We’re Under Attack!

About a month ago we started seeing a few ants in the house. You know, one here and one there and seeing as I’m not anything close to a Buddhist, I would squish them without hesitation.

I did feel a tiny bit bad but guess what, little ants? This is MY turf. If I was in your territory, you’d probably bite me or something, right? Indeed, you would.

Well, a couple ants turned into a few and then a few more. Then one night my daughter had a dream that her room was overrun with ants and another day our brick-paved area out back was covered with red ants and I started to freak so the huz and I decided this weekend we would really go on the offensive and try to get rid of them; the black ones, the red ones, the tiny ones, the big ones, the ones that are now in the bathroom and the ones that have had the nerve to crawl around on my desk. ALL OF THEM!

Let me tell you…those little bastards must be psychic or else they speak English because this morning? My coffeemaker was swarming with black ants. I mean they were all over it. And in it. EWWWWW!!!!!

If their goal was to ruin my morning, then mission accomplished because hello? NO COFFEE!!!!

My husband grabbed the coffeemaker and put it outside and I’ve been too grossed out to go check and see if they’ve vacated.

I mean really, ants in a coffeemaker? — WTF?

Why me? What’s so appealing about MY house? It’s not that dirty!

In any case, I’m starting to think it’s personal. You know, like payback for squishing their friends or something. Ughhhh.

And now I’m scouring the internet looking for a secret weapon because nobody keeps me from my morning coffee and gets away with it *carefully applies waterproof, smudgeproof, non-toxic warpaint*

It’s ON.

(Anyone know of a natural way to get rid of ants so I don’t have to use poison???)

I May Very Well Be the Stupidest Person on Earth

Blech. I feel like crap. Actually I’ve been feeling like crap continuously since the beginning of the week when I made a very stupid decision.

It all started when I realized I only had two Zoloft left. I knew my doctor’s office wouldn’t order a refill for me without seeing me because that’s what they told me last month when my scrip ran out and they so kindly called a new one in for me. I know. So irresponsible. Can you believe they let me raise children?

So, I make an appointment and go in last Friday and when I hand them my insurance card, the girl at the little window informs me that the practice has been sold and that they no longer take Blue Cross.

Of course, I’m like “WTF????”

And she says I’ll have to pay $70 for an office visit.

And I proceed to tell her and some doctor who has wandered in that they should have informed me of this change by mail or at the very least, when I called to make my appointment and that I’m not paying $70 for a doctor to ask me how I’m doing on Zoloft and scribble out a new prescription for me.

And the doctor mumbles in his very poor English that if he performs a service, somebody has to pay for it.

And I say “I’ll pay you what my co-pay is, which is $10. The other $60 is not my problem. You’ll have to absorb that since you couldn’t be bothered to notify me that you were no longer taking my insurance.”

And he tells me that I have no relationship to this office or to any doctor there and he’s not going to help me.

And I tell him that if they have my file over on the wall with all the others, with five years of my medical history in it, and that they called in a prescription for me last month, I DO, in fact, have a relationship with this office.

And then he goes on again about getting paid for his services and how he’s not the owner of the practice and all this crap, to which I reply that he needs to take that up with his bosses, not me.

And then he tells me to call Blue Cross and find another doctor.

And I say “I have TWO pills left and it’s 4pm on a Friday. You’ve GOT to be kidding me.”

Now sufficiently worked up, I continue on to tell him that he is he’s useless and greedy and uncompassionate and to just go away.

Much to my irritation, he doesn’t go away.

So then I bring out the big guns and tell both him and another woman who has joined our little pow-wow that they will be 100% responsible for whatever happens to me if I don’t get my medication.

The look of panic in the woman’s eyes as she glances at the doctor doesn’t escape me.

She suddenly gets up and fetches my file and begins reading the notes from when they called in my scrip the previous month. She whispers something to the doctor and he says something back and then they write me a one month prescription.

I write them a check for $10, thank them and snatch my scrip before they can change their minds.

Victory!

Except I really didn’t want Zoloft.

My plan was to talk to my REGULAR doctor who apparently no longer works there (thanks for telling me, betch!) and ask her to switch me to Wellbutrin or something that is less toxic to my sex life because I’ve been on Zoloft for about a year and I can’t take the frustration of, you know, reaching the big O, only about 20-30% of the time. It’s maddening, particularly when that area of my life has improved vastly in recent months. But alas, with no actual doctor to see, my plan was totally foiled…

So, I dropped my prescription off at CVS. I took my two remaining pills and still hadn’t gotten my new ones yet. A few days passed and I felt FINE so I decided I would just go off the Zoloft for a few days longer so I could have the pleasure of a proper and hopefully mindblowing um, you knowwww.

