Which isn’t to say I’m recommending it

I have a cold. It sucks. I’ve been in bed a lot. And I’ve realized that much of the time when sleeping my hand is up by my mouth. Specifically, my thumb is near my lips. I’m guessing this might be a comfort holdover from back when I sucked my thumb before my grandparents put quinine on it and got me to stop. I sucked my thumb last night to see if it still had the magical happy-making powers for me it has for Little Girl (though we’ve gotten her to do it a bit less all-consumingly often), and the experiment was distracting rather than soothing. Anyway, back to bed. I’m just happy I had the good sense to get sick on the weekend when Husband is here to keep Little Girl busy so I can stay in bed and read! When that’s the case, illness is almost like a vacation.

Homefront

We’ve come to visit my hometown for a few days. I like to try to visit pretty regularly–it’s only a few hours away–and plus I was getting pretty lonely with Husband gone for basically a month straight. And since soon enough I’ll be very far from my family, and my grandparents are in poor health, I try to see them since I can.

But while I know my mom likes us to come, and my stepfather seems to, despite the fact that this time I brought every last one of our pets (though we’re down from a high of seven to merely three), and my grandfather does as well, the visits are not actually that enjoyable for my grandmother.

Her Alzheimer’s advances apace, and she’s now wheelchair-bound when she leaves the house (for restaurants and doctors’ visits) as she can barely walk, and she’s starting to mix up fantasy and reality. Recently when watching an old Western (the TV is always, always on there), my grandmother began to weep because she thought that my grandfather had had a baby with an Indian princess in the film. I’ve sat with her while she thumbed fumblingly through a magazine which she started to see as an old scrapbook, and she kept trying to connect the images–ads featuring bananas, pictures of people riding bikes–with events from her past. And the fact was that she had turned to that magazine rather than talk to me, sitting right there, ready to visit with her, since holding a conversation can just be too taxing for her.

And sweet-faced Little Girl is pretty overwhelming. My grandmother will get peevish about some little, innocently little kid thing she is doing–pretending her fork is an airplane, examining a small, pre-existing rip in her placemat–and scold her and try to wrestle the item away from her. Little Girl requires rationalizations for these kind of interventions, and doesn’t understand why she’s getting on her case. She’s learning that she just has to do whatever my grandmother says when she’s worked up, even if it doesn’t seem fair or reasonable. My grandmother simply can’t be reasonable anymore, after all. When they enjoy each other, it’s brief and simple, as when they’re playing with stuffed animals, or clapping along to the fight song from the state university’s football team as sung by an animated plush bulldog, or Little Girl climbs up on her knees for a hug. So we keep visiting, looking for those moments.

Not to mention that being at my mom’s means I don’t have to come up with any meals.

Tears

You know sometimes, you read a post, and the comments are all, “you brought me to tears, that was so ___” and I always figured that for hyperbole, maybe a figure of speech. But then I read something about how women on average spend 2.5 hours a week crying, and wondered. Is crying really that common? I was pretty hysterical when I realized my cat, Tang, who just died, was so sick, and I had cried a bit (maybe about ten minutes?) the night before the surgery for my miscarriage.

In fact, I can tell you about every time I’ve cried at least since getting married: when my rabbit was killed; a bunch of times during all the infertility stuff; the newborn phase, mostly for breastfeeding reasons; and weaning. That’s it. Evidently, compared to most people, that’s not a lot.

I understand each tear contains the hormones related to the emotional upset, and shedding them releases your emotional burden (I’m glad this is a blog and I don’t have to find a citation for this assertion–but I read it somewhere respectable enough). It’s possible I just don’t get as emotional about things as others, but more likely that I’m just not showing it. I’ve had enough therapy to realize that it all stems from my problems with my mother. With her, my way to assert myself was nonchalance. Whatever, mom, it doesn’t matter what you say. I was all about the sangfroid.

