Britney, On the Phone, at 3 a.m.! Get It?

I'm no pundit. I really barely know what I'm talking about. But here's the way I see it: the coverage of Obama's world tour was very powerful and full of dazzling imagery to go with his inevitable rhetorical panache. During the same week, McCain was made fun of on The Daily Show for his stops at grocery stores and schnitzel houses. This week, the "buzz" from McCain's people is that Obama is acting like he's already President (which is bad, how?) and they've got a new TV ad where they refer to Obama as the biggest celebrity in the world. I know, they're trying to lump him in a ridiculous way with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. But who's more ridiculous in this case?

All I want to say about this is what I've repeated to my husband again and again (it's okay; he tunes me out, so he probably only heard it twice): the effectiveness and strength of a campaign apparatus is not only a means, but an end in itself -- if a person falters when running a national campaign operation, how can he expect to succeed in running the country? Just ask Hillary. You can call her at 3 a.m. -- she won't be busy, I'm told.

Chlorine vs. Poop

In my last post, I believe I was considering the relative merits of spending some time at our neighborhood swimming pool instead of the indoor therapy pool at the gym. Warm water vs cold water. Exercise equipment vs sunshine.

Well. I've spent the past three days going to the neighborhood swimming pool at lunchtime and all I can say is, DUH.

I don't like smelling like chlorine all the time, and never having my hair styled, but then, how often do I style my hair anyway? It turns out the cold water feels good on my sore muscles, too. I've alternated walking for 15-minute intervals through the water (frontways, backwards, and sideways -- so I get stared at, I get stared at anyway, with a cane, DUH) with 30-minute intervals of hanging out in the shade, working on my blackberry, and snacking on energy bars and vitamin water in the sunshine. Wagging more.

Today, unfortunately, the operative bout was chlorine vs poop. I had to leave the pool after only one 15-minute walking interval. Someone's child pooped in the pool (they think; might have been barf, and I suppose it could have been an adult) and they had to close it. I could have stayed on the deck, but I couldn't justify sticking around, even with the stack of work I'd brought, when I couldn't get in the water to do my walking. I personally think this happened because of my three days at the pool, I was most organized today. In addition to my BBerry, I brought piles of documents to work on and my iPod to listen to. That'll show me.

AJS is --wait for it -- hilarious. She has started to wave. She waves both hands at once, one at you and one at herself. With her giant, wonderful, barely toothy smile. Somehow, when she's bored, she grinds her three teeth together. This is a horrible sound, but I don't really blame her, as she must find it extremely odd to suddenly have teeth. She had a bad night last night. She couldn't go to sleep until she finally collapsed at 9 pm. Even though a sitter was here, I ended up having to put her down myself -- twice. [I have these beautiful big bruises across the bottom of my rib cage: when I'm trying to put her down in her crib gently, my back muscles can't hold my torso up, so I sort of collapse against the crib railing, and that's where the bruises happen. Hematoma Ed.] She also didn't eat enough, so she woke up at 4:30, starving and babbling and ready to get up and play. Urgh. She wouldn't go back to sleep until 5:15 or so. Then, the next sitter arrived at 7:00 to get the Wednesday party started, and although I think Abby was sleeping flat on her face when we woke her up (her whole little countenance was red and shmooshed), she was as happy to wake up as she always is. I know my husband gets by on just about this much sleep (or less) every single night, but I don't know how he does it. I feel like my head is encased in Jell-O, not unlike Dwight Shrute's stapler.

As it stands now, I have much more to say, but the baby is asleep and it's not even 8:30. I am so tired I can hardly think. I smell like chlorine (better than poop). I am going to go upstairs, rewind the DVD I fell asleep to last night, and watch some more until I (most likely) fall asleep to it again.

Wag, Wag

Well, the boat ride really wasn't so good for me. Or at least that's the reason I'm claiming for this entire week+ of rather excruciating pain. I have hurt more in the last week than I believe I have during the entire past year (although I recognize that memories fade). Anyway, I hurt. I'm not sure what to do. I am scared, and I really want to clean my office.

That pretty much sums it up. No, there's more.

