Back From the Brink

Did you miss me? Oh wait, what's that? You didn't even notice I was gone? (I'm discounting you, Ninja, since you are the best stalker ever). Well, I WAS gone. Very gone. Very, very gone, in fact.

I was in the mountains at a bad ass cabin with an indoor pool and hot tub. You know, because I'm fucking fancy. But you know what they take away when they give you a hot tub? CELL PHONE RECEPTION. And Wifi. I think we all had a mini panic attack when we realized we wouldn't be able to check Facebook for 5 whole days. You know what I realized though? I needed to not check Facebook for 5 days. I needed it so hard.

 As for the actual vacation, I had the best time ever. I relaxed. I napped. I hot-tubbed. I got drunk every single night (though, I'm kind of ashamed to admit that my tolerance for alcohol is practically non-existent at this point. When I say I got drunk, I mean I had 2-3 drinks every night). One of the most enjoyable things for me was not to be overscheduled. I'm usually that asshole on vacation who has every minute of every day planned down to the potty breaks. I could blame Caitlyn, because having a toddler does make it kind of necessary to plan poop breaks, but we've only really been on one vacation with her. I guess I'm just a planner when it comes to relaxation. Because everyone knows that (despite my usual tendency to be late for EVERYTHING) being a militant asshole if anyone (RODOLFO) throws off my plans, is the one true path to relaxation and enjoyment.

Anyway. There were a few activities. We went horseback riding. We visited some local caverns and took pictures of particularly phallic stalagmites. We swept up dead bugs (and really. That was an activity. There were so many dead bugs. And live bugs, for that matter. All the bugs. All of them). Mostly though, we hung out and drank and read books and ate barbecue.

I think I mentioned it in another post, but for the record, this was a vacation I took with a group of my friends. My husband and child stayed home. I bring it up now because I had a pretty shitty revelation on my way home. As I mentioned before, there was no cell phone reception at all. None. There was, however, a house phone. I could not even get a text out to Rodolfo because I have pauper phone company, T-Mobile. Nadine, however, has Verizon so I could at least send him a text with the house number to have him call me.

He did not call me. Well, that's not exactly true. He called me the first night. Then I received daily calls from our babysitter (who I later found out he questioned every day to be sure I didn't call her, because he was convinced I was lying about not having reception). On our way back home, I figured I'd call him when we stopped for lunch, but he called me before I had a chance and was pissed that I was within cell phone range and didn't immediately call him, despite his ignoring me for 4 days.

 So that's when I realized it. The thing I needed a vacation from the most. It wasn't Caitlyn or MS or house hunting or even work. It's him. He is the number one stress factor in my life. So I don't know (I also don't know how this post went from "fun vacation stuff" to "maybe my marriage sucks"). That's it I guess. Not really sure where to go from here.

I'm Going to Whine About Being Tired. You're Welcome.

I'm sure I've mentioned my upcoming vacation. T-minus 6 days, motherfuckers.

The thing about this vacation is that my husband and child are staying home. This is the "say goodbye to my 20s" vacation where I spend the week getting hammered with my friends.

Do you want to hear something pathetic, though? The things I'm looking forward to the most are things like sleeping in and reading books and shitting and showering in solitude. Because I haven't shit or showered in solitude since Caitlyn started walking. I'm looking forward to shaving my legs too, because, if I'm being honest, I shave my legs maybe once every 3 weeks now. I just don't have time to do it more than that, and anyone who knows me realizes that is long enough for me to look like a bear. Summer is coming, you guys, and my legs are unprepared.

I feel so old. A few years ago I would have been seriously looking forward to spending a lot of time really, really drunk. And I am looking forward to that. But, honestly, I'm more looking forward to being able to read more than one page of a book per day.

The point I think I'm trying to make here, is that I am burnt the fuck out. BURNT. OUT. I can usually handle the trials of being a parent, but all the shit that has been recently heaped on top of that has me basically crawling through this week like I'm in a desert and vacation is an oasis. I'm completely and utterly exhausted. Run down.