Husband can’t stand this about me. When we’re arguing and I’m being condescending about his upsetness instead of being hurt myself, he thinks it means I don’t care about whatever the topic is, or his feelings. That’s not true, but I also can’t let myself show any vulnerability. The way I was raised, showing your feelings was the quickest way to get them pummeled further. So now, for the most part, I do sadness as anger, and injured feelings as brittleness.

I’m trying to teach Little Girl it’s okay to be sad, but I know actions speak louder than words. Maybe her father–who is never afraid to show his feelings–will be her guide there.

Sometimes daddies are too far away

The season is winding down and so this week was the locally famous children’s singer’s last. The shows start at 8 PM, way too late normally, but I made a bedtime exception this week for Little Girl. The stage was a semi-circular platform underneath an ancient oak, and children sat cross-legged there with the parents on benches down a few stairs from the stage. Little Girl isn’t the type to separate from mommy easily, but she got into the music (when she wasn’t digging in the sand at my feet) and got up on stage (still facing me), pinwheeling her arms in her own self-taught dancing style, occasionally attempting splits and somersaults. (She later got several compliments on her moves.)

The singer has been working this gig for more than thirty years and it really showed. He was full of snarky comments about the posters the children had made, their endless delight in the ABC song, their regional accents. He made a lot of jokes about beatings and spankings. I’m not saying he wasn’t funny–to adults–or that the children didn’t enjoy the songs, but his attitude was weirdly off. It wasn’t really a patter that I’d want Little Girl much exposed to.

Or maybe the bad taste left in my mouth after the performance resulted from another Bad Tourist Parent episode. While most of the little kids dutifully sat and watched, another young girl, like mine, felt compelled to move to the music. She was pretty independent-minded and wandered the stage a bit in her pretty pink dress and pigtails (and occasionally the singer would show his irritation with her through some sarcastic remark about ADHD), and at one point moved towards the pretty blinking lights of his sound system. He turned and yelled, “Don’t you touch that!” and went back to his song.

This little girl reacted just like my own would when spoken to so sharply by a stranger and she froze, stuck out her lip, covered her face in her hands, and started sobbing. The crowd waited and soon started murmuring, “Where’s her mommy?” while looking around, watching for someone to come up and rescue her. No one came. I couldn’t take it anymore–it was heartbreaking, and it was just as if it were Little Girl were up there. I was close, so I popped up, lifted her, and brought her back to my bench on my lap where Little Girl waited.

“We’ll find your mommy, it’s okay,” I told her, as I continued to look around for the girl’s caregivers. Another lady beside me said she thought she’d seen the parents earlier in the evening and she looked about, too, but still no one was coming to fetch the scared toddler. The poor pigtailed thing started to ask for her mommy, and just when I was about to carry her to find a police officer, a pissed-looking guy came up, put his arms out for her, and said, “You didn’t have to go get her.” But I did. I couldn’t let that poor dear be scared and humiliated all alone on the stage when her parents obviously weren’t coming anytime soon. Where had he been, anyway? The bar?

So I’ll be glad when the tourist season is sewn up, though it’ll mean the end of The Perpetual Beach Vacation, and that, for company, we’ll be left just with the retirees. I overheard the dullest conversation between two of them today wherein the old guy detailed what yard work he had done that morning, in what way, with what equipment, for how long, and then moved on to what he would have done had the rain not started, and where he likes to buy his gardening supplies, and how he knows what to select, and how he decides to–OMIGOD I felt so sorry for his date, who sadly, and mutely, was probably just happy to have the attention of one of the few men available in her age bracket.

Speaking of men, Husband hasn’t even been gone half of the two weeks of this current trip, and Little Girl is already kind of a wreck about his absence. “I’m sad about my Daddy,” she tells me, and strangers (I can’t imagine what they make of that), often. “I want my Daddy come home.”

