down the drain

I've posted this photo before, but when I took the picture I had no idea that I would become so intimately acquainted with my drain.

All week long, I've been repeatedly sticking my nose up to the drain. 

I readily admit that I tend toward the crazy end of the spectrum, but it's not OCD that has gotten a hold of me this time.

It's this god-awful smell.

That's coming from the sink.

I don't have a garbage disposal, and maybe that's part of the problem, but when we came back from our little weekend excursion the whole first floor STANK.

Naturally, we blamed the animals.

I even brought out the UV light and searched the house for pee stains.

I found some really disturbing glowing marks on the walls in the kitchen, but surprisingly (thankfully) no evidence of feline misdemeanors.

It took me two days and a bottle of Febreze before I finally figured out that the stench was emanating from the drain.

I proceeded to dump everything I could think of down the drain followed by drought-inducing amounts of water.

Nothing. A few hours later the smell would come right back.

This isn't hyperbole. It smelled like something DIED in there.

As a last resort, I made the sink off limits for 24 hours and dumped one of those "earth-friendly" drain-cleaners that promises not to kill all the children and pets in the house that cross its path. One has to wonder about the effectiveness of a drain cleaner that doesn't harm the children, but I thought I'd give it a try.

Plus 24 hours without the sink meant I had an excuse to not cook just leave the dishes on the counter.

I think it worked.

But now I can't stop myself from smelling it.

You know, just in case.

palsy

I try to space out the interactions I have with my mom. Keeping them months apart if at all possible. I found out this weekend what happens if I have visits with her that are less than 2 weeks apart...

My hands start shaking uncontrollably.

No joke. I couldn't put on make-up. I couldn't hold a hair brush.

I showed my husband my wildly flapping fingers and his response was, "yup. it's either that or your eye twitch."

I didn't know hand tremors were even an option.

And the strangest thing was that I felt rather calm, considering I was going to be walking into the lion's den shortly.

They grow up so fast

In just two days, this blog will be one year old.

If I was in Hawaii I would throw it a Baby Luau.

And I would invite all of you. And we would have Haupia, and Pipikaula and Kalua Pig and Malasadas and sushi and potato-mac salad and cucumber namasu and... oh sorry, this isn't a cooking blog.

But I do want to thank all of you who take the time to read and to comment here. I've felt the love so many times, through your public comments and your emails. I received a really nice email just the other day, talking about having a narcissistic parent and the struggles of dealing with that.

I don't think I would have been able to cover the ground that I have if it wasn't for all of you. Knowing that you are reading pushes me to go a little further than I otherwise would have. Writing about my experiences makes me think about them a little more. I spend more time processing what happens in my family and slightly less time just feeling crappy about it.

THANKS! You guys are way cheaper than therapy, and you'll still keep in touch even if you move to Florida, right?

And now you'll have to excuse me, because I have to get ready to spend my blog birthday driving many hours to an undisclosed location for an undisclosed event. (Well, I know where I'm going, but I'm still working on blocking certain IP addresses, if you know what I mean, so I'll have to keep mum about it for now)

Oh, and that cake up there? The super-cute one with the ballons? Flour Patch Bakery, for those of you in the Montclair area. That is the cake I would serve at my blog's baby luau.

I have exactly one hour and 25 minutes to myself this week and I'm giving 20 minutes of that to you

I just dropped Daniel off at a friend's house for a playdate. Which is so great because it IS possible to have too much quality time with your kid. (If by quality you mean the Science Channel and by time you mean me catching a nap between the commercials)

On the way to the playdate Daniel was talking about the first school he ever went to back when he was 3 1/2. He spent 2 months in the summer going to school 2 days a week for 3 hours. I wanted to ease him into preschool since he had such a hard time with transitions.

So he says to me from the back seat:

"I don't know why, but I always walked on my toes when I was at that school."

