We are back in podcast land!!!
I don’t have a ton to say about this one. We break down the move experience and the hustle that happened right at the very end. We also discuss how the transition has been on us. Hint: Hard on me. But you knew that.
Sometimes it is really hard to admit that something you think you should be stoked about, something everyone expects you to be excited about is just… hard.
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The podcast and the blog have fallen silent because I am in a deep dark transition hole.
You guys. Moving has been so hard. And the move itself was probably the easiest move Kamel and I have ever had together. We are pros at this packing thing. The movers arrived and we had the entire apartment cleaned out and all of our belongings (except for the pans under the stove, whoops, and the wall mirror behind our bedroom door – extra whoops) in 12 hours. And everything was ok. I was ready to get out of there, all I wanted was to get into our house and start settling in and setting up. The kids were with my parents overnight and we were focused and pumped for unpacking, rebuilding furniture, finding our life again.
And it was all good, I felt progress, we were humming along. Until I didn’t feel that way anymore.
Once the kids got home I realized just how big this space is. And this sounds initially like “my tiara is just too shiny!” but, that’s not it. You have to understand that my family has been spending it’s entire existence in a space that is the same size as our current den. There were never any stairs, there was only 1 exit, if I shut all of the doors to the bedrooms and the bathroom I was never more than three wide strides away from my bolting kids or a fallen toddler. We cooked, we ate, we played, we snuggled all in the same space. And now we have a 2,000 square foot house. With an upstairs, two living rooms and three exit points. The kids got home and the family SCATTERED. How do you cook dinner and keep the 3.5 year old from running out the front door? When he can open locks and open doors and we don’t have enough baby proofing – you can’t. How do you manage their transitional feels while also needing to find pajamas and where are the paper towels? And do you remember where we packed the baby shoes?
It’s herding cats and narrowly avoiding 3 alarm fires and feeling like I’m drowning drowning drowning 95% of the time. All while working. All while supervising light construction and maintenance. All while trying to do laundry and find my bras and oh shit the kids have no clean pants for school. I am generally very orderly. I know where everything is and everything has a system. Except here. Not yet. There are no systems, only surviving. Only 50 million trips up and down the stairs. Only hour long bedtimes to get Gabe down. Only dinners frantically made with the 2 pans I can find and thank god for yogurt snacks. Thank god we’re 5 minutes from a target.
As Kamel and I manage the daily things, the working and the feeding and the dressing, we are also trying to manage our kids’ transition. We started them at a new daycare that is Spanish immersion and I know its hard for Gabe. He is exhausted. So many things he is figuring out and learning. And I worry about them so much. He says he misses his friends. He names them. I feel so guilty. Is this the right thing for them? It cut down their time in the car from 45 minutes to 7. It gives us an even better chance of creating bilingual kids – a major goal of ours. But I still worry. Is he sad? He was at the same daycare since he was 10 months. Is this what he needs? I trust that it is, but I worry anyway.
All the while Kamel and I are not giving any attention to our own transitioning. This is hard. We have new routines on top of a new house on top of the dysfunction of having everything you own scattered about in boxes. I am so tired. I am never not tired. I am painting on my lunch break. I am dropping the kids off and picking them up. Running out the door late because a work call ran long. Our bedroom is a mind-field of half unpacked boxes and piles of clothes.
It will get better. We’ll get things unpacked and find our way. But in the mean time I am scattered and sad and tired and I have no more output. This is the year of running on empty. Somehow I’m still doing all the things, though my enthusiasm wains and my attention span is minimal. I forget plans and schedules, to do lists and tasks I genuinely intended to complete. This can’t keep up. When and how does the recharging happen? I’ll let you know when I figure it out.
I’m still trying to figure out how to properly send you to my World’s Okayest Moms podcast without hyperlinking you to all of the places. But there are only so many hours in the day. I would love to be able to host TWO podcasts here, so you could listen in a post (as so many of you do), but I haven’t (meaning Kamel hasn’t) figured it out yet. Sigh. So for now, I will link you.
The specific podcast I am referencing is this one about traveling with tiny humans. And I think I’ve linked it here before. (There is a more recent one about co-parenting too! And how much I hate it, but it is also working out totally fine, but I hate it, but omg single mamas, you guys are killing it out there.)
