I did really well the first two weeks. Ran a (virtual) 5K at a sub 8-minute mile. Kept the beds made and the rugs vacuumed on the daily. Washed my hair. My ability to cope with the uncertainty of this weird new normal slowly degraded however, and now I’m in this weird place where I only feel… safe (I think that’s the word. Unanxious. Grounded. Okay.) if I’m eating. Or too distracted to think about eating. So let’s get distracted, shall we?
Ask me anything! I’ll answer! Just be nice but not like, too nice because I cry REALLY easily right now.
It has now been a good decade since I watched an episode of the World’s Best TV Series. But from my memory, Walnut Grove had a few good brushes with epidemics, drought, pestilence, and other scary shit. Like bandits, and nitroglycerine. I mean, the prairie is always trying to kill you, so you’ve got to be on your toes. When things get dicey, I always fall back on my Little House education for keeping things together in a time of crisis. Now I’m sharing those time-honored tactics with you.
Get the sod house ready. In other words, get you a PLAN. If Pa got sick, you know he was prepared to sweat it out alone in the sod house to protect his family. We decided that if someone in this house gets sick, they go straight to the sod house (master bedroom) where, only the designated caregiver (me) is allowed to drop food and brief messages of comfort while covered head to toe in garbage bags. If it’s me who gets sick, well, I’m screwed. I’ll have to live off that bottle of Tums on my dresser. Like Ma taking a hot knife to her infected leg, I’ll do what I have to do.
Put some stuff away in the root cellar. When things took a serious turn, I bought one extra of everyday necessities and stuck them in the freezer in the garage. It seems like something Ma would have done. You know, put away some flour in the event the crickets come this spring. Or in our case, a loaf of Mrs. Baird’s, some whole milk, and those no-sugar-added popsicles I like to eat while bingeing Netflix right before bed. I also made extra dinner a few nights in a row and froze the leftovers for when things really get bad. At least I know if I fall ill, my two year old will still be throwing perfectly healthy lentil soup on the floor in a tantrum over god knows what.
Nextdoor.com is the Mrs. Oleson of the Internet. Do not engage with that old bag. Nope, not even to set her straight. You see her coming your way from down the road, you fake an errand at the blacksmith. DO WHAT YOU MUST.
Take care of your neighbors. I’d like to think it doesn’t take a catastrophic event for me to be a good neighbor. But in times like these, it’s just as important that your neighbor has spinach for their smoothies as it is for you to have your morning banana, so before you do that provision run, you might want to check in next door. VIA TEXT. DON’T BE CRAZY.
Dirt and sticks make great toys. This is a great opportunity to teach your kids about gratitude. In the absence of outside entertainment, we’re teaching our kids to make do. You know, with a house full of toys, technology, and endless attention from their parents. Hard knock life, right? I will say I was rather proud when we explained that parks are a no-go right now, my kid, ON HIS OWN, acknowledged that he is lucky to have a playground in his backyard. He still throws an epic fit when I won’t buy yet another season of Paw Patrol the Plots Just Get Stupider, but we’re getting there.
Brush your hair 100 times before going to bed. Okay, this has nothing to do with our current predicament, but it’s really great for your scalp and let’s be honest, what else are you doing?
“I’ve come to understand that a mother is not a person, but a service,” I said.
Her eyebrows raised slightly, but she said nothing, so I continued to explain how in all of my encounters since Charlie’s birth, I have been stripped of my personhood and re-summed up in a single syllable: Mom. At the store. Our pediatrician’s office. Even my husband now calls me “Mom” in Charlie’s company. In the months since my since my son came into this world, I’ve felt like I was slowly disappearing from it – dissolving day by day, partly because of the isolation of the stay-at-home role and partly from the very real truth that I am no longer the person I used to be.
I spilled my guts, all the while fearing that I was alienating a new friend I’d made at library story hour. Our children were playing together in the backyard splash pad while we gnawed at pretzels under the patio umbrella. My friend was quiet for a moment and I knew I’d done it. We were so different already (she, a pastor’s wife and me, a… well, whatever I am), I feared I’d driven a giant, neurotic wedge between us.
But then she said, “I never thought of it that way. I guess it’s easier sometimes to socialize through our kids – less chance of rejection, maybe. But I am going to try to be better about that.”
There’s this feeling of relief at being understood suddenly, after ages of shouting into the darkness, that’s so overwhelming it actually feels like grief. I do so much of that – screaming inside my own head – and all that ever comes out is a sigh, to which my husband will say, “What can I do for you?” He means well. He loves me. But he doesn’t understand because he can’t. Everything he had before Charlie was born, he has now. The same social structure. The same career. The same face, hair and pelvic floor. He gets to sneeze without peeing and when he leaves for the day, everyone he meets will assume he has a name. And they’ll call him by it.
But she understood, even if only a little. And I wanted to cry when she closed that gap between us.
I wonder sometimes if my expectations are off. I mean, I know our postal carrier’s name. It’s Paul. It has never seemed extraordinary to know that. To say, “Thanks, Paul!” when I see him on the porch. Yet, my own name gets lost so easily in the parental shuffle. I know it’s there on the chart at the pediatrician’s office, right next to Charlie’s name. No one has to memorize my face and put it together with my name in order to make me feel like a human. They just have to read it. And still, every visit begins, “Mom, can you get him undressed to a diaper?” Even when we lived in the hospital for a month, Charlie and I, the nurses, the doctors, the techs, the therapists – they all had names. I knew them. I used them. But I was always Mom.
When Charlie was born, I was so enamored of him and so thrilled to be a mother – his mother – that naturally I didn’t fight it. Instead, I basked in it. Mom. Mom. Mommy. Twenty months later, I feel completely lost in it, struggling for reasons to *not* wipe banana on my pant leg (who’s gonna see? or care?) or even to brush my teeth some days (what’s the point?).
