Sugar and Spice

Mother Goose once told us that young females are comprised of “sugar, spice and everything nice” but I beg to differ. At age four, I was fairly certain that my daughter K.C. was made up of “screeches and pouts and ferocious, mad shouts” instead. She went from an infant who was colicky for her first six months to a whiney, defiant young waif who ruthlessly nagged me for hours on end.

I know what you are thinking – If she were YOUR kid you’d put a quick end to THAT behavior. Yes, I used to look at other misbehaving children in the supermarket and think the same thing. Jacob was so easy-going and well-behaved and prior to K.C.’s arrival I was certain I must be quite the successful mother. All kids go through the “terrible two’s” or even the “terrible threes” in one way or another, but with Jacob I was always able to redirect poor behavior by starting a game of “who can find the Cheerio’s” or threatening to take a favorite toy away.

I once applauded my parental prowess and patted my own back on more than one occasion for never allowing whining, temper tantrums or the like in my home or in my presence. I now know that what I thought was good parenting was simply a good combination of personalities in a child/parent relationship. K.C. swiftly and methodically showed me what a great parent I was not.

I have never allowed whining or responded to requests in that voice that hits the eardrums like fingernails on a chalk board. That’s the number one rule, right? I used to believe that if a parent did not respond to or reward whining, the child would stop. Jacob probably tried whining twice, and when he realized it did not work, he stopped and hasn’t tried it since.

I also was under the incorrect assumption that children learn to speak from their parents and will imitate parental tone and inflection. For whatever reason, the tones emitting from my middle child resembled more of a squeaky door hinge than a human voice. Where had I gone wrong, and why did she continue to use this “voice” though every time she was made to repeat her requests in a “nice” voice?

I believe this particular whine comes from the cellars of Nature vs. Nurture. In this case, Nature is the main influence. I did not whine as a child, nor did my siblings. I do not tolerate whining as an adult, yet my daughter proved to me time and again that she is not me. She did not think the same way I do nor did she respond to threats the way I might have responded at age four.

I was always quite a tomboy. I loved stuffed animals and Hot Wheels cars, but had little use for dolls or makeup. In fact I was given a Barbie doll on my fifth birthday. I did find some use for her… I took her legs off and used them as tent poles for GI Joe’s campsite. Barbie legs also make good obstacles for toy horses to navigate in imaginary horse shows.

K.C. seems to be much more of a “girlie-girl” than I ever was or will be. I do wear makeup to work and for social occasions, but never if I am just hanging about the house. K.C. has seen me put on my makeup and at age two started asking for a drop of lip gloss every now and again. By her fourth birthday she had more makeup than I do, yet she was still far more interested in MY makeup than her own.

Having received two sets of makeup for her fourth birthday, we had already had a number of minor mishaps. A large hot-pink stain appeared on the carpet in her bedroom, and her psycho-gene was already showing up in obscure lipstick messages on the bathroom mirror. As a result, I decided to put her makeup in a “time out” for a few days.

One Saturday afternoon, it occurred to me that it had been quite some while since I’d had my four-year-old hanging about my ankles. As it was not her nature to entertain herself for more than a few minutes, I set off to find what she had gotten into. As I peeked into my own bedroom, I heard some quiet noises from the master bathroom.

I knew if I made my presence known, I would be met only with a wildly guilty look and I might never know whose toothbrush she had been scrubbing the toilet with. Instead, I snuck quietly to the bathroom door and peeked through. There was my little pumpkin and our white bulldog, Brandy Ann, sitting facing each other. You must understand that Brandy Ann is about the most patient, sweet-natured creatures on this earth. Indeed, she was sitting patiently as K.C. was giving her a makeover that would have made Tammy Faye Baker look clean-scrubbed.

As I pushed the door open and exclaimed “K.C.!” in a loud voice, Brandy Ann raised her blue shadowed eyebrows and nervously licked her strawberry-glossed lips in surprise.
“I didn’t do it!” K.C. screeched as she sped past me, making for the security of the small space under the bed in her room.
Brandy Ann stood up nervously, knowing she’d been caught as an accomplice in this indescribable crime of fashion. Her small bulldog tail nub was pressed against her backside and her innocent eyes ringed in green eyeliner followed me as I turned and left the bathroom. The lines between the guilty and the innocent were a bit fuzzy in this particular case.

I’d love to tell you that I marched myself straight back to K.C.’s bedroom to exact a punishment proportionate to the crime, but that would be a lie. I was laughing too hard to do much of anything other than turn back to the bathroom and start picking white dog hairs off the collection of open makeup scattered about the floor. I needed a little time to gather my composure enough to face the small, remorseless make-up-artist under the bed.

Later that day I moved the mangled remains of my own make-up collection to a higher shelf, away from artistic little hands. I did, however, allow Brandy Ann to trot proudly about the house for the rest of the day made up like a two-dollar whore.

I finally broke down and went to a child specialist for help. To my consternation, we left the office with a prescription for Zoloft which is an anti-depressant. My dear K.C. was diagnosed with Oppositional Defiance Disorder (or ODD). This “disorder” is caused by low serotonin levels in the brain. A child will repeat bad behaviors because each time she does something naughty or gets punished, she will get a “rush.” How interesting that my daughter is getting high from misbehaving. We always thought she was a bit... odd.

She comes by her serotonin issues honestly, I suppose. My paternal grandmother was a bit nuts, my brother was completely whacked, my sister once had a habit of washing her hands about 68 thousand times a day and my dad and I were always a bit too anxious about nothing in general. So perhaps it was my fault… in a way.

We never mentioned to K.C. that she was going to be getting medication at all. We simply put it in a cup of milk with enough Strawberry Quick to send any other healthy person into a diabetic coma. Within a week of putting K.C. on Zoloft at the ripe old age of four, there were changes. BIG changes. She no longer spent 8 hours a day in time out, she still had toys left in her room and she became… happy. After the first week on her medication she came to me, looked up at me with her big, brown eyes and said, “I don’t cry anymore, mommy! I’m happy now!” Though I once may have cringed at the notion of putting a child on medication, my new, improved and happier version of K.C. 4.0 made it all worth while. Would Tom Cruise agree? Well if not, I will happily loan him my middle child and allow him to taste that unaltered vintage of whine for himself.

Cheers!

Chapter… whatever

So, pregnancy was as smooth as sandpaper with nails sticking through it and encrusted in broken glass. By some miracle my boss was very understanding of my little life-altering surprise and allowed me to take on the lower-stress position of Bill Collector/Bounty Hunter/Call People and Bitch at Them. We shortened the title to Collections though honestly I prefer Goddess of Company Wealth.

Though the position was far different from any other I’d ever held, I actually wasn’t bad at it. The company was small but growing, and the Collections area needed a creative makeover. It was actually quite fun figuring out where all the problems were and finding creative solutions for them. I think I even surprised myself with some of the major changes I made in inter-company communications (I knew that degree would come in useful some day).

