I Am THAT Parent

Emily woke up around 8:30am today. I went in to her room and said good morning and then suggested she play with her toys for awhile. I turned on her stereo so she had some music and went back to bed. (The Girlfriend and I went out last night to see her brother do a show and he was AWESOME but we didn't get home until around two and holy jesus I was tired.) I just woke up again about a half an hour ago. Do you know what this means? My clingy spider monkey is developing SOME sense of independence. It's amazing. I heard that this would begin to happen. I had friends tell me when my face was stained with tears and my voice was raw from crying and my emotions were as thinner all of the hair I was losing in the shower, and it showed. It showed when I would walk up to my baby with crazed eyes and a forced smile, when I would pick her up and pat her back just a little too hard and I would watch TV and cry and cry because I was never going to have a normal life ever ever again. It showed when I would look at her and whisper because I didn't want to yell and I would tell her how much money she would earn me on the black market, what with her blond/copper hair and her bright blue eyes.


Seen here at 4 months, when I still liked having a baby.


Seen here around eight months, before her teeth started coming in and before round two of her health problems kicked in.


And pictured here, at two years old. And I cannot say this early in my day how hard two was for me. Look at how beautiful she is. It's probably the only reason I didn't give her to the gypsies. Or throw her out the window. Needless to say, it was hard. I was also going through a rough time that involved almost EVERYONE I KNOW telling me what a shitty parent I was being. So I changed my methods to fit those standards and you know what? Emily and I suffered for months because of it. So I stopped. And things got better.


And now, now she's three.



Emily has been getting in to the habit of WAKING UP DRY OH MY GOD. The last few days she hasn't been feeling 100%, so I've been more relaxed with watching her fluid intake. And she's still woken up dry. This means one of two things: 1)I am the greatest mom ever for proving that yes, it is possible to go an entire night without peeing, or 2)she's dehydrated, so the fluid that she is taking in is alll being used, and there's nothing to get rid of. I hope it's the former. I suspect it's the latter.

Anyway. I'm a very no-nonsense parent. I took her last pacifier away the 3000th time she spit it out when she was eight months old. She was on the boob for nine or ten months and then I had to switch to formula. I took her bottles away the day after her first birthday, and took her last nighttime bottle away around 15 months. I stopped buying diapers when she turned two. Now, I'm done buying pullups.

A lot of people disagree with this; They suggest tying pacifiers to balloons and having a ceremony, or write novels about the guilt they feel for taking away a bottle, or write about their fears with too-harsh potty-training. I of course experience guilt, and I'll get to that later. As far as these things go though, I am harsh. When I say something I mean it; When I tell her to do something I mean it, and when she's too old for something, it goes away. Now, I know there are children that simply don't potty-train, etc... I however, decided when she was two that I was done changing diapers. I had bought Emily her first potty chair when she was 15 months old. I didn't buy it with any expectation. Rather, I bought it with the hope that my little spider monkey would have something to sit on in the bathroom instead of my lap. (Let me just point out that I never thought I'd take a dump with a child on my lap. I know it's gross.) To my surprise, she pulled off her diaper and reached for me to put her on the seat. So I did. And she peed! It was marvelous.

There are also a tremendous amount of health problems miss Emily had. Among those were a wicked set of allergies, eczema and the resulting GOD AWFUL BLISTERING diaper rashes. We tried everything at the stores, her doctors made special creams, I let her go naked CONSTANTLY, I gave her oatmeal baths and I tried the hippie stuff at the hippie store and no matter what, if any bodily secretion sat on her skin for longer than about five minutes, she would start bleeding.

So when she was two, I bought her a ton of panties, put her in them and told her, hey, do you see these? Look! It's Dora! Dora doesn't like pee-pee, and your pants will get all wet. So if you have to go pee, tell mommy, ok? She looked at me all, yeah, you're insane. And then peed her pants. And cried when her legs got wet. She peed on herself for about a week when she got sick of it, and she started using the toilet. Since then, she would get put in a pullup at night. A few months ago, I got really tired of the ten pounds of pee she would produce in the middle of the night. And again with those rashes. Also, she takes her baths at night. It's been an essential part of her bedtime routine since she was 4 months old. So when she pees all over at night, I have to give her another bath in the morning before rushing her to daycare. Have you read my first post? WE ARE NOT A MORNING PEOPLE.

