Spruced Up

So, I found myself in a situation last night that I bet some of you can relate to. I was barefoot, standing in the back room of an organic cafe in the middle of nowhere, pretending to be a space alien who was talking to an alligator. No? Just me? Hmm.

This all started when I was driving home in an unconventional way and noticed a sign that said "Living Waters Organic Cafe" on a little, out of the way building. Since one of my greatest pleasures in life is finding little cafes near my home to frequent, I was excited.

I looked through the menu online and saw that it was good. Then, I noticed a tab at the top labeled "Ongoing Events". I clicked. The page that came up was filled with healing retreats, drum circles, and various things that Chris would probably refer to as "hippie nonsense", including a laughter yoga class. This piqued my interest because I, being clumsy, find yoga to be hilarious. Every yoga class I've ever been to, though, has been so deadly serious that I have been too nervous to even laugh at myself as I flub my way through what are supposed to be the graceful series of calming poses.

I called on my friends to join me in this class, and Laura responded that she'd join me. I envisioned a large group of awkward people just like me, laughing our ways through a traditional yoga class, not feeling as uncoordinated as we would if we were surrounded by lithe, suburban yogis in expensive gear. This, my friend, was NOT the case.

The class started at 5:45 on a Friday, which led me to believe that it was going to be like a refreshing, communal happy hour. I arrived at the cafe before Laura did and was led into a back room that was empty, except for one stone-faced woman. I put my things down and took off my jacket, then introduced myself to her. Her name was Spruce. She wore purple from head to toe, including a purple velour tracksuit and a purple buzz cut with a long, braided rat tail. Spruce told me with a very serious expression that she was "usually a hugger", but she had a cold so she was going to keep her distance. She told me about some 'inner child work' she had done with one of her clients that day and gave me a business card with her reiki practice's information on it. When she left for a moment, I sent Laura a text: "Only one other person. Her name is Spruce."

Shockingly, Spruce turned out to be the class leader. I got a sinking feeling when Spruce told me that this was not a traditional yoga class, and that actually, we wouldn't be doing any yoga. Laura and I decided later, over a beer, that calling the class 'yoga' should be considered fraud. But I digress. Spruce and I began our warm up, which consisted of stretching towards the ceiling and pretending we were playing in the clouds, and pretending that we were throwing colored paint at the walls. This imaginary paint was meant to represent "all the stuff we'd let stick to ourselves over the course of the day", and all the "negative judgments we made about ourselves". I thought about the nice day I'd had--hanging out with the baby, making mittens out of an old sweater, having Chris come home early to make me a grilled cheese--and didn't really feel the need to throw emotional paint at the walls. Oh, and we also gave ourselves a lot of hugs.

Laura arrived in the middle of this. When Spruce was bending at the waist and "allowing gravity to do its thing", we exchanged a look. My look said, "I'm sorry", and hers said, "Are you kidding me?" Now, let me just say that neither Laura nor I are closed-minded individuals. She went to Sarah Lawrence, for God's sake. I have a degree in person-centered counseling. We both do yoga. We're not some kind of corn-fed Republican stockbrokers or anything. But the next 45 minutes really tested us.

So, Spruce led us in some fake laughter that was meant to get us breathing and laughing correctly. She informed us that a lot of the laughter would probably be fake, but that, "with time, we could learn to really laugh". She was probably one of the most serious and unfunny people alive today. I found it extremely odd that this dour woman was leading a class about laughter, when I had a hard time imagining her laughing, or even smiling, or even really feeling happy. At one point, she stopped to think about one of the exercises. She muttered to herself, completely straight-faced, "Is it ho-ho-haha? Or haha-ho-ho? I always get my hohos and hahas mixed up." Laura lost it. I lost it. We both started laughing, really laughing. And since that was the point of the class, we just kept on laughing. We laughed when Spruce suggested we pretend to be space aliens looking for Earth's leader, when we pretended to be at a casino buffet, eating various things that made us laugh in different ways (I think it's possible that Spruce ate something before class that made her laugh, if you know what I mean), and when we had to lie on the floor, listening to what is basically a one-woman laugh track on CD (which we were told was available for download for $10). At one point, Laura and I were lying there on our backs on the floor of this backroom, listening to insane laughter coming from the CD and from Spruce, just laughing like maniacs, and I thought, "This is what it must feel like to be insane". Laura just kept laughing, sporadically saying, "Oh my god". Whether or not we were laughing for the right reason, we were laughing.

The class ended after a brief relaxation exercise. Spruce told us we could try to use what we had learned to try to incorporate laughter into our daily lives, even if it was forced. I had to bite my tongue to keep myself from asking why in the world she was teaching a class about laughter when, it seemed, she didn't really laugh that often. Maybe that's why she was trying to teach it--because she needed the practice. In any case, that's what I did with my Friday night.