I want to bring this traveling one back up again because I brain farted when we were podcasting and I didn’t tell the most horrible parenting story of my parenting life when I had the chance, even though I had planned to and saved my story for this one moment and EVERYTHING. And then poof. I dropped the podcast story-telling ball. Thank god there are three of us on there.
So now, I will tell you. The most embarrassed I have ever been as a mother happened in the San Francisco airport coming back from Miami. For full backstory, we had just gotten off a 5-6 hour flight, we had had to wake up the kids at there 3-4am. Gabriel had been very sad and very confused as to why we were making him get out of bed. He did not sleep on the plane. We were all sunsoaked and smelly and Fae eventually put on a pair of Gabe’s boxer briefs as pants while on our layover in SFO because her pants got too dirty and we had no extras for her to wear. Gabriel was living on a diet of yogurt bites and M&Ms. As a family, we were hanging on by a thread.
When Gabe gets over tired he becomes a maniac and acts out in ways that I do not understand. He becomes an anarchist. He will look at me like I’m not even there and act out for no reason at all. It is impossible to reign him in and it is totally the worst.
We had let him run free in the airport when we got there because he is 3 and had just endured 6 hours in a chair. And also because we had 2 hours to kill. BE FREE! We bought him a legit smoothie hoping he would drink it and eat some fruit. He had like 2 sips. We were sitting in these giant red chairs, per his request, and he was sitting and spinning and just kind of generally wandering around within my sphere of influence. The next table over from us was an older couple. The man was reading a non-english paper, and the woman was sitting across from him quietly. A few minutes later she got up and went somewhere else, leaving her section of the paper on the little coffee table thing in front of both her and her husband. In very literally a split second Gabriel reached over, grabbed the woman’s paper and flung it into the air as he walked past the table.
Let me let that soak in. He is walking past, grabs the section of the paper with his left hand, and flings it into the air without even looking at it as he walks by.
The sections separate and float down in different directions. What I believe are prayer cards that have been clearly removed from a very old book and that were folded into her section of the paper scatter.
And then I died.
I hiss in a loud voice, while marching over to grab my child, some form of parental scolding. The older man is just looking at me, saying nothing, with a face of total contempt and disbelief. Kamel is handling Fae and didn’t see what happened. I have to then explain to Kamel, breifly, what happened while I’m also explaining why he needs to keep Gabriel OVER THERE while I go back and run around picking up the paper and the prayer cards and trying to put them all back together again while I apologize profusely.
The man, my only audience, remains disgusted at my actions. Doesn’t utter a word, but watches me run around picking up all of the papers like a bad mother who can’t control her fucking kids.
I am still dying. It is a slow, terrible death.
When the woman comes back I hear him explaining to her what happened in a different language, while boldly gesturing in our direction. That’s when I shoo Kamel and the kids away. We need to go somewhere else, ANYWHERE ELSE.
Yes, yes children are an extension of our hearts living outside of our bodies. But they are also representatives of our arms and legs, and they move independently of us, so often to our extreme horror.
A few weeks ago I had the worst week. It was a bad week. No one died, but it was pretty shitty anyway. As all terrible weeks do, this one started with hope.
A house. A weird shaped, tall house. Next to a park, in an affordable area. It was cute. Had a den off the kitchen and three bedrooms upstairs. It had no backyard, but a patio and a deck. I imagined summers of sidewalk chalk and potted plants and Chardonnay. I knew we could and would get this house. We had room in the budget to blow everyone else out of the water, much like all the people who have just recently purchased homes have done to us. This was it, we were almost. Nearly 90 days from the beginning of this journey I saw the finish line.
I have found that one of the biggest differences between being a kid and being an adult is denial. When you’re a kid you don’t know all the crap stuff that could happen to you and it makes you fearless. The fearlessness is good, it creates risk takers which in turn creates opportunities. Except for the kids who film themselves jumping off roofs. I can’t help those people. But as an adult! As an adult, we know too much. We’ve peeked under too many rocks, we’ve heard too many stories, we’ve seen things. We have stuff to lose now. We feel the weight of our mortality.
But if adults all acted on that knowledge, the world would stop. It’s too scary, too risky, nothing is guaranteed! The unknowns are the worst, because they offer infinite possibilities. We all know the bad things that could befall us: We could get cancer, we cold die and leave our children without a parent, we could suffer a financial downfall, lose our jobs, drown in debt, things could not work out as planned. It’s rare that they do, but we make the plans anyway.