Unbalanced

When Husband is abroad for weeks at a time, I frequently get emails like, “Place sucks, everyone is an idiot,” followed by phone talks that consist largely of his venting about his unhappiness about his work. Meanwhile I am torn between sharing what we’re up to with not wanting to make him jealous (e.g. “We went to the playground and then rode the free trolley around and then did some window shopping and then danced to some live music and then fed the turtles under the bridge and then walked on the beach with the dogs, and that was all after 5 PM!).

Everyone he’s surrounded by is really into this macho work-is-everything attitude that’s anathema to Husband. I mean, he’s brilliant and hardworking at what he does, but at the end of the day he wants to put it aside, go home at a reasonable hour, and be with me and Little Girl (if he’s here), or take some pictures, or play on the internet, whatever. But whenever he’s not working at home, and particularly when he and his co-workers are all in Europe, he has to put in 12-hour days and then several more each evening at bars, at restaurants, hanging around with these men, most of whom he not only is tired of seeing all the time but doesn’t even like to begin with. This evening (his time) he had to go out with the big wigs, despite plans he was excited about to photograph an abandoned mine, where they boasted about all the birthdays of their children they’d missed, made fun of the mere 38-hour work weeks of the staff there, and shared wisdom like, “You can always get another wife, but you can’t get a new career.”

Being the main money-maker around here, Husband just has to put up with that crap for now. But I’m not sure what he’s more excited about with regards to relocating: being closer to his family, or having an excuse to quit his job.

Since last we spoke

Hey! We’ve been busy. Sometimes when you leave it too long so much happens and then it feels impossible to parse it all. I’m sure you know what I mean. Here are the salient details:

The trip back to where we just moved from was mostly successful. The resort relaxing, the friends entertaining. We did not close on the house, however. Somebody screwed up the paperwork. But we signed power of attorney over to the realtor on this matter so when it’s ready to close–by the end of August if people can find time to do their jobs–we won’t have to go back, since it’s a long trip and anyway Husband is in Belgium until Labor Day.

The Swedish Embassy is moving extremely quickly with my application for residency. They contacted us with two questions: Where will we live? What will Husband do for work? (I have to say I am peeved that no one seemed interested in my career plans.) We were also told that an interview would be unlikely, given the length of our marriage. Husband of course finds this rapidity to be a relief; for my part, as the move gets more and more imminent, I feel a mixture of regret about leaving the US and excitement about the new adventure.

Our dogs were very, very bad for our pet sitter, the fourteen-year-old girl across the street whom I’d engaged to walk them when we were gone. They escaped from the kitchen one night, ate the litter box, became ill, and shat in various rooms of the house on fine needlepoint throw rugs. They even managed to stain the hardwood floors. And while we were gone my mother decided to come to town–thank goodness we’d cleaned the house and done the yard before leaving town–and she and the handyman, who was around trying to fix the roof leak, couldn’t get the dogs to stay penned up either as there was a thunderstorm and apparently there was this chaotic scene where the dogs kept eluding them, escaping out either end of the galley kitchen, vomiting intermittently. Goodness.

Pudding has been mourning her dead brother. In the middle of the night, she cries and yowls in the dark living room. I go pick her up and bring her to bed with us and pet her until she relaxes enough to rest. It’s beyond sad. She’s been talking a lot in general, partly because, as I’d promised Tang on his deathbed I’d give Pudding salmon, she’s now quite keen to have wet food every evening, and also because she’s always been a talker, and now she has serious questions for me.

Now that summer’s almost done, about which I am rather broken up, I finally learned that we could have been using the three community pools around here all this time. The jellyfish are out now and I looked into getting a pool pass for a few weeks when I discovered that was unnecessary. So now we get to do truly awesome things like play in a large, nearly empty pool with old oaks overhanging, listening to restaurants’ live music, where Little Girl swims like an otter (she can really move underwater; the only thing she can’t do is not drown, i.e. come back up to breathe, so usually I have her in a vest), and then we can hop in the car or on the bike and go to the ocean for a romp in the waves.

Oh, and Little Girl turned three!