And I did and it was awesome…but then idea of going BACK on the Zoloft and going back to the complete opposite situation was so unappealing that I opted to stay off of it altogether.

When I started feeling like shit this week, I thought I was getting sick. I’ve had muscle aches and nausea and headaches and dizziness and this feeling of something heavy and leaden perched on my forehead, which I attributed to a virus coming on. Drug withdrawals never even occurred to me because I’ve never had them before.

But today I had one of those freaking lightbulb moments that Oprah loves so much and decided to look up the withdrawal symptoms of Zoloft and uh…I think I facked up REALLY bad when I decided to forgo my medication in exchange for some great sex. *sigh*

Now I’m positive that the awful symptoms I’ve been experiencing are from not properly tapering off the Zoloft. All I want to do is sleep because I feel so crappy and ill. Fortunately, I don’t happen to feel depressed which seems like a total bonus given everything else I’m dealing with.

But now I don’t know what to do. In the past, I’ve quit Zoloft cold turkey and never had anything like this happen.

Do I ride it out for another few weeks to a month (NOOOOOO!!!) or do I start taking it again and then taper off the way you’re supposed to? I’ve read some really horrible scenarios on a depression medication message board about withdrawals and I’m now paralyzed with indecision.

Maybe if I had a facking doctor to advise me, I’d KNOW what to do. But alas, I was once again irresponsible and didn’t tend to that during the week because I was too busy feeling like holy hell in a handbasket.

Make no mistake. Depression is bad. Horrid. Crippling. But being continuously ill for an undetermined amount of time is depressing in it’s own right. DO NOT WANT!!!

So, it’s many hours later from when I started writing this post and in that time I broke down and took half a Zoloft, which is 50 mg. I don’t feel 100% but the 500 lb anvil that was camping out on my forehead seems to have gotten a lot lighter. I’m also feeling less fatigued and the muscle aches are almost unnoticeable, relatively speaking. It worked THAT FAST — and I’m glad — but it’s also scary as shit to think I can’t function without it.

How the hell am I ever going to get off this stuff?

No Kid, Huh?

Before I had kids, well, actually way before I was THINKING about having kids, I thought I didn’t want any. It wasn’t because I had a fully-mapped out “life plan” or big goals in which children would have been an impediment. Definitely not that. Burning ambition has never been my strong suit…

I just didn’t have that maternal yen back then. And it wasn’t that I hated children. I simply had no feelings about them one way or the other and seeing as I didn’t ever envision myself being married, it stands to reason that I never spent any time envisioning myself as somebody’s mother, either.

I felt I was destined for bigger things, though I had no idea what those things would be. Of course, looking back on that, I have to laugh. What on earth was I thinking? And smoking?

The biggest irony of all, however, is that I ended up exactly where I never thought I’d be and frankly, becoming a mother, even with all it’s drudgery and sacrifice, is still the best and biggest and most important thing I’ve ever done.

Some people will nod their heads in agreement. Others will scratch their heads because they don’t quite understand. And others still will gag in disgust because they hate breeders, particularly self-congratulatory ones like myself, and they hate children. Not dispassion for us or even dislike for us but hate. They hate me and they think my kids shouldn’t exist.

Now I can understand people not wanting to have children and I don’t think it makes you a bad person to not want to be a parent. I know people who have decided not to have kids and they’re nice, normal, well-adjusted people so far as I can tell and I have no issues whatsoever with their decisions.

I do, however, take issue with those who have a more…extreme point of view; people who feel nobody should have children.

Corinne Maier’s book No Kid: Forty Reasons For Not Having Children is exemplary of this kind of extreme thinking. Maier herself admits the book is “50% provocation and 50% a serious book…”

Maier wrote the book because she has moments in which she bitterly regrets having kids and also as a response to France’s “cult of motherhood”, fueled by generous state subsidies and incentives to have children, which were intended reverse a decline in its birth rate.

Says Maier. “In France, people go on too much about the glory of motherhood and you’re not allowed to talk about all the problems having kids causes…” The Glory? HELLO? Mommy/parent bloggers have already pulled back that particular curtain, thankyouverymuch.

I’m the first to admit that motherhood is hardly glorious. It’s a lot of work. Duh. We all know that. What I don’t dig are some of her ridiculous statements about a child-free France:

“Just imagine. There’d be fewer of us around so rents would be cheaper, it would be easier to get a job and there’d be fewer traffic jams.”

Just who does Maier expect to change her diapers when she’s a miserable ninety year old? I have a newsflash for you, lady… No new babies being born = a city full of old people with nobody to care for them.