As my belly grew, so did my job responsibilities and, oh yeah, my blood pressure. High blood pressure is a bad thing when one is not pregnant. When pregnant, it’s like an evil mother-in-law taking up residence in the room right next to the master suite… on the headboard side of the wall. Though I did my best to take it easy, the numbers on my home blood pressure monitor climbed steadily. By 20 weeks my doctor wanted me to stop working. Of course I stopped working immediately. Immediately after the tenth of the next month. First he throws Prunes at me and then he acts like paychecks grow on trees. What was up with this doctor?

At 28 weeks of pregnancy I made the mistake of going in for a routine fetal non-stress test. The “bun” proved to be doing just fine, but the “oven” was getting a little too hot. The staff would not even let me go out to the parking lot to grab a pre-packed suitcase from the trunk of my car. I was given one of those lovely fanny emphasizing robes that ties in the back, and being 28 weeks pregnant I had to have help with those poorly-placed low-tech fastening devices.

Taking up temporary residence in the hospital was an experience. There’s nothing like sleeping on a plastic-covered mattress loosely covered with one thin sheet in the one ward of the hospital that is kept extra warm. Finding a comfortable position while pregnant is hard enough without attempting to stuff a plastic pillow between your knees for hip support. I was given the option of laying on my left side or getting repeatedly reprimanded for shifting to my right side when my left side became sore. By day two my old back injury was acting up, and by day four I called one of my best friends who happens to be a Chiropractor to come “visit” me. I felt so much better by the time she left that my blood pressure went down to 150 over 98 for an hour or two.

By Sunday, August 6^th my blood pressure was back up just a bit. My doctor seemed to think 168 over 112 was a bad thing. He asked me to call my husband and to be ready to go into surgery in the next hour. (And he thought my blood pressure was high before?)

I grabbed my cell phone and called my hubby’s number. No answer. I called his other phone. No answer. I called the first number again and almost started to freak. As I was about to try the number again I received a text message that simply said, “HOLD ON!” I was about to get wheeled in to have a baby, and he put me on HOLD behind an “important” phone call!

I did the only thing a woman who’s not allowed to get out of bed could do. I called some friends and told them to go kick my hubby’s ass. Well, I did mention I was about to have the baby, and they said they would drive right over to our house and get him if necessary. Luckily when they called his phone, he saw it wasn’t me and answered. Needless to say I got some good apologies after that cute stunt.

Though I’d had two needles in the spine before for my other two c-sections, the third time was not the charm. Though the area was supposedly numbed with Novocain, I could still feel it just fine. I love it when they say “you’re going to feel a little pressure…” Pressure my butt! That HURT! On top of that I could feel the needle going to the left of the centered target. By the time I was on the operating table I was numb from the torso down, but my blood pressure was higher than ever. In fact after the whole ordeal was done, Dr. Prune confided that he’d never seen blood pressure that high in someone with an epidural. He was actually worried I’d arrest during the surgery. I love hearing delightful tidbits like that.

I’d love to tell you every detail about the surgical experience that day, but I had been put on a Magnesium drip to prevent seizures. For those of you lucky enough to never have experienced high volumes of Magnesium infusing the bloodstream, it’s a unique experience that is somewhat comparable to being seasick while on a bad acid trip. I’ve never tried acid, but I’ve heard stories. I have now actually seen the walls breathe. I vaguely remember the anesthesiologist on my right saying “Put your arm down. Can you hear me? Please put your arm back down.” Huh? What arm? At the time I had no earthly idea what he was talking about, but I am guessing that one of the side effects of Magnesium is arm levitation.

The only clear memory I have is seeing my beautiful 2 lb. 7 oz. daughter being wheeled out in a small, plastic cart. She was pink and breathing on her own. She was absolutely beautiful. And that’s when the anesthesiologist gave me the good stuff.

I woke up (somewhat) in the recovery room. Generally at this point new mothers are wheeled to the Post-Partum ward, but they were too afraid to move me very far. In fact I was put in the room directly across the hall from the recovery room. I remember very little about the next two days. I know I was longing to see my tiny daughter, but neither she nor I could be moved. When my blood pressure was finally a little lower and the walls had stopped breathing, I was wheeled in a stretcher to the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). Though Danika was tiny, she was doing better than we had dared to hope. I was even allowed to hold her for a minute before being taken to my new room in the Post-Partum ward.

Just as my blood pressure was coming under control, a doctor from the NICU came to my room and excitedly announced to me that she thought my daughter had Down Syndrome. Thanks lady! That was just the medication I needed to insure a swift and stress-free recovery from the wild ride from which I’d just disembarked.

Prune

At the time I found out I was pregnant for the third time, I didn't consider myself "old." According to the date on my birth certificate, I wasn’t as "young" as I once was, but at 2 weeks away from my 37th birthday, I didn't feel a day older than 21… and a half. I certainly didn't put a great deal of thought into my age, especially because I preferred to behave like you're average twenty-something.

When I went to my doctor for my first pre-natal visit, I was given a sizable goody-bag of magazines, pamphlets and coupons. Though I was eager to look through my bag, I was short on extra time until a month or so later. I got it into my head after a long Saturday of doing laundry that reading a magazine would be fun and relaxing, so I went spelunking in my bag of wonders and noticed a high-quality, thick magazine under a pile of other "stuff." I eagerly pulled it from the bag and looked at the cover to see if this was "Parents Magazine" or some lovely catalog of baby items. It was rather a shock to read "Plum; The Complete Pregnancy Guide for Women 35+."

Honestly, my first fleeting thought was "This can't be for me!" Yet as I mentioned, the thought was fleeting when the reality of my age set in. Holy Cow! I'm over 35! Excuse me? Am I such an anomaly that an entire magazine is dedicated to the amazement that is my pregnancy? Apparently so!

I threw down the magazine in disgust... and later picked it back up and put it in my bag to take to work. Hmmm, it is true. I am pregnant and I am over 35. I suppose somehow I just hadn't thought of those two particular elements of my life, together.

As I started mulling over this newly discovered idea, a number of thoughts came to my mind. I started to wonder about the goody-bags kept at my doctor's office. I envisioned one nurse telling another in the back room "Oh, be sure to give the 4:15 one of the bags for 'older' mothers." I wondered if they had two separate piles of goody bags, or if they just alter a bag every now and then for an "old" gal like myself. Do they need a big pile of Plums rotting in the back room, or do they just go through a few each month.

And "Plum?" We might as well call it "Prune" for those of us bearing children in our crow's-feet years! Or how about "Geriatric Gestation" or "Diapers and Depends?" Perhaps "What Took You So Long" or “Afterthought" would be great name candidates too. How about "When Your Baby's in College, You'll Be... Dead?" I can see articles in such a magazine entitled "A Wal-Mart Greeter Can Pay College Tuition!" and "How to Deal With Women Half Your Age At PTA Meetings."

It's true. In Texas especially, many women become mothers at 19 or 20. I'll be 42 when my youngest goes to Kindergarten. Will I be constantly mistaken for my child's grandmother? Will teachers young enough to BE my child annoy me?

