Doggone It

Or so I wish, most of the time.

Setting: The first days of November 2009

"I'm going to run this by you first since I don't know what you'll think, but I really want to do something special for Tom's 30th birthday next week and I know he's always wanted a Yorkie and Paula's Cairn and Yorkie are having puppies soon and so I thought one of those puppies would make a great birthday present for him. Do you think that'll be okay?"

No. No. A million times, no.

That's what I wanted to say. That's what I wish I said.  But here's what I actually said:

"Umm. Sure. I guess. You can ask him; I'll leave it up to him."

No. No. A million times, no.

And that is how now, sixteen months later, we have a sixteen month old Cairn/Yorkie mix named Buster. A sixteen month old dog who, through only some fault of his own, has had four different homes, in chronological order: my parents' house, our old apartment, my in-laws' house, and our new home.

Buster was a teeny tiny puppy when we got him, but he was the biggest in his litter. Buster's mother almost died after giving birth to him, his three brothers, and one sister. As the biggest of the puppies, Buster seemed to take charge. His (human) foster mother told us how he was the first to learn how to drink out of the water dispenser and "showed" his siblings how to do so. He was just a little pipsqueak of a puppy, but he seemed to naturally take charge.

In short, I think we got a dog with mommy/abandonment issues.  (No, no, a million times, no.)

Because the hubby and I both worked full-time and didn't have the time to stay home and train Buster, he went to live with my parents since my mother wasn't working. He was paper trained and did a good job of sticking to the paper . . . most of the time. He was a voracious eater and a fierce playmate with seemingly endless energy, easily exhausting the large mixed breed dog my parents have.

After a month or so, Buster came to live with us. It quickly became evident that we needed to know how to train him, so we signed up for puppy training classes at a local pet store. I was at the end of my second trimester and we wanted Buster to be whipped into shape before the baby was born.

That didn't happen. Buster was hyper. Really hyper. And he just would not take to housebreaking. After being paper-trained, he didn't seem to want to let go of the option to do his business in the house. It was annoying and really something a couple about to have their first baby should not have to be dealing with.

And I continued to wish I just said, "No. Don't buy us the dog." But I hadn't and now he was our responsibility.

In the meantime, Buster's brother got returned to the Humane Society two or three times because his owners were finding him too difficult to handle. Friends of my parents adopted Buster's sister and also repeatedly considered returning her (to date, they haven't, though).

If it were up to me, Buster would have been returned. Easily. And a while ago.

After Nate was born, Buster went to live with my in-laws, who graciously kept him for us for six months - far longer than we had originally asked. But we couldn't envision how we'd manage both Buster and the baby in our little apartment so they kept him until we moved to someplace bigger and got settled in. Unfortunately, their house is busy and hectic and they were unable to give Buster the sort of training attention that he needed and so whatever progress we had made was mostly lost.

We are still working on housebreaking Buster and I wonder daily how nice life would be if I didn't have to clean his crate and mop the floor nearly every single day. How nice it'd be if I could let Nate crawl on the kitchen floor without having to scrub and disinfect it first. How nice it'd be not to have a huge gate across the doorframe from the kitchen to the dining room. How nice it'd be not to hear barking every single time our upstairs neighbors come and go. How nice it'd be if I'd just had the courage sixteen months ago to say no - no, don't buy us that dog.

Then I think about Buster. Where would he be if we said no? Would he have been returned several times like his brother? Would he have found a home much more suitable than ours - one where he wouldn't have been shuffled around so much? There's no way of knowing who would be better or worse off.

Around noon today, I got Nate up from his nap while the hubby took a shower. Nate and I sat in the glider for a bit, talking and singing songs. Then I plopped him on the floor and headed toward the kitchen to grab a snack. As I entered the dining room, I came to a screeching halt - literally. I stopped short and screeched. Sitting there on the floor next to one of our dining room chairs was a little gray mouse.

I spun around, dashed to Nate, scooped him up, and ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

"Auughhh! There's a mouse in the dining room! Nate and I are going to hide in the bathroom here with you until you finish your shower."

We had a mouse once at our previous apartment. I came home from work and there it was, dead on the kitchen floor. As best as I could guess, based on the pristine condition of that mouse, it seems Buster thought it was a toy, chased it, caught it, shook it, broke its neck, and then deemed it uninteresting, dropping it and leaving it alone. Either that or the mouse took one look at Buster and had a heart attack and keeled over.

I don't mind bugs and spiders. I've even dealt with a bird in my room at my parents' house - three times. But I just do not want to ever have to deal with a mouse, even if it's tiny.

So today, I'm glad we have Buster. He didn't get today's mouse yet (it scooted out of the kitchen through a heating grate), but he's on the job. And it's obvious he knows he has a job to do. As a terrier, it's what he's made for and I'm happy to let him have the sense of fulfilled character that taking care of our little friend Mickey will give him.  Yech.

