Monkeys Gather Publishing

2009-07-14T08:03:00.001-07:00

Long time, no blog.

Things have been busy at Casa de Monkeys. Children grow, grown ups regress, people go in and out of work and then there are the always the too-short weekends. I went to a writers conference. The kids are running around half naked in the warm weather. The boy knows his alphabet. The girl is being potty trained.

Speaking of potty training--I had no idea that it would be so hard. I never knew that "Do you have to go potty?" would become the most important sentence of my repetoire. And why can't the tv teach the potty training? I love the tv for so many reasons--it taught the boy his alphabet, it keeps them occupied in the mornings--would it be so hard to have it teach the kids the toilet training? And even though I'm virulently anti-robot, can't they make a robot to do this?

Because it's wearing on me. Parenting already makes me feel like a failure in so many ways, this inability to get a person to pee in the appropriate place--yes, I just cleaned up yet another accident--just makes me want to cry even more. And it hasn't even been a week yet. We're not even a week out, and I already want to cry.

I have a vision of the girl and I in the bathroom, me sitting on the floor, crying, begging her to pee in the potty, while she asks me questions in her incomprehensible Girl Monkey language and tries to fit her big girl panties on my head. Who is this supposed to be training, anyways?

Regardless. Prayers are appreciated. Valium would be appreciated even more. Contact me for address information.

Best,
The Main Monkey.

2009-02-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

Dear God,

Yesterday, here in the Great Lakes state we got some nice, warm weather. Sure, it was only 40 degrees, but you know what? It might as well have been 80, because the hubster and I took the kids on a walk to Old Town and we practically skipped the whole way.

Today, though, there's a chance of snow again this afternoon. After what has arguably been the longest damned winter of my life, I have only one request for the powers that be: Can we please be done with the snow now? We have already proven how easily pleased we are with temperatures, it doesn't have to be 72 and sunny every day, just 40 and thawing. Please, please let it thaw--I can't remember what a lawn looks like. I think I speak for everyone when I say we've had enough.

Thank you in advance,
Your humble servant even though she missed church yesterday,
The Main Monkey

2009-01-07T11:23:00.000-08:00

It's finally happened. There are no jobs in my field in Michigan--well, any that pay more than my library job.

I cannot believe this. I don't know what to do: I guess I always thought that the right job would open up for me at just the right time. But nothing has opened up, and I feel like now it's time to make my own luck, because God only knows this writing thing isn't working out.

Any ideas, Intertubes, for a struggling writer? I'll even take work from home Ponzi schemes at this point.

2008-12-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

I found myself thinking about what I'm going to remember about these early toddler days when the kids are older. I've been told this age is the hardest, which gives me a little comfort, but that it takes almost a year to get through it. A year? Are you kidding me? I have this vision of the last poopy diaper that I will ever change, and it can't be a year away. Plus, they need to walk and talk regularly. Now.

What will be what I'll remember most of this? Am I going to remember the absolute boredom punctuated by unmanageable chaos? Will I remember the periods of time when I wanted to bolt almost every minute of every day? Will I remember how moments grind by sometimes?

Will I remember the sweetness of my son's voice saying hi? Will I remember the joy in my daughter's wiggle when I hold her and do a little dance?

Will I remember the bittersweetness of the whole thing, how glad I am that time passes, relieved, while wishing I could hold on just a little longer? Will I remember how sad it makes me that I don't have the energy to be the perfect mom, and the shame I feel that I can't live up to the label? Will I remember the shame I feel every time I turn on PBS and go into the other room to close my eyes for a minute?

Will I remember any of this? Because it's hard enough remembering it now, while sitting here writing as my children giggle incessantly in the other room.

2008-11-18T08:41:00.000-08:00

At left: behold the felted hat! It took forever, and when I was felting it I almost lost faith due to its rapid increase in size, but it all turned out right in the end. Also behold the vaguely artistic photo layout. I call it "The Picture In Which the Blogger Figures Out How to Turn Off the Flash On the Camera She's Had for Six Months."

It's a little long, but it works.