Honestly, I am still clueless to this day. It had barely sunk in that I was pregnant at all, let alone that my "advanced age" somehow put me at risk. How could I be 37 already, anyway? Wasn't I celebrating my 18th birthday just a few years ago? I look at women in their late 30's and early 40's and I don't think of myself as being like them. In fact I see a lot of women younger than myself that just seem somehow older than me. Perhaps it was the years I spent performing in "Peter Pan" with a local college theater group that somehow gave me a skewed sense of age.

Whatever the case may be, I'm still not ready to age gracefully. Heck - I plan to go into it kicking and screaming the whole way! And when my children finally do graduate and move out of the house, I'm going to get that sports car I've always wanted, a horse and a new bikini. I'm going to travel as much as my job's salary will allow, and I'm going to spend every cent of my children’s inheritance. When I’m 110, perhaps I’ll settle down and when my husband dies, I’ll find a nice young man and be his sugar-momma!

So was I special because I was pregnant and over 35? Next time I go to the doctor's office, I'm going to tell him where he can stick his "Plum!"

Disaster Flambé

In the summer of 2005 I decided it was time to get out of the home child care scene. My own children were enough of a challenge, and my house was a disaster. Though I had four dogs at the time, the odor and stains on my carpet had not come from any of my four-legged charges. Perhaps that was a catalyst in my decision to trade in child care for doggie daycare.

I started about the same way I did with the child care, but I also took the step to rent a building in which to have my business. Now living in a Texas town North of Dallas, I checked ordinances and codes. Though the folks at Town Hall told me the existing cement floors in the building I had rented would suffice, the OTHER people at Town Hall later told me the floors would have to be sealed with epoxy. Of course by this time I had already made a bit of an investment in renovating the building.

There is a lot of stress associated with starting one’s own business. There is also stress in having a two-year-old hanging from one's ankle every minute of the day when starting said business. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we humans have a built-in gauge that measures stress. It’s called “Blood Pressure.” Though the last few times I had been to the doctor my blood pressure was a tad high, I never thought anything of it as mine had always been ridiculously low.

Around this time my sister called me and asked me to come to Louisiana. In her twenty-seventh week of pregnancy, she had been put in the hospital when proteins were found in her urine (yum!). I packed up the last of all of our baby toys, car seats, bassinets, bottles and so-on and prepared to drive to Louisiana. Mind you, this was about a week after Hurricane Katrina blew through, and though my sister lived in Lafayette, there was still a bit of turmoil across the state. My husband could not come with me, so in his stead I brought my beloved Olde Victorian Bulldogge, Brandy Ann and my Chihuahua, Devon. Brandy’s looks alone would be enough to deter any person with malice on the mind.

While in LA I took it upon myself to create the proper environment for my sister’s new addition. I had my brother-in-law move all the computer equipment and furniture out of the chosen future room of the first-born, and painted my butt off for the next two days. This is why I no longer have a butt... I wish! I should mention that I am actually NOT a beginner painter. I have enjoyed creating art on any piece of blank canvas I find. My own home does not have a white wall in any room… I take that back. My son’s room has an Oriental theme. Rice-paper white walls on three walls and a brilliant oriental red on the fourth wall. The trim around the doors, floor and windows is black, and I painted a dragon in gold upon the red wall. What? Don't all mothers paint "theme" rooms for their children?

While off on this tangent, I might as well run wild and tell you that I have always wanted Venetian Plaster and stone for walls. By no stretch of anyone’s imagination could I afford such luxuries, so I created my own plaster and stone (and brick and adobe…) with paint. I love it when visitors look about the disaster that is my home and look visibly surprised to see an arched brick window above the kitchen cabinets, or marble walls in the bathroom.

The baby’s room in my sister’s house was not finished a moment too soon. Baby Joshua was born on Labor Day (of all possible days) in 2005. He weighed in at 1 lb. 8 oz. Thank goodness the little guy had a huge amount of “fight” in him to carry him through the next few months. Knowing that my sister lived just down the street from some big NFL football player, I was disappointed I didn't have one of those stork signs on which I could paint "Louisiana welcomes it's newest future NFL lineman, Joshua. Weight: 1 1/2 lbs. Height: 12 inches!" for the front yard.

Just after Joshua’s birth, my sister’s doctor asked our family members if anyone else had high blood pressure. The answer was a resounding “No.” Shortly after the final echo of the word, I started to wonder just a little bit about my last few visits to my own doctor. Was it possible little Miss saltaholic-I’ve-always-had-low-blood-pressure could be developing a problem? Nah!

Upon my return to Texas, I made myself an appointment with my doctor to follow-up on my new migraine medication. The visit created a whole new kind of headache for me. My blood pressure was quite a bit higher than my aspirations of building a successful doggie daycare business. I started taking medications that seemed to do no more than an order of salty french-fries would. The dosage was increased almost weekly, and I was taken off all other substances that might elevate my blood pressure for any reason. I finally allowed the doctor to talk me into walking away from my floundering doggie daycare business, and into going off the birth control pill I had been on since the birth of my last child. I found a job working for a small company in a nearby town and got pregnant on my first day.

Nothing like sleeping your way to the top… and no, it’s not like it sounds. I suppose the stars aligned just perfectly on the 18^th of January, 2006. Our little celebration for my first day in a new job (and that cute little French Maid outfit my hubby got me) resulted in pregnancy number three. How was I going to explain this to my new boss after only three weeks on the job? I know – you’re probably thinking “why even tell your boss so early?” Well, I had taken a sales position that required 50 plus hours of attention a week, and my blood pressure just found a new reason to become even higher. Somehow I had inadvertently found myself in possession of all the necessary ingredients for the recipe for “Disaster Flambé.”

Alien Encounter

Everyone always told me how different their boys and girls were while they were carrying them. By my twenty-third week of pregnancy I would have told you this one started out differently too. I felt Jake for the first time at 14 weeks, and felt him regularly after that. This one I felt at 12 weeks (because she was sitting right on my overly-sensitive bladder) but stopped feeling her when my uterus rose up a bit. I started feeling her again around 16 weeks, but only now and then.

By twenty-three weeks she made herself known ALL THE TIME. She was not at all like Jake. Jake was gentle with mommy. He'd bounce and bump and rub and pat and wiggle. This one punched and stabbed and kicked and walloped! My belly button became a point of interest, and a great punching bag. My hubby often joked that she was going to hit it just right someday and make my innie an outie. My bladder made a great trampoline, especially when it was full and we were in a car. How nice I was to supply her with toys in there! On top of everything else, I had developed an “irritable uterus” which meant I enjoyed hard contractions a minimum of four times an hour. At first I would go check in with my doctor (that's what the books tell you to do if this happens) but later I was instructed not to bother the doctor with my contractions "unless part of the baby was hanging out." Needless to day, there were days I went to the ladies room just to check myself for extra feet.

The dog and cat still fought over who got to sit on mommy's lap, but I think both were contemplating the possibility of demonic possession. One night the cat was asleep on my lap when the baby woke up and decided it was play time. This warm lump on top of her was neat! If she punched it just right...
Yes, I think I had the best view from the outside. Without warning, the baby clobbered the cat's tender underbelly. Wellington's round, green eyes opened wide with shock and he jumped up to find the mouse that had run beneath him. He inspected and sniffed the entire area of my belly for almost a minute before deciding he'd been mistaken, and settling back down to complete his nap.
Whump!
Wellington shot from my lap as if he's been... well... kicked. He sped to a hideout under the coffee table, eying me with distrust as my hubby and I sat there laughing until tears came to our eyes.