Noted

I take back my disparaging comments about nannies on vacation. THAT IS A BRILLIANT IDEA, particularly when it evens out the adult-to-child ratio. We had a wonderful time with our friends here; so much storytelling and laughing fits and games. We’re both sad our friends had to go (for Little Girl, this means the identical twins, whom I can now tell apart so well it seems unbelievable to me that other people think they look the same, and their insanely patient-for-small-children’s-games nanny; and as for me, their hilarious mom). Compared to the twins, Little Girl plays very much more independently, which isn’t a surprise. (No, this isn’t code for “she sucks at sharing”.) But through necessity, she’s really good at creating elaborate, narrated interactions and activities for her toys.

Hello little horsie! That’s gonna go in my house! Oh, my house! (singing) hm, hm, hm, hm (runs to other room, comes back) I got my house! My house goes right here! (can’t get it to open like she wants) My house not listening! Not listen to me. Oh, it’s open now! Daddy horsie! (sing song) Go in the hou-ouse!

+++

Some people were just letting their kid climb the ancient oak tree in our front yard. I had to chase them off. I mean really, tourists. Is this how you act at home?

+++

There are a lot of older people living here, and so often the women have these lined, pinched, angry looks fixed upon their faces. It sort of seems like their sour expressions froze over the decades. It makes me so aware of how I am holding my facial muscles–I certainly don’t want to end up with a permanently pissed off look. Besides, I think I read just the act of smiling makes you happier. Just like how anticipating laughing improves your mood.

+++

Husband will be back from Europe tomorrow, and then we’ll be here a couple of days, and then we’ll be back in our old city for a few days for the house closing and to see friends, and then we’ll be back here for one day, and then he’s off to Europe again for two weeks. Several friends have invited us to stay with them in Atlanta, but we may end up in a hotel to keep things less complicated. What would be better for Little Girl do you think? She’s never been in a hotel. What do you do with a little kid at night in a hotel, anyway?

+++

Speaking of whom, next week she turns three! For a while there she was daily going on and on about how it was her birthday, and how she wanted cake, so to calm things down, we baked brownies and called it cake, and she hasn’t mentioned it since, thank goodness. Before we moved away, our friends threw her an early birthday party, so we may actually just let this slide past without much fanfare. Or, you know, any.

+++

I miss my cat.

My new niece

Recently Husband’s little brother’s teeny tiny wife gave birth, one week late, to a perfect baby girl, Saga, who weighed nearly ten pounds. Laughing gas and a vacuum extractor were involved which I think is pretty typical from Sweden (at least it’s been the story with both sisters-in-law so far). She looks just like her father except she’s got her mother’s distinctive nose. She likes to sleep and eat. You know, the normal stuff. Living in Sweden as they do, her parents have literally years of maternity and paternity leave to divvy up and take like they will from their typically Swedish jobs at a state-run daycare and Ericsson. They’ve just bought their first home and move in next month, and have scrapped their crazy plans to renovate the kitchen immediately, what with the tiny human they have now.

Although I was obviously aware a baby was on the way, when she was finally born, the sadness totally surprised me. I mean, I was supposed to be having a baby, too. Part of the reason I had wanted to get pregnant last winter was, semi-consciously, because V was. She’s always said she wanted to time her first baby with my second, a sort of shimmery, pretty idea that proved too perfect for real life. First she miscarried, then I did. But now we both have little girls. And after my initial reaction, I’m very happy for her, for the whole family, that this new little person we’ll get to watch grow (and whom I do not have to wake up with in the night!) is here. She and Little Girl have visited over the webam several times already, and as Saga snuffles in her sleep, couched in her father’s arms, my girl likes to sing her melodies that eventually all turn into “Twinkle twinkle little star.”