In general angst news, I look for jobs and then do not get them. I come up with vocations and toss them aside like the books I'm not reading. I feel restless; it's time for an adventure.

Luckily enough, I smell poop from the other room. Dear God, when can I start potty training again?

2008-10-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

So.

It's October--my favorite time of year, as you can see below. However, with the delight of crunchy leaves, apples with caramel dip and the air just smelling right comes the fact that I get a little antsy as things settle down for the winter.

One may call this angst.

So if anyone has any ideas about what I should do with my life, please pass them my way. Ideas with positive income streams take precedence over those that will just end up costing me more money.

2008-10-14T07:20:00.000-07:00

This is the tree outside my front door. Stunning, isn't it? Trust me, it's nothing compared to the real thing.

I love autumn.

2008-09-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

Come on, man, why did you have to hang yourself? You are one of my favorite writers. You were the one who wrote about the effects of Illinois wind on junior championship tennis--which I was familiar with from my own extremely amateur tennis days in junior high--and made me fall in love with Roger Federer. You were the one who wrote about suffocating Arizona cockroaches beneath drinking glasses and suspended my disbelief so that, for a moment, I believed in ghosts, even if they were the ghosts of avant-garde filmmakers. Seeing your name on the masthead was the last straw in turning me into a Harper's subscriber.

Man, you were the reason I decided to write my first novel. And now you're dead, you succumbed to the abyss and you did it yourself, you fucking genius you.

My novel isn't very good. It's no Infinite Jest, which I read half a life ago when I had dropped out of college and was working part-time at a big box grocery store in Kalamazoo, had just moved in with two people I didn't really know, and my life had gotten to a point of absurdity that I had to disconnect. So I spent $28 of my 100 or so dollar weekly paycheck on this mammoth, hardcover (oh, the luxury!) tome, and spent two weeks doing nothing but working and reading in various places around that unfamiliar apartment.

I cried reading that book. I hadn't cried in a long time. Even more important, one of my roommates was watching me read, was a witness to this complete absorption of attention that I was capable of, and was taking notes. He is still one of my best friends. I have one of my best friends because of that book.

Even more, after my brother enlisted in the Navy, he asked me to send him books on the ship when he was stationed in Japan. I tried to think of good books with a large quantity of pages, and ended up sending him Infinite Jest. Not only did he read it, he got several of his shipmates to read it, too, and that particular copy took on a life of its own, getting hidden in electrical equipment and being read by those who hardly ever read on shore. It turned out to be a great book for the sea.

You were the one. You were the one who made me think that maybe writing nonfiction essays would be a good idea--you made me realize that I had my own sense of self, to a point, with A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. I cheered you for your MacArthur grant, and you gave me hope. Yes, hope. That someday, I might be able to write this well. That I might be able to meet you. That I too may someday be capable of this greatness.

But if this greatness, your particular kind of greatness, means I end up putting a rope around my neck and kicking a stool out from under me, I'm going to have to think again. Why, man? Couldn't you have held on for just a little bit longer?

You know, for me?

2008-08-30T10:56:00.000-07:00

Meet Platty the Puss. He's awesome, and has green eyes AND nostrils. I made him myself.

I'm also on antibiotics, so take all enthusiasm with a grain of salt. But I had to brag, and the kids love him--it's their reward for not figuring out the new childproof device yet.

2008-08-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

What happens when a mother of twins takes five minutes to check her email? How about this:See that white square on the top right corner of the cupboard door? That would be the childproofing device. You know, the one that failed. The black box that the Bear is standing on would be the VCR. The metal box to the right of the VCR would be the DVD player, turned upside down. All those DVDs were, five minutes previous, in a box in alphabetical order. Many of those painstakingly alphabetized DVDs were now, at this point, under the rug.

It was, I should mention, 9:00 in the morning.