The dog had encountered the bumping tummy also. The first time or two she sat upright and sniffed my belly thoroughly. After deciding there was no immediate danger, and no goblins hatching out of my belly button, she decided she didn't mind getting whacked every now and then, provided I continue to allow her to sit on me. She had also noticed that lap real estate had become progressively more limited. The good news for her (unlike the 15 lb cat) was that there was almost always room for a 6 lb Chihuahua, even one wearing a pink sweater and sparkly purple collar.

Since the dog had decided the tummy is not dangerous, the cat eventually gained enough trust to vie for the limited lap space, often dislodging the canine in his efforts to become comfortable. Of course it was mommy's job to make sure there was room for everyone on the quickly shrinking lap.

As the baby grew stronger, my clothes grew progressively more interesting. Shirts with stripes turned into shirts with moving waves. Loose items fluttered when under attack from the entity within, and solids gathered quickly moving shadows before they fell back in place. My belly button was permanently bruised, and my bladder had become a popular dance floor for tiny feet.

I'll never forget the day I was sitting at work entering information into an order on the computer. I felt the giant kick just as the keyboard tray and keyboard that had been resting just against my growing belly, disappeared from under my hands and rolled back under the desk.

Of course this behavior was not something that just happened in the daylight hours. Talk about things that go thump in the night! There must be some kind of rule that playtime starts when mommy is just… drifting… off. Whack! If the baby could communicate, I’m sure she’d be saying, “Are you asleep yet? Gotta pee?” And all ideas of sleep that I had just moments before are put on hold until after the first of many potty breaks for the night.

Can you tell what a child's personality will be like before they're born? I knew if this was any indication of things to come, my daughter would have no trouble trouncing her brother by the time she was two. Mommy's job will be protecting the tiny ten-year-old from the terrible-two-tantrums. My husband suggested we get her involved with martial arts very early, so she can learn patience and control to go with that cat-launching kick. Perhaps she'll have an affinity for soccer, or become the first female NFL kicker. Only time will tell.

Nesting

Why is it that somewhere in the 8^th month of pregnancy, human mothers are over-taken by a sudden and irresistible urge to clean everything in their paths? This “nesting” is not to be confused with spring cleaning. The activities encompassed by “nesting” may include such things as sanitizing the insides of cabinets, using a toothbrush to clean the grout behind the toilet, vacuuming or otherwise airing the box-springs and mattresses on all the beds and using a vacuum attachment to suck the dirt from behind the baseboards, to mention a few. Creative women will find many other cleaning activities to keep themselves busy over this nesting period that would confound the most obsessive-compulsive cleaner.

I can remember squeezing (wedging) myself between the shower and toilet to remove the scum that had built up in the crevasse between the back of the toilet tank and the wall. If my unborn child thought the accommodations were tight already, he had another thing coming until that scum was gone! I have often wondered if this cleaning spree created or otherwise affected his ability at age eight to put his ankles behind his head – a talent he loves to show off at the most unusual of times. Thank goodness I have recently been able to curb his habit of inquiring of people at the grocery store, “you wanna see me lick my nipple?”

The nesting phase can also be blamed for some of the unusual creations that appeared about my house. Though generally I can not be classified as the “domestic” type, I was guilty of sewing a quilt for my first baby. Well, it’s supposed to be a quilt. I’ve never been one for tedious measurements, or sewing straight lines. I still have the thing, too. I take it out whenever I need a good laugh.

It was at that same time that I also scrubbed the horses’ barn from top to bottom. Perhaps this was some odd form of “Mary Complex” for those of us who are concerned we might have to lay our child in a manger around tax time. Though the horses were amicable to the changes, I doubt they noticed the lack of cob webs or dust and they efficiently had the barn back to its original working condition within days.

Of course by then I had moved on to my truck. I vacuumed under the seats and cleaned the jack and lug wrench, too. I thought about having the bed-liner removed so I could wash underneath it, but gave that idea up when I realized I’d have to store the liner in the dirty basement. And that got me started on the basement! I swept the cinderblock walls and cement floor before hosing the whole thing down with bleach and scrubbing the underside of the steps.

Having bred dogs for a number of years, I noticed this behavior is not limited to the human species. Nesting does, however, take on a slightly different form for dogs. My Boston Terrier, Maggie, used to find dirty socks and old newspaper to line her whelping box. In contrast, I was washing the new crib sheets on a bi-weekly basis starting two months prior to my son’s birth. Though Maggie would sit and stay, I never was successful in teaching her to vacuum or dust during her nesting phase. On the other hand, like me, she was very good at cleaning her dish throughout her pregnancy.

Perhaps nesting with my second child will be different. As I sit here and write, I’m 19 weeks pregnant and already thinking about all the things that need to be done before the baby is born. Though we’ve already registered for the baby necessities, I still have to vacuum the back yard, steam-clean the trampoline, disinfect the cats, wash all the dog's clothes and purify one Texas lake. At least this house doesn’t have a basement!

As God Giveth

After a while I was finally ready to date again. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I suppose that makes me as nutty as a Snickers bar.

I had given in to L.T.’s requests for a date and was astounded just how well a man could treat a woman if he chose to. He chose to. My tattered heart needed time and patience and I was given both, yet there were always warm welcoming arms waiting for me when I needed them. Happiness became a part of my life once again.

I’ve never been known for my patience. The very July after that awful yet wonderful Christmas, I said “Yes” to L.T.’s proposal of marriage. He’ll be the first to interject that it was not before he asked the third time, while down on one knee, on a moonlit beach on Grand Cayman Island. (I wanted it to be right this time.)

Of course the subject of children came up almost immediately. With my long-running history of infertility we decided it best not to wait to initialize project “B.” We discussed every aspect, including the possibility of adopting a baby girl from China, after we tried for at least 14 months to get pregnant with medical intervention (kinky, huh?). We found a Reproductive Endocrinologist and set up an appointment. I was told I would need to discontinue the use of the birth control pills I was using to regulate my wacky menstrual cycle the month prior to the appointment.

Much to our consternation, fourteen days post pill discontinuation, we conceived a baby. I could have been knocked over with a feather and poor L.T. had to figure out how to break this kind of news to his parents. It might not have been so much of an issue if it weren’t for the fact that Dr. Edwards Senior held the position as an ordained Baptist Minister with a sizable congregation of wonderful people who kept up with all of his eldest son’s doings.

Of course I had called my own mother within five minutes of identifying two pink lines on the test stick. She was probably more excited than I at the prospect of her second grandchild. We wondered how the Edwards side would take the news.

It was not long after learning of our wonderful and terrifying pregnancy that we also learned of L.T.’s mother’s diagnosis. Judy’s breast cancer had spread and it would be a miracle if she survived until Christmas. That Thanksgiving we made the trek from Texas to Florida with a video tape of our first sonogram. We sat Judy down in front of the big-screen television and hit the play button. There, much larger than life, was our little baby. Her newly formed arms and legs were wiggling as she danced about in her little, dark home inside my womb. I will never, ever forget Judy’s delighted giggle and the look of wonder on her face as she watched her first grandchild move about.