When I finally told my husband I no longer felt like a person anymore, he seemed angry at first, but I think that’s the initial response to anything he can’t fix. We decided that it was time to end my stint as a stay-at-home mom – something I hadn’t felt like I could give myself permission to do. I was miserable. Dying one small death after another. But my son was so happy and clever and thriving that putting him in day care had always seemed unnecessarily punitive. After all, it’s not his fault that it’s not enough for me. That I don’t love this the way so many other women I know seem to. My sisters. The countless mothers on my Facebook feed, who caption photos of their days at home with, “I love my job!” I love my son in such a deep, wonderful, frustrating and all-consuming way. But I do not love being at home. Admitting that last bit has been enormously difficult. But there it is. Out there.
So a few days ago, Charlie and I took a tour of an early education center we’re considering with the end goal that I can re-enter the workforce, and perhaps, reclaim a little of myself before it’s too late. It’s a nice enough place, if perhaps, a little too structured for my liking. We arrived a few minutes late and made our cheerful introductions with the center’s associate director. I was Heather. This was Charlie. She cooed over him appropriately and then we got down to business. Before we began the tour, she offered to put my belongings behind the counter.
“Here, Mom. Let me take your bag for you.”
“My name is Heather.”
She smiled and blinked. Did I make her uncomfortable? If I did, it didn’t register. And I didn’t care. I was taking back my name and I had to start somewhere.
I spent the last hour or so carefully cleaning your spot in the laundry room. I threw away your blanket and that heated bed I bought for your old man cat bones, swept up the telltale black hair you’d left behind. Mopped. Not to erase you, but to remove the evidence of the suffering you went through at the end. Two cancers are really more than any one furry little guy should handle. But still, I thought we had more time. When you wouldn’t lift your head for a dish of cream, I knew it was time. I hated that knowledge. It hurt so much.
I tried to stay with you, in that spot where you spent your last night, curled up beneath the cabinet. I stayed as long as I could, but my body is not young anymore. I feel like you’d understand that. I couldn’t stay for the whole procedure at the animal hospital, either, because my heart doesn’t feel as young and strong as it used to. But that, you wouldn’t know much about. You stayed you until the end, until they gave you a shot and let me hold you until you fell into a deep sleep, your pink little tongue poking out between your front teeth and your breathing slow and steady, finally done with the pain. They took you away and I sat in the car and cried until I felt like I would be sick.
My grief at losing you is compounded by guilt, but I think that’s the way with humans. I’m so terribly sorry for being impatient with you. It’s a character flaw that runs pretty deep. You drove me nuts, you know, refusing to drink out of anything but the dripping sink. I’m sorry, too, for that last litter of kittens that caused you so much stress. Like I said, I thought we had more time.
Thank you for being a good friend. You healed a very deep hurt the minute Elana and I brought you home from that shelter in New York. I remember you slept next to me under the covers that night. What a weirdo! You stayed a weirdo, in the very best ways. Thank you for purring this morning when I petted you for one of the last times. It’s such a little thing, but I couldn’t bear the idea that you’d go out remembering only pain.
Telling my son stories about you will be so bitter sweet. I’ll always remember you.
With less than three weeks until the Wee Dictator is due, we’re in a bit of a state of turmoil at our house. A dozen unexplained bug bites over a few nights in the last couple weeks turned into a panicked call to the exterminator and one freaked out mama-to-be.
You cannot bring a baby home to a house with bugs! Those people end up on the news! And not in one of those feel good stories they run after bits about gang violence and terrorism, either.
My first inclination was that we had fleas. Our feral cats have become indoor/outdoor cats over the course of the winter (they’re not dumb) and they love to sleep on our bed (see: not dumb). Although they’re flea-treated, I thought fine, maybe I miscalculated their last dosage. Maybe they could *possibly* have brought something inside. Seemed logical.
My ultimate fear was bed bugs. Horror of horrors! Neither of us travels, though, and there’s nothing new in the house that could have transported them. I mean, that doesn’t necessarily rule out the possibility, but the pest control man seemed utterly befuddled, having found zero evidence of any kind of biting pest, flea, bedbug or otherwise. Our stark white mattress is, well, stark white. Same with the bedding. An in-depth investigation yielded only more nothing. Nothing but frustration. The exterminator left without having exterminated anything or rescuing me in any sort of way, except for providing a set of instructions for some proactive measures we could take. And boy, did we take ‘em. I’m having none of this risk taking. I’ve washed every bit of everything in hot water, the Dork Lord has sprayed the room, the mattress has been covered, bug boards laid and blah blah blah.
It’s ultimately a lot of stress that I didn’t need. I think the worst part for me is that I’ve worked so stinking hard to make everything as perfect as possible for Charlie’s arrival and then…this. This thing I cannot control. And if you know me at all, you know that I’m not so good with things I cannot control. They are my nemeses. My Khaaaaaan!
I haven’t cried yet, but let’s not rule it out.
Also, now I just itch all the time. Out of pure suggestion. Meanwhile, the only thing our sticky bug traps have caught is an unfortunate dust bunny. And Midge once. But that was funny.
By way of a Hal update: He’s doing remarkably well. He still seems completely unaware that there is anything wrong with him. His appetite is up and his weight has returned to normal. He sleeps a lot, but, you know, he’s a cat. And that’s sorta their modus operandi. Having grown accustomed to his daily medication routines, Hal even voluntarily jumps up on the counter while I glove up (being pregnant, I’m not allowed to touch any of his meds). I’m guessing that his willingness has little something to do with the treat he gets after. Like his mama, he’s compelled by food. Outside of his daily meds, it’s very easy to pretend there’s nothing wrong with him. So I do.
