(bitter)sweet

One of the lesser-known benefits of having the kids spend moving week with my parents?  The ability to curse freely when hammering one’s thumb, dropping necessary bolts through cracks in the porch, or hearing that the phone/cable/internet company would have to reschedule again to actually get us connected.

Leaving in an hour to go retrieve the little dears.  It’ll be fun to bring them back to see their new rooms, though the eight-hour drive to get to that point might be a little tedious.

In my nearly 31 years, I’ve moved house 17 times.  

I’ve navigated culturally shocking moves from places like South Dakota to Alabama, Arkansas to England, rural South Carolina to Cambridge, Mass. 

I’ve lived in our current city (albiet in two different houses) for a little over five years, the longest I’ve ever lived continuously in one place in my entire life.  I’ve lived in this house for a little over four years.  About six more months and that would have broken a record too.

This house, where I’m now sitting on the couch surrounded by boxes and disassembled furniture waiting for the movers to arrive, was the first I’ve ever owned.  My son helped me plant a tree in the front yard just before his first birthday.  I brought my daughter home for the first time here.  I expected to feel more connected to it than to anywhere else I’ve lived.  But I’m not altogether sure that I do. 

Sometimes, when I’m having trouble falling asleep, I try to remember what I can about the apartments and houses that I grew up in.  For a few I can navigate full floor plans.  Others are diminished to a balcony from which I dropped used popsicle sticks onto the heads of passers by. or rusty chain-link gate that connected my backyard to my neighbors’, or the view of the living room from the top of the stairs where I’d posture and scream when I’d been sent to my room, or the way the mountain goat head my father had mounted above the television set in our basement den scared me more than anything else in the world when I’d wake up before my parents and want to go downstairs to watch cartoons. 

I don’t think as much about the places I’ve lived in since moving away from my parents.  I realized a few months back, when I was walking past the house we rented our first year in this city and looking up at what was once my son’s first room, that I can’t even remember exactly where I’d put the crib.  I do remember it was a decision I’d agonized over.

I’m an absolute pro at disconnecting from old friends well before moving on.  It helps that for most of my life I’ve lived in some form of itinerant community, be it air force base, college town, or teaching hospital.  Near the end of my dad’s military career, he was a “base closer” so the last few places we moved from essentially ceased to exist in their known-to-me form as we left.  Whole schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, shopping districts disintigrating over the course of a few months.  Then we’d be among the last to leave.  Packing up, turning out the lights, and hopping into our weighted down cars.  Most of my friends from here moved away last year anyway. 

I’ve wanted to live in the city we’re moving to the suburbs of since I first visited there as a high school freshman.  I’d even had this city in the back of my mind when I was deciding what sort shape to give to my career plans. 

When we were househunting in our new city, we were thinking of it as looking for a place where we might live for 10 or even 20 years.  But more recently it’s looking like my career might necessitate another move in as little as two, possibly even internationally, because of a slight but geographically important shift in my subject matter focus.  So already, even as I meet the friendly new neighbors, I can tell that I’m not letting myself get too attached.

I’m back from the best nine-hour drive of my life. I was all by my lonesome except for David Sed@ris’s latest book on CD after kissing the children goodbye and wishing my parents good luck. I never thought that pulling quickly through the drive-thru at T@co Bell instead of stopping for 45 minutes at some godforsaken chicken nugget shilling playplace would be so liberating.

I even made off with a car-full of old furniture in need of repair that’s been rotting in my parents’ garage for several years. Bonus! Some spiders may have hatched from a nest concealed in the twin headboard somewhere around North Carolina.

I dropped off the carload of antiques, made a stop at the mall to pick up a quilt that I’ve been coveting for Semisweet Girl’s big-girl-room-to-be, and then came back up to the old house and managed to get the entire upstairs mover-ready. I’m dirty and I smell, but I got a hell of a lot done.