The hubby won't hear talk of returning Buster, so he's our responsibility to keep. As much as I think the idea that everything happens for a reason is completely bogus, I can't help but feel that it's true sometimes (the "sometimes" being what makes it so bogus). Regardless, I like to think that Buster is better off with us than he may have been with another family because we just keep trying to get him properly integrated into our home.

And now, if you'll excuse me, he's barking his head off. Time to go see if it is at a man or a mouse.

This post is an entry for the Living Out Loud project.  This month’s theme was “Tempting Fate”.  If you’d like to take part in future projects, click here!

A Photographic Memory

"Do you have a picture for every day of your childhood?" ~my brother-in-law to my sister one day as he saw the albums upon albums upon boxes upon boxes of pictures of us my parents have in their basement

I have a terrible memory. I have few solid memories before the age of seven and, even then, I'm honestly not sure if they're memories or just events I know happened because we have pictures of them.

I don't remember my sixth birthday, but clearly it happened.

(Aw, look at my summer tan - that never happens now.)

When my sister was a baby, she had crazy, dark brown/almost black hair that stuck out in every direction.

Do I remember that directly?  No.  Do I remember my sister as a baby at all?  Actually, no.  And I was four years old when she was born.

Do I remember doing the dishes as a child?

Yes, that I remember.  But that happened repeatedly and I have to be about eight years old in this picture.  (And, I would like to note, please notice who is actually doing the chore, thank you very much.  This is still my life.  Thankfully those high-waisted husky jeans are not still a part of my life, yikes.)

It's hard, sometimes, having a bad memory.  I wish I remembered more of what it was like to be a child.  One of my earliest solid memories, which I know is a true memory because there are no photos, is when I fell off the top bunk bed when I was seven.  I banged my face on the ladder on the way down and ended up with a black eye.  This got me excused from gym for the week and what this meant in elementary school was that I got to sit on the piano bench on the side while my class took gym.  (Gym class happened in the all-purpose auditorium where we also had music class.)  My mom bought me two new dresses so I could feel pretty despite my black eye.

Unfortunately, one of my classmates didn't feel the same way and told me I looked like a fat lollipop in my new dress.  1 - Nice seven year old, right?  2 - What is a fat lollipop?  Lollipops are already round; aren't fat and round kind of synonymous, at least to seven year olds?  But the phrase "fat lollipop" sticks out in my head so strongly, I have no doubt in my mind that that's exactly what he said.

I also remember exactly who said it.  Not long ago, I ignored his friend request on Facebook.  Is it wrong that the comment still stings nearly thirty years later?  Probably.  But he and I were never friends anyway.  In the fourth grade, we had a history project to complete and one of the options was to make a puzzle map of the original thirteen colonies.  My dad helped me make one out of cardboard, carving out the states individually, coloring them in, writing their names, labeling the Atlantic Ocean.  My dad helped with the carving, but I did most of it myself.

This other kid, he also came in with a map - a wood one that was clearly carved out with wood tools, the type a parent would have AND have to use.  And the handwriting?  Not a nine year old's.  I remember being annoyed that it appeared he had nothing to do at all with his entire project.  Of course, I have no idea what grade he earned.

So there are two memories, I suppose, both fairly negative.  That's the problem sometimes; my early memories are few and far between and so many of them are unhappy.  I wouldn't say I had an unhappy childhood; I did get picked on a lot, but I've learned that most people seemed to.  It's just that those moments always stung so much that they stayed with me and I have a hard time remembering joyous moments that resonated with the same power.

In adulthood, there are many, thankfully.  Good times in college, good times going out in my 20s, making new friends through my husband in my 30s - and now, all the memories we're building with Nate.  I still find myself clinging to the negative moments, though; I sometimes think about sad or aggravating moments that happened years ago.  What for?  Why?

But I take pictures of the good moments, the happy ones, the things I want to remember, big and small.  We have a ton of pictures of Nate's first Christmas, but I also take pictures like this one - Nate's first time having toast, today at brunch.

It's a small, seemingly insignificant moment, but it's one I know now I'll never forget.  I don't think I'll ever become someone who shrugs off negative moments easily, but I can be someone who actively counterbalances them with positive memories.

This post is an entry for the Living Out Loud project.  This month’s theme was “Total Recall”.  If you’d like to take part in future projects, click here!

My body is a moving object.

I was eleven when my brother started kindergarten.  My mother volunteered for some class activity and when I got home from school that day, she was crying.  I asked if she was okay and she explained that she heard one of my brother's classmates say, "Wow, Ken, your mom is FAT!"  Even now, nearly twenty-five years later, that memory stings enough to bring tears to my eyes.  I remember my mom telling me this was why I had to lose weight: she didn't want me to go through the same things she had to go through.