House hunting is killing me. And it's not just the physical part- not just the running around after work and every weekend, looking at houses that are inevitably NOT the house. It's the mental part too. The part where I feel like we won't ever find a house. The part where I fall desperately in love with a place only to find out there is some bank related issue that will make it nearly impossible for us to buy it. The part where I want to give up and live in my shitty one bedroom apartment forever.

The other thing that's been getting to me is the amount of time and effort it has taken me to coordinate the delivery of the medication I'll be starting after vacation. I swear it's taken no less than a dozen phone calls to get this shit to my house. And it's kind of bullshit to put that much effort into something you are dreading.

Oh. And did I mention that Caitlyn's birthday is in less than a month and I've done literally nothing to prepare for it? Literally nothing. Awesome.

So I dunno. That's it. I guess this vacation could not have been timed more perfectly. Ideally, I'll get home showered, shaved, and well-rested, and my husband will tell me he found us the perfect house.

I Stared at My Computer for 5 Minutes Trying to Come Up With a Clever Title. I Failed.

I've been avoiding making this post. I don't know how to make it funny or enjoyable to read. And I don't want you to know how much I'm struggling. I'm angry and bitter and the reflex reaction of everyone I've told is to pity me, which only makes it even more clear that I'm fuckity fuck fuck fucked. Which kind of makes me want to punch things. I think you all know where this is going:

I got the results of my spinal tap, which have confirmed MS (as much as you can confirm MS without a recurrent episode). Doctor says I have all the markers for it, plus blah blah blah medical stuff. And so I have to start on treatment.

On the upside, apparently my insurance is going to cover all but a $50 per month co-pay on my medication, and I qualify for the pharmaceutical company's co-pay program so they are actually even going to cover the $50 a month for me. That is pretty much the only upside though, the fact that this incredibly expensive medication isn't going to bankrupt me.

When I had my first symptoms, back at the end of December/early January, it took me almost 2 months to feel completely back to normal. And during that time when I felt tired and fuzzy and off, it was easier to say "yeah, there is definitely something wrong here", but once I snapped back to being me again, I guess I went into denial. My spinal MRI came back clean. My hearing and vision tests were normal. And so I started to think about how stressed I was in December, running around every day after work and then every weekend, trying to get ready for Christmas. I had myself pretty convinced that it was all a big coincidence. The brain lesions could have been from anything, especially considering my klutzy nature and my tendency to fall and smack my head on shit. And the lesions? They weren't even inflamed! They were tiny, inconsequential things that showed no exacerbation and no improvement. And the weakness and exhaustion were surely side effects of the steroids.

Truth be told, when I went in to get that spinal tap, I fully expected it to come back showing nothing of consequence. My doctor had already made it clear that that doesn't actually rule out MS, but in my own mind, it was going to. Because I'm too strong to have something like this.

Except that clearly, I am not. Because I do have it.

There's the immediate stuff I need to deal with. The fact that I finally feel like myself again, not sick or tired like I did for the first 2 months of this year, is making it really hard for me to deal with starting this medication. It's an injectable, which sucks right off the bat. But I've done that before. I took Lovenox when I was pregnant with Caitlyn. I don't look forward to the injections, but I can handle them. It's dealing with the side effects that's getting to me. It's the fact that the "flu-like symptoms" "USUALLY go away in 2-3 months". Usually. It's a little ironic to me. To finally feel like myself again, to be able to stay me as long as possible, to try to stop the progression of this disease, I have to inject myself with this medicine that is going to make me feel sick for the next several months. It's a cycle that will seemingly go on forever, as is the nature of this disease. Exacerbation and remission. So starting the meds, to me, is like a trial run for being sick all the time. I get a few months of being myself- the person, the wife, the friend, the mother that I see myself as, then I have to give that up and slip into being this person I don't even know: sick, tired, fuzzy, unable to focus on my daughter and my relationships and the things that matter most to me. A person in survival mode. Survival mode is not how I want to live half of my life.