I began waking her up in the middle of the night. I came to the conclusion after two months of different wake up times that she pees around 3am every day. And she pees a lot. Then I started limiting her liquid intake after 5:30pm. Then I stopped buying the pullups. (and now that I've gotten us all caught up, we're back to the original story). She's averaging about one accident a week. Every morning I go in to her room and say "Good morning my Emmy! How are you! You look like a mad scientist!" And she says "Mmmm hrmphh unnnggggggg mmmmmh OHMYGOD! MOM! I woke up dry! SWEEET!!!!"


And I am so proud of my baby. My three year old baby.

Testing Mobile Uploads

This is my baby's crazy mad-scientist hair. And when I'm done working out the kinks of updating where and when I want to, these sporadic and jumbled posts will end.

About a Hot Topic.

Oh. And I'm fucking tired. Because I'm lame. But this is something I read in the small paper today and I started fuming. read it. It's about abortion rights in Arizona. Welcome to my passionate side showing up as being extremely bothered.

Good night, internet.

Day of Death.

The title's a little dramatic. I understand that. But, well, I can be a little dramatic.

Five years and two days ago, I was at the hospital with my Grandpa, Tristan Meinecke, a getting-more-famous-now-that-he's-dead Chicago artist. My grandfather was the number one man in my life for a good majority of my life. I spent a lot of my childhood seriously wondering how the hell I fit in to my family. My Grandpa was that link.

He was seriously depressed. Had very serious bad days and very dark days and very very hard days. But he lived through it. I don't know how much to write about him right now, because I stupidly didn't write about it yesterday. Anyway. Five years and two days ago I sat at the hospital with him. The doctors said he couldn't hear, and they were lying. I sang and I kissed his cheek and told him about my day. I was a senior in high school and had quit my job a few months prior to take care of him. I would change his feeding tube and help him tie his bow-tie that he insisted on wearing. We would watch old movies together and I would fight with him about eating real food. We would talk and talk and talk. We would argue about my clothing choices and women's rights. He was the least traditional man I've ever met, in my life. More open-minded that anything, but at the same time he was incredibly stuck in his ways.

I was at the hospital with him and I put my hand on his arm and snatched it away. My hand left a visible palm print and water began pooling in it. I never knew that skin could leak. It can. It pooled until my hand print was full, a lake with five fingers and the water dripped on to the floor. The plan was to pull the plugs of the machines that were helping to sustain his life the next morning. He wouldn't want to be plugged in. Everyone was fighting about it, yelling and screaming and it was awful. I know everyone has been through this. I don't know why my experience is unique, or why my feelings feel so, mine. But they are.

The next morning we got a phone call that he had died. And I know it's cheesy and I know it's poetic to an annoying extreme, but he did it on purpose. He didn't want to make my Grandma, his Angel, an actress and the love of his life, feel like she had any part in killing her husband.

Last night I curled up on the couch and watched TV with The Girlfriend and cried. I feel like I should be over it.

Five years and one day ago, my Grandpa died. And I miss him. A lot.


Yesterday, Emily's fish, Charlie died (see, DAY OF DEATH. I told you.) We had a funeral (and my camera won't load the fucking pictures, of course) and flushed Charlie down the toilet. I got her a new fish, a new beta fish to be precise, and one that does not look like Charlie at all. It's a pearly color and has pink and purple fins. It's a boy, and Emily named him Goose.

About Me

Current as of January 1st, 2011

My name is Melissa. I am single and adventurous. I have a four-year-old daughter named Emily Grace (or Emmy, Ems or Monster). We are proud fish owners. Goose was our most recent fish and unfortunately, after three long years of life, he has left us. We're going fish-shopping soon. I live in a sleepy little town that has unspeakable beauty and unbridled ignorance, both in abundance. (To be fair, there are plenty of open-minded people here too, of course. However, as a town, a place with an identity, the ignorance is overwhelming to those of us from Elsewhere.)

One thing you'll learn after any length of time spent on this website is that I am incredibly long-winded. It is both a strength and a weakness. If you want the short version of this bio, here it is and it is the only short version of anything you'll read from me again.

Short Version: I am a Mom, student, daughter, friend, liberal, life-loving woman, born in Chicago and currently living in a sleepy Arizona town. My Mom has cancer, I am single, and I love writing, language, laughter and love. Ok. Now, on to the meat of it all.