But even better than all of that. Better by far… we have not one, but TWO offers on the old house! Can you fucking believe it?!?!? This house has been on the market for three months with only a pittifully, laughably low-ball offer to show for it, and then suddenly we get TWO! TWO offers!!! Our realtor was all “we don’t want to get too smug now and scare them both away…” Fuck that! I’ve got two offers and I’m planning to use that to my advantage. I sent him scurrying away with strict instructions to call the two sweet little families (both with stellar credit, I’m sure…) and scare the pants off of them. Okay, not really, but I did make him call both of their agents and let them each know that we had another strong offer and to tell the agent that presented the first offer that they should take the counteroffer we made this morning very seriously.

Geeze. Now that I’ve put it that way, I sure as hell hope this actually works out.

Move minus 60 hours and counting.

Edited to add:  WE DID IT!  We have a contract!  Thankgodamercy!  And not only is it enough to put us in the black in terms of our home equity line (an event that we had once thought was certain, but had recently begun to doubt), there’s enough left over to pay off the small credit card debt we’ve accumulated in the last month, PLUS a little more.

You should know that yesterday alone I kicked the dog away from the front door (harder than was strictly necessary) when she tried to dart out to chase chipmunks in the driveway, screamed at my nearly-two-year-old that she needed to STOP SCREAMING ALREADY and told my shit-losing four-year-old that I was rolling down the windows of our car so that everyone else stuck in standstill traffic on the interstate could hear what a jerk he was being.  I actually called him a jerk.  To his face.  Oh, and I also bitched at my husband for the entirety of the 30 minutes that we spent together today about his failure to clean up his dirty dishes and accused him of having an illicit affair because he seemed suspiciously intent on me and the kids leaving on Sunday instead of Monday.  Also, I may or may not have had a beer with (for) lunch for the last three days running.  I do at least wait 2-3 hours between the beer and driving to the gym so I can “work out” while the kids enjoy an hour in the babysitting room.

And I got an email at 5 pm today asking if I could finish up a  contract project I’ve been working on by Tuesday morning instead of by the end of June.  I did at least have the sense not to tell them that I was willing to drive the 9 hours back from my parents’ house Monday night so that I could actually attend the meeting (which itself is being held two hours away from where we now live) on Tuesday morning.

Help me.

We spent yesterday, as we have spent one weekend day of every week since early March, at the new house.  The new house has become a big part of our family life, since it’s where the four of us spend a lot of time playing together (no TV and no furniture, just toys, toys, toys and a playground next door) and going for long walks in the nearby park when it’s nice out and having floor picnics in the family-room-to-be when it’s rainy, while we hide out during open houses at the “old” house.  Even Semisweet Girl seems to understand that we’re moving.  “Go house, ‘kay?  Go now!  Go sleep house.  No home.”  She even gets that the new place is the “house” while the old place is “home.”  With Semisweet Boy, it’s always “when will we leave for the new house” and then “when are we going home?”

There are two boys around a year older than the Boy.  One right next door and the other catty-corner across the street.  They both seem very sweet and interested in their somewhat younger neighbor-to-be and SSB has talked to them each a few times.  Yesterday, after Sugardaddy had been called back up to the hospital, SSB watched our neighbor playing in his front yard for a while and then finally got up the nerve to go over there.  He spent about 30 minutes searching for just the right toy to use as a pretense for his visit.  “I have to have something to share with him!”  After finally settling on airplanes and making certain that he’d found his two best ones, we walked over there while SSG was napping upstairs.  The neighbor was very nice and even went inside to get an airplane of his own to show SSB, but his dad had just come outside to spend some time washing the car and it was obvious that neighbor boy had been waiting all along to help out his dad, so he wasn’t interested in playing airplanes right that minute.  While I asked the dad a couple of questions about grocery stores and the nearest Target, SSB snuck away back to the house and let himself in.  By the time I’d made it back, he was curled up in a corner of the empty dining room with his head on top of his knees, staring out the window looking more genuinely sad than I’ve ever seen him.  I sat down next to him and rubbed his back.  After a while, we talked about how he was worried about meeting new friends and going to a new school.  I told him about how I had moved a lot when I was a kid and that I knew it could be scary.  He seemed to perk up and when SSG woke up, the three of us headed off to run errands.