Then there's the longer term stuff. I've waffled a bit on having another baby, even before I knew I would spend my life being sick. It's been a tough decision. As a person who grew up with 3 siblings, the idea of Caitlyn being an only child feels wrong to me, like I'm depriving her of something in not giving her a brother or sister. On the one hand, with this new information, I feel more inclined to have another baby. I don't know how long I'll have before this disease becomes unmanagable. Hopefully decades, but that certainly isn't guaranteed. So I think of Caitlyn being a little older, a teenager maybe, trying to cope with going through her own changes and maturation and having her childhood taken from her by having to help take care of her disease-stricken mother. And I wonder if having a sibling, someone who truly understands what she's going through, someone in the same boat, someone to talk to when she needs to say how much she hates taking care of me and she wishes she had a normal mom like all her friends, might ease that burden a little bit. Because burdening Caitlyn feels like the biggest failure I could have as a parent. I can't relieve her of the burden completely, she loves me and I know she will be there for me even if I tell her she doesn't need to be, but maybe having a sibling to help carry it will make it easier for her, to give her a break, a sense that she doesn't always have to be there.

On the other side of that coin, having another baby feels so selfish. Because relieving some of Caitlyn's burden, a burden I certainly didn't choose for her because I didn't know about this disease before she was born, means choosing to actively inflict it on another child. And how can I make a choice like that?

If I do decide to have another child, it's a decision that needs to happen soon. The longer I wait, the more likely it is that I'll have progression of my symptoms. If I'm going to do this, I can't afford to wait. Which wouldn't be so bad, if I just had to have Rodolfo roll on top of me for a few minutes a couple of weeks after I had my period. But it doesn't happen like that for us. So in addition to everything else that makes this decision so hard, all the pros and cons that already exist, now we have to figure out if we can afford to spend $8000 or so on IVF (we can't, in case you are wondering. Which really means we have to decide if we want to go back into debt to have another baby.)

And then, if I decide to wait, or not have a baby at all, there's the issue of birth control. The medication I'll be on causes miscarriages, so I would absolutely need to stop taking it before deciding to get pregnant. And that isn't such a problem, really. The problem is the fact that, because of our fertility issues, we don't use any birth control, ever (or at least not in the last 5 or 6 years). Not even the trusty old pull-out. Because our chances of me getting pregnant are so slim that it would be a miracle if it happened. A miracle we would have happily welcomed. A miracle I've always secretly hoped for. Yet another thing MS will take from me. Because I can't hope for that anymore. I can't hope to get miraculously pregnant, because my medications could kill my baby. And so I have to go on some sort of birth control, JUST IN CASE.

In fact, with all these tests and shit, I've found the issue of birth control comes up a lot. When I had contrast MRIs, I was grilled about the possibility of being pregnant. Same for when I had the spinal tap. As it turns out, medical professionals don't really appreciate the answer "probably not because my husband has shitty sperm, but I guess it's technically possible". They do not appreciate that answer at all. It's really frustrating because I always wanted to keep that little bit of hope alive that maybe it would happen on it's own, and now I can't even have that.

I don't know. I'm pissed off and bitter and scared, and I don't know what to do with any of it. My current plan is to get very, very drunk when I go on vacation in 2 weeks.

Judgy Playground Moms Can Lick My Scrotum. Yes. Scrotum.

My parenting was judged by a complete stranger.

I know. You've all been there too. No pity party for Jaclyn today. Let me start with what happened earlier in the week:

Rodolfo and I needed a new mattress. We've been putting it off... oh, let's say 3 years, and so when we saw Sears was having a sale, we decided to finally suck it up and spend the money so we could stop waking up with backaches every morning.

We were in the store, setting up delivery for our new bed when Caitlyn just full-on melted down. I've said it before, she has her asshole moments, but nothing like this. This wasn't a minute or two of whining over a toy or because I wouldn't let her ride the escalator for the 10th time or because I made her wear shoes; this was a full-blown, middle of a store where we were in the middle of a large transaction and therefore javascript:void(0)could not just walk out, hissy fit.

The funniest part is that there was no real catalyst for it. I think she may be getting another set of molars, because she hasn't been eating or sleeping much, so I can only attribute it to that. She simply decided after 20 minutes or so of wandering around, riding the escalator and carrying around the Dora purse I was planning to buy her, that she was done with Sears. DONE. She melted first into sobs, then angry, irrational rage when I tried to pick her up off the floor (because obviously you don't stand up for a meltdown. You must be face down on the floor).