Of course, as you can see below, he did have help. See how politely the Bird is explaining how to disconnect the various electronic devices, speaking from experience. And if you go by the look on the Bear's face, he did nothing wrong and is purely an innocent bystander--an innocent bystander STANDING ON THE VCR.
Below, the Bird tries to convince me of her innocence, too.Sorry, kids, I'm not buying it. Hannahdog doesn't have opposible thumbs. Best to you all, and happy cleaning!

2008-07-27T18:36:00.000-07:00

That's my mom on the left. What can I say, I look a lot like her, although she probably wouldn't be caught dead wearing black unless it was to a funeral and I refuse to give up my hipster-colored fabrics.

My children, on the other hand. . . let's just say that when I pulled up with my Dad after getting their birthday sandbox, I said, in all monotone sincerity: "My children are wearing tie-dye."

It did make them easier to see in our crowded house that night, though. By the way, they're one year old, and I feel 92. Especially now that I have pictoral evidence that I look like my mother.

2008-06-26T17:11:00.000-07:00

An email I sent earlier today:

(Clears throat.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I will not be able to attend Mental Health Thursday Lunch today. It is true, I may indeed need it more than any of you, but I am awaiting a call from the pediatrician which might require immediate medical attention for my precious daughter.

What? you may ask. Is the Bird, aka Tiny Recurrent Pterodactyl, all right?

Mostly. You see, I had my Once Every Five Years If Not Pregnant Insomnia last night--thank goodness it only lasted until 1:30 this time, and then I was up for a bit at 4:30 due to inconsolable tiny people who can't speak English or Spanish that made me cry in frustration so hard that my husband woke up and took over for me with what is perhaps the most gentle hug I have ever received.

Brazelton says that they're doing this night waking thing because they're frustrated that they can't walk and their light sleep cycles are so light that they can't help but wake themselves--indeed, even the Bear has been writhing around in his sleep so much that he loses his bink, and then all hell breaks loose, multiple times a night. But I think the real reason for this is that they are now Officially Toddlers, and Hate Me.

So I was sleep addled. And imagine my joy when these tiny hating people, aka My Children, let me sleep until 9:30. And the quiet! Oh, the quiet! It was like a cheese danish, lightly warmed, brought to my side in a quaint bed and breakfast in Portland with a fine, fine iced latte from Stumptown Coffee by my usual imaginary cabana boy. It was delightful. I thought to myself that they might love me after all.

Soon the Junior Monkeys were making their happy wakeup time noises--although the Bird has returned to her Pterodactyl ways, and my eardrums are suffering, but at least at this point they were well-rested eardrums--so I made my way down the hall to greet the day with my two small loves. As I opened the door, a smell reached my nose, a familiar smell, a smell of great importance. And my vision was still blurred from sleep, but I could see a brown ring around my daughter's mouth.

Needless to say, her diaper was off.

I cannot describe the horror, but here are a few important points:

I had not had any coffee.
The Bear was screaming his head off in hunger.
She not only had a quilt in bed with her, but both her and her brother's duckies and a Linux penguin, all of which are now enjoying the jacuzzi of the washing machine.
Oh yes, they did have corn for lunch yesterday, why do you ask?

I wiped her off as much as I could, which turned the happy poop-covered girl into a screaming with rage poop-covered girl, and put her in the bathroom to go make some bottles so that the boy would finally stop screaming. I brought him and the bottles into the bathroom to find tiny pieces of toilet paper--wet toilet paper--scattered around my child.

The bath went well, the boy was fed, eventually everything made it to the washing machine, and I now have coffee. But I will never be the same, and now I'm awaiting news regarding my daughter and whatever hepatitis she may have contracted from her own feces.

Did I mention that tomorrow is my deadling for editing and formatting this 300 page dissertation I've been working on for the last month and a half? You know, the first enormous project of my freelance career? And that the dog apparently escaped from the backyard into Oakland Avenue while I was washing the poop off the girl?

Update: I am only supposed to watch for a fever and/or diarrea, and my beloved Julie has promised me air conditioning all afternoon if I can just make it to her office. We'll see, folks, we'll see. I must go, now they want breakfast. Of course, of course, it never ends. . .