We’re all pretty on edge about moving at this point.  I know things will be fine once we get settled, but SSB’s behavior is shot all to hell and even SSG seems to be sleeping poorly and asking a lot about the house and about visiting Nana and Papa while we move.  And I’m in danger of some serious overshopping.  This is the worst part, when there’s really nothing I can do to get ready (we’re having several house showings a week, so I’m avoiding having half-packed boxes lying around until the last possible moment), but I know I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.  When I have a lot to do, I often go out and buy stuff because it’s an easy way to mark something off my list and feel like I’ve accomplished something.  We really can’t afford a lot of extra Ikea crap right now, so I’ve got to keep this under control and just buzz around inside my skin for another week.

I used to hate my father-in-law more than my mother-in-law.  Then, about 18 months ago my father-in-law pulled Sugardaddy aside on the last day of our six-night Christmas visit and politely but firmly explained that two days is about all they really needed to feel like they had seen enough of the kids and that for future visits, we could just stay with them for a weekend and then go to Disney World or down to their beach house on our own to make the trip worth the flight.

Now, I love my father-in-law.  Even though he (an M.D.) and I once shouted each other down over the alleged inappropriateness of my polite and concerned suggestion that my 29-weeks-pregnant sister-in-law should get her blood pressure checked and his insistence that she was fine and there wasn’t anything that could be done anyway and that we didn’t want to ruin Christmas for everyone by rushing over to the drug store for a few minutes, did we?  24 hours before she was rushed in for an emergency c-section with full-blown HELLP syndrome.  Still, water under the bridge, people.  Water under the bridge.  The man has asked me to spend our Florida visits at Disney World and the beach without any extended relatives present and I feel it is my duty as a loyal daughter-in-law to obey.

So now my mother-in-law is forced to bear the full wrath of my in-law hatred by herself.  Really, she should have been expecting me to tell her that I can’t really enjoy her visits because she’s awfully high maintenance and that she shouldn’t feel the need to come up to see the children merely for appearances’ sake because we understand that she loves them in her own “special way.”  Bitch.  Okay, maybe I left out that last part.

I don’t regret it in the slightest.  What I regret is that Sugardaddy is having to face the idea that his parents, whom he truly loves, might in fact be heartless bastards.  It started with that fateful Christmas, which also involved several rude comments about Semisweet Boy’s apparent lack of creativity, inquisitiveness or intelligence.  The comments nearly prompted me to tell them that I wasn’t sure that they knew Semisweet Boy well enough to make such assessments, but I was in fact certain that they didn’t know me well enough to be sharing them with me.  Instead, I kept my lid on and then let it all explode to the surface in the argument about my sister-in-law’s health.  Oh, and after my nephew was born (he’s doing fantastically well now, by the way) and various relatives and medical professionals were praising my husband’s foresight in insisting that she finally go into see her OB two days after Christmas, my father-in-law’s response was that she would have ended up in the hospital sooner or later whether Sugardaddy had intervened or not.

Sugardaddy has always been a devoted and loving son.  Too devoted and loving, really.  In all interactions with his parents until recently, it was obvious that he was still hoping for the approval, the affection they had long withheld.  Still walking around them on eggshells because they were far too delicate to be bothered with his needs or his dreams.  Now, he’s given up.  He shares nothing.  He’s polite but cold.  Sure, it’s all to my benefit (and Disney’s) in the end, but it’s painful for him and I’m still struggling with the best way to help him through it.  Whether to burst his bubble when he relapses and starts talking about how maybe we should stay more than four nights (already two more than my father-in-law has requested) this Christmas.  Whether to stop my complaints about them altogether now that he’s feeling the same way.