The only way to survive as adults is to live with a certain amount of chronic denial. We know the bad stuff is there, but we only take a glimpse, and then we shove it back up in the attic. We slide it back under the rock. We pretend we didn’t see it at all. We say those things happen to OTHER people, not to us. We tell ourselves they are just exaggerations and we move forward.
The only thing standing between us and that house was paying $250 and having a pre-inspection. As long as nothing was wonky with the title (has happened to us) and there weren’t any risky or very expensive fixes (has also happened to us) we would be good to go. The construction was relatively new – 1992 I think? – so I wasn’t overly worried. The appointment we had was at a weird time, so I went alone and Kamel went to pick up kids and battle rush hour traffic.
Everything was going well. A few windows that needed to be replaced, a screen door (no matter, I wanted to put in french doors anyhow!), a hot water tank that needed to be replaced, brand new hickory floors, solid roof, solid siding, check check check check.
The only thing left was to check the attic, where all the bad and scary things live. Except not really, you just want to make sure there is enough insulation and there isn’t any leaks or mold or what have you. We have yet to run into any of these issues. Those things happen to other people.
Everything was humming along until the inspector said: Bats.
Ha. Ha. I said. Jokes, I said.
No, really, he said. Bats. Four to six in that corner, another half dozen in the other corner. A colony.
So as I choked down tears and kept it together, I knew immediately: Bye house. Because you don’t inherit pests. Especially pests that are left to their own devices for over a month while you wait for the house to close. But, I worked the problem anyway. So, let me tell you what I know about bats.
A small colony is 10-20 bats. They expand like koi and their colonies will grow depending on the size of the space.
They are protected and cannot be killed or trapped.
That means they need to be shooed away and then the spaces where they can get in need to be sealed.
The spaces don’t need to be any bigger than the size of a quarter.
It can be a process, as bats really like their homes.
Removing them could cost up to $1,000, not counting the insullation that will need to be replaced at $2/foot and the repair work on the roof and sides of the house to prevent them from getting in. If you accidentally trap a bat in your attic they will burrow into your walls trying to escape. They are very smart and crafty.
I also learned that there is no way I will buy a house that has tenants in the attic.
This may seem small, because this is not my house, and in so many ways thank god for that. But I really wanted it to be my house. I really wanted it to be done and we are not done. That part was an, “Are you KIDDING me?” moment. That was on Tuesday.
On Wednesday morning Kamel texted me that he was feeling like he might be laid off.
“But don’t worry, Lauren. We’re going to be alright.”
Let me tell you right now, that is not a text you send without some follow up. That is not a text you send and then wander into a meeting. That is not a text you send without some CONTEXT.
So I sat for 40 minutes checking my phone and reacting to spikes in my anxiety by thinking of other things, but knowing that bad things happen, that bats can be in the goddamn attic, that people lose their jobs, that the homes you spend years saving for and millions of hours looking for get put on hold sometimes because life happens. To other people, but not to me. Surely, NOT to me. With two kids, in this apartment with no air, this place has NO AIR, and a kitchen that is no longer big enough to even store all the food our kids EAT every week. Not to us.
But then when Kamel called me after 40 minutes and he said that yes, he had been laid off, I could not stop the tears. Because the roof had been ripped off and we were standing in that dark attic, bats and all.
What are we going to do?
I still don’t really know.
In that moment my brain fast forwarded to all the things we needed to figure out. First, email the real estate agents and put a hold on our search. Second… second?
Do we start talking about moving somewhere cheaper? Do we start strategizing pulling the kids out of daycare? What can we afford on just my income plus unemployment? How fast can Kamel turn this around?
Kamel applied for almost 40 jobs in that first week. And we were lucky because he had warning, they gave him a headsup to start looking even before his pay ran out. For that I am so grateful.
In the mean time, many of the things I know are there but choose to ignore are knocking on my door. “Hello? Lauren? We need to talk.”
I’m still telling them that no one is home. I need time to figure it out. When do we have to start moving on these changes? How much time do I have until the bats aren’t just in a house we didn’t buy, but are right here with me?