Much love to all, and I hope your days are going better than mine,
Joan

2008-06-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

Self-employment achieved! Thanks, Luke, for the work. Have to go, now have to actually finish the project. . .

2008-05-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

On Obamarama.

Oh, sweet Barack, my favorite candidate that I've ever had. You will be so close in Grand Rapids, yet I stay here. I hear that you will fill Van Andel arena, anyway, without me.

So, in your honor:

2008-04-21T18:52:00.000-07:00

Oh, Gwyneth.

First of all, I have never liked girls name Gwyneth. Second, now I know I was merely being clairvoyant about your "admission" that you had postpartum depression.

From msnbc.com (and various other sites on the tubes):

“You know, I had postnatal depression after Moses,” the “Shakespeare in Love” actress confessed. “I didn’t know I had it until after it was over. I just didn’t know what was wrong with me.

-snip-

I felt really out of my body. I felt really disconnected. I felt really down. I felt pessimistic.”

The actress is certain she knows the source of the problem. Unlike her first pregnancy with daughter Apple, Gwyneth abandoned her prenatal routines, such as acupuncture and massage.

Okay, let me unclench my teeth and unpack this. As a member of the 10 to 20 percent of women who get postpartum depression, let me fill you in on some things.

First of all, I most definitely knew that I had postpartum depression while I was in it. You know how? I went mildly psychotic. I thought people were going to steal my babies. I kept forgetting there were two of them--seriously. I was terrified that I was going to hurt them--not nervous that I was going to drop them while sleep-addled, mind you, but that I was going to snap and break one of their legs in a fit of uncontrollable rage. I thought that my husband would be far better off without me, and that he would be so much better as a dad if I weren't here to mess it up all the time. Those are not symptoms of "feeling really down," those are symptoms of a mental illness. Which is what postpartum depression is, and why they medicate you for it with real drugs prescribed by a physician.

Disconnected doesn't even begin to cover it. Gwyneth, darling, I was kicked out of the will at 18, mugged at gunpoint at 20, and had a near-death experience due to massive pneumonia, a collapsed lung, full-body pleuresy, and a freakin' heart attack at 30. And you want to know what finally got me to a psychiatrist to get medicated? Postpartum depression.

So you may be an easy target, with your nannies and your macrobiotic diet and your regular yoga and your accupuncture and massage, but let me tell you this: Do not, under any circumstances, use this thing that almost destroyed me, this disease that most certainly is NOT a character flaw, as something you "think" you had in order to connect with a larger audience to sell more copies of that damned fashion magazine you're all airbrushed to hell on the cover of. Never, ever again. Because people like you are the reason that it took me six weeks of delusions of hurting my daughter, forgetting my son existed, and beating myself up because I was recovering from major surgery and having a hard time sustaining a milk supply for the 10 hours of breastfeeding I was doing a day before I went to the doctor. Oh, and being hard on myself for not thinking it was blissfully, joyfully FUN.

Even after I went to the doctor, filled my prescription, and went home I still heard this little voice in the back of my brain, a voice that sounds strangely like yours, telling me that I just couldn't hack it. And you bet I cried in bitter failure while I took those pills--at first. Now, seven months later, they are almost the best things that ever happened to me, and I feel more alive and downright chipper than I have in a long, long time. I actually enjoy my babies and am finding motherhood more of a happy tussle than an epic struggle.

But don't think that isn't too chipper to want to kick your skinny white ass until you stop yapping about things you don't understand.

What Six Months Can Do

2008-03-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

You know, every once in a while you have to take a peek at where you've been in order to get a grasp of where you're going.

This is me when I found out I was having twins in 2006. I swear, I have never been that happy in my life. This is made better when you know that in this picture I've been throwing up multiple times a day for over a month.

But, as I told my family and friends in an email later that day, I was not a slacker: I was an overachiever. Anyone related to me with a uterus should take note that even when you're only three months out of the hospital and feel like you are going to keel over any day now, your uterus will still overachieve. Be warned.

Fast forward six months. This is the end of June, people. And yes, that's me in the middle. THIS IS NOT EVEN THE MOST PREGNANT I GOT, I still had another month to go.