I can’t imagine how different I would be as a person, as a wife, and as a mother if I hadn’t grown up with the total assurance that my parents loved me unconditionally.  I worry that his experience with conditional love has him on his false best behavior at all times and might make him unwilling to share and too willing to deceive.

I love him.  Nearly unconditionally.  And I trust him.  But I don’t trust the people who raised him and sometimes that worries me.

Um… Hi! Remember me? Geeze, this is a little awkward, seeing as how I never really said anything about taking a break. Time sort of slipped away. And then more slipped away. And then I thought about just deleting the whole blog. And then about a month ago I decided to wait and put up a final post once I found out which job I’d be doing next fall. But my future employer is still spinning the roulette wheel to determine my fate and so my desire for a tidy little ending to my pursuit of work-outside-the-home mommyhood has been thwarted.

You know what? I think I’ll stay here. For several months, as part-time coursework and a part-time job turned into full-time course work and two part-time jobs and moving to a new city, I sort of forgot that I even had a blog. But then, here it is. And here I am. Two weeks ago, my full-time term ended at school, one of my part-time jobs ended, and the other one was cut back to finishing up a single contract project. So for all intents and purposes, I’ve somehow managed to return to being a stay-at-home mom for the short term. I’m thinking of it as a hiatus from my career pursuits while I wait for our move to be over (God, please let it end soon. Please let some nice, charming family with stellar credit and a lot of cash for a down payment fall in love with our house. And while you’re at it, send us some of those good Christian movers. And please make the cable company guy show up on the appointed day.) And suddenly, over the last two weeks I’ve been reading blogs and message boards voraciously. Me at home equals me reading blogs. And now, just two short weeks after my return to all-mommy-all-the-time, me at home equals me blogging. Yay for you!

There are many updatish posts that I want to write, so expect to hear from me a lot over the next week or so (and then, maybe not so much, especially if the cable guy misses my appointment - our move is Friday, June 13th, because the only thing unluckier than moving on Friday the 13th is paying extra to move on a Saturday, also the move involves me driving the kids 9 hours to my parents house, driving back, moving, driving 9 hours to retrieve the children, driving back, and then spending the following 2-52 weeks trying to convince my son that sleeping in a new house isn’t for pussies). Much has happened. Semisweet Boy learned to ski. Sugardaddy and I went to a whole other country for a week by ourselves, where we swam through a cave for three hours to see calcified human remains. We closed on a new house that I now have wet dreams about on a regular basis. Mmmmm… closet space. Mmmmmm… crown molding. Mmmmm… neighborhood plastered with Obama placards. I rocked the flying trapeze with my mom and sister-in-law in New York. Semisweet Girl started speaking in complete sentences. Mostly saying things like “I want cookies TOO!” and “No FAIR” and “Mine, mine, MIIIIIIINE!” But also “Me so funny!” and “Love you, Mommy, Awwwww.” Semisweet Boy nearly got sent to the child psychiatrist (again) after spending a month drawing nothing but houses on fire. Both of the Semisweets got spots at the preschool I adore. I gave an actual talk at an actual law school symposium. And got paid for it! I was offered (and then told that I was in fact one of two candidates for) a fancier job with my future employer than I’d been expecting. Semisweet Boy started to read (sort of). And Sugardaddy decided to take two whole months off between ending his medical training and starting his first real job. Also, I may have told my mother-in-law that I didn’t like her very much.

For now, I’ll delight and amaze you with the mindblowing cuteness of my kids. Can you believe it? Semisweet Girl is like a whole real person now!

Just a few minutes to spare here, the last two weeks have been a whirlwind.  We have a contract on a house in our new city, which is sort of insane since we weren’t supposed to move until July.  Now it looks like maybe May?  Lots of work deadlines and intensive “winter intercession” courses.  Plus a nasty virus that involved 104.5 degree fevers and profuse vomiting and intense headaches.  At one point, Sugardaddy was ready to pack up the whole family to head to the ER for spinal taps.  But we’re mostly better now.