In keeping with the theme of laughter, Sophie laughed for the first time on Thursday. She was in the bath tub, having the time of her life, and it was the best thing I think I've ever heard. It made me cry.
Hope you're well!
xo

Big Salty Tears

First, let me just acknowledge that it's been a long time since I wrote. Then, let me acknowledge that I am not too sorry about this because the baby is happy and healthy, and that accomplishment has absorbed the majority of my time in the eight weeks since she was born.

So, another reason for my lapse in blog updates has been because most of my days have sort of started to run together into one, long, bleary-eyed day that is punctuated by fluctuating amounts of sleep that can't really be called 'nights'. I have entire expanses of time in which I can't identify one thing that I've done, said, eaten, or written. So when a moment of time appears in which I feel somewhat coherent, I will take some time to write. This is one of those moments.

The final excuse for my blogging absence is that there really hasn't been anything funny to write about. I could go on and on about the baby--how cute she is while kicking her little legs in the bath, how she loves to pee on the changing table, how I am routinely covered in a fine film of baby vomit, how she started to smile about 10 days ago and it's been the happiest 10 days of my life--but I am so obsessively in love with this baby that those things would be all I ever write about, and I would lose what remains of my readership. I'm telling you, I would write so persistently, unwaveringly about the baby, in so much unnecessary detail, that even her adoring grandparents would roll their eyes and think to themselves, "Dude, give it a rest."

There's also something distinctly unfunny about having a baby. The things that I might have laughed about in other peoples' blogs about their babies are not the least bit funny to me. What? They cried when their babies got their 2-month vaccinations? That's funny! Their baby won't remember and will be just fine! But when my baby was lying on a cold table, naked and screaming, it was not funny. She may have been just fine after a moment, but I wasn't. And it wasn't (and still isn't) funny. When the guy on the radio was talking about his wife's weeping response to putting their baby in daycare, it was a funny story. But to me, lying in bed at 3AM, worried sick about turning over the most important person in the world to me to strangers so I can go to my detestable job for 8 hours a day, it is anything but funny.

So, that's how it's been over here. Poor Chris. Send nice thoughts his way. He is handling my new-mom insanity with about as much patience, love, and humor as anyone ever could. Sometimes I stop paying attention to how awesome everything is because I'm caught up in something negative (I clipped the baby's nails the other day and accidentally nicked her tiny fingertip, which caused more crying for the two of us, for example). But then sometimes, I take inventory and realize I have an amazing husband, a beautiful, happy baby, and healthy family all over the world who loves the three of us, and there is so much to be grateful for that my attention is pulled in the right direction until the next moment of parental clumsiness.

But enough about that. The other thing that has been going on recently--really, the only other thing of any interest--is that Chris gave me a sewing machine for my birthday and I am trying to make things. I have a history of poor follow-through when it comes to, oh, everything, but especially crafty things like this. That's why there is an unfinished painting of a squirrel in our closet, and the reason that the only thing I have ever knitted has been scarf after scarf after wonkily-knitted scarf. But I am determined to get good at this new hobby. First, though, I have to do it "the Christina way". This basically entails jumping into something without really paying attention to the way others have successfully done it for years, failing or at least falling short of my own expectations, then resigning myself to the fact that I need to follow the directions, at least for a little while. And that's why there's a half-sewn tube of fabric sitting next to the sewing machine which will probably never become the skirt I'd like it to be. But someday...someday you'll see me wearing something I've made. No, not another hole-y scarf. I mean something I've sewn.

OK, hope all is well with you!
xo

How Much?!

So, it's been awhile. I'm not going to make excuses, mostly because all the excuses I have start with "The baby...", as in, "The baby needs a lot of feeding!" or "The baby kept me up all night/morning." No, I'm not going to make excuses because I don't believe anyone is actually reading this. I read somewhere (OK, I didn't read it, I just made it up) that you lose half your readership for every week that goes by without a blog post. Since only about 3 people read this blog when posts were made more frequently, I fully expect that the rest of you have dropped off. And I don't blame you. No, I do not.

And maybe it's a good thing you've stopped reading, because I'm going to talk about something serious now, and something that I've talked about before (no, not the baby this time): health care in America.

Recently, due to a lack of having their crap together and an excess of their own heads up their asses, the billing staff failed to acknowledge that our baby was added to my insurance plan when she was born. How this happened, I do not know. When I preregistered, then re-registered at the hospital, they took my information down and I thought things were OK. After I got home with the baby, I added her to my policy and was told the plan would cover her retroactively starting the day she was born. Stupidly, I thought this would actually work. It didn't.

Anyway, long story short, I received a bill in the mail yesterday that demanded I pay them a small fortune for her "care" in the hospital. And let me just clarify, yes, that is sarcasm. If anyone should be paid for the baby's care in the hospital, it should be me. I fed her. I changed her. I rocked her to sleep. They only came in to weigh her and comment about how much hair she had.