So I went from that cute girl in the above picture, pointing to a belly that looks like she ate too much mac and cheese, to the enormous thing you see at left. Note how my lovely husband looks in awe at my ginormity. And my grandfather, at right, is looking like this is completely normal. What can I say, we're Catholic--breeding is second nature to us, even when unplanned and multiple in nature.

Ah, yes, finally. A month later, here are the new reasons that I'm alive. Boy Monkey is at left, trying to escape the multiple blankets his father has swaddled him in, you know, in July. Girl Monkey is at right, expressing with her face how incredibly serious this sleeping thing is.

So yeah, there's no real purpose to this post aside for me to wax all nostalgic-like about the craziest six months of my life. Oh, and maybe show some Monkey Pictures that you all haven't seen before.

Have a good day, people. I can smell spring on the wind, and it can't come soon enough.

Black History Month

2008-02-26T20:31:00.000-08:00

I just published an article about Malcolm X on another site. Please read. I swear I'm not insufferable while discussing race relations on a liberal website.

Thanks,
Main Monkey

A promise to a Mensch

2008-02-21T13:54:00.000-08:00

The very kind, very nice, most favoritest mensch--although her mother is a favorite mensch, too--and I had a lovely discussion Tuesday night, about which she wrote this post . So I am returning the favor and sharing these delightful photos from my oh-so-traumatic junior high school yearbooks.

You bet your sweet rear end this means I've reached certain therapy goals.

First, some context. You know how some kids just sail through junior high with little or no psychological damage aside from the agony of that pimple they got on the night of the dance? I was not one of those people. Northeast Junior High in 1989-1991 was a battlefield for me, and I undoubtedly lost. Most of the scars were healed in high school and college, but don't we all carry a little bit of that seventh grader inside of us?

So, in the spirit of openness, friendship, and the Fightin' Northeast Vikings, here we go:

This is my seventh grade picture. Several sources have described it as one of the worst school pictures they have ever seen. Behold the frizzy hair that my mother, bless her soul, thought a perm could take the natural curl out of. Behold the glasses' pre-spherical lenses that distort the size of my eyes to an alarming degree only to emphasize my natural blindness. You can even barely make out the metal braces so large that my poor teeth were entirely obscured due to their heavy bulk.

Ah, but this is only the beginning:

This is my seventh grade gymnastics team picture. (I have no idea how the x got on my foot, but there most certainly was not an x there in real life. The tattoos didn't come until seven years later. Oh, and none of them are on my foot.)

Please note again the gleam of the braces. Also, note the complete and utter lack of, um, womanly virtues in the chestal region. And apparently it wasn't degrading enough to have to change out of a swimsuit in a locker room after my required swim class--why, God, why did they require swim classes in this oh-so-awkward year?--but I made the Conscious Choice to parade around in a leotard in front of strangers--to music! My severe awkwardness must have made me mentally ill.

Also, note the bangs: Half curled up, half curled down. Aw, yeah.

Finally, in the spirit of "if I wanted to expose so much of my gangliness why didn't I join the volleyball team with those tiny little shorts," I give you the 8th grade tennis picture. There are new glasses, but they're still horrible. There's a new hairstyle, but the bangs are twice as high. And the leotard may be gone, but it's been replaced by a tennis skirt.

Sigh. If only we could go back to our 13-year-old selves, if only to give hair advice. And to tell ourselves that we really were kind of pretty, even if those jock guys called you an ugly slut on the way home from school every day.

So, Mensch, this trauma's for you. I hope you've enjoyed it. And now I hope you realize that when I was puking pregnant, my hair was falling out, and I was the color of a cigarette ash without the actual cigarettes, I still was hotter than I was in 7th grade.

Proper equipment and geneology

2008-02-07T10:48:00.000-08:00

Lansing got a lot of snow last night. Lansing also has a strict 24-hour snow removal rule. Although my dear husband was too tired to shovel last night, he did somehow have enough energy to get in an "animated discussion" with me about geneology, which pretty much ended with me saying something along the lines of "geneology is dumb!" and huffing off to sleep in the guest room without another word.