I tried, you guys. I tried to calm her down, to distract her. I went so far as to try to get her to jump on the beds because she loves to do that at home. No. A resounding and resentful no (followed by another dramatic, face-down flop onto the ground). When she reached for the last trick in her bag, full-blown screaming, I told Rodolfo I'd wait for him in the mall. At least then people would only be passing by as they gave me dirty looks.

To my utter relief, as I walked out of Sears, I noticed the mall had installed one of those indoor, toddler playgrounds right at the Sears entrance. Yes. I could sit, she could play and shut the fuck up and stop screaming in my face. Except, of course, it didn't quite go down like that.

Caitlyn was still mad. I coaxed her onto the slide once, and then she gave up. She collapsed onto the rug of the play area and sobbed for no reason in particular. And you know what? I let her. A few times I made the obligatory amount of effort by asking if she was ready to play yet. She scowled and answered NO each time. So I let her cry it out for the next 15 minutes or so.

You are probably thinking this is where the judgment happened, but actually the other moms and dads were fucking fantastic. This particular play area was very clearly intended for toddlers, so I'm sure they all felt my pain. And not a single one of them gave me the "control your asshole kid" glare that I was expecting. In fact, they joked around with me about Caitlyn's tantrum. Commiserated.

A funny thing happened after that. Caitlyn realized that I wasn't responding to her shitty attitude. It took a while, but eventually she picked herself up off the floor, ran over and gave me a hug. Then she started playing with another little girl until Rodolfo showed up. She started to melt down again when it was time to leave, which only got worse when we refused to reward her bad behavior and walked right past the carousel that she loves and rides every time we visit the mall. Still, I felt like I won that night.

In any case, it's kind of funny how that worked out. I was completely expecting judgment and dirty looks because my kid was flat-out acting like a dick, but I got nothing but sympathy. I guess I was feeling a certain solidarity with other moms this week because of it, so it definitely threw me off when I was told about the random stranger who judged me to my babysitter today at the park.

My babysitter has a 3 year old son and when she took our kids to the park, another mom asked her if they were both her children. She clarified that the boy was hers, but that she is Caitlyn's babysitter.

The other, random stranger mom who has never even met me, decided that I was a shitty mom right then and there. "Oh", she said "How sad. You have her all day?". Then she went on to ask if I "really have to work" and said that "people should plan if they want to have kids". Plan to marry a rich man, apparently.

My babysitter, being the fantastic badass that she is, responded with something along the lines of "you're right. Only rich people should be allowed to have kids, so they can stay home and let their nannies raise them". The woman went on to say that her husband doesn't let her work, to which my new hero very effectively ended the conversation by saying she had "to go to work. And besides, you probably have to go home and wash your husband's feet or something".

Have I mentioned how much I love this woman? She told me she thinks the woman was trying to pay her some sort of backwards compliment for being a stay-at-home mom, without having even a drop of actual information about her life and circumstances. Which led to a whole other conversation about the assumptions people make.

You see, my babysitter is biracial. It's something I immediately loved about her because our family is also biracial and so I knew there were certain things she would get about us right away. The conflicts of culture when raising a child by parents of different races can be really annoying. With Rodolfo and I in particular, we are both extremely stubborn. Extremely. So, while we usually do just fine sorting out the little stuff, when we have a major conflict of ideals about an aspect of child-rearing, neither of us is particularly inclined to fold.

Our babysitter gets this. She realizes that sometimes I'm going to tell her one thing and Rodolfo is going to tell her the complete opposite. She knows how to find the right balance, to respect both of our wishes and find a middle ground. Come to think of it, should we ever need the services of a marriage counselor, we might do well to ask her opinion first.

In any case, when we were talking about the fact that this random, judgy bitch at the park felt like she had some sort of solidarity with her because they were both at home with their children, it made me think of something else. White people.

I'm curious if it's just me. You see, it's happened to me on MANY occasions. It would seem that some of the other white people, the ones who don't particularly like blacks and Hispanics, seem to think we are on the same team in that respect (or lack thereof). They think they can whisper in my ear about "all the blacks" or how "no one in this store speaks English- they should go back to their country!", simply because we are both white.