Some things happen for a reason. I truly believe it was God’s will that Judy was able to share the joy of knowing she was to have a grand child, with us. That holiday season was bitter-sweet as Judy passed just hours after Christmas ended. She was a stubborn woman and she positively refused to ruin anybody's Christmas by passing on the 25th. She kept her word, passing on at 1:00 AM on December 26th. She will be remembered as a woman of her word unto the last.

Conversation With A Six-Year-Old

When Jake was four, he started with the basics of "where do babies come from?" We were in the car on the long drive home from school, and it took everything in my power not to suck my gum into my windpipe. My dear mother (thank you mom, for everything) taught by example that honesty and a straight forward approach is the best policy, so I proceeded with care.

I started in terms that I felt he could best handle by explaining that when a mommy dinosaur and a daddy dinosaur want to have a baby, they get very close together and the daddy dinosaur puts his sperm in the mommy dinosaur and so on. That was good enough for a four-year-old.

One evening while driving home, Jake (who was turning seven in two weeks) suddenly and out of nowhere piped up from the back seat, "So how does the man get the sperm get into a woman?"
I took a deep breath while putting some effort into keeping the car on the road, thought for a moment and replied, "Well, it comes out of his penis." Don't you love saying penis while driving? No? Well then why do these "cherished moments" so often happen whilst navigating rush-hour traffic?
"His penis? Ewwww!" (Pause) "But how does it get inside the woman?"
"It goes in through her vagina." Yup - another of my favorite words! I explained this to him cringing only slightly this time and swerving to miss a cement mixer entering the busy highway two inches in front of me.
"Eeeeewwwwwww!" (Pause) "But it couldn't fit in there!" Jake exclaimed. I peeked and caught him making the most horrendous expression in the rear-view mirror. I swallowed my giggle, sped up to pass the cement mixer which was moving about 20 mph slower than the rest of the traffic and answered him, “Well, GOD made animals and people so that it does fit because he wants us to be able to have babies."
"Eeeeewwwww! That's gross!" (Pause) "Do they take their clothes off?" He asked in horror.
"Usually." I stated, again trying not to giggle, and blushing a rosy shade of purple, I'm sure.
"Eww! That’s nasty!" (Pause) "You'd think GOD could have thought of something better than THAT!"

A Christmas Story

There was good news and there was bad news. The good news was that The Jerk was gone. The bad news was that he had taken with him all the money, including my most current child support and paycheck, and left me in the first stage of bankruptcy. Gotta love dating!

He had gotten in his motor home and left without a word to me or a “Goodbye, Merry Christmas” to Jake. I had $20 in my purse and that was it. My next paycheck would not quite cover my car payment, utilities and phone, let alone food or Christmas presents. To top it off, rent would be due a few days after Christmas. My situation was about as much fun as cleaning the grout in a fraternity shower... with my tongue!

I thought over ways in my mind to explain everything to Jake. Until now he’d been a lucky little boy, getting to celebrate all the Jewish holidays with his father, and Christian holidays with me. Perhaps this year I would have to tell him that we were going to have a Jewish Christmas? We could light some candles and sing Hava Nigila while we ate stolen crackers from the local Waffle House. Would he wonder why Santa had come every other year, but not this one? I was not altogether certain how I was going to handle it, or what we were going to do.

They say the holiday season can be the most depressing time for people, and that year was one of the most depressing I had ever had. There would be no food, no gifts, no visitors, no family… no one but my son, me and some macaroni & cheese for dinner. I had been left with a bad taste in my mouth (kind of like fraternity-shower grout) and I had sworn off men completely! If I’d thought it was in me, I would most definitely have become a lesbian, likety-split. (Freudian slip?) Of course I couldn’t help thinking that since I’d finally hit rock bottom, the only place left to go was up, right?

I put on my game face and proceeded into the world like a warrior to battle. I wasn’t going to let them get me down. (I have no clue who “them” are, but it just seemed to work in this sentence.) I held up fine at work, and I was great when my son got home. It was just those in-between moments I had to worry about. Stress was taking its toll and I was unable to eat (which helped conserve food) and lost weight (which is never bad when you’re female).

I was now working as an office manager and my co-worker, Dan, noticed. As there were only the two of us in our office, we would often scatter our life stories among the idle chatter. He soon knew that I’d rid myself of The Jerk, and The Jerk had rid me of all my money. (Thank goodness I didn't have to deal with that pesky stuff any more! Perhaps I could just trade with shells and pebbles.) Knowing the bags would be empty when Santa got to our house, Dan brought in one of his son’s older video game systems and a few games to go with it. To me it was a pot of gold. There would actually be something under our raggedy plastic tree when Jake awoke on Christmas morning... and what mother doesn't want to create a new techno-addiction in her child at such a nice, young age?

Unbeknownst to me, Dan had discussed my situation with one of our regular customers. This same gentleman had once asked me out while I was still with The Jerk, and though I had politely declined the invitation, we remained friends and spoke frequently. In fact I had already mentioned to him that I was no longer with The Jerk, but had not gone into detail about my situation beyond that. I did not wish to be a depressing presence to those around me during the holiday season, sob, sob, sob...

Once again the gentleman (henceforth known as L.T.) asked me out, but of course I was simply not ready for any man to be within a two mile radius of me… well, at least not in that way. He even offered to take my son and me with him on a Christmas vacation to Colorado. As innocent of a proposal as that was, I declined. First for the most obvious reasons, but also explained to him that my employer would allow me no time off. The day before he left for Colorado, L.T. stopped by and gave me an envelope, asking that I not open it until after he had left. I respected his wishes, and after he left, found a $100 gift card to the local grocery store and another $100. gift card for a toy store.

I don’t know if I can fully describe the emotions that swept over me at that moment. I felt wonder, joy, amazement, sadness, depression, anger, anxiety and happiness all at the same time. All these emotions were swirling about in my head like a great tinsel-wrapped tornado. I wanted to laugh, cry and scream in both fear and bliss. So much had been destroyed in the last few weeks, but Christmas was still coming to Jake’s and my little world.

Later that day as I was getting ready to leave the office, Dan handed me a large box filled with food. Once again I was reminded I had not been forgotten. We are all familiar with “the meaning of Christmas.” We’ve heard stories and seen TV shows and movies where people go through wonderful transformations and learn that Christmas goes far beyond the strategic commercialization of the jewelry and toy makers. Those stories have always meant something to me (in a cheesy kind of way), but I can honestly say that in the Christmas season of 2001 that feeling far transcended any I’ve ever had. While I was at the lowest financial and emotional point I’ve ever been, I was swept off my feet by the kindness of others. Awwwwwww, right?