Now, I’m sure her statements are somewhat tongue-in-cheek and primarily intended to provoke and rile up oversensitive mommy-types like myself and I can accept that. Ann Coulter does that crap all the time but SOME of the COMMENTS in reference to an article about Maier’s book are kind of sad and disturbing (and very poorly written).

Here are some of th comments, verbatim, with my own (biased) responses following in italics:

Corinne is fantastic! Having children is a form of environmental pollution. We need less people consuming unconsciously the blood and life of this planet. — Andya , Coulson, UK

It’s too bad your mother didn’t share your philosophy, Andya. But hey…since you think the world needs less people, perhaps you’d like to sacrifice yourself in the name of of your convictions?

•••

Overpopulation creates pollution (think about that , Mr A. Gore, having 4 (!) children). My wife and I are also childfree and loving every minute of it! Let’s abolish child benefit and the world will be a nicer and cleaner place. — john, ghent, Belgium

Dude, I know. I can’t believe they gave Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean he has FOUR children. OMG! But seriously, John, who has done MORE to stop Global Warming? You and your happily child-free spouse or Al Gore?

•••

I never wanted a child but because of a highly correctable mistake we ended up having one. The result for me was something that I never experienced before…total collapse and depression. Real depression. I became a stay-at-home dad, moving away from my home town of Toronto where I had a wonderful job and a marvelous group of friends, to Ottawa, a provincial, conservative and unfriendly town where I know no one. Furthermore, the child that I care for is loud, confrontational and has “special needs” as he has Asperger’s Syndrome, a flavour-of-the-month problem that supposedly denies the kid any social elan, which is certainly evident in this kid. Now I am poor, looking for low wage jobs and I am lonely and depressed. AND I HATE IT! Ms Maier’s book cannot correct the stupid error, but it it so refreshing to know that I am not alone. After reading the responses on this page, I really know that I am not alone. Thank you, Ms Maier. You are a true friend. — John, Ottawa, Canada

I’m very sorry to hear that you are suffering from depression but you know, there ARE treatments for that. Perhaps a visit to your doctor is in order, no? And by the way, Asperger’s is NOT a “flavour of the month problem.” Are you really that ignorant? He is your child, your flesh and blood. How can you be so cruel? In my not very humble opinion, you give creedence to the idea that some people shouldn’t procreate and it sounds like your son would actually be better off without you (and your negativity) in his life.

•••

I agree completely with Corinne. I have a 3 yrs old boy myself and seperated from his father. I’d give a lot of money to turn back the clock. It sounds cruel but it is the truth! But if you say that openly to anyvbody in your social circle, your a bad mother or even a bad person… — Caroline, Barcelona

Perhaps this will sound cruel as well, but why don’t you give your son up for adoption? You don’t want him but I can assure you somebody out there does and he would be much better off with them rather than having a mother who wishes he were never born.

•••

Less truly is more. haha! — molly, akron, ohio, us

Ahahaha, Molly! You’re sooo clever ;)

•••

Well, when we don’t multiply as a society, then our oh so pleasant society will cease to exist in 1-2 generations. And the other societies, you know, the less pleasant ones but with so many children, will claim the space with the remaining inhabitants. It’s that simple. — Esme, Prague, CZ

Finally, a voice of reason.

•••

Presumably the proudly childless will be expecting the offspring of the fertile to do all the work when they’re retired, man the hospitals, give them their medicine. Imagine if the work generation went on a tax strike. Why should their taxes go to pay for the welfare of those who didn’t want them to be born? — Guy, London, UK

Well said, Guy!

I’ve been reading this fascinating book called “The Nurture Assumption” and in it the author spends some time discussing how differently people parent today in the modern, urbanized world as compared to “traditional” societies (think villages and tribes etc). Even in just my lifetime, parenting has changed quite a bit.

For example, my parents never sought to entertain or stimulate me and didn’t even play with me all that much and that was NORMAL. And my parents certainly didn’t worship me or worry about boosting my self-esteem and college marketability every waking minute of the day. And that was NORMAL, too.

This is all to say that I know some parents (Not ME, of course. Heh) are kind of nuts and do some insane things that make them really easy to hate (Mandarin classes for toddlers anyone?) but wishing children away is not the solution.

Have you seen the movie “Children of Men?” It’s set in the future and human sperm counts are at zero. Nobody has been able to have babies for two decades and the youngest person on the planet is 21. While I totally get that it’s a work of fiction, it paints a very, very grim picture.