Tomorrow I will have been not-pregnant with Fae as long as I was pregnant with Fae. It’s a milestone, something to think about, her birth like center of a see-saw and at this moment everything is balanced. But my body is not a mirror of itself from 18 months ago. I don’t think it ever is. (Looking at my 9 months pp post after Gabe is a shock. I look SO GOOD omg! And young! And ugh….)
3 days before giving birth to Fae. My last profile shot pregnant.
1 week postpartum.
Pregnancy is weird. What our bodies go through and recover from is strange. How can we be ballooned out like that and then snap back like a rubber band? Well, it’s not exactly as quick as a rubber band.
2 weeks postpartum.
This time the whole recovery process feels slow. It was slow right out of the gate. Everything was sore longer, my hips and groin felt fatigued for months. Walking was slow. Getting back into a workout routine was slow. Everything slow.
My tummy skin is still weird and soft. Weird meaning different and inexpiable. When I am on my back it is soft like jello. I can jiggle it around. When I sit it folds in on itself and I have a few tire rolls. In the evenings I can still look 3 months pregnant, a little pooch. Some clothes fit, some clothes don’t. Sometimes I can buy in my old size and sometimes nothing fits right at all. I am less than 5 lbs above my pre-pregnancy weight but that has never made any difference when it comes to postpartum recovery. It’s not the number, it’s the shape.
9 months postpartum.
My boobs are soft and hang low. They are still recovering from 6 months of breastfeeding. My skin all over has lost its firmness. I think I remember that that is hormonal. I have been working out hard for the last month. Since I stopped breastfeeding I amped up the workouts, amped up the strengthening, and have been paying closer attention to what I eat.
For the last month Kamel and I cut out alcohol and desserts. Except when the world calls for it. Which is a lot less than my 1 beer a day and sometimes a pack of M&Ms that I found in the cupboard. The annoying thing is that it didn’t make much of a difference. Well, not on the scale anyway. I think working out helps my elasticity. It helps my feel sane, it helps me feel strong and energized. It puts parts of me back where they belong.
For months after giving birth I had incontinence issues. Jumping made me pee. Running made me pee. It was a horrible feeling and very demoralizing when you go to the park to jump rope on your lunch and leave after 30 seconds because you’ve peed. Thankfully, at 9 months out that has greatly reduced. I can do jumping jacks and high knees and all the normal working out stuff with mostly not feeling like I’m going to pee. Sometimes I still do a little. We aren’t superheroes.
I’m not on any birth control. I just want my body to be. I don’t want to put anything in it or take any pills or mess with anything. This is me, whatever works for you – you do you. But it means that we are more at risk for pregnancy. What was that I had said about vasectomy? Well that didn’t happen. Won’t happen. But that’s not my story to tell. The other day I was a little late, and I thought… hmm… what if I’m pregnant? I struggle with having a third all of the time. I love my kids, I want a million of them. There are just so many factors and a lot more cons than pros. Minus the part where the pro is another AMAZING HUMAN. Ugh. Well, anyway… there was a moment where the possibility of being pregnant was kind of a little bit more possible than usual, and I had this moment of pure, clear as day, sickening panic. I do not want to be pregnant again. I do not I do not I do not. (Do I? No. Right? Right.)
In 9 months I have lost 45 lbs.
My stretch marks have faded to white, though I still finger the scars from time to time.
My breasts have expanded to 2 sizes bigger and then shrunk back down to sad little deflated balloons.
My rings all fit comfortably again.
My hair is growing back and the regrowth is about 2 inches long. Still so fucking annoying.
I am still about 1 size above my usual pants size, though I squeeze myself uncomfortably into old pants and muffin top the shit out of them.
My vagina is good. My back is getting there. My strength is almost back.
Nine months in, nine months out. What we live through, what we are able to thrive through is phenomenal.
Last week (and like three posts down because oh the state of this blog and the state of my no time at all for anything) I had a podcast about house hunting. Buying home right now in Seattle is a bear. And that is the kindest way I can put it.
It is so much work, it is so much time, it is so much stress. And with our already very full plates, it adds stress to a pretty thick stress-sandwich. In the podcast I talked about how Kamel and I have a different approaches to the process, how we have different take aways from the experience. Sometimes it has caused tension. His interpretation is different than mine. He is this thing called “a different person” than I am. And I have to take his needs, wants, desires, expectations into “consideration” because we are “married” and “sharing a life together.” How inconvenient.