I must tell you that I did take my son to the toy store to use the gift card we had received. After much deliberation, he chose a number of toys that he liked and we went to the check out counter. At this particular store, business is tracked by taking each customer’s phone number at the time of sale. As our turn came up, the boy behind the counter (who couldn’t have been more than 20 years of age) politely asked, “May I have your phone number?”
Jacob looked him square in the eye and said in a voice loud enough for most of the store to hear, “Ooooooooo, you want to date my mom!” We left soon after with my hand still firmly in place over Jacob's mouth.

That year Santa came to our house. Jake couldn’t have been more excited by the wonders he found under the Christmas tree. We enjoyed the company of our next-door neighbors, ate a wonderful Christmas dinner and we all played silly games well into the evening. After all the bad things that had happened, suddenly I found my faith in human-kind being slowly restored. I learned more that Christmas than in any I can remember before or since. While the lessons hurt at the time, I will carry them with me for the rest of my life, kind of like that tacky popsicle-stick Christmas-tree ornament my aunt once gave me.

The Jerk

My second marriage had crashed and burned and so had the computer industry. At the same time I was getting back out onto the job market, I felt I was ready to start dating again. I really did not prefer the nightclub scene though I enjoyed a good evening of dancing and fun. It’s just that when it comes to targeting one’s next victim, the disco or two-steppin’ joint is not the place to do it.

There was little hope of finding a good man at work considering all the rules most companies have concerning dating other employees. Whatever was a woman to do?

Then I saw it – “Ladies, place your free personal ad for a week. Hundreds of men on-line 24 hours a day!” How much cheesier could it have gotten, and how funny would it be to try? I had to go for it!

I had never done anything like it before (I know you’ve never heard that before) but it really was my first time. I figured I’d better do some research, so I read through ads of hundreds of desperate, lonely women, and what I saw amazed me. Hundreds of practically identical ads, one after the next, page after page… SWF seeks caring individual who enjoys walks on the beach and candle-lit dinners. Jeez! What a dull existence these poor on-line daters must lead. I had a mission. It was up to me to single-handedly spice up the on-line dating world. It was my job to paint this world in a Technicolor rainbow of unspoken promises. It was my job to create the best darn ad these withered wisps of humanity would read all night!

I approached it from a marketing standpoint. Audience? Male. Purpose? Get a date. Yeah, that pretty much sums it all up. And I started:
1969 Classic. Original Blond color. Incredible performance on all types of terrain after appropriate warm-up period. Shifts on-the-fly from elegant city style to rugged off-road model. One 5-year-old after market addition. Room for your kids, but not for excess baggage. Bad drivers will encounter flawless anti-lock braking system. I added my email address and then I hit “send.”

Though this was a great experiment in marketing, my actions bore vastly unpredictable ramifications. Within a few hours my mailbox was full to capacity. There was no way I was ever going to be able to read all of the responses. I skimmed briefly over numerous letters, finally coming to one that I found interesting. A man who loved road-trips and world travel, water sports and any number of other things I enjoyed. We started emailing back and forth, and before too long, spoke on the phone.

And that’s how I started dating Trent… henceforth known as The Jerk. He seemed like a perfectly normal man. He was outgoing, intelligent and friendly while not being too over-bearing. He was nice looking but not overly vain. We shared many similar interests and both enjoyed deep discussions about the universe, religion and other Zen-type things.

Little did I know that lurking beneath that normal-looking exterior was an engine that ran on alternative fuel sources.

After dating a few weeks, The Jerk wanted to meet my son. We wanted the introduction to be non-threatening and fun, so we chose a hockey game as out first “group date.” A few nights later The Jerk wanted to take us out to dinner. It was fun until near the end when The Jerk wanted to go smoke a cigarette. He went to the bar, and evidently slung back a drink or five.

Later on that evening The Jerk’s alter ego showed up at my apartment after quite a few more drinks. He was not one of those slurring, falling-down drunken people. He was bright-eyed and even claimed to have sharpened senses. So sharp, in fact, that he explained to me that he could tell that an airplane flying over-head was going to Phoenix. (Hmmm... now that's normal!) I wanted to ask him to leave, but I worried about the lives he’d be endangering if I did so. Shortly thereafter, he left anyway.

Why did I see him again? He apologized and said it wouldn’t happen again. Perhaps my faith and trust in others was just a tad out of proportion. I don’t honestly know, but looking back, I was looking real intelligent, no?

Of course it did happen again, about three weeks later while on an out-of-state trip for Thanksgiving. And again at a Christmas party and at a Super Bowl party and one evening after work. So I moved in with him.

I know, I know. After making one less-than-bright move with Number Two, I do this? The thing is that The Jerk was a great guy as long as he was not drinking. He was wonderful with my son and he and I shared many interests. He was always nice to me, as long as he wasn’t drinking, or I wasn’t trying to talk to him about drinking.

Somewhere during this time I got laid off yet again and went for a number of months without a job. Thankfully The Jerk was still working and paying the bills. I found out later that he was paying the bills with a number of credit cards he had gotten in my name by stealing and using my personal information. Though I was debt-free when I started dating The Jerk, he successfully ran up close to twenty-Thousand dollars of credit card bills in my name. Nice.

I had never known an alcoholic, but I began to wonder. (And you're thinking, "You began to wonder?") I started to see that The Jerk became very defensive if alcohol was brought into the conversation at all. I had always thought alcoholics drank every day. The Jerk did not. Then again I thought most adults out-grew getting sloppy-drunk just for fun by about 23 years of age.

Then one day in late May The Jerk called me up where I had finally found work selling office furniture, to see if I could get off early. He wanted me to pick up Jake so we could all go on a boat-ride in the boat he bought with my credit. That’s right. He sweet-talked me into buying him a nice used ski boat even though I told him I thought we should wait for our financial situation to improve.

Anyway, Jake and I went home early and changed into our bathing suits. We even invited the neighbor to come along. The Jerk had left to put the boat in the water before we got home and was to meet us in the back yard of our little house on the lake any minute… any minute…

After an hour and a half, I started to worry. After three hours I was sick with worry. After a tremendous thunderstorm started with high winds, hail and a chance of tornados, I got Jake out of bed and we got in the car. We went to the park where the boat launch was, and found his car and empty boat-trailer there. I went to the park security guard on duty and explained my situation. An alert was put out to the coast guard to find the poor man who must be stranded on the lake in the storm. Then I went about trying to locate one of The Jerk’s friends who was camping in the park to see if he’d seen him.

I was told which campsite the friend had and drove down there in the pouring rain and screaming winds. As I arrived, I could see to figures sitting in the cab of the friend’s truck. I ran out in the whipping rain, sure The Jerk must have just gotten off the lake, soaking and cold. I was sure his cell phone must have gotten too wet to work, and they were probably just on their way to our house.

He lowered the passenger-side window and looked at me as if I were a heinous bug.
“What do you want?” He sneered.
All my pent-up anxiety exploded with the energy of a small nuclear warhead. “Nothing! I don’t want anything!” Suddenly the picture was all too clear (finally, right?), and here I was at 10:30 at night in a thunderstorm with my child asleep in the back of my car, chasing after The Jerk.

I could not sleep the rest of that night, and the next day I took Jake to a movie. The Jerk did not bother to come home until about 1:00PM. I was done. I was ending it right then and there. I had my mind made up!