Lo and behold, when I awoke this morning, yon driveway and sidewalk were still covered with the white stuff. Being the cheery lass that I am, and always feeling up to a winter-related challege, I suited on up in the proper equipment.

See? I'm all happy and ready to go: ski jacket, dorky hat, teeth that I really should have used the retainer as directed on. What you can't see are the well-worn adventure boots, Smartwool socks, and thermal gloves. I'm even wearing my breathable rain pants from Oregon, which provides unimpeachable evidence that my butt is the same size as it used to be--it's the pants that are getting smaller. All together, this weather-readiness is what an ex not-so-lovingly called the "lesbian geologist look." (Note: I have nothing against lesbians or geologists. He did, but I do not.) I felt vital, alive, and full of vim and vigor.

I went out to engage in some heart-pumping snow removal, and managed to get this far before needing a break:
See? There's a path leading from the front door to all the way down to the street. (Fun Ghetto Fact: The brown van parked out there has absolutely zero exhaust system: no muffler, no pipe, no nothin'. In other words, it lacks proper equipment.)

Keep in mind that all of that was done with what I did not realize was this crappy of a shovel before I got suited up:
Yes, that weird edge does make shovelling much harder, thank you for asking. But I am a vital, hale and healthy young woman, and I attack whatever challenges arise with a vigorous mind and body. Even the family's need to get a new shovel does not deter me from my snow-removal duties.

I needed a rest at this point, no matter how hale I was feeling, and went inside to get a drink of water. At this point, I heard the Junior Monkeys over the monitor making their Happy Wakeup Time Noises. I went up to fetch them and smelled perhaps the most noxious odor I have ever caught a whiff of coming out of my son's pants. I picked him up, took him to the changing table, and proceeded to open the most impressive poop package I have ever seen. (I would have taken pictures, but the smell would have melted my camera.) Not only was it impressive upon opening, but it became even more impressive as The Boy spread The Contents all over his plastic pants, his brand-new outfit, the changing table, the wall, and even Mommy's sweatshirt. With, I might add, his feet.

Over the next 20 minutes I was able to disinfect the table, the son, and even myself, and brought both the Junior Monkeys downstairs. Apparently, the glare from the snow was frying my neurons, because I thought to myself, "Self? Why don't you take the Junior Monkeys outside with you? That way you can finish shovelling and they can get some much-needed fresh air!" I looked down at the adorable Monkeys, who cooed and babbled while rolling around and grabbing their feet.

Fifteen minutes later, there was no more cooing and babbling, but rather only this:

See? Not only is The Boy desperately unhappy with the Infant Torture Device (aka "Snowsuit") that I had to administer, but The Girl has apparently lost all will to live and sits there apathetically in her cute pink ears.

Yes, I eventually did get the walk, driveway, and stairs cleared, and no Junior Monkeys were harmed in the process. But it did take me over two hours to finish when you count the time spent on poop removal and baby torturing.

Why, do you ask, am I telling you all of this? And publishing it on the Intertubes, no less? Let all of you husbands and boyfriends be warned: Because my husband argued with me about geneology, I slept in another room last night and therefore he did not wake up in time to shovel the walk. Since I had to shovel the walk with a crappy shovel, I was not around to remove my son's biohazard of a diaper at the point of explosion, therefore allowing the only somewhat contained substance to find its way into nooks and crannies within the diaper that it ordinarily would not find. Had the biohazard not found all the diaper's little nooks and crannies, the spreading of said biohazard all over creation upon the opening of the diaper may not have happened. Also, because the job was taking so long due to the damaged shovel, I had to take my children outside with me. In order to take them outside in cold weather, they should be dressed for it, which caused two happy babies to turn into what you see pictured above.

In short, if my dear husband hadn't insisted upon arguing about geneology with me last night, even if it was "for the children," I wouldn't have had to clear the walk with a broken shovel or get covered in poop, and he wouldn't have enraged his son or made his daughter lose the will to live. The least he can do is apologize--and get us a new shovel.