But I digress. The amount we were billed, because they believed the baby didn't have health insurance, could cover a good portion of a down payment on a small house. It could buy a used Japanese car. It could cover half a year at UMM when I was attending. And this bill included what I learned was the "uninsured patient discount", which is a seemingly random amount that is knocked off the price out of pity. It wasn't even half of the total price of the care.

My heart literally skipped a beat when I saw the bill. I called Chris in a panic. The next day, when I spoke to the billing representative, it became clear that a mistake had been made, and I came down off the ceiling and rejoined normal life. But for a few hours, I knew the panic that uninsured people must feel when they receive a bill like this.

Here's why it was silly of me to feel that way: I am employed, married to someone who is also employed, have more than enough money in savings to have paid the bill without any effect on my day to day life, and would have been able to replenish the savings within a month or two with a little effort. What if I wasn't employed, wasn't able to get a good job, wasn't married? What if I'd received the full bill for my care and the baby's care, which totaled almost $30,000? What if I had this new baby AND a mountain of medical bills?

At this moment, there are about 50 million people who could potentially receive necessary medical care, and then a bill like this. FIFTY MILLION. When they do get care and can't pay those bills, where does the money come from? The cost is divvied up and passed along to everyone. It's like shoplifting, except instead of stealing a sweater, the uninsured are getting lifesaving medical treatment that they would gladly pay for if they could. The price of the sweater is raised to cover the one that wasn't paid for. The same thing happens with medical care. This is why I was charged about $3000 for each night I spent in the hospital, and I couldn't even get anyone to answer my call light.

My little moment of panic deepened my belief that we need, need, NEED to make health care accessible to everyone. We need a public option--not a forced plan for everyone, but the option of having care provided by the government for those people who don't have a job that gives them health insurance. Health insurance can not continue to be run by companies that seek to make profits, and can not continue to be seen as a luxury item for the middle and upper classes, or those of us lucky enough to continue to be employed.

A friend of mine received an itemized bill for her recent hospital stay. In it, there was a $18 charge for a "mucus disposal system". She figured out this was actually just a fancy term for the box of Kleenex provided in her room. Eighteen dollar Kleenex! This is madness. Let's do something about it.

Hope you're well!
xo

Eat, Sleep, Eat, Repeat.

Writing more often isn't working. There, I said it. You know it, I know it, but I didn't want to dance around it. What am I doing that is more important than writing? To begin with, I'm keeping an infant alive. I'm also napping. To be fair, I'm napping because I'm keeping an infant alive for a few hours in the middle of every night.

So, I'd love to say that I've been doing things that are really funny to write about and interesting for you to read, but that would be a lie. And I'd never, ever lie to you. I may exaggerate for comedic effect, but I'd never flat-out lie. No, basically, my life for the past 4 weeks has been feed the baby, change the baby, feed the baby, wipe up something that has been forcibly ejected from the baby, kiss and cuddle the baby, feed the baby, sleep for about 2 hours, feed the baby, sleep for 2 hours, feed the baby, try to find time to eat and drink something that will turn into food for the baby. So... That's that.

Chris and I are celebrating our 2-year anniversary tomorrow! I can't believe it's been 2 years already. He's the best. He's probably the most laid-back man on the planet when it comes to this whole baby thing. I'll be frantic about something having to do with feeding the baby, or the way things have shifted physically, or a number of post-pregnancy issues and he'll just say, "You're doing a great job. Look how happy the baby is. I love you", or some other comforting thing. And then I really pay attention to how happy and chubby the baby is or how much he still likes me the way I am, and everything's OK until the next "crisis" I mentally create.

But again, I will just say that this baby is the best person in the world and I couldn't ever have imagined feeling this way about another human being. She has turned me into a marshmallow and a grizzly bear at the same time. I feel like I've known her forever, but she's brand new. She's the most beautiful and interesting thing on the planet, even at 3, 4 and 5AM. I'm smitten.

With that, I'm going to leave you. The baby's hungry!
xo

An Undertaking of Epic Proportions

Well, hi again. I'm hoping to return to a semi-normal pattern of writing now that things are relatively calm and the holidays are over.

I'm not one of those people who usually gets stressed out by the holiday season, but this year presented some challenges that made Christmas feel much less Christmas-y than in previous years. Having this baby has been absolutely amazing, if not entirely all-consuming. There have been days when I have not showered, not eaten, not even really stood up much, and have just fed and rocked and fed and fed some more. Those days feel long, and leave me feeling as though one of my days has been sucked into a black hole of time that I'll never get back. They are also sort of sleepy days, lazy and oddly cozy. I wish the weather would get really, really crappy so I could make some cocoa and really settle into them. But for now, those days are few and, thankfully, far between, and I have retained some level of new-mom sanity.