And a word or several on Charlie: Kid’s head down, ready to go. I’ve asked him to be born a few days early on the 16th (it’s a full moon, after all, and babies love to be born on full moons), and I’ve decided that whether or not he complies will tell me everything I need to know his personality. Come on, Charlie. Do this for mommy. She wants to roll over in bed without her whole skeleton hurting. I’ve also asked him to have a reasonably sized head. Please, oh, please.
Thank you most sincerely for all your good thoughts and well wishes with regard to Hal and Charlie. So far, so good! And uh, if you’d like to direct some of that positivity at the bug situation, well, I would not object.
The discovery was entirely accidental. I’d taken Hal in on Monday for hairball issues and his ‘senior’ cat follow-up. He’s 10 now, and I’ve been telling myself that’s middle age, no matter what the vet says. Anyway, it was accidental. Happenstance. They happened to have a difficult time getting a urine sample, so they happened to use an ultrasound to guide the procedure and the clinic’s feline internal medicine specialist just happened to be walking through the room when they did.
“Back up,” she said. “Right there in the intestines.”
We came in with hairballs and left with lymphoma — or very likely lymphoma. I declined the through-and-through biopsy for 100% confirmation. It would have required him to be put under and have pieces of his intestines cut out, a trauma that neither of us needed. And for what? I would not be putting him through chemotherapy. He wouldn’t understand and the time it would buy would only be for me and my guilt. Although in the last several days I’ve agonized over that decision plenty.
Without the biopsy, there’s no real prognosis. No window of time. Though my research has turned up a sorry statistic that cats treated on prednisone alone (the route we’ve taken, to make him comfortable) live an average of 45-60 days, I tell myself we have longer; he doesn’t act sick.
Hal and I met when he was five months old in the front window of the SPCA on the Upper East Side. When I had nobody, I had him. Sometimes I am so heartsick, I think I might retch because the hurt just runs so deep. Forty-five to sixty days. Charlie is due in 55 days. You see why I pretend it’s not true. Inaccurate. A stat I can stubborn my way out of, like I usually do. Dying kittens? Pfft! We can beat that. We’ll stay up all night! For days! But cancer? Cancer sees me coming and is not at all impressed with my tenacity. Being awake, being at work feels like a punishment, when all I want to do is curl up with him on the couch and maybe watch some Pretty Little Liars reruns and pretend that this is just not happening.
Well, this is long overdue. But I assume you’ll forgive a lady who is working full time and pregnant full time for having very little extra energy to expend. Just rolling over in bed takes so much damn work these days! See also: being alive. If not all pregnant women start to resent life in general by the end of the process, don’t let on. I’m going to assume this semi-constant state of hate is normal.
Not that there isn’t also a lot to love. It’s just… mama’s tired and sometimes forgets this is a temporary state.
By way of guppy updates, Charlie is a very wiggly young man with a special affinity for the right side of my rib cage. If you see me sitting very still, eyes closed, breathing slowly and deliberately, all is well, my son is just trying to break free via my skeleton. I worry much less about his… viability these days. Mostly because I don’t have to wonder if he’s okay in there. He keeps in touch. Often with my bladder.
It is endlessly delightful (in a Tremors sort of way) to watch him squirm around in there, turning the taught surface of my belly into a map of elbows and knees. Sometimes my coworker Kelsey and I watch the show and make wide eyes at each other like, “This is so weird.” Weird and awesome.
Up there with heartburn, one of the least lovely things about pregnancy are the people, mostly other mothers,who say horrid shit to you. Which is something I’ve still not gotten at all accustomed to. I’ve had people point out how swollen my feet are (because I’m not self conscious enough as it is), compare their current state of weight gain/bloat with my pregnant body (flattering), and declare that the genetic testing we had done was pointless because their friend had the same results and their baby came out with {insert horrible malady here}. Some women just like to tell you how traumatic their labor was, as though you have some say in how this kid eventually makes his way to the outside world. I’ve even been told that bouncing Charlie around in my womb to persuade him out of my rib cage area will adversely affect the shape of his head. Um, yeah, and if that doesn’t, THE BIRTH CANAL WILL FINISH THE JOB.
The heartburn I got a prescription for, but the comments, man, there does not seem to be anything preventative I can do short of declaring, “Seriously, unless you’re going to tell me how radiant I look, do not speak.”
Back in the Things Which are Awesome category, people have also been extraordinarily kind. The owner of a mom n’ pop coffee shop in San Francisco fixed a broken toilet so I wouldn’t have to walk two block to the park to find a restroom. People carry things and hold doors and strangers smile for no other reason than the world loves babies and also, they quite possibly know how totally overwhelmed and awkward I feel.
And Charlie’s nursery. I love going in there. Sometimes I sit in the glider and read and yell at the cat to stop tearing at the rug all while picturing how many times Charlie will pee or puke on me in this very room. Ah, babies.
People also give you the sweetest, softest things for your baby. Which brings me to making some long overdue additions to the Fairy Godmother list:
Teak sent some deliciously soft swaddlers and an organic stuffed bunny and this note that made me a little teary. RzDrms sent a crazy generous package full of clothes and baby mittens and a thermometer that scans the forehead (so neat!). Fellow catlady Barbara E. sent this OMG outfit involving a hoodie with bunny ears. Seriously, I die. And Melanie sent the gift of Sandra Boynton and if you haven’t had the pleasure of reading those out loud to a young ‘un, get on that. Pure silliness.
I hope I have not missed anyone. I am so genuinely touched by the kindness and generosity.
Sixty-three days to go. Please let Charlie treasure punctuality, like his mother does. And also books. And animals. And gender/marriage equality. But I’ll take a love of punctuality to start.