My favorite response is always to mention the fact that English isn't my husband's first language, that some of his family members living in this country don't speak English at all (before you get all annoyed about that one, I'd like to point out that they live in a primarily Hispanic community and get along just fine without it. I suppose though, you could also react the way my dad does and point out that "we" are "catering to them" and that "the Italians had to learn English!". I know I've mentioned that he's an asshole. Let me just reiterate that now.) and that our daughter, despite appearing to be white, is both biracial and bilingual.

Does this happen to you other white people? Can we get the word out that not all of us (despite our frequent inappropriate jokes on our blog) are racist?

Anyway, that was all very off-topic. In any case, my babysitter is the fucking shit and defended me to some random, bitchy stranger and put her in her place. It's always frustrating to think someone is judging you because you have to go to work. I don't think it's quite the "mommy wars" situation it can get made out to be. I just think some people are assholes.

In any case, its nice to know the person watching my kid has my back, understands why I'm leaving my kid with her and respects that choice and expects anyone who thinks they are allowed to assert their opinion on it respects it too. If ever I questioned my choice to go back to work after Caitlyn was born, this made me sure I made the right choice. Because I'm not the only one teaching Caitlyn to be a super awesome badass who stands up for herself.

The Worst Day of My Life

Exactly 3 years ago today, I had the very worst day of my entire life. Tomorrow it will be 3 years since we said goodbye to Nicholas.

You would think tomorrow would have been the worst day, but it wasn't. 3 years ago tomorrow, I woke up in far too much pain from being in labor all night to really think about what was happening. And yes, having my son fall out of my body onto the floor was undoubtedly the worst moment of my life. But as much as it hurt, as hard as it was to say goodbye to him, I can't say it was the worst day. Because I got to hold him and kiss him and say goodbye. I got to see his face for the one and only time. And I'll never get the chance to do any of those things again.

So tomorrow will suck. It will be sad and quiet and I won't quite know what to do to feel like I've acknowledged it in the right way. But I'll remember his face too, and that makes it a little bit easier. Tomorrow is a mix of emotions. I never know what to call it. His birthday? That seems to imply cake and balloons and presents. Anniversary isn't right either. It still has a connotation of celebration to it, and that is not what I plan to do. I do not celebrate that day. And then there is the way I've seen a lot of people refer to it- angelversary. God, I fucking hate that so much too. So I don't know. I don't know what to call it or how to deal with it. I just know it makes me sad.

Today though. Three years ago today, I had an early appointment for my 24 week check-up. Rodolfo had worked late the night before and wasn't even going to come with me, but right at the last minute he threw on some clothes and decided to join me. I can't even imagine how I would have survived that appointment if he had just stayed home.

I remember being annoyed about my 20 week ultrasound. The tech was kind of a bitch and just as she started my much-anticipated ultrasound, she told me to be quiet and not ask any questions because she was very busy performing the detailed exam. She printed me some great pictures, but I never got to see the screen. I never got to see my little boy squirming around. So when I walked into my appointment that day 3 years ago, I remember hoping that Nicholas would be in an awkward position where they wouldn't be able to find his heartbeat with the doppler, so I could get another ultrasound. When his heartbeat wasn't found right away, I smiled a little to myself. Listening to his mother already.

My OB assured me that this wasn't anything to worry about. "I think I picked it up for a second, but let's do an ultrasound just to be sure everything is okay". She sent me back to the bitchy ultrasound tech and I waited in the room with the butterflies on the ceiling to see my baby boy again. I expected to immediately recognize the sound of my son's heartbeat, but it wasn't there. I held it together for a few minutes while the tech silently checked without so much as a word to us about what was happening. Finally, I asked what was going on. She said she needed to get the doctor.

This is when I started to panic. I started to cry and asked Rodolfo if he heard the implication in her tone. "Why didn't she say he was okay? I have to go get the doctor? She might as well have said "your baby is dead"." Rodolfo assured me that everything would be fine, but the tears would not stop rolling down my face. I had to be overreacting. It was something else, something they missed at my 20 week ultrasound. Maybe he had a birth defect. That would suck, but we would figure it out. We would love him no matter what. Then the doctor stepped in and the life I knew, the life I anticipated, the life I carried inside of me, it was all gone in a moment.