I am an aspiring educator and scientist. I want, with all my heart, to teach in inner-city high schools and to study language and children's communication disorders. I love language, how we talk, why we talk, and I want to be on the team of people who look at linguistics from a neurological perspective. I want to help figure out why children can't speak, and how to help them learn to communicate.

I was born and raised in inner-city Chicago. Meaning none of that suburb shit. I'm a total snob about Chicago. All Chicagoans are. It's an amazing city. I graduated from one of the largest high schools ever, and did not graduate with honors or anything spectacular. I got held back my sophomore year of high school and spent the next year getting back with my class. I graduated in 2004, at the age of seventeen.

I enrolled in Columbia College in Chicago and quickly dropped out after learning that there were better things to do with my time. Meaning, I became an alcoholic. I lived in various places, took a couple ill-advised road trips, partied in bad neighborhoods with the people that the news channels are constantly demonizing, and worked at an amazing diner. Then, I met Emily's Dad.

I moved in and found out about thirteen weeks later that, oops! I was pregnant. I was eighteen. I was about two months along and had been drinking the entire time. To make a long story short, when I sobered up and decided to keep my child, I realized that I could not be around and would not let my child be around the people and the lifestyle that I had been living. I left when her father couldn't change, moved to Arizona when I was seven months pregnant, and had Emily in Scottsdale on February 4th, 2006. Her father and I don't talk. He has never met her.

I moved north because I hate Phoenix and all surrounding areas and though I love my mother dearly, we seem to get along better when we don't live in the same space. I have my AA and am about a year out from my Bachelor's degree. I'm going to brag: I have a perfect GPA. I'm bragging because I'm proud. I'm bragging because I am shattering statistics.

I'm pretty passionate. A side effect of that is that I am usually bothered.

I love language, in every way. I love to talk and I love finding grammatical errors and I hate editing my own things. I also love run-on sentences. And fragmented ones. And split infinitives. A lot.I have an unhealthy obsession with shoes, purses, CNN and The Backstreet Boys. I also love really bad movies.

I started this website because I wanted a more public outlet. I want to facilitate discussion and document my life in a less emotional way than the online journal I've had since I was thirteen.

And, I'm a rambler.

For Fuck's Sake

Emily has the craziest hair. She has a combination of her dad's hair and my hair. His always used to remind me of Cory Matthews' hair, but less curly. My hair is wavy and frizzy when it's natural. Emmy has this dirty blond hair with copper highlights in the summer that just began growing last year. It's straight on the top and curls up in the back. When it's wet, she just has this mess of curls all around her head. I love it. I call her my mad scientist.

I went to get a haircut today. I hacked off about eight inches and it's going to be much simpler to handle now. Then Natalie, my best friend and Emily's Godmother got her hair cut. She didn't change it at all. Just got a trim.

This is a picture of my two best friends in this whole world, Alan and Natalie:


This is one of my favorite pictures of the two of them together in the entire world. It's at one of my favorite bars in Chicago, across the street from my Dad's house. Anyway.

Natalie moved to my town about six months ago with her boyfriend. She told me today that she's moving again, about three hours away. That's totally manageable. Much more manageable than the 2000 miles that have separated us since I moved away three years ago. But still. I got really sad about it. At least she's moving to a place with lots of casinos, and lots of vodka. You can't go wrong with vodka.

We went to eat at The Olive Garden (classy girls that we are), and Emily talks SO MUCH ALL THE TIME OH MY GOD. The entire time was like this:

Me: I know! I can't believe what's going on, and I keep getting all this shit from the guys that come in to my work for voting for Obama...

Emily: Mommy. Mommy. Mommy? Mommy. Mommy, I'm talking.

Me: Emily, you're supposed to say 'excuse me' before interrupting me. Anyway, and then...

Emily: Mommyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, exCUUUSE ME MOMMY-

Nat: Emily, we're in a restaurant. be quiet.

Emily, with squinty eyes: You're not my best friend Auntie Nat, excuse me, mommy?

Me: Yes Emily. What can I do for you?

Emily: I really like mac n' cheese.

Me:... That's great.

Nat: So (her boyfriend) and I were talking about this political comedy thing-

Emily: Auntie. Excuse me, Auntie?