Just a quick note to acknowledge the baby gifts that have arrived – bottles from Sarah S. and a baby bath tub, wash cloths, towel and sleepers from Jennifer. Thank you – you guys are just so awesome! I feel like I’m going to spend a great deal of time telling Charlie about his Internet Aunts one day. You didn’t have to bathe in the roasting pan because of a very nice lady who lives far, far away who didn’t even know you. It will be like his own personal fairy tale.
We were standing in the bathroom the other night, flossing or what have you, when the Dork Lord took a long look at my belly.
“There’s an actual baby in there. It’s going to be born and then we have to take care of it.”
“That’s sorta how this works, yes.”
“I can barely take care of myself!”
I snickered. “Well, that’s why I’m here, yeah?”
It wasn’t the first minor freak out either of us has had. It’s sure not to be the last. We’re half-way through this pregnancy and it still doesn’t register all that often that it’s real. Our little guppy is a manchild. We’ve known this for weeks and weeks thanks to a relatively new blood test that identifies the baby’s genetic information floating around in my genetic information and BAM! reveals possible chromosomal abnormalities and the baby’s sex. Our 18-week check up was a while back (the Penis Unveiling, the Dork Lord calls it) and everything seems to be just as it should. Ten fingers, ten toes, four heart chambers and discernible stubbornness.
His name is Charlie. You can pretty much call him anything you want as long as that anything you want is not ‘Chuck.’
We’re at the point where I can sense the motion of him wiggling around in there quite a bit, though individual kicks and karate chops are just starting to catch my attention. It’s all very science fiction-y and very distracting. Then sometimes I don’t feel him and that’s even more distracting. So this weekend, I ordered one of those hand-held Doppler jobbies so I could listen to Charlie’s heartbeat at will. It arrived yesterday and is now my favorite battery operated device. It took a while, digging around on my belly, to find that heartbeat, but once I did, it was like getting a report card. A plus, plus, plus!
A few weeks ago, I had my very first full blown, I’m pregnant so I can’t take my meds migraine. It was 26 hours of unmitigated torture. I figure Charlie owes me. He’ll be pretty new to the job for the first Mother’s Day, so I’m gonna give him a year to figure out how best to say Thank You for Not Poisoning Me. I do love sapphires.
Thank you for all the well-wishing! We are so thrilled and terrified. But mostly thrilled.
To say I was surprised would not be entirely accurate. In fact (when I tell people this, they immediately get this look on their faces that says, “Does not compute.”), for the first two days that I knew, I couldn’t get out of bed I was so depressed. My head was so full of information about my broken ovaries and inadequate eggs that I was absolutely sure I was going to lose it. It’s the ultimate inferiority complex. The infertility inferiority complex.
Fourth of July weekend, I slept on and off and bargained with the Universe as I peed on stick after stick. “Please let me keep it. Please let me keep it.”
That I’m married to an optimist eventually provided a very necessary counterpart to my world-class worry. Though, it wasn’t really until this week’s ultrasound that I started feeling like this was the real thing. I’d even started showing the week before. Still not real. But something about watching the little guppy bounce around in there convinced me that whatever odds were stacked against us, we really did beat ‘em.
I am forever grateful for all the messages of encouragement and all the hearts and thoughts and prayers that went out for us. I don’t know why we go so lucky – but I am so grateful we did.
My feelings on abortion are complicated. My feelings on choice and access to care are not. Sent this morning via United States Mail:
Dear Senator Davis,
I often have a feeling of despair in regard to the political process, the lack of a real voice many of us have in it, and the increasing fervor to remove rational discourse from it. I do not feel that way today. Thank you for what you did last night. Thank you for standing up for us – both literally and philosophically – and for giving us a reason to hope.
If one day we are actually successful at spawning (I remain at the There’s Still Hope stage of this endeavor for now), I will likely begin every telling of that child’s birth story with, “I peed in a cup eighteen thousand times to get you.”
A brief note: If you were happy to see words on this page again, you’ll be less happy to discover that, for the foreseeable future, they’re likely be about bodily fluids and disappointment. But hey, if you stuck with me through douche-bags and disappointment phase, this won’t be nearly so head/desk. So there’s that!
And, back to peeing in a cup. Over the last handful of months, I have learned a number of things. Among them:
Fertility treatments are very expensive.
None of them are covered by insurance.
These things being true, my doctor and I talked about not talking about fertility treatments for a while. The Dork Lord and I are actually pretty lucky that we didn’t try and try the old fashioned way only to realize a year or two down the road that my parts were defective. Lucky, because the up and down of the monthly Did it Take? is really emotionally taxing. I paid that tax a handful of times before pain became a factor, the doctors got crackin’, and we had our answer even before we’d even asked the question.
Where do babies come from?
Not from you. Your ovaries don’t work.
That we can’t afford to pursue something more aggressive until next year, well, right now it’s really only taxing on my patience. It’s almost a relief compared to the pain of wondering. Almost. In the meantime, we’re keeping at the old fashioned approach – after all, what have we got to lose? The Dork Lord’s getting laid a whole lot, so he can’t complain. But he’s not the one peeing in a cup twice a day hoping that a little strip of paper will reveal that, contrary to all indications and doctorly predictions, your ovary came back from the dead and RELEASE THE HOUNDS! HERE COMES AN EGG!
Like I said, I’m still hoping, in a detached sort of way. And peeing. Always peeing.
I suppose it was to be expected. I mean, I did and I didn’t… expect it. If anything, I thought my age might be a complication. If anything. The women in my family line seem to get themselves in the family way just by thinking about it. Honeymoon babies, whoops babies, accidents and surprises (never mistakes. No, never). A sister with an eating disorder and no period to speak of? Babies! Just like that! And because my own inner lady workings always seemed to work with boring predictability, I took it for granted that I would do the same.
So much for granted, in fact, that during our house renovations this spring, we converted the guest room into a nursery. The door to that room stays closed. I don’t need to see the giraffe wall sconces to know that they are there, dimmed to off, while we make very vague plans about what to do next. While I silently contemplate how many of those ‘next steps’ we’ll take before I’ve had enough.