Other people are weird

Happened upon another wandering small child out by the lagoon today while we were taking the dogs on a bike-run (this means Little Girl and I are on the bike, she in her special little seat, and the dogs run alongside us, leashed; looks crazy but works great, at least until they get tired, poor lazy things.) The kid, five years old, said she was waiting for her mom to come back from the beach, who did indeed show up. Nearly 10 minutes later. I mentioned the alligators, and she was all, “Oh, I heard they don’t bother people.” Right, so you are not worried about tempting them by allowing your tubby, juicy little kid to linger along the shore? Plus, what makes you think it’s a good idea to let your child be all alone in an unfamiliar place by open bodies of water to begin with? Tourists, sheesh.

Husband’s in Belgium again, but this week promises to be exciting, as some of Little Girl’s favorite people, identical twin girls, are coming on a visit. With their mother. And their nanny. This is something I truly do not understand, but my friend insists she simply cannot care for the girls, who are nearly three, at any time before 9 AM. Wow, must be nice. Do you think I can use the nanny too, and go see a movie?

…huh. I can only come up with two anecdotes illustrating other people’s weirdness? Must be a good week then. Or boring. Six of one!

Swimsuit PSA

Do I mention that I live at the beach often enough? No? Okay, so I live at the beach, right? Even when I’m not actually on the beach (at which I live, btw) it’s pretty casual around here, and much of the time people are in their bathing suits when riding bikes or whatever. And, my friends, most of the time people are doing the swimsuit thing all wrong. I need to set the general public straight. (I realize a guide to bathing suits would have been more helpful at the beginning of the summer, when you were shopping, but I wanted to make a careful study of this topic before presenting my research findings.)

I have scientifically determined the bathing suit style that looks great on everybody and every body:

This enhances small breasts and lifts and shows off big ones. It’s cute but not slutty, fun but not too young, glamorous but not self-conscious. Add a floppy straw hat and you’ll be set.

And it doesn’t have one of those little skirts (in fact, I think this particular example cuts a little low on the thighs–the higher the cut the longer your legs look! Of course, then you have to worry about, you know, hair removal, but still.)

Look, I know everyone thinks those swim skirts are a good way to cover up body flaws, but really all they do is highlight the fact that you think you have some. Nearly every woman has some cellulite. Nobody cares, I promise. Weird veins, stretch marks–honestly I only notice them when you are trying to distract me. (Not to mention, when wet, those skirts are all clingy and drowned-kitten looking). Same goes with extreme shirring, though a little can be flattering. Confidence and unselfconsciousness in your body make it look better. If you insist on a cover-up on your way to and fro, a little sleeveless cotton dress or some sweat shorts are the way to go. A big white T-shirt, say, is basically a sign that says, “My body embarrasses me. Guess why!”

It’s largely about attitude. And also, like I said, my rigorous research findings suggest this particular style works on everyone. Problem solved. You’re welcome!

(And no, that pic is not of me. I actually totally would have put one up–I think I have a rare form of body dysmorphic disorder where I look way hotter to myself than to anyone else–but I haven’t mastered the art of photographing myself in a mirror like the population of MySpace, and Husband has been out of town, and plus he would totally make fun of me if I wanted a bathing suit shot of me for my blog. I even tried to get Little Girl to photograph me, but she just kept getting shots of her feet.)

I should have known better than to buy something from the juniors’ department

Tonight I attended Part 1 of my high school reunion (you may guess which one). In preparation, last week I got a haircut that, well, did not go as anticipated, and this week I bought what can only be described as a minidress. It is made out of a tissue-thin cotton material in black and possesses a neckline that does fantastic things for my breasts. I had to try it on in front of Husband like six times before he semi-convinced me that I was not too old and motherly for it. So tonight I show up (Husband-free, indeed the only person not to bring a partner), and I see an old friend, the organizer, and the first thing she says to me is, “How’s the pregnancy going?” OMIGOD MINIDRESS FAIL.