Last weekend we were on one of our many many (many many) house view expeditions. We have spent so much gas driving from neighborhood to neighborhood not liking homes, let me tell you. My approach to house hunting is serious. This is serious business. It is strategy and trying to be the first to jump on opportunities. It is trying to look into the magic 8 ball that lives in my head and see how our family’s lifestyle will grow and change and adapt to whatever house set up we buy. It’s a lot of mental energy for me trying not to fuck this up. And last weekend Kamel and I were driving to a house and we were chatting about our expectations and Kamel said, “I’m so happy I get to do this with you. I wouldn’t want to do this with anybody else.”
Aw, thanks Kamel. Same! (I said.)
But, like, what else do you say to that? It was true, but it was also just a response.
And overall, it was a disappointing day. I was hoping to leave that day with the rush of wanting to put an offer on a house, but instead we went home going back and forth on, “Did we like it? No? We’re sure? We’re sure. Ugh.” But you know what? I am so grateful for Kamel’s positivity. I am so grateful for his ability to make fun of his complete inability to remember how to pronounce different neighborhoods around Seattle, his ability to poke fun at his own excitement, his ability to poke fun at my ever present terror bubbling just at the surface of my being. He makes me a better person and he takes care of me without even trying, he does it by just being him.
Marriage is dumb in so many ways. The constant compromising and the co-everything and the sharing (my god the sharing). But I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else but him. And thank god I am sharing this experience with Kamel. I probably would rent forever if I didn’t have my buddy.
I don’t do resolutions but I do like to look ahead and make some goals for myself. What can I accomplish next year? What did I do in the year that trails behind me? What are we here for? What are we doing? What have we done? Etc etc.
At the end of 2014 I made some goals.
I wanted to be more involved in charity work.
I wanted to make a dent and/or finish a book I had started.
And I wanted to have my baby.
The entire year I felt a nagging guilt over not being more involved in charity work. But I did do more/give more than I had in previous years. Time, tiny human responsibilities, and finances limited my ability. This is just something I really want to do and will always be a priority for my life. It’s just the unfortunate truth that sometimes other things come before my ability to give to others. Ugh, that just sounds so gross saying out loud.
I did for sure make a dent in a book I was writing. I did not finish it, though I had no excuse not to. I have, though, decided to reorganize it. (Did you hear that Margaret! Stop reading the draft you have! I have no goals for it!) I foresee this being an evolving process. One that doesn’t get much traction until after Fae turns 1. That’s just how having tiny humans works. The first year is a shit show, the rest of life struggles to keep up.
Oh, but I did have that baby. So, gold stars for me!
2016… it has a nice ring to it. When I think about the year in my mind I get little sparks of excitement. THE FUTURE IS HERE. What’s going to happen? What are we going to do? What surprises will pounce on us? Will they be good surprises? Or will they sit on our faces until we cry for mercy? Who knows! The future is a mystery…
What do I want to accomplish? What do you want to accomplish? What are you going to conquer in 2016? Hearing the aspirations of others is inspiring, so please do share in comments.
My three goals:
1.) Buy a freaking house.
2.) Create a successful (meaning good, by my standards) podcast.
3.) Be consistent with Weekend-ing again.
Other minor goals that I’ll say are “honorable mentions” are…
1.) Get into a career situation that is more permanent than where I’m at currently.
2.) Get our photo books printed!! For fucksake!
3.) Get back into shape.
I really feel like this year is the year of Taking Care of Business. It’s going to be one of those rip-roaring years where we all look back this time next year and think, “holy shit… all of that in just one year?” Yup. All of it in just one year. We got this. It’s going to be insane.
That survey was spectacular. Over 90 people answered the questions. Let’s get to the stats!
First, the biggest write-in favorite was NARS Orgasm blush. Or blush of any kind. I forgot the blush! I am a pink pink lady. Pale and pink. It doesn’t occur to me to add more pink. Also, I wish I was in charge of naming NARS products. That must be a great office.
As far as demographics, people are all across the board from late teens to 40+ with 60% of the participants between 30 and 35.