•••

For those of you who aren’t all anti-parents, anti-kids, I have some interesting news about a cool new mommyblogging anthology coming out next year. I’ll have a little something published in it, along with pieces by a TON of awesome bloggers that make me swoon when I think of the good company I’ll be keeping between those pages!

It’s called The Best Little Mommyblogging Anthology Ever and our fellow author and editor, Rita of Surrender, Dorothy, has worked tirelessly on this project for over a year. I am humbled by her abilities and mad skillz and just so thrilled to be included. Please pop by Rita’s place and check out the long list of contributors and maybe give her a ‘lil high five action because she truly deserves it!

•••

And finally, the caption contest winner will be announced in my next post! Stay tuned.

Posted under Daily, Happiness, Life, Newsworthy, Suckassiness | 50 Comments »

Instant Karma

Do you believe in karma? I do. But until tonight I’m not sure I would have said I believe in INSTANT karma.

See, I have this neighbor with a pool and this morning as I was sitting out on the back porch enjoying some coffee and reading a magazine while I had the whole, peaceful house to myself, I started to notice a rather loud, grinding noise coming this neighbor’s pool pump.

I knew it would only get worse because Neighbor Guy’s pool pump has done this before. It grinded and screeched for 18 hours a day, getting louder with each excruciating day until it finally broke. Only then did I get my back porch and my solitude back.

So anyway, by this evening the noise was so loud the huz and I could barely speak to each other out there and forget about relaxing and conversing like we normally do. It was torture.

So I go over to Neighbor Guy’s house (he’s about 55 and really crotchety) and ask very, very nicely if he would consider turning his pool pump off for a couple hours.

In a very annoyed tone, he informs me that the timer goes off at 10:30pm (it’s currently 7pm) and he KNOWS it’s malfunctioning and that he will be fixing it on Saturday.

So I say, while mentally calculating that it will be over three hours until the unholy racket subsides, “I was just hoping you could turn it off for a little while. I’ve been listening to it all day and it’s very loud, so much so that I can now hear it in the house.

And he says in his typical rude, cranky old bastard tone “Yeah, well I have to look at your trash can sitting out front all week.”

And I say “Yes, I know. But the new ones (we just got these new GIANT blue trash cans provided by the city to work with the new fancy schmancy automated trucks) are so wide, we can’t get it between the cars to put it away.”

(I’d like to note that we have a special paved area next to the street where we put the trash can and it’s obscured by this tree-bush thing. It’s very unobtrusive. He puts his can right IN the street. Idiot)

And he says “Yeah, well you should just move your cars.” And you should just BITE ME!

Now I’m getting pissed but I don’t want to fight with someone I have to live next door to so I DON’T say:

“Yeah, and we have to watch you mow your lawn while your rather unsightly ass is wearing a fricken speedo”

Or

“Yeah, and we have to listen to you blare Rush Limbaugh from your backyard every weekend while you nude sunbathe”

Or

“Yeah, but I have to listen to you gush about George Bush every time I get stuck talking to you and I bet it was YOU that set my John Kerry sign on fire a few years ago, you miserable asshat.”

I could go on and on but you get the point.

So all I say is “I’ll be sure to mention that to my husband” while gritting my teeth and promising myself that we will NEVER bring Monster Can up to the house EVER again.

When I return home, I relate the exchange to my husband and he gets pissed, too.

You should know that we are AWESOME neighbors. We are quiet, considerate, helpful and always friendly and had that butthead ever NICELY asked me to consider bringing the Monster Can up to the house, or anything else within reason, I would have begrudgingly tried to honor his request. Instead he uses it against me. Jerk.

I tell my husband to let it go because I don’t want to have a feud with Neighbor Guy and his Ukrainian mail-order bride (Seriously, the word on the street is he ordered her over the internet) or his teenage mail-order stepson that he works like an indentured servant. It’s just not worth it.

So we get the kids ready for bed and tuck them in and then while I’m out on the porch feeding the cat and musing over how we’re going to survive until 10:30pm, let alone Saturday, the pool pump starts making a new noise. A hideous scraping, clunking, winding down, death knell noise. And then it was very quiet.

Official time of death? 8:30pm

God. I LOVE that instant karma!

Do you have bad neighbors? How do you deal with them?

Of Guilt and Grief…

My God…does the drama of life ever end? It feels like I’ve been knee deep in it lately. This time, however, it’s not really my drama but it’s still heartbreakingly sad to watch someone slowly die, as my husband has for the past two weeks.

My father-in-law had cancer for four years. He thought he’d beaten it after the first two years until they found it had spread. For the next two years he suffered through chemotherapy and radiation, knowing it would never stop the cancer completely, though it gave him some relief from the terrible pain. He endured all of it because he didn’t want to leave his wife of fifty years. If there were ever an example of true love, my in-laws were it.