But I gained weight, and gained weight.  My weight steadily grew until I had gastric bypass surgery at the age of 28.  And then my weight dropped.  I went from hating my body to being bewildered by it.  This is what I looked like with less fat?  There were hip bones under there?  I had a collarbone that could show itself?  What would I look like if I didn't have all this excess skin now?  Why had I let myself irreparably damage my body by getting so fat that my skin wouldn't shrink back?  So then, at 30, I had plastic surgery and had some parts nipped and tucked, and that helped - but then weight slowly crept back on over the next four years.  And then I got pregnant and gained only 10 pounds in those 40 weeks.  Then I gave birth and, in the following six months, lost the 10 pregnancy pounds plus another twenty-five without really trying (I thank the thyroid medication I'm on).

But what this means in reality is that my body is a moving object.  I can't put a finger on it because it won't stay still.  Its shape won't stay.  I have absolutely no reference point for what my body's "norm" is.  Since giving birth, my hips have gotten (seemingly permanently) wider but my already reduced and lifted breasts have gotten a bit smaller (no complaints about that).

So what's happened? I no longer think about myself as any body type.  When I was fat, I identified as fat.  When I was thin, I identified as a former fattie.  It was a part of who I am that I knew I couldn't shake.  Now?  Now I cognitively recognize that I am overweight (technically obese) but I don't feel like it.  It's like my mind has simply given up trying to categorize the body that carries it around.  It's been quite freeing; I feel better about my body now than I did at some points when I weighed 35 pounds less than I do now (near my lowest adult weight).

So I was snapped out of a seeming fog when at a deli the other day, as I was buying a soda, a bag of pretzels, a candy bar, and a pack of gum, the cashier asked me, "Is that all for you or is someone else in the car?"

Immediately I was seven years old again, being told I looked like a fat lollipop in my new dress.  I was nine years old, being told I shouldn't tuck my shirt in because fat people don't look good when they do that.  I was eleven, watching my mother cry about hearing a five year old say she was fat.  I was fourteen with spitballs in my hair and tacks on my chair.  I was seventeen, wondering if anyone would ever be generous enough to love me despite my appearance.  I was nineteen, being called, "FATTIE!" by a passing car of guys in front of my friends.  I came rushing back into myself, filling up the body that I can't even get a hold of anymore.

And then?  I lied.  "Yes," I said, "My husband is in the car."

Why did I do that?  I can eat a damn bag of chips and candy bar if I want to.  Instead of instantly feeling ashamed, I should have been pissed off that this guy felt he had the right to ask me that.  But all it takes is one question to make me feel like I gained a hundred pounds in an instant, like I went from the real Gwyneth Paltrow to the Fat Suit Gwyneth in Shallow Hal.  It's those moments that I realize my growth hasn't been as full as it sometimes seems.

Tori Amos used to sell t-shirts that said "Recovering Catholic".  I should have a "Recovering Fattie" shirt, even though I'd never wear it and most people wouldn't understand how someone still fat could be a recovering fattie.  But that's how I feel.

And, so, here I am and here's my body.  I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I do finally feel like I own it, even when a short question sends me reeling.

These two things, however, I do know:

1. I like who I am and that will never again be dependent upon my body size.

2. That deli has lost my business.

This post is an entry for the Living Out Loud project.  This month’s theme was “It. Was. Awful!”.  If you’d like to take part in future projects, click here!

Cleaning Product Aromatherapy

As with many parts of pregnancy, I think my nesting instinct came late.  I don't know if everything about my pregnancy felt delayed because it took me so long to feel pregnant (and even longer to look vaguely pregnant at all), but it feels like I'm always playing catch-up. Oh, the baby seems like he's hungry after his bottle?  Better start foods!  Where are the baby bowls and spoons?  Better wash them!  Now! Now! Now!

And so it was with my nesting instinct; I think it kicked in after Nate was born.  Before he was born, I just wanted to make sure he had a place to sleep and we had some clothes for him ready to go.  I didn't even prep any bottles or buy formula "just in case" because I was so dedicated to breastfeeding (until my milk didn't come in and I found myself scrambling to sterilize bottles and nipples in the middle of the night as Nate continued to cry).

But then suddenly, after Nate was born, I found myself wanting everything to be spotless.  Every errant drop of beverage or hair started to drive me crazy.  And so I started to wipe everything down with Lysol wipes.  And I soon realized they smelled amazing, especially the lemon scented ones.  I started to look for excuses to use the wipes just so I could stand and smell the wipe for a minute before wiping down the counter or table.

And then one day my mom bought Gain detergent for the laundry at her house.  I had seen the commercials about how people love the scent of Gain but I figured it was just advertising blah blah.  Uh, no, it smells amazing.  I now have the Gain detergent, fabric softener, and dryer sheets.  I keep looking for the Febreze with Gain scent and will be buying the Gain dish detergent when our current detergent runs out.  I'm addicted.