I’m not sure if it’s worse that what actually was going on was that I had, apparently, told her that I was pregnant, back when I was, and then neglected to tell her when I was not. So then later, when my high school BFF showed up (the one who married my high school boyfriend, which still weirds me out), and I was relating this story, instead of laughing at the end, she’s telling me she’s so, so sorry. Huh, something had gone seriously awry with my anecdote. It seems I hadn’t ever even told her I was pregnant to begin with, so here she was getting a very large amount of information stuffed into an aside about a story about someone else. And then I was hastening to tell her it was okay, I wasn’t too upset about the miscarriage, in fact otherwise we’d never have gotten to live at the beach!, and I could tell from her increasingly horrified expression that she clearly thought my affect was all wrong.

Most of the evening was a similar mixture of awkwardness and catching up. I didn’t recognize an embarrassingly large number of people (they were so much older than I remembered!), and once I did have everyone mostly down, I still couldn’t quite remember my relationships with them. Most of us had been in the same very small class since the sixth grade, and friendships had waxed and waned, so I kept having to ask people, “So…were we friends in high school?” And people would tell me yes, you told me about orgasms! or We used to have slumber parties at your house all the time! or We were in physics together senior year, don’t you remember? And no, I totally did not. I remember shockingly little about all those years of forced togetherness.

When that old BFF and BF got married a few years ago, I took Husband to the wedding, and it was increasingly disconcerting to introduce him to one after another guy with whom I had been to at least one of the bases. Tonight wasn’t quite so populated in that way, though a couple of men and I kept our distance and I wore a strange smile when I shook their wives’ hands. I spoke to most everyone. Mostly the topics were jobs, kids, geography. Everyone had all these careers, Ph.Ds, businesses. I recalled a lot of the spouses from high school, which seemed weird to me until I remembered I have been with Husband since then, too; people said they remembered hearing about him. I fell in for a long time with a few other women and I realized we were orienting around each other in the exact same positions we used to in seventh grade at lunch. We shared breastfeeding tales. Somehow none of them was happy.

I’m glad I went, though it wasn’t an entirely good time. It feels like part of my Farewell to America tour, tying up loose ends. There’s another event tomorrow and I’ll go because my friend is the organizer, but I think it’ll just be depressing, and lonely since everyone but me is bringing their families; I’m moving away, literally and figuratively, from my early life’s ties, stretching them thin. Sometimes this long process of moving abroad feels like swimming to the horizon, waiting to drop off.

Wanted and unwanted visitors

Except our parents, no one has come to visit us now we’ve moved. What our friends have against free beach vacations is beyond me, not to mention that they are missing out on hanging out with us.* And we are very fun.

But now people are starting to email me possible visit dates, which is totally exciting. Except they all want to come during the same week. And also except the fact that this other lady I kinda know, and do not like, emailed me: “Heard A was thinking of coming to visit. We’d love to tag along!” Um…uh…you smell like cigarettes and are unreliable and unpleasant and your kids like to push. And there is only so much space, you know? Plus, notably, I did not even invite you! I mean, really.

I miss my friends. I miss them, specifically, very much, and I miss having friends in general. And so does Little Girl. She’s still talking about the little six-year-old girl, here on vacation, we played with at the beach a few days last week (I guess tourists aren’t all bad). Now, when she mentions one of her old buddies, she automatically tags on, having heard me say it so much, “but she’s too far.” It’s very sad. Sigh for her, sigh for me.

* In answer to your question, yes, we could go back to visit, too. But it’s rather hard to organize what with having to find a place to stay there, arranging pet care, and scheduling it not when Husband is here nor when he is not here (we like to make things overly complicated). Should nothing go wrong, we’ll return for a visit when we have to be there anyway for the house closing.

All that said, we had a wonderfully sociable time today in Savannah visiting with other bloggers and their assorted delightful children (and one hot husband), and then enjoying some of the historic district’s highlights. It was very fun. Little Girl seemed to be under the impression it was her birthday party, actually (we went to a pancake house, and so that means I uttered the word “cake,” and she knows her birthday is coming up, so she put two and two together). Good times.