Today is a hazy, gray day. The NOAA says that it's 72 outside, but it feels like 88. Steamy. You can almost see the air. Maybe I should try to go to the neighborhood pool instead of the boring-but-warm therapy pool at the gym. The visit outside might at least be pleasant. I could take my blackberry and maybe relax for a few minutes on a lounge chair in addition to doing my walking around in the water. Problem is, part of the water idea is the heat -- trying to let the warm water loosen up my muscles. It's rained so much over the past little bit that I can't imagine the water is anything but chilly now. Of course, most people don't have a neighborhood pool or a warm therapy pool, and I'm choosing between them, so I should stop whining. I saw a t-shirt recently that said, "WAG MORE. (bitch less)"

Right now, I'm still in my dressing gown, having seen everybody off, had breakfast, read the Post, dogeared pages of the Chasing Butterflies catalog which contains children's clothing we could never afford, drank my tea and checked my work email (London is quiet, thank God). Since then I have been talking business items with D on the phone, arranging for babysitters this week and dogsitters next week and possible au pairs or nannies in some uncertain future, shopping for bath seats and footie pajamas for Baby, and making lists of lists.

I also dogeared the Pendleton catalog which contains women's work clothes I am going to have no choice but to buy. It's going to be a long time before I fit into any significant portion of my work wardrobe. I know I almost never go to the office, but I only have two pairs of pants, one sweater set (a sweater set!?! what was I thinking? just what you want to wear when you feel frumpy already -- plus, it sheds on everything; there is a reason it was at the Brooks Brothers outlet store) and one blouse that fit me. It's really not cool. You know what I really like for work? Shift dresses with matching jackets. Especially if one can then wear the jacket with pants. I am going to try to buy one of those and then also a pantsuit, in homage to the Democratic loser. I think I'm done wearing black, though. It just makes me look old and doesn't impress anyone. One needs to be sleek to pull off black. And I need some flat shoes one can wear with a shift dress and its matching jacket.

I was in the children's section of Border's the other day, looking for math books for our girl S (she is math crazed). I saw that they had a kids' book called "Barack Obama: An American Story." I was amused. I pictured an "American Girl"-type doll, with a little Hawai'ian school outfit and then maybe you could also buy the Young Democrats outfit and an accessory package which included "real" voter registration forms and even a Chicago soup kitchen play set. Am I souring on Obama? No. I just tried to picture buying that book for your kid and I got sort of the same negative feeling that I do about force-feeding them a particular sports team or musical preference. It's one thing to engage them by setting an example, but another to set expectations. There was even the An Inconvenient Truth book for young readers. Kinda creepy. D pointed out that it's an unfortunate tendency of people to just buy a book for the kid rather than trying to talk about the world and explain it to them.

S had her 7th birthday yesterday. Thanks be to God, we had it at the local gym franchise. This means the kids run around like maniacs for a while, then they play loud and wild games overseen by an energetic 20-something who does cartwheels for fun, and then they repair to another room for (in this case) ice cream cake and YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING BUT BRING THE CAKE. S lorded it over the table. She is hilarious. Like most confident kids, she goes a little bonkers at her birthday parties, being a little too loud, a little too brash, a little too rude. But she's also endearing in her excitement. Often she truly doesn't like being the center of attention, smirking down at the floor when she wins a school award or when strangers tell her she's so pretty. But in that element, with her beloved grandparents and best friends around, she explodes. It's wonderful.

R has the typical 4-year-old, younger-sibling trouble with all this. She opens her presents and he either demands to play with them first or kicks her for getting them. But he still did well. He played nice with the kids and bore their teasing when he announced that he was eating "around" the ice cream on the ice cream cake. He let others play with his new foam-dart shooter, which he won at a charity festival run by Grandpa on Saturday. In general the older kids were great this weekend, which was a treat because now we won't see them for a week. D is going to NYC for a few days, and I don't get to have visitation while he's gone. Next week, luckily, we will be at the mountain house together so we'll make up for missing them now.

Meanwhile, AJS was passed from grandparent to aunt to grandparent during the course of the party, like the smiley-sweet marshmallow she is. She was fascinated by this, her first kid birthday party. She crawled a bit on the mats while Papa made a substantial human shield against the wild running of the older kids. She drank some of a bottle, but mostly was not content to lie back and watch when so much was going on around her. As things were winding up, she got the opportunity to play with her first helium balloon. This was HUGE. It made me think of that scene in Knocked Up when Paul Rudd says he wished he liked anything as much as his kids love bubbles. She is so delightful. The happier she gets, the wider she opens her barely-toothy smile, until her mouth is so wide she can't open it any more. She loved that balloon. If I'm going to keep talking about these kids, I need some new synonyms for "hilarious."

Unfortunately, our baby girl didn't sufficiently nap with all the excitement, and she became extremely overtired. Like Mommy sometimes gets, Abigail was wired, even though she was exhausted, and she had trouble winding down. She crashed in my arms at 7:30, but then woke up three -- or was it four? -- times during the night. My poor, beloved husband was the only option for getting up with her, although he has to rise at 5:30 for work and can't nap at his desk during the day, because my back and abs are so weak and painful I can't really lift her out of the crib, especially now that the bed is lower and I have to plan ahead for 2 1/2 days without him here this week. This is the way it is.