(This blew me away, because I don't remember him toe-walking, but I figured this was a good chance to talk about sensory integration)

"I think I have an idea why you might have walked on your toes while you were there."

"Really?"

"Well, ever since you were a baby, you have always been a really sensitive person. Lots of lights or sounds bothered you and I'm guessing that being at a new school with lots of kids might have stressed you out."

"I remember the funniest thing that happened at that school."

"Oh, really? What was that?"

"On the first day I tried to take my shoes off when I got there and you told me to keep them on. I didn't want to and you said everyone needed to keep there shoes on in case they had a fire drill. But I figured the probability of a fire drill was pretty low."

"Well, you know now that everyone keeps there shoes on at school."

"Of course. But how does being sensitive make me walk on my toes?"

"Well, you know how sometimes you need pressure?" (Proprioceptive input to use OT speak)

"Yeah to calm me down when I spin out of control."

"Well, not everyone needs pressure like that. Some people don't need it at all."

"Are there more people who need it or more people who don't need it?"

"There are more people who don't need it."

"Cool! So I'm rare! I'm a rare person! Just like I'm the smartest six year old in my whole school!"

"Uh, there aren't that many six year olds in your school, and don't go around saying that to people."

"But it's true."

And from there the discussion dissolved into him telling me that he is the smartest person in the family and me saying that he might just be but he doesn't know the most and besides it hurts people's feelings when you brag about being the smartest. And he was all whiny and six and didn't sound smart at all, just annoying and then we were at his friend's house and I hope he doesn't spend the whole playdate telling everyone everything that he knows.

If the conversation had gone they way I had it planned in my head, I would have been able to tell him a little more about sensory integration and how it effects his life, but instead we just got to the "nyah, nyah! I'm the smartest!" part.

Now on to the vacuuming.

Is he planning some sort of hiking trip?

My husband relayed this story to me after Daniel fell asleep the other night:

"Dad? What's 15 times 40?"

"Um, 600."

"Oh. What's 600 divided by 60?"

"That's 10. Why?"

"Mom said that it takes about 15 minutes to walk a mile, so it would take you 10 hours to walk 40 miles!"

(when my husband told me, I had to ask him if that formula was right. Clearly, Daniel's ability to do math problems has nothing to do with me)

Love on the mirror

When there's just one kid in the family sometimes it hits you that the phase, the moment you are in is fleeting and it will never return.

Last night, when Daniel got out of the shower, he took a moment to do what he has been doing lately - draw a heart on the steamy mirror and write his name + mom inside it. He does this on scraps of paper too. So much so that I confess that it is sometimes annoying. But last night it hit me.

This is a boy who is almost seven.

Soon he will abandon all this talk of "I love you mom" and focus his energies elsewhere. And of course I will watch with pride when he does, as I do with each new development.

But I guess I'd better get out my camera the next time he proclaims his love on the mirror.

It was greener than I remembered green could be

Well I'm back in body if not in spirit.  Upon walking into the house after our latest excursion, my husband announced that it was like going from a mansion to a boat.

Pretty much, yeah.

So here I am on my house boat, surrounded by all the crap we are so enamored with. I have to tell though, it all just looks like crap to me right now.

I'm going to go take a nap.

He told me he would be happy if it rained our whole vacation

Summer is kicking my ass.

We planned all these short vacations, partly because we had to and partly because of the animals. But the reality of it has been that I have spent the entire summer either packing or unpacking or (and this has taken up most of my time), lying comatose in denial of the packing/ unpacking that needs to be done.

Plus, my kid is home. And god love him, but clearly school is better for him than hanging out with me.

So I'm off again, and when I emerge from my coma return I'll have something to say. Hopefully.

Maybe I'll even have pictures.

Oh, and did you have any idea that Silly putty from the supermarket could entertain a child for two hours?!

Neither did I.

I should probably edit this before I post it

Back when my therapist still lived in NJ before she skipped town, I would get so excited when I remembered a dream. The pressure would be off for me to think of something to talk about and I could relax, because I knew that I could easily make one dream last through 50 minutes of therapy.