Nat: Yes Emily.

Emily: Your hair is pretty.

Nat: .... Thank you, Emily.



And so on and so forth. It was ridiculous. I know that this is typical of three year olds, and I am very grateful to be in this stage and to be done with two (because if there was ever a time when I was close to actually throwing Emily out the window, it was her entire second year), but at the same time, for GOD'S SAKE SHUT UP FOR TWO SECONDS.

The Not-Awake Feeling Hasn't Left

Despite the fact that it is 5:42. So: A Random Assortment of Thoughts.


1) People at the laundromat are WEIRD. Really really weird. There was this woman there, and, ok. let me explain. I am not very politically correct. I am very blunt. I don't know how to pussyfoot around anything, so I get accused of being tactless. If any of this bothers you, you should probably go read somewhere else. Anyway. There was this woman there and I'm sure she was sick, or something, but her hairline was incredibly high. Like if you take your two index fingers and pull them up as if you were going to wear your hair like, well, I couldn't find anyone. I was thinking Legolas from LoTR, but his hair goes back a little too far. Since I couldn't think of anyone, I just did a paint photo.



This is what her hair looked like. Her forehead, from her eyebrows to her hairline was about six or seven inches. I mean, it was absolutely ridiculous. Why would you go out like that? I can understand having to make a run to the store or something, but she was there for hours. So then, she's bending down to get her laundry from the washer and what is it on top of her head? A FUCKING BARETTE. Clipped to hold her hair back. You know, like women with bangs will pull their hair back with a clip in the middle? Yeah. That's how she had it. RIDICULOUS. I don't understand people. Like, at all.

2) Emily had a great time swimming. I still wish I could have been there. But I got all the laundry done.

3.) I had to get my eyes dilated at the eye doctor because eye disease runs in some of my family, and I'm anal and paranoid.

4.) THREE YEAR OLDS ARE ANNOYING. But cute. Which helps. Most of the time.

5.) I really want a very specific pair of glasses, and of course I can't find them online. It would help if I could remember the name of the designer, or the names of the specific colors (they're brown and green. Which means in designer speak, they'll be Organic Walnut and Northern California Moss or something), and I'm going crazy. They're awesome. Rectangle. The rectangles are brown and the sides are thick, and length-wise they are half brown and half green. And I want them.

6.) I can't stop watching The Freak Show, even though I don't like it. It's like doing some foreign research project on a primitive culture. Part of me wants to know what it's like to shit sunshine all the time. The rest of me wonders simply how her vagina is still intact enough to have sex with her husband.

7.) I haven't worn contacts in something like six years. My eyes hurt. And I might have a lot of typos, because I can't really see straight.

8.) If Emily touches this screen again I may throw her out the window. It's a TOUCH SCREEN EMILY. When you TOUCH it, things happen. Please to be stopping.

9.) Money is very overwhelming. Like whoa.

10.) I want to write. I need to write more.

11.) People at the laundromat are REALLY REALLY REALLY WEIRD.

Mornings

Emily and I went out to dinner last night with some of the girls from work. We had an hour wait at a restaurant whose food wasn't even that great. It sucked.

I got home and The Girlfriend was sleeping, passed out from a night out with some of her friends. So Emily and I cuddled up on the couch to flip between E! and What Not To Wear. I love that show.

This post is pretty pointless. Because I just woke up. My hair is still matted from sleep and there are black mascara marks underneath my eyes.

Today I have a massive amount of laundry to do. So massive an amount that I'm just going to the laundromat to do it. Then I have an eye appointment. I need new glasses and have needed them for a hella long time. The other day, I got bleach in my eye (I got in to a fight with one of those bleach pens, and the bleach pen kicked my ass) and my left eye has been blurry since. Thus the eye doctor appointment.

Emily is going swimming with a couple of my friends and their kids. I really want to go.

I feel really disjointed. These posts will become much more regular when I get all the coding worked out that I want to get worked out.

I need to wake up.

Dear Coffee Creamer

The amount of creamer in the container is ridiculous. I hate it. I am a coffee addict. Meaning I REALLY LOVE COFFEE. As an addict, I have certain taste preferences. These include having the creamer of my choice, because sugar and milk just don't cut it.

Please put more creamer in a container, and have a better price.