The Dork Lord wants a kid more than he does a new car, he says. Meaning, whatever it takes financially, is what it takes. In for a penny, in for a pound! What he doesn’t fully understand is that I may not be willing to go to those lengths. To be excavated and augmented for the off-est of off chances it will take. I am not one of those women who will suffer infertility for years and years because I will stop hoping long before that. Because my insides are not made of rainbows and unicorns and optimism. And I am not going to arrive at rainbows and unicorns after I cycle through the requisite stages of grief. I know me better than that.
The diagnosis itself came from a nurse – not even my doctor – over the phone one afternoon while I was at work. The doctor won’t answer when I call back with questions about my condition, either; I’ve landed on a list of the childless and desperate and those calls get triaged. Leave a message. Someone will call you back. That someone will probably be a nurse so you’d better not expect to speak with the person who’s been forearm-deep in your lady parts.
Having thanked the nurse (for what now, I wonder), I sat there for a minute, blinking at the gray wall of my cubicle before sending a text to my husband, who called back immediately, wanting to talk about it. I did not want to; I didn’t answer.
This is, actually, as close as I have come to talking about it. I will avoid discussing the actual diagnosis, though, so do not ask about it. Because it feels so personal – and so personally devastating. If you know me at all, you understand why we won’t talk about it. Why it’s such sacred territory we just won’t go there. One of the first reactions to the news was from my sister who asked, “Are you going to adopt then?” I’d been officially barren for all of ten minutes and already I knew everything I needed to know about my predicament: Keep it to yourself. Because no one will know what to say. Even those who should know better.
I know I should, but I take no comfort in the shared experience of infertility – the message boards and support groups of other women who’ve gone down this same road. I spent only a few minutes on one of those message boards and felt nothing but disdain at the weight of this unbearable disappointment being condensed into pithy acronyms by women whose hopes were made and dashed by the indeterminate differences in the firmness of their cervices or the soreness of their boobs. I have nothing to say to women whose periods they still call Aunt Flo or refer to sex as a Baby Dance. Grow the fuck up.
“You’re all fucking idiots,” I whisper back at my iPad and switch over to the news (also replete with idiocy) before landing an episode of Veep. There’s an odd sort of comfort in foul language.
The disdain is directed inwardly, too, and so much more malicious. I’ve been filled, until there is no space left for much else, with a self-loathing that words cannot form an adequate description of. It’s hate, raw and ugly. And no one can understand it. Not my husband. Not my sisters (two of whom are pregnant, incidentally). And the silence makes the hate run even deeper and colder. You have to hide it, you know. There’s not really room in the world for people who feel so much ugliness.
Some days, though, there’s an odd sort of perkiness to this new reality of mine. I think about all the vacations we can take without a bit of guilt. About all the things I can have and the temper tantrums I won’t have to endure. But that’s false and fleeting. Mostly what I am is numb.
If you sent in a donation to help with the sick kittens a couple months ago and you did not get a thank you note – I’m sorry! I sent them! Perhaps without stamps on them (or something similarly stupid), because some people aren’t getting thank you notes and they haven’t come back to me, so it’s the only thing I can think happened. Plus, it’s totally something I would do when dumb from sleep deprivation.
Please don’t think I forgot you or I was being rude. I’m going to send out a new batch this weekend (I’ve already put stamps on the envelopes!) and make it right.
Dick and Jane are my tenth and eleventh rescues since moving into our house last May. Each time I say, “I’m done! NO MORE KITTENS!” – when my heart feels worn out and my shoulders ache with the tension of worrying over the well-being of these tiny creatures, over whether I’m doing it right – the neighborhood delivers another wayfaring furkid. Surprise! The feral population on our street alone is a tremendous and heartbreaking problem. An epidemic. And sometimes, I feel so overwhelmed by this fierce personal responsibility I feel to each and every abandoned, mistreated, deserving animal. And that’s why “NO MORE KITTENS!” turned into “OKAY, JUST THESE TWO KITTENS.” Because someone has to do the right thing.
Dick and Jane came running down the sidewalk on Sunday night. I was on the front lawn, waving to a neighbor when they came sprinting, darting into the road. Their story is particularly sad. Two weeks ago, at ten weeks old, they were thrown out of a neighbor’s house to fend for themselves – because one of them was having problems with the litter box. I have since come to realize that he is terrified of it. My mind reels with images of possible abuses. What’s more, they hadn’t eaten in days. The abandoner didn’t want to leave food on the front porch, “because [she] didn’t want all the other stray cats to eat it.”
I know all this BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME.
Nonchalantly. Like animal abuse and abandonment is totally understandable.
It’s sickening.
So, now they’ve been to the vet, gotten their first vaccinations, tested negative for diseases and parasites, and our litterbox-shy friend is improving drastically in that area. The most devastating part of this just might be how much they simply want to be loved. They can be in the middle of the craziest kitten romp (pounce! tumble! chase!), but the minute I sit down, they climb into my lap and purr themselves to sleep.
Please share this post with anyone you think may be able to open their home to Dick and Jane.
These beauties come in a matching set (I am most firmly set against separating them, considering the trauma they have gone through) and come in a fashionable silvery gray – a complement to even the most sophisticated fall wardrobe!
We are, it would seem, squarely out of the woods. And our minds.
The little one who wouldn’t play? Now she won’t stop. Nelly not pictured in the video. She was off plundering and/or conquering foreign lands. I’m now pretty convinced she’s half Viking.
“The good part is, you will be able to put them down humanely.”
I stared at the vet tech, put my hand over my mouth and choked on a sob. At eight weeks old, the kittens had contracted feline distemper, a virus that, with rare exceptions, is lethal in kittens. Mama cat had been adopted the day before and the antibodies from her breast milk had run their course. The kittens were defenseless.