I haven't had a good dream like that for a long time.

Of course, I haven't been in therapy for awhile either.

But this morning I woke up to a dream that had me almost in tears.

Dreams fade away quickly but I made an effort to remember this one. In it I was a teenager again and was on some sort of a ferry that was going to be traveling all night long. At least one friend from high school was there, but not my parents.

As it became night, the staff on the ferry went around and checked on every passenger. Not just the usual, "Are you ok? Do you need anything?" They were checking people's blood pressure, making sure they had enough to eat, and essentially "tucking everyone into bed".

Instead of being creepy, it was very comforting, and everyone was calm and relaxed and smiling. When it came to my turn, I was a little nervous, but I've always liked to have my blood pressure taken so that calmed me down. The nurse who checked my blood pressure was very nurturing and I wished that she would stay with me longer, but there was a whole boatload of people so she was moving fairly fast.

After the nurse left, a man came along with a blanket for me and as he helped me to get it just right, he put his hand on my shoulder and touched my back with the finger of his other hand. He was touching one of many scabs that I had on my back, because at that time in my life I was cutting my arms regularly and I would scratch my back with my fingernails until it bled.

In my dream, this man that I had never met before, noticed these scabs and recognized immediately that the cause was emotional pain. He touched my back for a moment and then said something to me about detachment. I wish I could remember exactly what he said, because it was really important, but it disappeared too quickly.

I woke up right after this feeling extremely validated and grateful to this figment of my mind who had acknowledged my pain. The spot on my back where he had touched me hurt for quite awhile after I woke up and I decided to go right to the computer to look up "detachment".

I'm not sure why this is coming up now. Maybe it's because of this book I read recently, which brought up lots of old issues about family and vulnerability. The mom in that book is clearly a narcissist, but like the daughter in the story, you don't realize it until way too late.

In other news, I'm trying very hard this week to be calm and not to lose my cool about little things, because frankly, it scares my son. And although it seems like I'm acting perfectly normal to me, the truth is that I'm acting perfectly normal for my mother. And, well, that's BAD.

I'm rambling now, and I need to get some sleep, so to recap:

I had a dream which freaked me out.

Am I ever going to be done with all these ISSUES?

and finally,

Good mothers do not act like narcissists.

Good night.

I knew there was a downside to attachment parenting

So this summer, Daniel has been working on putting himself to sleep.

This is the part of attachment parenting that they don't talk about so much. In the books they say that the kids will put themselves to sleep when they're ready.

But what if your child is NEVER ready? What if your kid would rather forgo sleepovers than learn to fall asleep without someone next to him?

It's summer now, so it doesn't matter if he can't fall asleep until 11pm.  But I don't even know if this counts as falling asleep by yourself, because he still has one of us in the room with him.

We just aren't in the bed. And we aren't singing songs.

That's something. right?

Look, the kid will be 7 in just a few months. (SEVEN!) I think he needs to learn, right? I mean he might not be ready to do this on his own for a few more years, and I just don't think I can take that.

So...

the other night he was in his bed, and my husband was lying on the tiny Ikea sofa in Daniel's room, when Daniel started to discuss his feelings about stuffed animals.

He has never been a stuffed animal kind of kid, and as disappointed as that has made me over the years, I just figured that it was another sensory THING. But he  explained his disdain for the  soft and fuzzy that night.

"You and mom are the only non-ferocious animals I  Like. I only like ferocious stuffed animals. Like sharks and Ugly Dolls. The other stuffed animals really creep me out with their smiling faces. They are too smiley. I mean it's just weird. That's why I only sleep with ferocious animals."

Maybe he would like one of these?

Or MAYBE.... this is why he has trouble going to sleep in the first place.

I don't know. Today he announced that hedgehogs are the cutest animal, like, EVER.