Thanks,
Melissa.

While we're at it,

Dear Grocery Stores,

Please have better deals on things that get used quickly. Two eight ounce containers for four dollars is not a good deal. Not when one of those containers get's used in one morning by the two people that have two cups of coffee and then bring one container to work.

Thanks,
Melissa

So I Have a Blog

This morning when I left to get Emily to daycare I was running late. That's pretty normal for me. For us. We're not morning people here. So anyway, I get the text message that my ride was outside (my wonderful friend, who I'm not sure is comfortable with her name on the internetzzz. I haven't come up with a non-lame nickname yet, so for now, she remains "my friend") and I don't even have my shoes on yet. Emily's teeth haven't been brushed and her breakfast hasn't been made, and I'm pulling one leg in to my pants and yelling to Emily to please for the love of all things HOLY just get your BOOTS ON NOW and she was standing there, staring at me. With her hand on her hip.

So I get an oh-so-helpful reminder from my girlfriend, the morning person in the apartment, that hey, didn't your friend just text you and shouldn't you be outside? Huh? So I chop up some strawberries and throw in some blueberries and go shove Emily's feet in to her boots and grab my purse and throw my hair up in a bun and shove Emily's arms in to her coat and walk towards the door. I open the door and turn on my heel, tripping and hitting my elbow on a kitchen chair, because I forgot to kiss The Girlfriend goodbye. I kiss her, tell her to have a great day, thank her for putting up with my complete morning fail and go outside.

We get in the car and the seat belt wouldn't work. At all. It tok me an entire three minutes to get Emmy buckled in to her seat. Which is ridiculous. Do you know how long three ENTIRE minutes is? It's a long time to be standing with your ass hanging out of a backseat in eleven degree weather, especially when Emily is singing about how cool Hannah Montana is and how cool her Hannah Montana chapstick is and I don't even know how she learns about Hannah Montana and finally, the seat belt clips in and my hair falls out of the bun.

I walk to the front seat and we stop at the gas station so I can get newspapers (because I believe one hundred percent in supporting ACTUAL PAPER. I love the internet. In fact, I heart the internet. A lot. But. I am not looking forward to the purely digital age. At all.) We leave the gas station to get stuck at the fucking TRAIN. The Amtrak train. It sits there. Blocking two very major intersections in this small town, this town that sees fit to not provide ANY way around the train once you're pulled up to said train, and so we sit there. And sit. And sit some more. And Emily and my friend's son start talking about choo-choos and that choo-choos say "chhoooOOOO- CHOOOOOO!!!!!!!" And it's 6:24 in the morning and I've only had one cup of coffee and I wanted to throw them out the window. I call Amtrak. They sympathize, but don't do anything. We sit. I call work, hey, I might be a little late.

We get the kids to the daycare, driving behind an enormous truck snow blower thing, drop them off and rush to work, both of us late, and the person who opened for me put the money in backwards. Backwards. Did you read that? I'm a little OCD (except it's more like CDO, because I like it alphabetical) and I hate that. It didn't help that last night the closer forgot to turn the heat on and the computers weren't working, and it was 13 degrees in my makeshift office, and I was four minutes late (which is still eleven minutes early, but, like I said: CDO) and I was just so frustrated.

So I work. For two hours. When the daycare calls me all, hey, Emily threw up. Uh-huh, three times. Yeah. Can you come? We can't keep her. So I say, well, she's on a food strike. She didn't eat her dinner last night. Does she have a fever? No? Um, well... And they interupted me with Melissa, you need to come.

So I sigh. And it was a satisfying sigh. And I leave to go get her. Go to the store, buy some throwing-up essentials (you know, things to keep her hydrated, stuff like that) and go home. And I had a doctor's appointment in an hour. Fucking fuck, I forgot, and I have to go because I've waited a month and a half to get a new inhaler and I can't miss it. So I have to bring her. With me. To the doctor's office. I hate bringing kids where kids don't need to be.

The Girlfriend comes to pick me up and we go to the doctor. She gets mad because it takes over an hour and I'm shaking like a mad woman from the albuterol high I got from the nebulizer. I go home. She goes back to work. Emmy is, of course, COMPLETELY FINE.

I'm only at one pm. Needless to say, it was a long fucking day. Hi internet, my name is Melissa and I am a rambler.