After giving us 10 or so minutes of privacy to sob and hyperventilate and call our families, my doctor came back in and told me I needed to calm down so she could explain what came next. Calm down? Really? My baby was dead. How the fuck was I supposed to calm down? Somehow, I managed to stifle my sobs for the next few minutes.

My first option was to have labor induced. No. That was my immediate reaction. I couldn't bear it. I was already terrified of labor, and without the prize at the end of it, I just didn't think I was strong enough to do it.

Option number two was a D&E. What the fuck a D&E even was, I had no idea. I just knew I would go to sleep and have surgery and no longer be pregnant when I woke up. It was not explained to me until after we had made that choice, after I was given medication to dilate my cervix, that a D&E meant I would never see my son. In fact, I don't know that it would have even come up at all, if it weren't for the fact that I was asking why this happened. "Well", my doctor explained "We can run some tests, but with the D&E there is only tissue to test, so we may not get a clear answer". Oh. So she was going to rip my baby out of me in pieces. Thanks for the heads-up, cunt.

Oh, and did I mention she called me fat during all of this? Yes, when I told her that I could not bear to labor with my stillborn son, she told me it might be my only option. She told me that because of my weight, there might not be enough... room?... in my cervix to do a D&E. Then she actually bothered to look at my cervix and remarked "oh, well that's not bad". Again, thanks, cunt.

At that point, layers of my cervix were stripped and medicated sponges were placed next to it. Then I left. I left the doctor's office and went home and sat on my couch and stared into space for several hours. I didn't cry. My mom showed up, visibly upset, offering hugs and comforting words but I barely registered them. I was numb. I was in denial. I was a few steps away from being catatonic.

Soon it was time to go to the hospital for pre-admission testing. This is when all the horror of the day shook loose again. I remember sobbing in the waiting room and while they drew my blood. I was suffocated by the realization that my baby was gone. Devastated.

I went back home and started to freak out. I had made the wrong choice. I realized it then. It pisses me off, looking back, to know how little information I was given. Because I spent hours researching cribs and swings and strollers, but did not give a moment's thought to what I wanted to do if my baby didn't make it. And I don't think anyone does.

Why didn't anyone give me more than just the most basic medical information? If I'd have known what a D&E actually was, I never would have chosen to have one. If I'd heard of Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, I would have asked them to come take pictures of my son. If I'd have known that you can find funeral homes that will do cremations for free, maybe I wouldn't have spent months after Nicholas' death imagining his remains ending up in a dumpster full of medical waste. I can't tell you how many nights I was kept up by that thought. And you know what else? Maybe have a fucking pamphlet for a grief counselor or something on hand.

Anyway. So I was freaking out. I had realized I didn't want a D&E but for some reason I didn't think I was allowed to change my mind. So I decided that I would need to put myself into labor and maybe I'd have Nicholas before the next day. So Rodolfo and I walked a mile away to an ice cream store near our house, had an ice cream cone and walked home. We were 3/4 of the way back when the contractions started to become really obvious.

I spent the rest of the night in pain. When I finally tried to go to bed I was woken up every 3 minutes or so with another contraction. All I wanted was to be unconscious, to avoid the mental and physical pain, but I was not that lucky, because the worst day of your life takes forever to end. It gives you no break. And you replay it over and over again every year for the rest of your life.

Rodolfo and the Art of Vagina Maintenance

When Caitlyn first started taking off her diaper, about half the time there would be pee in the diaper and half the time she would take it off explicitly for the purpose of pissing on my floor. Then, for a long time she was taking off mostly wet diapers. And she was really on top of that. She would drop a diaper and the pee would still be hot. Then, in the last few days she has gone back to pissing on my floor again.

None of that is particularly relevant. The point is that usually when Caitlyn takes off a diaper, it is because of pee. I find it funny, how offensive she seems to find the idea of sitting in pee for even a minute, yet she will sit in a shitty diaper for as long as it takes me to notice. I mean, in all honestly that isn't usually very long. Because her shits smell like a dump truck filled with decomposing bodies. Still, when it's time to change poop, Caitlyn always tries to run away. She is one with her shitty diaper. Usually.