“We call it the ‘wasting away disease,’” she said. “Their immune systems are simply too immature to fight it.”
When the tech took the kittens into the back to make them more comfortable with fluids and anti-nausea injections, I sank into a chair and cried, my mouth buried in the crook of my arm to muffle the sound of hysteria. A text from my mother read, “Best thing is to say goodbye.” Our family had dealt with distemper before. It was devastating.
I gathered up the kittens, the antibiotic I knew we had little hope of keeping in their violently churning tummies, paid the vet and went home to cry pitilessly into my husband’s shoulder. Once the kittens had fallen asleep, I began scouring the internet for information on Feline Panleukopenia. I shouldn’t have. It was horrifying. Nothing I read gave me any hope of them lasting more than three days; I understood then why the vet had only given me five days worth of medication. He knew they would be dead before it ran out.
Medical science told me to let them go. But I could not. My reading told me that the virus was like the parvo virus in dogs. Our family had dealt with parvo before, too. It required around-the-clock, intensive care, forced fluids and nutrition. And faith. Else, how could you spend hour after hour battling something you can’t see? If I could keep the kittens alive long enough to develop antibodies against the virus, they could make it. But first I had to take on fever spikes, drops in body temperature, shock and dehydration. So I held them while they shivered, tucked them inside my sweatshirt and cried streams of snot onto my sleeve. “I’m sorry,” I said, over and over. “You deserve better than this. Better than me.”
In-hospital care would have cost $500 per kitten, per day. It was simply not an option for us. I was eaten up with remorse and guilt.
Day Two: Monday
Every two hours, day and night, I gathered up the babies and squirted Pedialyte from a syringe into their tiny mouths. They shuddered and cried and I stroked their backs while I whispered, “Please don’t throw up. Please don’t throw up.” They did anyway. We took two trips, one in the morning and one at night, to the vet for fluids and anti-nausea injections. At 4:00AM, Nelly drank on her own. Nelly, who twelve hours before had convinced me of the doctor’s advice to let them go. Each time her body heaved to throw up, bloody water came out the other end.
“How long can I let them go on like this?” I asked my husband, a hand over my face to hide the ugliness of my agony.
“Until you know the medicine will or won’t work.”
With Nelly stabilizing, I had a bit of hope we could save at least one. The others fought through unbearable nausea and debilitating diarrhea, crying when their stomachs cramped hard enough to force thin, foamy water from their otherwise empty tummies.
My husband woke me between feedings. “What happened? Is everything okay?” I had been crying in my sleep.
Day Three: Tuesday
I took another sick day to nurse the kittens, sleeping while they slept. Two more trips to the vet (after a kind and generous gift from a Facebook friend I’d never even met, continued care was made much more doable) and countless attempts at peeling Nelly off my yoga pants when she’d scamper up them to perch on my shoulder like a parrot. The runt of the litter, it both surprised me and didn’t that she had such verve. Such fight. When she went into the litter box and, for the first time in days, did not cry, I clapped when she produced a real poop. No one has ever been so happy to see poop, ever. Twelve hours later, Hamilton followed suit.
Day Four: Wednesday
With two kittens stabilized and two still showing little progress, I had to go back to work, stomach sick from constant worry. Gentry wouldn’t eat and Holly wouldn’t engage. At lunch, I went home to do a round of fluids and food and as I cradled Gentry, I heard a sound – the slightest little hint, barely perceptible, that he had a stuffy nose. Kittens who can’t smell don’t eat. I ran to the bathroom where the Little Noses baby nose spray was from our last Mission Impossible: Kitten Rescue and dosed him up. By evening, he was going back for thirds.
Day Five: Thursday
Holly isn’t much for playing yet (aside from toying with the string on my sweatshirt) but she’s eating, drinking and cuddling – no longer choosing to slink off and sleep alone under the sofa. Nelly and Hamilton are driving. me. effing. crazy. Which is to say, they feel great. Gentry is getting there, too.
I told my boss that I was going to sleep through the night and start wearing eye makeup again, because I feel safe in saying, we did it, no more crying. Yeah, it will have to be bargain basement eye make-up after $850 in vet bills over four days, but ask me if that’s too much to pay not to have to euthanize four eight-week-old babies. Or don’t ask; just have a look for yourself.
Nelly & Hamilton (who still needs a mommy)
Holly & Gentry
And last but not least, Mama Nox, in her new home with her new favorite boy, Caleb. All but Hamilton have new homes to go to (as soon as they’re all better) but this adoption gives me the most joy. I worried and worried and worried (as I do) that Mama Cat wouldn’t find a home. But someone scooped her up into a loving home with a little boy who wants nothing more than a kitty of his own to sleep on his bed. My heart hurts, a little, with how happy that makes me.
Hoo-boy, am I in a fix. To make a long story short, on Sunday, I rescued a mother cat and 4 3-week-old babies. The mother was starving so she was very amenable to being scooped up by the resident cat whisperer and is quite contentedly living in our spare room/office.
For now.
I am taking care of 9 cats. It’s exhausting. And expensive.
These lovely creatures need homes. They are the sweetest most exquisite little beings. I’ve spent the last several days hand-feeding the babies while mama got her strength back. What a handful! Last night, we learned how to lap from a dish! It was all very exciting. Everyone is getting strong, healthy and adventurous and so playful.
Here are some factoids:
1. Four babies and 1 mama, all very adoptable. The mama is less than a year old, sweet as anything and I’ve never met a cat who wanted to be loved so much. I get a lump in my throat thinking about what she went through, being uncared for.
2. Two boys, two girls. Currently named after Texas Rangers. KittenFace Gentry (don’t tell the others that he’s my favorite), Hamilton, Nelly and Holly (after Holland).