Ah, nostalgia.

2008-01-31T11:51:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here trying to do anything aside from filling out my bankruptcy paperwork.

Funny, never thought those particular words would ever be typed by yours truly. I promise that I'll be back next week with the usual snark and candor. Until then, allow me to wallow in a bit of nostalgia and go back to the halcyon early days of Monkeys Gather Publishing, aka 2003. You know, back when I wasn't bankrupt and actually thought that I might someday be a novelist.

What is Monkeys Gather Publishing?

One could ask oneself why the world would need another internet publishing house. A Google search turned up almost 500,000 of them in under a second. So why on earth did someone create another one?

It’s simple, really. Most of them are downright awful. The rest of them are pretentious. And if you really want to do something right, you have to do it yourself.

Monkeys Gather Publishing is a loose association of writers who are committed to the idea of free publication of quality work. This work includes short fiction, essays, and poetry.

Monkeys Gather is the brainchild of Joan Bolander, who was frustrated by her inability to get her work published by conventional means. That, and she has an understandable laziness about sending her babies out to the slaughter. Needless to say, she is somewhat neurotic, being raised Catholic and all, and this project lessens her guilt about not being able to write 24 hours a day. It’s bad enough that she was supposed to win the Pulitzer by 23, and the Nobel by 35. At least there’s still is time for the Nobel.

Thus, while she spends her time typing horrible amounts of code, tending bar at various awful restaurants in the Portland, Oregon, area, and attending business classes at a horrendous community college, she at least can keep one eye on the fact that every time she goes into a bookstore, she creates a place on the shelf for her opus. Who knows, someday, it will actually be on that shelf, and someone will actually read it.

Crap, now I just want to go back to Portland. Oh well, I still have four more years to go for the Nobel, although now it will probably be for Raising Multiples rather than Achievement in Literature. And it's nice to know that I still don't want to slaughter my babies, although now they're ACTUAL babies, not horribly punctuated juvenile prose. Sigh.

Pants and Faith

2008-01-23T18:40:00.000-08:00

I finally mustered the courage to talk to Father Gordon at St. Paul's about this little itch I've been having since I got out the hospital about the fact that I just maybe. . . possibly. . . um. . . am being called to be a priest. (Yes, me. It's just a possibility, so you can stop your snickering right this instant.) He said that the most important thing is to make sure that I believe in what the Episcopalians believe in—which I pretty much think I have covered, but who knows, all sorts of things could pop up between now and whenever this gets resolved—and make sure that I'm hearing God's call, not the call of my ego. I asked him if there was some sort of multiple choice quiz I could take to figure out if the little itch comes from above or from my increasingly diseased mind, and he laughed and shook his head.

So instead of filling out little ovals on a Scantron sheet, I've been praying, reading and meditating. Let me tell you, the quiz would have been much easier, and, knowing my absolute love of external validation, far more satisfying. And as I started thinking about my deep and unending love of external validation, my thoughts naturally turned to the ever-growing size of my rear end.

First, let me explain the validation thing, then I'll get to my rear. I love it when people tell me I'm awesome, so much that I will bait them into doing it. I never fail to mention that I graduated Phi Beta Kappa while working two jobs and taking 19 credit hours. I point out as often as possible that I was a semi-professional musician in high school. I take great pride that all of my bosses, even the one who fired me, considered me their flunky. Although I did not even remotely want to have sex at the end of my pregnancy, I still loved it when my husband hit on me because it meant that I still had it going on, if “it” involved two squirming fetii in their rapidly shrinking respective organic kiddie pools. The list goes on and on.

And, speaking of my pregnancy, let me tell you, my butt has not been the same since those kids decided to grow in there. To be honest, it hasn't been the same since the Near Death Experience (NDE) in the fall of 2006, actually. When I got out of the hospital, I weighed 115 pounds, and when I looked in the mirror, I tell you, the only thing that made me smile was the fact that at least I wasn't fat.