58% of those who answered are daily makeup users, but just the basics. 25% barely ever use makeup, or use very little.
The most important beauty product for most people is moisturizer – tinted or other. About 45 people ranked this product as the number most important product used. Second most important product for most is mascara and third is chapstick/lipgloss.
The write-in favorite brands introduced me to some brands I had not heard of and reinforced the brands I love and have used for years. Many of you suggested Laura Mercier tinted moisturizers (had never heard of this and now am for sure going to check it out), clinique products across the board, and burt’s bees for lips.
For body lotion (something that for me is a constant search because I have chronic dry skin, made worse by having babies, and my skin gets used to lotions and stops responding after a while. I am currently using Caudalie, but the smell is not my favorite) we all must be hippies because the overwhelming response was coconut oil! Which I use on my face, hair, and body. I have three body lotion things going at once most of the time because I have a lotion obsession. Jojoba oil was also mentioned (and something I also use), as well as Jergen’s, Aveeno, and Vaseline brands.
The splurge write-in was my favorite because this is the good shit. This is the stuff that we all covet and get excited to use – make excuses to use! Again, NARS products and NARS blush was a recurring write-in. Several people by fancy nail polish, and new lipsticks were another one.
But let’s discuss further. Do you have a favorite item you think more people would enjoy? What about hair products? Tell me how you makeup. Where do you buy your goods? What does “fancy nail polish” mean? I’m only like 13% adult.
Where did I go? What have I done? WHAT IS HAPPENING?
Last week I had so many posts bubbling in my head. SO MANY. I even wrote half of one! But my real life hustle is taking up all of my time.
First a quick update: Things around here are moving fast fast slow fast fast slow. Right now I am in the fast fast. My search for a full time, normal person job fizzled, and as the holidays approach I am toning down my job search at the moment. Thankfully because of contacts in the professional writing world I have been piling on the freelance work. Piling on so much, actually, that we are able to pay for Fae to go to daycare after Kamel is off paternity leave. I can’t really control the job market, or who gets hired if it isn’t me, and I certainly can’t control how long this process takes, but I can control my hustle. And if my hustle means working from home all day and again after the kids go to bed and during stolen hours on the weekends? Then hustle I will. Because we have some major financial goals and without me those things can’t happen.
Like buying a house. Which is most likely put on the back burner for another year, unfortunately. But we’re getting there… we’re getting there. That’s the slow part. Fast fast hustle, slow life goals. As is life I guess.
So while I’m on my computer my writing brain is 99.9% focused on writing for dollar signs. It has been leaving me with less and LESS time to write for no dollar signs, even when that writing fills me up. It’s only been a few weeks of this hustle so I’m still finding my balance.
But in general I feel so awesome! And mentally kick ass! And smart! And on it! And handling my shit like a BOSS.
Because when things don’t work out like you imagined, strut down the paths that are open to you. Make it work. Make it more than work. Hustle and thrive. Fast fast slow.
Last week Kamel and I dropped Gabe off at my parents’ and headed over to Snoqualmie Falls and Salish Lodge for an overnight and some pregnant spa-ing. If you would like a quintessential pacific northwest hotel experience it is 100% worth it to spend a night at Snoqualmie Falls.
Also it should be noted that their restaurant is one of the best I have ever experienced EVER. And it overlooks a massive waterfall! And they have chocolate souffle, of which I greatly indulged!
Also the beds are magnificent even for giant pregnant me. So, here is a totally unsponsored plug. Do some getawaying and some pampering and put this one on your list.
(lol that sign)
I love you forever and ever pacific northwest. And I will never not appreciate the lush.
You know the walk up is serious serious serious business when I tie my sweatshirt around my waist. It took me hours to stop looking like a tomato and Kamel had to assist me by pushing me up some of the bigger hills. Lord have mercy.
(Workout photo followed by: honey infused BUTTER.)
“That’s not a knife… THIS is a knife.”
(Oooo. GET IT. GET IT!)
Cut to: breakfast the next day because 85% of this staycation was eating.
Kamel’s breakfast wins ALL of the games.
How have you been indulging lately? Where and when have you been able to take a tiny chunk of time out of the usual just for yourself? If you haven’t, you should! (Mid week hotel rates are cheaper! Also playing hookie for a day and staying in bed is also beneficial for health and happiness.)