3. I will get them all fixed if I have to. I just can’t keep them. NINE CATS. DID YOU HEAR ME? NINE.
Please, pretty please, email me (thisfish at gmail dot com) if you live in the area and would like to meet them. Even if you can only foster! The no-kill shelters in the area are currently full but that won’t always be the case.
Please pass this on to anyone else you may know who has a big heart with room for a little fuzzball. The idea that they might not go to loving homes keeps me up at night with worry. They are so very sweet and helpless.
We are going out of state on the 25th – I’m desperate to get them caring parents by that time.
It’s impossible to get stills of these little guys right now – they wiggle! So here’s some video I captured a couple days ago.
I’m still here. I have no intention of shutting down my blog completely, which is why I haven’t posted the official sign-off some of you are asking for. I might not have much to talk about right now, but that doesn’t mean it will always be that way.
In fact, last week, my nephew Andrew was born, which is among the most meaningful things I have ever participated in. His dad got very ill and I stepped in as birth partner to my sister. Extraordinarily moving. And I was going to post about it, but then I got back to my email and lo and behold, there were quite a few about the blog. And among the friendly how-are-you emails were a handful of why-haven’t-you-posted? and don’t-you-owe-your-readers-better? emails and it started to feel burdensome, right out of the gate.
Doing something out of obligation sucks all of the joy right out of it and all I want is to love it again, to actually need it again. Which may or may not make sense to you.
I’m living Ground Hog Day. Wherein Ground Hog Day is actually Pay the Bills Day. We’re living and working and sleeping and eating all with the goal of paying off our debt so we can start a family. We meet financial goals by maintaining a strict budget and we maintain a strict budget by not doing jack shit. That’s just the way it be. It is boring and repetitive and stifling sometimes. And it certainly isn’t anything to write about.
Since December of 2010, we have paid off roughly forty thousand dollars of credit card and student loan debt. We have about half of that left to pay and even typing that sentence makes me want to retreat back into the quiet of my spreadsheet. See?
It’s just the way things are and it won’t always be. So while I’m sorry to those I have offended by not making a proper exit, it’s just not something I’m ready to do.
Andrew Michael Christensen. Hours old and minutes away from puking down my shirt.
Upon review, the mention of Elizabeth Smart was used a punch line. A feeble, and tasteless attempt at a joke. It wasn’t mean to be mean spirited, but still–it was over the line
I regularly meet with the morning show, and all the on air staff here. It is their job to entertain in the “Ticket style” and sometimes in those attempts to be funny, they cross the line. When they do, it is my job to point out when they do cross the line, why, and how. I discussed this with the guys, and they had received email about it too. And they also told me when the segment was over, they immediately felt they could’ve gone to far and felt bad about it.
Generally speaking, some topics (rape being one of them) just aren’t funny–no matter what.
Jeff
I haven’t heard an apology on air, and there wasn’t one in that letter. I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s not quite good enough.
Jeff,
Will they be making an on-air apology?
Heather
And we wait.
No they won’t.
Here is why, in part. Having done this for the past 18 years or so, its been my experience that an on air apology only causes further attention to a mistake that is already out there–and shouldn’t be revisited. I don’t want them to explain the joke, then the mystery created when they don’t explain it, causes a stir among the audience and makes it a greater issue due to runaway imaginations.
They made a mistake. I pointed it out to them, they already felt bad about it. It was addressed in a meeting and now they have to be allowed to correct it moving forward.
This is not unlike dealing with kids in many ways!
Jeff
I think I’m going to outsource all of my apologizing from now on. Who wants the job?
While not unexpected, I find your answer — particularly the last statement — to be so intriguing. One, I probably wouldn’t let kids run my radio station, but that’s beside the point. And two, from my 18 or so years of experience *being* a kid, I can tell you that were I in the wrong, I’d have been marched right over to whomever I wronged and been made to apologize (there’s this whole stealing gum incident that’s etched pretty clearly in my memory). My parents certainly didn’t do the apologizing for me, either. A “they felt bad” is not nearly the same thing as the culpable person saying, “I’m sorry.” Obviously this must be the industry standard, protecting the talent, but it seems very… unmanly.
But like you said, Kids.
So, while acknowledging it directly is clearly out of the question, I’m sure we all (your advertisers included) can look forward to the Musers’ eventual Public Service Announcement. Perhaps it can be a Limbaugh/Ticket joint production.
And honestly, I don’t look forward to the conversation in which I tell the Dork Lord that I’ve been boat-rockin’ his favorite radio station (I think he gets a wee bit weary of my ‘the world should be a better place’ on an endless loop). After reading some of your comments, however, I decided that it might be more effective to take my complaint to the source (and perhaps change something) than let it loose in the ethers to bounce around aimlessly.
Here’s my email to the program director:
Good afternoon Jeff,
I’ve debated with myself about sending this – whether or not there’s a point; what kind of outcome it could have. But I think it’s important, if only to say that I spoke up.
Here is what I know:
Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped when she was 14 years old. Taken as a “wife” by an insane man, she was raped and abused in ways that most would consider torture. Nine months later, she was found. Elizabeth Smart grew up, went to college and became a victims’ advocate for child abductions.
Smart married over the weekend.
Yesterday morning, I was listening as someone on your show referred to the event as her “second marriage.”
I was stunned. One, at the reference to her teenage ordeal as a “marriage,” and two, that no one on the show stopped to say, “Hey, man, that’s not cool.”
The comment doesn’t just show a lack of taste, but a disturbing lack of humanity and compassion for the victim of a brutal crime. Look, I get that it’s a bit. My husband reminds me about that almost every morning when I wrinkle my nose at some eye-roll inducing comment by Gordo, et al. But this isn’t Kim Kardashian we’re having a big old laugh about. It’s a child rape victim. And whatever lines a person should or should not cross on the airwaves, I think mocking a child rape victim is one of them.