The weight has been a long-term obsession with me. I was a gymnast when I was 12, and I've never fully recovered the feeling that at any moment someone is going to make me take off my sweatpants and prance around in a leotard in front of an audience, inevitably screwing up stunts due to a lethal combination of stage fright and social anxiety that I still have to this day. I admit that I cried when I hit 100 pounds. I have always carefully watched any sort of cellulite for this reason—heck, who wouldn't—and for years operated on the assumption that if I lived on cigarettes and coffee I would never have to go on a diet.

Well, the cigarettes eventually had to go, and the coffee started making me crazy. In 2005 I dropped both habits—the coffee was only temporary, but the cigarettes stuck. I started working out to counteract the inevitable weight gain, but somehow the number on the scale kept going up, and up, and up. And up. Until I was at an all-time high, and wondering how the heck this was happening when I was being so good and working out three times a week, at 7220 feet, no less. I mean, crikey, my BMI was in overweight territory! I didn't even eat sweets!

I didn't have to worry for long, because after I moved back to Michigan I had the pneumonia/heart attack/full body sepsis/ARDS that did its best to kill me but failed. I teetered out of the hospital in six-figure debt and shaking from the morphine withdrawal, blowing bloody chunks of my damaged lungs out of my nose every ten minutes or so. My life was forever changed. But hey, I was 115 again.

You know you have a problem when the best part of living through a NDE is the number on the scale. And that particular number was temporary: I watched, with no small sense of loss, as the numbers crept back up to a far more reasonable series of digits. But at that point, as they say, that was the least of my problems. A month later I was pregnant. Not only pregnant, but doubly pregnant. And I gained the recommended 65 pounds over a period of nine months—85 between October and July—to a whopping high of 200 pounds when I was sent to the hospital to get the little buggers cut out of me due to my skyrocketing blood pressure.

A week later, I went to my OB for a checkup and discovered that I'd lost 50 pounds. He said it was some sort of record, and my little heart, so deprived of sleep and nourishment, warmed a little. I lost the rest of the weight in the next week, and proudly wore my skinny jeans out to a lunch date with friends. I was so happy. And I told so many people about it and why.

Once again, my body had done this amazing thing, giving birth to two babies! At once! And all I could think about was the number on a scale. Ah, validation, you are a twisted mistress.

Needless to say, this didn't last. I found that eating pounds of chocolate at a time is not good for your behind. I started exercising, and found the numbers inching up the scale again—my sister says it's muscle, but I have my doubts. And lo and behold, last week I found my BMI back in overweight territory and only one pair of pants in my closet that even remotely fit.

I was sad. I continue to be sad. And when I'm sad, I can't work on all of my plans that I have right now: I have chores to do, dogs to feed, babies to play with, research to be done on how exactly to play with babies, and a training program for the 5k I want to run this summer to plod through. I have plans, people! I need validation! And arbitrary guidelines! I have no time for sadness!

So, in a bit of a huff and in need of some sort of feel-goodery, being a Christian, I turned to the Bible. I looked something up on the internet, and, being the mother of infant twins, I immediately forgot the chapter and verse. But I remembered it was in Matthew, so I skimmed through looking for something familiar. I am the light of the world—ya, sure. Our father who art in heaven—yup, know that one, but not it.

And then, of course, while not finding something in particular, I found exactly what I needed. Matthew 6:25: Therfore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.

Oh, crap. Even Jesus, the least judgmental person ever to walk the planet, thinks I should lighten up on my rear and not worry about my body or the shrinking number of pants that I can actually wear. Just great. And sure, the context is about how you cannot live in God's world and the world of men at the same time, but it certainly rang a bell. The one that sits right next to that tiny itch.

I realized that if I am called to be a priest, I should not be worrying about the size of my behind, but rather about whether my faith is enough to carry me through. And isn't that the question, really? What else do I have to carry me through, if not all these tiny rules and obsessions about my BMI, my mile time, and my children's development? What else is there really, if not faith?

Monkeys!

2007-12-28T10:46:00.001-08:00