In breaking news, my friend and I are having a spirited electronic discussion about breakfast foods, I am missing my girlfriend in New England, my husband and I are all excited about LinkedIn, my dog is alternately playful and dispirited when I can't keep up with her, I am really dying for a trip to the UK, and my office is still a mess. I think I'll go get dressed and then consider what to do next.

You Know What's Good?

These are.

Either? Neither?

We're thinking about a live-in childcare provider. When autumn arrives, D can't continue dropping A off at day care every day -- he needs to leave earlier for work than 7 a.m. (which is disgusting in itself, but that's a separate post). If I take her and bring her back two to four nights a week, history tells us, I will strain my back so much that physical therapy will turn into nothing more than Anne groaning while the therapist gingerly rubs her back and then applies ice packs. Getting various sitters in here to help on the various nights that D can't get home in time to pick A up has worked okay, but is far from ideal. We are barely managing to keep our kids happy and healthy, our house liveable, our laundry clean and our grass mowed and I am struggling to provide a cooked dinner 4 nights a week while working, running errands and trying to actually work 37 hours. Forget reading parenting books, experimenting with healthier meals, planning for the future, or decorating, cleaning or maintaining my house.

So, what? An au pair? A younger woman is less threatening (less likely to take my place as Mommy), has more energy, and possibly may be more intelligent than a middle-aged woman who has decided to become a nanny rather than just doing it for an interim period before moving on with her life. A slightly older nanny may be more skilled, more reliable, possibly more of a long-term solution so that A doesn't have annual turnover in the people she loves.

Which one f's up your kid more? Which one would solve more problems than she created? Either? Neither? When are are my husband and I supposed to find the time to think about this individually, much less talk about it together, much less research and hire someone?

As Steve Irwin might have said, "Crikey. Someone find me a stingray."

Blind Beauty Spots

Why is it that so many women find themselves so unattractive? Each of my beautiful friends -- all of them, truly, beautiful, inside and out -- have blind spots about their own beauty. One told me the other day that her husband was "out of her league" -- at least, back when they met in college. Let me just say, I know both of them, and that cannot possibly be true. Luckily, that same gal knows that her butt is to die for. Another of my friends focusses on her personal impression that she is frumpy, and not enough on her gorgeous, sparkly eyes, scrumptious coloring or enviable dimples. Another, thin and tall with more enviable dimples, talks about her "pooch," a sort of are-you-kidding-me kind of reference to the tiny bulge in her abdomen which is where I assume one stores vital internal organs. And yet another beloved gal cannot stop talking about how fat she is, probably apologizing for it 12 times a day, when (a) she is not fat and (b) she has the prettiest face, the most beautiful, graceful hands, and the most flattering hairstyle of any of us.

I decry this behavior with humility, because I also hate the way I look, especially since I now have a mommy body and am forced to wear flat shoes instead of my beloved slingback heels. I feel like Judi Dench's body with a face that is a cross between Frances McDormand and Molly Ringwald (and not a flattering hybrid, at that). I have hated my thick legs ever since the muscles developed when I was a young gymnast, and now that I've got a baby girl with perfect skin I hate myself for having allowed a UVA or UVB ray to touch mine. I have always disliked my elbows, and I live in fear that my triceps are starting to look like my Grandma Mitchell's. So, although I'm fierce in my opposition to my friends' self-deprecation, I have my own in spades.

When is my 6-year-old S going to start thinking of herself this way? What can I do to stop her? Right now, she calls herself a "Skinny Minnie," apparently a lovely moniker bestowed by her stepfather, whom I am beginning to suspect of being a jackass. How do I stop my friends? How do I stop myself? How do I stop my daughters?

Not the Best Thing for Ya

Saturday, we went boating on the Chesapeake Bay. Close friends of our close friends grew up on Kent Island, a rather idyllic community on the Eastern shore. Other than narrowly missing our chance to have crabs for dinner, it was a wonderful day. Some of our best friends, plus new (to me) friends, beautiful weather, beautiful water, even a huge flotilla gathering called AquaPalooza with the Beatles blaring across deck after deck of rafted-up pleasure boats, folks happily paddling or floating between them, cocktails in hand. I laughed really, really hard a few times. I made other people laugh a few times. That's all you really need, right?

And yet, part of the way through our cruise along the water, I started to cry. Maybe it all started before the day even began, when I had to consult my internist and my neurosurgeon to find out if it would be safe for my spine to spend all day on the water. Do other people have to consult their neurosurgeons about their weekend recreation?