I don’t really feel like blogging about all that stuff though.  What I want to say, to share, to document for myself is that I’m feeling very conflicted about the work thing right now.  Time is passing in strange ways this year and although it’s been about six months since I started doing stuff (school, work) that has me away from my kids around 20 hours a week, it’s only just now that I’m feeling pretty shitty about the whole thing.  Maybe the first six months whizzed by in a cloud of euphoria at my newfound freedom and sense of self as a working, studying woman instead of as a frumpish brain fogged mommy.  In any case, I’m still happy and feeling mostly balanced, and certainly in a better state of mind than I was during the 3.5 years that I didn’t have regular childcare.  But I’m having more and more of those moments when I want to hang onto my little ones and not let go.  When the thought that I won’t see them for more than an hour here or there for the next few days makes it harder for me to breathe or swallow. 

Two things are bringing this on: a couple of intense weeks where childcare time is up to more like 30-35 hours because of work deadlines and intensive courses and the fact that my real deal job in an office is looming.  I probably won’t start going in regularly until late summer or fall, but it’s coming.  And it brings a natural progression from working 20 hours a week to 30 to 40.  Semisweet Girl is so young and she’s growing so fast and Semisweet Boy too.  I’m missing things.

For the first time since my triumphant return to the world of the living, I’m starting to second guess my choices.

Today, Semisweet Girl learned a very useful word.  “Poop,” which she says with the tiniest hint of a smirk followed by a coy look down toward her nethers and a muffled little “heh heh.”

Suffice it to say that Semisweet Boy is bursting with pride.

I took it as a much-needed reminder to pull out the baby book and finish filling in some of those blank pages.

Just woke up here at my parents’ house in South Carolina.  At least they are going to take over with the kids this morning so that Sugardaddy can sleep in and I can finish up the final paper that’s due this afternoon. 

Yesterday, we left home at 3:30 pm, car loaded to the roof and kids still sick, but excited.  Three hours later we’d made it exactly 73 miles.  We got the kids fed, exercised (well, we let them preted to play something that may or may not have been Dance Dance Revolution, but with spiders, in the arcade that was attached to the gone-to-pot chain restaurant that was the only place we could find to eat when Semisweet Boy finally couldn’t stand the hunger and the traffic any longer), medicated, and in their PJs, turned on a particularly soothing Raffi DVD, and figured they’d be asleep within an hour or so.  At about 9:30, they finally passed out after much screaming on Semisweet Girl’s part and much (understandable) complaining about the noise on Semisweet Boy’s part.  That wouldn’t have been too shabby at all, except that by about 12:15 am, they were wide awake again, thanks to a particularly bumpy patch of I-95.  After another round of pain relievers and leg patting and singing of soothing songs that lasted about an hour, I finally gave up and put on another DVD.  Everyone was awake until we got to the house at 3:30 am.  I wasn’t able to get the Girl settled down until about 4:15.

During the last few hours of the drive, the Girl stared bleary-eyed at the screen and frequently announced that there was a DUCK! or a DOG! in the movie.  The Boy mostly gazed out the window at the various sites to be seen once we’d exited the Interstate and begun our long descent into the Redneck Paradise that is the interior of my parents’ home state.  There were a few priceless moments though:

Girl: DOG! DOG! DOG! DOG!!!!

Boy: That’s not a dog, Girl, that’s Raffi! Grrr…. 

Boy: I’m just looking out the window at all the things.  I like ALL the things in South Carolina.

Sugardaddy: You mean like the Pork Outlet and the Adult Video Store? (the only two establishments we’d passed in the last thirty minutes)

Boy: Uh huh… I like ALL the things.

Boy (whispering): Mommy, is it the middle of the night yet?

Me: Yes, it is definitely the middle of the night.

Boy (in the babyish sing-song voice he often uses with Girl): Girl, it’s the middle of the night, please.