But here's the weird thing - it's like these things are aromatherapy.  I actually feel better when I smell them.  During my maternity leave, when so many of the days were simply difficult to get through, the smell of the Lysol wipes actually helped.  There was even one day where when I went to bed for the night, I took one of them with me to smell before I fell asleep.  Weird, I know.  Really weird.  But it helped.

Even now, months later, the smell of laundry turning or a freshly cleaned bathroom makes me feel so relaxed.  Did having a baby turn on some Good Housekeeping gene or something?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a bathtub screaming with soap scum to attend to.  Mmmm.

This post is an entry for the Living Out Loud project.  This month’s theme was “Name your vice”.  If you’d like to take part in future projects, click here!

If high school was now...

I read yesterday that the CEO of Foursquare is an NYU grad (my undergrad alma mater).  I'm always happy to see NYU grads in the news (which happens often) but I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about this one because I don't really "get" Foursquare.  Okay, you announce where you are and earn points and become the Mayor McCheese of Starbucks or something?

In thinking about this yesterday, I said off-handedly to the hubby, "But, man, if Foursquare was around when I was in high school?  I would have been watching it constantly.  Because I had nothing better to do."

It's true.  I was a very sad high school student, both literally and figuratively.  I was that kid listening to Morrissey and The Cure, looking out her bedroom blinds, trying to see which particular popular kids were showing up for the pool party across the street.  A trio of popular siblings lived across the street, providing me hours upon hours of jealous spying time.  We're now friends on Facebook, even though I still can't think of anything I like about them and wouldn't recognize them if I saw them in person.  But isn't that what Facebook is about?

Speaking of Facebook, I would have friended everyone I went to high school with and then spent hours upon hours looking at their profile pages, seeing who commented what to whom, who was dating whom, who broke up, who posted what pictures.  I quite possibly might not have made the honor roll or the National Honor Society because I would have spent all my after school time online.  I may not have become an English major because I may not have spent my spare time reading. (Now there's a scary thought.)  I would have been obsessed with Facebook stalking.  Instead of standing in the hall at school with my friend Sarah, trying to eavesdrop and spy on the popular kids, desperately trying to figure out what was going on in their lives, we would have gone home after school and spent hours on Facebook.

And I would have had a blog.  Oh, yes, I would have had the type of blog that would make me cringe as an adult, kind of like my journals from the time do - except they would've been public.  I would've written about how much I hated high school and how much I hated life.  I would have wondered obsessively about when I'd have my first boyfriend and when I'd fall in love and whether I'd ever get married.  My words would have displayed for all the world to see just how socially awkward and unaware I was, just how little I really knew about why and how boys and girls got together. 

I would've written thinly veiled descriptions of who I hated and why.  I would have written more strongly veiled descriptions of who I had a crush on and why.  I may have logged all the minute details of their day, much like I did in notes with Sarah.

I would have posted terrible poetry.  Terrible, terrible poetry - but words that helped me express what I felt so painfully inside.

I would have made people worry about me.  I used to write suicide notes, not because I actually planned to kill myself, but I found it comforting to think through what I would want to say if I knew I was never going to talk to anyone ever again.  I would try to figure out what I could write so my family wouldn't feel any guilt.  I would try to figure out what I could write so people at school knew just how miserable they made me.  But I would never write any of this with any true intention behind it.

I wonder if I would have been bullied online, like I was at school.  What would be the 2010 equivalent of tacks on my chair and spitballs in my hair?  Would people write rude things on my Facebook wall and then delete them, just so I'd see them and then there'd be no proof?  Or would they write rude things and then leave them, so I'd be openly embarrassed?  Or would I have come out of high school with more friends because I would have unintentionally opened myself up to more of my fellow students, instead of coming across as stuck up or shy?

And would I have found Fatshionista type sites and communities, where I may have learned to love not just my body, but myself, years and years (and years) ahead of when I actually would?  Where I would have learned the dangers of dieting?  Where I may have learned about intuitive eating early enough to make significant changes to my relationship with food, possibly preventing me from having gastric bypass surgery at 28?

I really don't know what I'd be like now, as a person, if I'd had the internet in high school.  I suspect that I truly might be someone different and possibly may have had a different life, one I would feel just as right in as I do in the one I have now.  I know you're supposed to say you wouldn't change a thing because your past made you who you are now, but I don't have a problem seeing myself with a different job, or living in a different state, or even having a different husband.  The only exception is Nate.  I simply cannot imagine myself with a different child and I can't imagine having had him at a different time, a different age.  So then I suppose I really wouldn't change a thing if this all led me to him.

This post is an entry for the Living Out Loud project.  This month’s theme was “Back to school”.  If you’d like to take part in future projects, click here!