Maybe it worsened a bit when I watched everyone else go swimming because I know that I can't climb a ladder in and out of the water and I can't tread water any more, much less swim. I knew in advance that would be the case and yet I wasn't prepared for how lonely it made me feel.

It went downhill a bit more on the boat in the sun when I realized that my Marylander husband was as happy as a dog with its head out the window, tooling around the Bay like this -- and in my head I'm hearing the neurosurgeon's answer to my question about my ability to safely go boating: "Well, it's not the best thing for ya. You know, it's not the fusion we're worried about, but those two levels above it, the C3-4 and 4-5, we just have to try to protect those as long as we can. You're not going to do this every weekend, right?" And I begin wondering how many years it will be, if that, before I need surgery again, and suddenly the rum punch doesn't interest me and I just start to hurt-- inside.

Then my dear friend DM starts telling me, in that loving way she has, about how good my husband and I seem together, and I couldn't help but start talking about how I really feel. It was like those moments I have (too often) when someone says, "How're you doing?" and anyone polite would just say "Fine, thanks," but I find myself saying, "Well, my allergies are acting up" or "I have this weird sunburn spot right here," etc. So I very frankly explain to DM that I agree that he's unique, that I feel almost that God knew that some tough times were ahead and decided to give me a wonderful husband to help me through it -- and that I wish the benefit were mutual. I tell her that I feel like a burden and like I don't have anything to offer him. I say thank God for the baby because at least I can feel like I gave him something. And I mean it.

Later, I ride alone in the back of the boat (where the ride is not as jarring, where I rode all day) and look down at the deck. That is when I start to cry. My husband stands along the port side, where he can keep an eye on me. But everyone else is up front, dancing and playing to the loud 80's music (I think I heard the Tubes, but you can't hear the music too well behind the captain). Plastic cups are being raised, and pictures are being snapped; more than once someone says something like, "There are worse ways to spend a day than this" and the sun glints off the water like gems on velvet as the day finally cools off. And I cry. I try to keep my face under control, but tears roll down. I am thinking that my friends are having one of the best days they've ever had together, which they'll remember for a long time, and I am sitting in the back, on the sidelines, in pain, with my husband stuck half-way between.

I cry because at that moment I feel that this will always be the way it is -- that my fate is to watch others enjoy themselves, to sit on the sideline, to be fighting pain and physical limits and to have nothing to offer the group besides someone to talk to when they feel the need to sit down somewhere quiet and take a break from the action. Don't get me wrong -- everyone was very solicitous. Our friend the Captain was a very gentle and careful driver, always considering my condition and checking on me frequently to make sure I was okay. My girlfriends took turns coming aft to see me and certainly my husband voluntarily reduced his enjoyment of the day by at least 40% in keeping an eye on me and making sure I was safe and relatively happy. But there it is.

It was a rough day. And yet, also beautiful and also wonderful to see our friends. Like life.

I think my attitude needs adjusting. I try to keep my inner dialogue positive, but Saturday I just couldn't do it. Or wouldn't. Was I feeling sorry for myself? Absolutely. Am I entitled to that, once in a while? I think so. But the problem is, I mostly feel sorry for myself when otherwise fun things are going on around me, because that's what makes me think about the fact that there is so much I can't do, and that what I do often hurts so much or is so hard, and it just feels so unfair. Yet, I'm with a man I adore, I have kids I fiercely love, I enjoy my work (at least some of the time), I love my house, I love my family, I can read and write and care for people and even go to the mall sometimes (although no more 4-hour marathon shopping sessions, but that's another story). But I'm going to miss out on so many enjoyable things if I can't find a way to live in the moment of pleasure and to put aside my feelings of incapacity and loss. Not to mention to stop feeling guilty for being who I am.

Yet, when does one stop grieving? Or maybe the better question is, how does one know when to start grieving, so that the process can finish, when one never knows if there's really anything to grieve? We're in this limbo: maybe I'm going to get completely better. Maybe I won't get any better than I am right now. At some point, I'll need more back surgery. Is that going to make it better, or worse? How many more surgeries? When? It's all a big, black hole of uncertainty, and to allow myself to grieve the loss and get through to the other side seems like giving up, and I'm not ready to give up on the chance that I'll actually recover. So instead, I feel sorry for myself and try to limit my complaining about the pain and inconvenience to the 18 hours a day I'm awake and do what I can to squeeze in physical therapy among all the other demands of our hectic and overwhelming life.

