What I have been up to for the past year and a half

So the posts previous to this one are some of the things that I wrote while I have been gone from my little blog. I was writing for a blog that a few friends started as a spin off of the Apron Stage called the Peanut Gallery Speaks. These posts do not represent everything that was written in that time for that blog, but it is what I have saved to my computer. So here it is.

It's funny, looking back through all of these posts, remembering how fun it is to write. How fun it is to write with the reckless abandon and relative anonymity of a Blogspotter. It's nice to remember who I am. I'm Traci, Dammit. So many things have changed in my life in the past year and a half but hopefully my love of sitting around and typing my own stream-of-consiousness bullshit will live forever! And between you and me, as of right now, that love is feeling pretty strong.

So, possibly two people who still read this, let's get this party wagon back on the road.

I fell in love recently with two blue eyes, ten sausagy fingers, one bald head. I am completely in love with this kid who cannot even lift his hand without poking himself in the eye. He spits on me and we both laugh, I think his poop smells nice. It's ridiculous, he's ridiculous - I'm ridiculous. I'm in love I'm in love and I don't care who knows it.
I think we have to feel like that, because some of the things you find as a parent are absolutely horrifying. For example; did anyone know that a circumsision can just not take? That you can circumsize a kid and his penis might just refuse to break up with it's foreskin, and reattach itself? Weird. Did you know that it is possible to completely plug your nostril with one solid booger? Or that breastfeeding baby boys can lactate? Or that one in every thousand children are born with a underdeveloped extra digit? These are the things I never wanted to know but now do because I'm a mom.
And it doesn't stop there. Kids think the bath tub drain is going to suck them up, they hit each other because they want to be friends. They can watch the same movie for weeks at a time. They have stomachs like billygoats and imaginary friends. They can swing all day and not get sick - it's just not right. And my life has been taken over by these little weirdos. They interact with stangers as though they have a delightful cocktail of Tourettes and Aspergers.
It's hilarious when it's not mortifying.
Really, that sums it up. Hilarious when it's not mortifying, heaven when it's not misery, and when it's not drudgery it's complete, utter bliss.
And when I think about it like this I want a million more six fingered, booger nosed, lactating, snotbrats just like 'em.

Pulling out of Lactation Station

My fourth and last child is ten months old. I have to remind myself of this roughly every fifteen minutes. Wasn't I laying in my twin bed, praying for boobs yesterday? I thought so, but somehow an eleven year old is sitting in my kitchen baking a cake - trippy. I feel like that stoner in high school who was somehow always surprised he has hands. It's a very elementary fact in my life that I find endlessly bewildering and fascinating.

Pardon the informality, but I have breastfed every child. I'm sure at some point I would have said that with an air of superiority, but I was pretty young back then. I am old enough now to have no opinion on a whole list of things, and breastfeeding is at the top of that list...for other people anyway. I have an opinion for myself. It has to stop.

Simon, my ten month old, disagrees. Imagine being in a prison camp for ten years eating nothing but moldy rice and dirty water. Now imagine coming home to your first bite of apple pie. Your eyes roll into the back of your head, you heave an involuntary sigh of relief and delight. Happy times are hear again. This is the face Simon makes every time I feed him. Every. Single. Time. He wiggles his tiny little baby body in an effort to be even closer to me and then, as he's eating, looks up at me with love and gratitude and, while still eating, the corners of his mouth upturn and he smiles.

“Why would you want that to stop?” one might ask. The answer is because I am stone cold. Six years of having people dependent on your physical person for sustenance does that to you. There comes a point in every female life, I am sure, when you have to say “alright you pack of parasites, enough is enough”. No matter how cute the parasite, a line must be drawn at some point and for me that time is now. (note to self; potential children's book idea in there somewhere.)

But do I have my moments of regret? No.

Because the next time I wear a full length dress - or forgo the breast pads in my bra - my eyes will roll back in my head, I will heave an involuntary sigh of relief and delight.

Happy times are here again.

My Life in Limbo

I realize that this might sound annoying, but in these times of economic uncertainty, I have found an embarrassing amount of possibility has opened up to my family. It might be kind of braggy, but I would argue that I am due. My husband and I spent the first five years of our marriage pursuing his dream of being an airline pilot - this was right before the bottom fell out of the airline industry - and an aviation degree does not come cheap. We then embarked on the plan B college track just to get a decent job. We also decided to go with the “buy high sell low” trend for real estate that has been all the rage these days, but now, after years of financial beatings and general wandering about, hauling our student loan debt as we go, here we are with a veritable buffet of choices before us.

I don't like it.

I think I've gotten so comfy in survival mode that having the future wide open seems not quite right, like those stairs that have no railing you see in modern contemporary houses. You know that you’re going to make it down the stairs, but all of that open space just feels wrong. We are dealing with a lot of open space so here are the choices

Choice A is stay in Utah, in our house, make it pretty, stay in the PTA and Cub Scouts and generally realizing my dreams of Leaving It to Beaver. Maintain long term/short distance friendships, which is a change from the short term/long distance relationships that are my current social interactions of choice and start Art school.

Choice 2) The same as choice A but do it in Washington. It's cool and misty there, my family is there and I generally love it.

Choice C – pull a Rebecca Smylie and join the Foreign Service, enjoy international life of mystery and become a national treasure (that's a given, right? Even now I'm changing the Mary Tyler Moore Show lyrics to the Traci McKay Show lyrics – Who can spread democracy with her smile?)