Of course I didn’t end it just yet. To his credit, the Jerk gave up alcohol that July and things went fine for a little while longer until the alcohol addiction was replaced with sleeping pills. I often wondered about The Jerk’s habit of taking a sleeping pill or four at ten-o-clock at night, and then going out to watch TV. He rarely came to bed before three.

Then one night I found out. The Jerk came into the room at two in the morning and turned on all the lights. He then started to dance around in his underwear and sing incoherently. Surprisingly, this was almost exactly how he acted while drunk! Though I repeatedly asked him if he’d been drinking, he didn’t seem to understand what I was saying. He finally danced himself out into the other room and I turned out the lights, thankful my son was not home.

The next day I asked him about the incident, but he didn’t remember a thing. He simply said, “Huh, I guess I took too many of my sleeping pills.”
To which I responded, “Huh, I guess you better never do that again!”

Of course he did do it again. The third time he did it, he emptied out my medicine cabinet and emptied a number of bottles of pills of all varieties, including an entire bottle of Darvocet. When I found him, he was in his underwear again, upright but incoherent. He had been finger-painting in the contents of an entire can of shaving foam and had interred the left-over pills within the small foamy mountains. Hollywood art, perhaps? There were quite a few unaccounted for prescription pills, and a large number of empty bottles.

Unable to carry him to my car, I called 911 and cordially invited an ambulance to come pick him up. Upon the ambulance crew’s arrival, the Jerk brightened up and asked “Got any fish food?”
One of the paramedics made a quick search of the ambulance shelves and replied, “Gee, hmmm… we must be completely out tonight.”

The Jerk was taken to the hospital. Due to the nature of the incident, the local law enforcement was sent to question me. When they asked for the Jerk’s address, I simply told them “As of tomorrow, he no longer has one!”

And that was the end of the Jerk. Of course at that time I swore off men, I swore off most of humanity and made up my mind to just stay single for the rest of my life. I celebrated the Jerk’s leaving with a large, cold glass of milk and danced around my house fully clothed. It was going to be hard, but it was going to be better!

Number Two

It has been said that everything happens for a reason. It’s true, and the reason I married my second husband is because I was an idiot. There, I’ve said it. I was looking for something opposite from Husband Number One, and quite successfully found it in Husband Number Two.

Husband Number One was highly intelligent, goal-oriented and always better than me at everything (according to him). Number Two was… not. Initially, Number Two seemed to be very nice, supportive, friendly and kind. He never came across as being too terribly intelligent, and after feeling like a second class citizen with Number One, I suppose that was an attraction, albeit of the wrong type.

The dating process lasted a little over a year, in which time I refused to live with him as I still stupidly deemed that as “inappropriate.” Looking back with 20/20 hind-sight, I wish now that I had stepped into the 1990’s and gone for a good test drive before making the decision to purchase. Much can be hidden from a woman blinded by love, with enough time spent apart – like the minor fact that he couldn’t read.

Well, I take that back. He could read enough to sound out the important things when necessary, but wasn’t I amazed the first time we went to a fancy restaurant together as newlyweds! He became upset that the menus did not show pictures of the offered fare, meaning that he would have to read about the food. I don’t know what I found more frightening; the fact that until that point in his life he ordered his meals based upon photographs of plastic burgers and Styrofoam slices of cake, or that I was now Mrs. Styrofoam cake. I was just going to have to bite the bullet and make the best of it.

I hold nothing against less-literate or less educated people at all. The simple fact of the matter is that I should have thought better than to marry one. It was not a good life decision to say the least, and not one of my brighter moves. This man was generally a very nice person, but the mix could not… mix. Whatever the case, as with almost any element of life, there are still things to laugh about.

I remember one romantic evening when we were walking together in the moonlight. He gazed up at the nearly-full moon and said, “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
I grew very excited at the prospect of finally having an intellectual conversation concerning the cosmos, and started wondering how to segue into Steven Hawking’s theories concerning universal expansion, as he continued, “It’s amazing that those stars are so far away…”
My excitement grew.
“And how the moon looks so small. It’s hard to believe it’s bigger than the earth!”
“What?”
“You know. How the moon is bigger than the earth but it looks so small form here.”

At that point my bubble of excitement burst, and there was something far more insidious welling up inside of me. I fought it. I fought it hard, but there it was, overcoming me. Overpowering me. Choking me. I tried even harder to subdue that heinous act of…
“What’s wrong?” He asked innocently.
Giggling. Laughing. Hysterical, eye-watering guffawing! I know this was not fair to him, nor was it kind, but like a sneeze, it was something I could not possibly control. I’m sure this was probably the beginning of the end for us and I take full responsibility.

To save face, he did go so far as to claim that that is what he learned at his school, and he’s not sure why my fancy schools were teaching me the wrong things. I refrained from pointing out that his school had failed to teach him how to read, and I offered sweetly to pull up some information on-line if he’d like. Unfortunately he had little interest in facts, and the internet might mean he’d have to read something. We dropped it.

Not long after this episode we started to see news stories on the future 2000 Summer Olympics in Australia. Jake, who was now a bright, happy five-year-old, started to ask questions about Australia as he was studying a bit of Geography in Kindergarten. We had a lovely conversation about the Olympic events we’d see on TV, and the weather in Australia. Then it happened. Number Two asked a simple question.
“Is this the first time the Olympics will be held on an island?”
I held it this time. I did not laugh or even crack a grin. I did so well until…
“Australia is a continent, not an island! Duh!” My five-year-old son corrected him.

On yet another occasion Number Two came up with the statement that said it all!
“Honey, you should know, I’m not the sharpest tack in the book!”
Though I refrained from saying “Well, you can say that again!” he did say it again and again. Many times in fact. I never had the heart to ask him about book tacks. I even wondered if that was perhaps one of the reasons he avoided reading. Perhaps he feared the book tacks lurking within the pages of seemingly innocent looking books. And if that was the case, I further wondered if one would find nails in the pages of the construction manuals he actually did look at every now and then, or if perhaps they were taped and bedded together.

These unfortunate scenes wore on our marriage. It did not help that he was also quite jealous. He constantly wondered aloud if I was cheating on him and if I wasn’t when I would start. Things became worse at a Christmas party hosted by my boss. Number Two had a little too much to drink and was certain he saw my boss and me “looking at each other.” He quietly followed me upstairs when I excused myself to use the bathroom and pushed me up against the wall for questioning. When I tried to escape, he threw me against the wall and put his hand precariously close to my neck to hold me there. Luckily someone downstairs heard the bang and came up to investigate. Of course I explained it away by saying I had tripped.

When I wanted to leave my job and work with a small start-up computer services company in the position of Vice President, he could not for the life of him figure out why I would want to leave a perfectly good management job as well as the man I was most likely cheating on him with. Though I tried to explain my aspirations and how my new boss and I planned to grow the company into something spectacular, it was something he could not relate to. He was a construction worker. His father was a construction worker. His brother was a construction worker. His goal in life was to (you guessed it) be a construction worker.