My mother-in-law took him to endless and seemingly daily doctor appointments and tried, in the face of futility, to make his discomforts bearable.

She catered to his every need and tried to make life as normal as possible, even when he couldn’t stand to eat because the chemo ruined his sense of taste and when he needed help getting to the bathroom several times a night because he could barely walk anymore.

The level of devotion between these two people was so touching. But it was also sad because we all knew how the story would eventually end.

A couple weeks ago he was hospitalized because, unbeknownst to anyone until then, the cancer had spread to his brain. From there it was a quick spiral downward. He was moved to a hospice where he was heavily medicated for pain and literally slept the entire four days he was there before he passed peacefully in his sleep.

I am relieved that his suffering is over but I am sad that he is gone. I’m sad that my son will never really get to know the man who, always sitting in his same chair, would light up when my little boy would stop running around and play with his grandpa’s shoes or or jibberjabber at him in his toddlerspeak.

I’m also feeling guilty for feeling uncomfortable around my father-in-law as he got sicker and sicker. For not stopping by on a lark with the kids like I used to do. For not reaching out and really letting him know that I cared.

This was not the first time I’ve backed away from someone that was ill. I had a friend from college and after I’d left school, we weren’t quite as close as we’d been. I heard he’d gone home to Maine because he had a brain tumor. I had the phone number where to reach him but I couldn’t bring myself to call. I kept saying to myself I would do it. Tomorrow. But that day never came. When I heard he’d died, I felt horrible.

It’s not that I’m afraid of illness or I think that I’ll catch it or anything ridiculous like that. I just don’t know what to say or do. I can’t sit there and pretend everything is fine when it isn’t. I can’t make pleasant small talk like everything is normal when I know someone is dying. I find great discomfort in discussing anything trivial, which most things are, because it feels like pretending. It feels wrong.

And yet, you can’t walk up to somebody with a terminal illness and just launch into a depressing conversation about their fate, about the unlucky hand they’ve been dealt.

I just don’t know how to act and ultimately I end up avoiding the whole situation.

We would go to my in-laws house for holidays or family get-togethers and I would go in the sunroom where he was always sitting and reading, working on his laptop, watching TV or napping and just hope that I wouldn’t have to converse with him alone for more than a few minutes. My son, an ever curious toddler, made it kind of easy, always giving me cause to get up and run after him in the interest of preventing injury or breakage.

Why couldn’t I just talk to him like everyone else did? Why was it so hard for me to look at his hairless head and shrinking frame? I don’t know.

I did always extend myself to my mother-in-law with offers to help with anything she needed and always sent my well wishes through her and in my prayers. But still… I feel guilt.

The only thing that makes me feel a tiny bit better is that while he was in the hospice, I took a few moments alone to talk to him, hoping he could hear me as he hovered somewhere between life and death.

I told him I was sorry that he had to go out that way. I thanked him for loving my children so much and being a wonderful grandpa to them. I thanked him for being a good father to my husband and in turn teaching him to be a good father to his own children. I asked him to try and wake up one last time to say goodbye to his wife before he let go. And I told him I loved him.

All of this has brought back a flood of memories of my own father’s unexpected death three years ago. Thankfully, my husband’s family is not like mine. We are a blended family and there is nothing simple about it.

When my father died, it seems like everyone (mainly my adopted sister, and stepsiblings) acted like their grief trumped everyone else’s. If someone cried too hard or emoted too loudly, they (including me) were made to feel like they were “carrying on” and that it was not warranted; that they had no right to be that grief-stricken or upset. That their sadness was not as important as someone else’s.

It was a horrible, horrible time and because of their strange sense of possessiveness over grieving, over who had the right to grieve most or be the saddest, my sister and I no longer speak.

I know my dad is watching us and probably cursing both of us for being so hardheaded and childish but we are at an impasse. I can’t overlook how she and her husband treated me in the face of a terrible loss and she can’t overlook a slight that never happened except in her very chip-shouldered imagination.

My husband’s family is the complete opposite. They are warm and kind and loving and supportive and would never in a million years treat each other or my husband that way. He really doesn’t know how lucky he is. Or maybe he does now.

And now you know that my sister and I don’t speak anymore, that I have issues with terminal illness and why I haven’t posted in a week.

If I owe you an email or said I would do something and didn’t do it, you also now know the reason.

I’m doing the best I can to catch up now that the funeral is behind us.

I want nothing more than to get back to our routine and resume my regular, boring old life with no more sadness and no more drama. PLEASE.