I think I've decided that it is harder to choose between two great choices than having one clear, obvious choice – unfortunately I am a few steps behind Stephanie Meyer in realizing that or I would be a rich novelist right now, because I'm guessing Twilight would not have been quite as popular if Bella was forced to choose between a hot, super human vampire with soulful eyes and a guy named Larry who loves Renaissance fairs.

So after a life of Larry choices it's time to choose between my Edward and Jacob...

Man, I kinda miss Larry.

*You have my word, PGS, from here on out I will do my utmost to abstain from Twilight references.

Cooking 101

I remember thinking as a child that in the future I would somehow have found a way to get my act together. I would imagine my mature self keeping my room clean, doing my homework on time, becoming a morning person, retaining information because my mind no longer wandered, you know, stuff that people do when they are fully cooked individuals.

I'm being generous when I say I am half baked, if anything. To stretch a bad metaphor even further, at this point I'm beginning to suspect I'm missing some ingredients all together. Let's review what thirty years of maturing has gotten me;

I'm still shocking late to everything. But now I also make a small band of angry children late to everything as well. They are conspiring to become less small band and more rebel force, I know it.

My hygiene has improved marginally, unfortunately, as one ages one must add more steps to the daily toilette, so (after a quick pit check to confirm) yep, I'm still behind.

I remember sitting in my bedroom, staring at the insurmountable task of cleaning before me, knowing that future me would never let things progress to this level. Good ol' future me, she thinks ahead and just hangs that shirt up. She is like a human Roomba in her bedroom maintaining efficiency. She would never serve real peanut butter and jelly to her bears for lunch, and if she did she would throw it away when she was done, not leave it on the floor, and if she did that she would never drop a pair of pants over it, and if she did she would never walk on those pants.

And if she did she would never wear those pants to school.

Future me is still just me. And thinking about it now, I have progressed. Because would not wear old peanut butter and jelly pants. Today me would draw the line at old! And today me spends a lot less of my days inwardly groaning and wishing myself away. Today me knows that some things are probably going to change only marginally, but that might be just enough to get by completely pleasantly for a very long time. Today me knows that very few things I am personally capable of would end the world, nothing, actually. Today me is still just me, but with perspective.

And with that I can miss a few ingredients and no one will know the difference, it's like adding garlic, or chocolate chips- enough perspective and you can camouflage monkey poop.

And I think lessons on camoflauging monkey poop in food is a very strong way to close, I'm not actually feeding you garlic monkey poop!

See! It's works and I am a genius.

“Mom, come out here and look at your son.”

Oh, how that is the real test, the test of my life.

He's calling to me from the living room. He just bit into a Sugar Daddy and pulled a loose tooth out. He's eight. He's so eight. Just everything about an eight year old boy – the crazy eight year old teeth, the gangly, floppy gate when he's being silly, the exuberance. And as I am plucking my face in the bathroom I hear him, and I know that if my life were a novel, this would be the foreshadowing of what is to come.

I wonder how well I step away from my ideas of how he's doing, or how I think he should be doing, and see him for what he is. Love him for what he is. Sometimes I think I'm tempted to keep ideas of the people I love locked in my heart, my collection of huggable dolls – rather than loving them in reality, apart from the way I would like them and their actions to relate to me.

I know that I can't, and wouldn't want to, know the full reality. There are some things that are decidedly not for me, who he is with friends, with God. But there are so many people in my own life that I would love to show my whole self to but I know our relationship could not sustain a full disclosure.

I love him. And every day it's a choice and a challenge to love him as completely as I can – on his terms, not mine.

I live in Salt Lake City.

My husband, Dave, grew up here. He went to high school here, he went to college here, all of his family lives here. When we go to the grocery store he tells me about the time he vandalized that store as a thirteen year old. We go for a walk by our house and he can tell me about the places we pass, who lived there, where he broke his arm on a trampoline, the driveway where a friend's dad had them all squish their hand prints into the cement. Our financial planner is Dave's high school buddy. Our pediatrician is across the street from the apartment complex he lived in when we met.

I think this is weird.

I have always felt a little bit strange about the whole concept of former boyfriends Facebook friending me. I feel that if your tongue has ever touched mine there is never a good time to try and rekindle that relationship, no matter how friendly you want to keep it, thank you very much. But if you grew up where you live you could see that guy at the grocery store, or your ninth grade Spanish teacher at he DMV. That girl who never let you sit at her lunch table? She could be asking you if you want fries with that (yeah, that's never happened to me either, but I can dream, can't I?).

I had a baby two weeks ago. I was attached to a bunch of medical doohickeys so when I had to use the bathroom my husband came in to hold up all medical apperati. Unbeknownst to us in all of our maneuvering the nurse's call button had been pushed and a nurse came rushing in, thinking that I must have fallen or was in distress.

She opened the door. “Is everything O.K.?”

Dave and I both looked at her, a little bewildered.

“The call button was pushed, are you alright?”

We realized what was going on and I told her that I didn't know how we had managed to push the button but that we were fine.

Just then my husband says “Sheri? Sheri Nelson? Brad's's little sister, right? I'm Dave McKay.”

“Oh my gosh, Dave! I haven't seen you in ages! How are you doing!?”

“Well, were great, we're having a baby! This is my wife Traci-”

Dave turns to introduce me and we all realize that yep, I'm still nine months pregnant, on a toilet in a backless gown.

“Um, Hi, nice to meet you, Sheri.”

We need to move.