The other day though, she decided to take off her shitty diaper. Bare-assed Caitlyn isn't an unusual sight, so I didn't react immediately. Then the smell hit me and I realized she was walking around my living room, brushing up against my furniture and sitting on my rug all while her ass was covered in shit.

Naturally, I called for reinforcements. Rodolfo quickly grabbed her so she couldn't run away while I found the wipes. She was still in the air, squirming her way out of her dad's arms, and it was my responsibility to clean her ass. I went straight for the problem area, obviously. Because it wasn't her vagina that had shit on it.

This is when Rodolfo stopped me. He wanted to know what I was doing. "You're supposed to wipe her front to back!", he exclaimed. Wow. I very nearly screwed that one right up! It isn't as though I've always had a vagina or anything. It's a good thing I had him there to offer his expertise on vagina maintenance. Summer's Eve ass motherfucker.

I'm a lady. And I do not do the whole "front-to-back" bullshit. It seems to me this is something we tell little girls so as to delicately explain the concept that they should not smear shit into their vaginas. So I understand why my husband might think that's actually how ladies wipe. But I've got to say, in practice, I just do not have the coordination. I find myself clearing the back end first, then switching up my TP and cleaning up the front. It is just me? Am I the only fucking weirdo on the planet who doesn't do the whole front-to-back thing? Because I'm pretty sure it's a myth perpetuated by douche companies to make you feel dirty.

Divide and conquer. That's what I say.

Sharing is Caring

As previously mentioned, sometimes my kid is an asshole. I'm doing my best to combat that by teaching her the basic principles of being a human being that the other human beings want to be around.

In particular, I've been trying hard to convey the fact that the world does not revolve around her. She is not happy about this most of the time. Because, really, she wants an ice pop NOW. She wants to watch Dora NOW. She wants to play with my phone NOW. Caitlyn is struggling with the idea that sometimes, maybe, something besides her whims are my priority.

That being said, she is a socialized kid. Despite being an only child, she has cousins very close to her age and she's been with a babysitter since she was 8 weeks old. She's always been around other kids and she mostly does well with not being the center of the universe when they are around.

This brings us to sharing. Or, more specifically, that despite her blatant narcissism, Caitlyn is getting pretty good at it.

The problem with sharing, though, is that once a kid starts to really understand the concept, you have to accept all of their attempts at sharing, even when they are fucking disgusting.

The other night, Caitlyn was eating an ice pop. She has a little game she plays with the dog, where he chases her around trying to snatch her food and she runs away squealing and giggling, holding it over her head. Caitlyn is in the lowest percentile for height and weight. The dog is a fat cocker spaniel. Guess who usually wins that game.

Anyway, she's never upset when the dog takes her food. In fact, if he doesn't chase after her, she will stick her food in his face until she has his complete attention. This is what happened with the ice pop. She was sitting on my lap, alternating licks with Joey (yes, it is disgusting, but it's not going to hurt her so I don't give a shit), a virtual master at sharing (because, you guys, she fucking LOVES ice pops).

And then she realized that it wasn't enough. She realized she needed to take it one step further. She realized that it simply wasn't fair to only share with the dog. And she shoved her dog/toddler covered slime pop into my mouth. Shoved. Like the male lead in a 70s porno. After multiple attempts at dodging it, telling her "thank you, baby, but mommy doesn't want any", I became the dog in her mind. She was going to get me to play her game. She spent 10 minutes going back and forth between cramming it in my mouth, despite my many (MANY) protests and attempts to dodge it, then letting the dog lick it a few times. Then licking it herself a few times. My god, this sounds more and more like I'm describing a three-way scene in a porn the more I explain it.

Anyway, so sharing. It is infinitely more disgusting with toddlers, much like, well, absolutely everything else. But hey, my kid is slightly less of an asshole now!

Finally, I should note that there are some things that Caitlyn refuses to share. Apparently my less-than-2 year old nearly got into a smack-down at the playground yesterday. Why, you ask? Because some 4 year old was following around her man (our babysitter's son). I can't even get mad at her for that. Bitches be crazy if they think they can just roll up on her boyfriend like that.