There have been enough of those days, though, that I felt completely unprepared for Christmas and Chris's birthday when they rolled around. I actually had to send poor Chris out to buy not only all my family's Christmas presents, but the ingredients to his own birthday cake, too. I'm hoping that the fact that I am three weeks post-operative and am keeping his daughter alive will help him to forget and forgive me for this holiday season.

So, today is my first day alone with the baby. Chris was home last week but had to work a regular week from home, so I had a little practice, but I'm still feeling a little concerned. What if I fall in the kitchen and don't have the strength to drag myself to my quietly-starving baby in the bedroom? What if...actually, I don't have a lot of concrete concerns. I'm sure it will be just fine. There's just something a little intimidating about being the only person responsible for this little baby all day.

Most of you reading this will have already met Sophie, but if you haven't, let me tell you, we lucked out. This kid is incredible. She is easy-going, doesn't get too upset about anything (other than being hungry), and sleeps like a champion. There is no guessing game when she's crying. We don't have to run down a list of potential irritants, eliminating reasons and trying out different solutions. The answer is always that she is hungry. She doesn't cry when she's tired or wet or for no reason, like some babies. She is either 100% content or 100% hungry. She runs on a simple, baby binary system. She doesn't mind if you take your time getting her little onesie over her head, or if you kind of struggle to get her arms into her tiny sleeves. She just sits there, looking around with her giant, blue eyes, waiting for you to get your parental crap together. Unless she's hungry as you're trying to do these things. Then, she cries. When you feed her, she returns to her natural, happy state for the briefest of moments, and then she falls asleep.

I'm sure I'll write more now, and I'm sure that for awhile, most of these posts will have something to do with motherhood. Bear with me. I'm not doing much more at the moment.

Hope you've had the merriest of Christmases!
xo

It Was The Best of Times

It has been a long time since my last post, but I have the best of excuses: Sophie arrived on the 7th!

I've read other people's blogs and some have had a tough time talking about their birth stories until a lot later, and I'm going to be one of those people now. Those of you who read this who are close to me probably already know the whole story, and those of you who are further away can probably wait for any details I'll ever be willing to give. I will sum up the experience for now by saying that it was not the birth I had envisioned, but the baby is healthy, and so am I, and the three of us are all bundled up at home.

Our baby is by far the best thing that has ever happened to me. She is beautiful, soft, sweet, easygoing, and incredibly lovable. The first time I met her, I could barely touch her let alone hold her, but that's all I wanted to do. And since she's been here, that's about all I've done.

She is happy and healthy and gaining weight steadily. She is a good eater, a good sleeper, has a great head of hair, and the most beautiful, big dark eyes that are slowly turning deep blue. She makes funny faces, she is cuddly, and she already makes us laugh. I can't imagine loving somebody more.

So please forgive my last entry, and rest assured when I say that all the discomfort from pregnancy and the birth are all distant memories, and I'd do it all again a hundred times over if that's what it took.

Hope all is well!
xo

Anwers to Your Questions

In the spirit of keeping up with this blog, despite really not having much to talk about other than The Baby, I'm going to answer some questions that have been asked of me over the course of the last few days.

Q: Are YOU still HERE? (This is usually asked of me every morning as I arrive at work.)
A: You can still see me, so...yes, I'm still here. I want every minute of my maternity leave to use after the baby is born. When I stop coming in to work, you'll know I'm not here. The biggest clue is that I WON'T BE HERE.

Q: Are you just super uncomfortable?
A: No, I am loving this extra weight attached to the front of me, along with the subsequent back and hip pain. Fat feet and swollen ankles feel amazing. It's better than chocolate. Yes, I'm kind of uncomfortable.

Q: Do you want to ________?
A: Unless you've just proposed that I lie on the couch and have people feed me things, probably not. No offense to you, but I've spent 40 weeks going to things and doing things. Now, I want to do nothing. You can come over and do nothing with me, if you want.

Q: Is there only one baby in there?!
A: Oh, shut up.

Q: How do you even stay upright with that belly?
A: I've got really, really strong legs. And shut up.

Q: Haven't you had that baby YET?
A: Actually, I did. This is just Thanksgiving dinner leftovers gone wrong. The baby is home with her French au pair. Of course I haven't!

Q: Are you still pregnant?
A: God, I hope so. Not being pregnant should neither look nor feel like this.

Again, I can't complain. This hasn't been all that bad. I'm just a little worn out and fairly sick of doing things. The next entry I write will either be in a week when I'm still pregnant and will be inappropriate for my younger readers because of the vulgarity, or will be an account of our baby Sophie's birth. I'm praying for the latter. You probably are too.

Hope you're well!
xo