Morality is such a fuzzy thing, especially in the entertainment business. What’s right, what’s wrong, what makes a buck, what doesn’t. Believe me, I know. I think, though, that in this instance, it’s pretty clear that what was said wasn’t just wrong, it was gross.
Further, the segment went on to touch on “Lizzie Smart” and the emotional “baggage” she must have brought to that marriage. I will venture to guess that your hosts are unaware that statistically speaking, one in four women will have survived a rape or attempted rape by the time they are 14 years old. Your hosts are likely the husbands, brothers, uncles or fathers of a sexual assault victim. And yet.
Showing sensitivity to subjects like rape might not be entertaining, but it’s the right thing to do. It also makes marketing sense. Why?
Women are listening to your show. I’m listening to your show and I’m a pretty fair representation of the fastest growing demographic of sports fan. I’m a 30-something-year-old female sports fan, in charge of the household finances (and on top of it, a blogger with decent following). I’m one of three women in my department alone who stream the Ticket at work. Or women who did. After yesterday, I am not certain I will continue to listen. It seems like while sexism is simply an unfortunate part of the sports radio bit, yesterday crossed a line that made me realize I had a decision to make. Stand up or shut up.
I have chosen to stand up.
Thank you for your time, Jeff. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Heather Hunter
Here is his response:
Thanks Heather- I saw your blog. I have not had a chance to go back and review the segment and the comments myself. I did not hear them live yesterday.
Before I respond to your email, or address this with the guys, I need to hear it.
I appreciate where you are coming from–
thanks for the note
Jeff Catlin
What’s next, I suppose, is that he listens to the show and decides for himself whether the comment merits any discussion. Look, I’m not asking for heads on platters; I just want some respect for those who deserve it and for someone to acknowledge that rape is not ‘bit’ material.
In the morning, while we’re getting ready for work, my and I husband listen to The Ticket – a sports radio station here in Dallas. The morning show, Dunham and Miller, ranges from sports chitchat to celebrity birthdays to news tidbits.
In general, I like sports radio. In general. But every so often, this show in particular crosses a line that gets my hackles up. The ever-so-patronizing Women Say the Darndest Things About Sports segment, for instance, or more recently, the post-Grammy reference to Adele’s lineage as possible “chimney sweeps” because of her accent. But today. Today was not sexist or narrow-minded or crass. It was soulless.
Elizabeth Smart (who you remember was kidnapped at 14, raped and abused by a man who had taken her as his ‘wife’ before she was miraculously discovered wandering the streets nine months later and who went on to become a victims’ advocate) married over the weekend. Mazel tov!
The show’s host congratulated Smart on her “second marriage.”
I was stunned. In part, because the banter kept going without anyone pausing to say, “Whoa, man, that’s wrong,” like was done moments later when another voice piped in to question what kind of “baggage” a girl like “Lizzie Smart” must bring to a marriage. Frankly, I was stunned that someone could muster the bile to say that in the first place.
A million angry bubbles formed in my chest. Second marriage. Just like that. Like it’s Kim Kardashian we’re talking about and not a survivor of rape and systematic torture. The glibness of his comment, made from where he sits, behind a microphone, safe in the statistical unlikelihood that something bad (actually really bad – not like a scare at the dermatologist’s office) will ever happen to him, well, it makes me shake my head.
Because it’s disgusting. Arrogant and ignorant.
And just in case it needs to be said in regard to “Lizzie Smart” and her “baggage,” the statistics currently go a little something like this:
One in Four college women report surviving rape (15 percent) or attempted rape (12 percent) since their fourteenth birthday. And the lack of respectful dialogue about victims means that many, many more go unreported. You know what that says? It says Elizabeth Smart is not the only one bringing something heavy with her to a marriage. She may be in company with, say, the wife, daughter, niece or sister of a clueless sports radio personality.
You guys. I’m sorry to be so absent, but I just don’t have anything to say. I’m not even interesting to myself right now and for the first time in a long time, don’t actually have a single story to tell. Everything in the last year was so full of turmoil or stress of one kind or another, my current day-to-day, in comparison, is so spectacularly dull. I mean, getting my very first ticket ever was this big nothing. I got pulled over. I got my ticket. I went on with life and because it wasn’t say, getting robbed or trying to save someone you love from starving themselves to death, the blemishing of my perfect record wasn’t quite the crisis situation I’d have imagined it to be.
My days go a little something like this: I go to work at a job I tragically, really like, so you know, there’s no drama to dig up there. I come home to a husband I also really like. Sometimes we talk about his Chemistry homework. Sometimes we bake things. Most times we pile on the couch with our fur children and stay there real cozy like until bedtime. Lather, rinse, repeat.
See? Spectacularly dull.
You know Picasso’s Blue Period? Clearly this is Heather’s Lazy Period. And without the gift of retrospect, I have no idea how long it’s going to last. I do know that for someone who is (probably unhealthily) innervated by crisis, all this peace and quiet has been a bit disquieting. Naturally, I tell myself to enjoy it while it lasts but come on. Enjoy what? Seriously, give me a limping kitten to save or a dilapidated shack to renovate because, oh my god, I need something to do.
This week, I flew halfway across the country to participate in an intervention for someone I love desperately. The intervention failed. We failed. I’m pretty sure that goes down in the books as the worst day of my life.
There’s a lot of brain energy – soul energy – that goes into an intervention. Weeks and months of worry and planning, so much heaviness hanging from such spindly threads of hope and then, in the aftermath, you’re left with so much nothingness. Food you don’t really taste and sleep that can’t leave you rested. And then there’s the anger, because everyone needs someone else to blame. Oddly, it feels like the dress rehearsal for mourning.