In the end, my boat ride did not put me back in the emergency room, but it wasn't great for my body. All the core muscles that your body uses to hold yourself upright, the ones you never notice unless you do a hard Pilates workout, are the muscles in me that are the weakest and don't work at all. And those are the muscles you use when try not to fall over on a boat. So they hurt a lot that night. As for my neck? The image I have of my vertebrae is of a stack of Girl Scout Trefoil cookies just starting to crumble around the edges. I'm pretty sure none of them broke that day. But have you ever stoved your finger? Where it feels swollen and stiff and it won't bend quite right for a while? That's how my neck felt yesterday. I woke up at 4 a.m. with the baby on Sunday, and felt that stoved-in feeling in my neck, and after she went to sleep I lay awake worrying. How much sooner would my next operation be, because of the strain I had put on my neck that day? Today, it feels better, the pain centered in my rib cage and abs once again, where "it belongs." So, hurrah, back to normal, I guess. This afternoon I have to pick Abby up from school, because I don't feel entirely comfortable with the new sitter and I haven't had a chance to try out another one yet. We'll see what she and her car seat do to my neck. But for now, I'm going to go soak in a hot shower and try to run through a mental list of all the things for which I am grateful. And I'm going to try to mean it.

Why, Oh Why?

Why, oh why, little girl, are you waking up at 4:30 a.m.? What, oh what, can we do to change your habits? How, oh how, am I supposed to function today when I can hardly open my eyes and keep bumping into doorjambs?

There's a kernel of a children's story in there, somewhere.

CUC Night

Imagine a messy house. Times ten. That's mine. Unfortunately, my back is really hurting today. In fact, everything hurts, from my 3rd cervical vertebra down to my distal phalanges. In fact, I am going to get up from the computer, put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, take a trash bag to my office and vaguely sweep the kitchen floor (brooms, no vacuum), and then take a muscle relaxant and lie flat on the floor. Well, maybe I'll lie on the floor after I eat a piece of my peach cobbler, which goes well with muscle relaxant. I wouldn't even do any of those things that come before muscle relaxant and peach cobbler, but you see, tonight is our biweekly clean-up-for-the-cleaners night. I hate CUC night.

First, though, I'll tell you how things are. We had two weekend weddings in a row. More about them later, but the important thing is that they were both absolutely beautiful and very meaningful. Dave and I both love weddings. Furthermore, I danced the night away (and did a shot of -- something) at the first wedding -- although I must admit I had pretty much crashed by the second wedding. Both were lovely, and Dave and I had a very nice, romantic time of our weekends away while Grammy watched Abs. Last night we topped it all off with a fun anniversary (our 2d) dinner at Morton's in Bethesda. A beautiful Cosmopolitan martini, a succulent steak, heavenly creamed spinach, decadent champagne cocktails, and a luxurious molten chocolate cake. And a sitter. It was wonderful. I honestly can't believe this man still wants to be married to me, much less loves me. But I think he does, on both counts. Silly man. :)

And now I'm sore. I found that alcohol nicely loosens the muscles (or deadens the pain, or both), so drinking at these weddings and dinners led me to do things like dance, and make out with my husband, in ways I normally can't but really enjoyed. So I had a grand old time. And now I'm sore, and tired.

S and R are both doing well. S is intensely bored without school, but she is starting to get excited about her dueling birthday parties. Ours will be at Little Gym this year -- we needed help with the execution. R doesn't seem to mind being out of school, and he continues to love helping with the cooking, which is darling and hilarious. He always wants to taste what he "makes," "to make sure it isn't poisonous."

And little AJS is a wunderkind, of course. She is crawling at just shy of 8 months. Not quickly, thank goodness (because Mommy can't chase her and we haven't babyproofed yet), but she speeds up when there's a TV remote to grab. (It's true -- nothing will make her crawl like the remote. Not her toys, not food, not even her beloved Daddy.) She also learned to clap, which just cracks herself up, and she has two teeth on the bottom and one starting to come through on top! For some reason she's been getting up in the middle of the night, lately. I think maybe she just can't eat enough during waking hours to sustain her incredible rate of growth. She is huge. Not fat, just huge. Sweet girl. :) We are just beginning to plan her baptism. This means that Grammy is online shopping for Abby's dress, I am online shopping for invitations and caterers, and D is online making sure the date doesn't conflict with a Ravens home game. Sigh. We're a little slow on the draw -- she'll be almost a year old by the time we do it -- but I think God will forgive us. We've been a little preoccupied.

All right, that's it for now. Happy CUC Night. Or, as they say on Baby First satellite channel, "Shushybye and Good Night."

My Girl and Her Daddy