“Why do you want to work so much? Other women don’t do that. Look at my sister. She’s a hairdresser. She makes good money and she doesn’t have to take a computer home with her and do work on vacation. Women are supposed to want to stay home anyway. You don’t even want to vacuum the house but once a week! You cook dinner but you still make me do the dishes. My sister doesn’t make her husband do the dishes! I see how you are. You’re just like that other woman I heard of once. She got a good job and left her husband. I see how you are.”

I took the new job anyway and as I worked from home a few days a week, I set up a computer in the master bedroom of our very small house. It was the only place where there was enough room for the desk. One day shortly after the alteration in bedroom furnishings had been made Number Two asked me, “So if your boss comes over to work with you on something, are you going to entertain him in our bidet? I don’t want you hanging out with some other man in there!”
I knew he meant “boudoir” as we did not own a bidet or “fanny fountain” as one of my college friends enjoyed referring to them. I reassured number two that I most certainly would not be hanging out in a bidet with any man at all! I was being perfectly honest and my promise seemed to make him feel better.

Unfortunately the start-up company didn’t go the distance, and neither did Number Two. Contrary to his belief, he did not “see how I was.” I put up no fight and left with my son and the bare minimums. Honestly I was just happy to go where I could think my own existentialist thoughts, and allow my mind to expand like dear Mr. Hawkings’ universe. And thus, I flushed Number Two.

Computer Literacy

Back in my college years, computers were just getting to the “user friendly” point… just barely. The screens were no longer black with the little, flashing, orange or green cursor. They were in an intermediate step between being better than a type-writer but not as good as Windows 93. There were no icons, no internet, and college computer courses opened one’s eyes to the wonderful world of Cobalt. Ick!

I had quite successfully avoided Computers 101 as it was not a requirement… until my senior year. Let me just tell you, I went into Comp. 101 kicking and screaming the whole way! How dare my college suddenly tell me just nine months from graduation that I could NOT graduate without this new requirement? It was like Algebra! It was something I would never have to use after leaving school. At least I sure as heck believed I wouldn’t, back then.

On my first day of Computer class, we each sat down at a desk with one of those frightening TV screen thingies on it. Electronic devices and I had never gotten on well together. It was kind of like being up close to a tarantula. If I had been leaning back in my chair any farther, I would surely have tipped over.

The professor gave a short lecture about how computers could revolutionize the world, blah, blah, blah, whatever. He mentioned that some people had irrational fears that they would somehow damage a computer by doing the wrong thing. That particular point definitely hit home with this little technophobe. To prove his point to each student on a personal level, he followed that little tid-bit with a request that each student push any key on the keyboard. Like hell!

He went about the classroom checking to see that everybody had done as he asked. Everything was just fine until he got to me. I sat frozen, like a deer in the headlights…
“Ms. Schilling, would you please press a key on your keyboard.”
“Um, I don’t think that would be a really good idea.” I stammered.
“Ms. Schilling, I can assure you that nothing bad will happen. Please don’t make me flunk you for failure to do something as simple as this.”
I felt like my stomach was trying to explode out of my navel. “I just know I’m going to mess something up, I swear to you!” I pleaded with him.
He gave me one of those looks that so clearly said “Look, you stupid twit! I’m not asking you to give yourself a self breast exam in front of the class. Just touch the damn computer, ‘Please’.” He uttered that last word only, and reached over me to poke at miscellaneous keys on my keyboard to show me how safe it really was.

As ridiculous as it sounds, I was shaking like a leaf as I reached out to touch the space bar. I could feel the plastic under my finger, but I still had to gather my courage for another moment. Tentatively, gingerly, I pressed the space bar.

Every light on campus went out.

To say I was traumatized was an understatement! The professor excused me from the class to gather my wits, and vomit. He stood outside the darkened Ladies Room attempting to console me through a small crack in the door.
“I TOLD YOU SO!” I sobbed from the bathroom stall.

The lights were restored to campus after it was discovered that a transformer had blown across the street. Of course it had nothing to do with me, or my close encounter with an electronic device, but it left a lasting impression. For the rest of the semester I received gentle one-on-one guidance from that very understanding and patient professor. I got by with a C in the class, and vowed never to do anything that required the use of a computer for the rest of my life.

Fast forward to 1997. I had moved to Dallas, Texas and was finally getting a much needed divorce. I was about to become a single mom of a one-year-old and I needed a job, fast! Through an acquaintance of an acquaintance of an acquaintance I got an interview with a nice company. A nice COMPUTER company. When the woman giving me the interview asked me if I had any computer experience, I was not lying when I said “Yes, I certainly have!”

By some stroke of fate, I got the job and quickly set about watching what everybody else was doing on these electrified boxes of terror. I put on my best professional look when I sat myself in front of my very own computer at my very own desk for the first time. My intestines felt like they were trying to strangle my spine. Then I tentatively, gingerly, pressed the space bar.

When no lights went out, nobody screamed and I didn’t get electrocuted, I took it as a pretty good omen. I set about learning all there was to know about this much-easier-to-use version of computer thingy. I also learned all there was to know about software products and how to sell licensing for those products to large companies.

By 1999 I oversaw the large volume software needs of five of the largest accounts my employer had, including J.C. Penney and the American Heart Association. I also managed a very detailed web site for our branch of business and taught a class to sales representatives on how to use the internet. Brag, brag, brag... (place resume here...)

Later in 1999 I attracted the attention of another computer company and made the transition to that company in the position of National Manager of Software Licensing. Then a friend hired me to be the Vice President of his start-up computer company. Pretty good for someone who was never going to touch a computer again just nine years earlier, I’d say.

It wasn’t until a little while later that the computer industry crashed on me… but that’s a different chapter.

Girda the Demonic Viking Lactation Coach

The first thing you need to understand before I dive into the post-birth quagmire with Girda, is that the Lord saw fit to bless my baby sister with MY breasts. It’s that whole sibling rivalry thing revisited, “Mom, she took my belt!” “Mom, she’s making faces at me!” Mom, she has boobies and won’t give me any!” Yes, my sister is a 36 EE, and I… I am a 32 A minus. In fact, to add insult to injury, my nipples don’t even stick out! What sort of sick sense of humor does it take to give a flat-chested woman “innies?”

Prior to knowing that I was doomed with a life-sentence of flat-chestedness, I was just as thrilled as any other 11-year-old to go out with my mother and purchase my first “Training Bra.” This contraption of straps and two tiny triangles of lacy fabric would become cell keeper to my rib cage for the next 5 years. In those 5 years I learned how to french-kiss, how to dance, and how to wiggle my training bra back in to place without being noticed. Finally at age 16, I came to the realization that my breasts had been in training for quite some time, and apparently they hadn’t learned a damned thing! The “Training Bra” was discarded along with other items of childhood fantasy like my tiara and the fake ruby slippers I had kept hidden in my closet for years. I was never to be a princess, and I was never to model for Victoria’s Secret. I quit wearing a bra altogether, and quite enjoyed this freedom through college and my early 20’s.

I find it funny that though flat as a board, I must still suffer through the embarrassment of the yearly breast exam performed by my gynecologist. Like I wouldn’t notice some lump that had attached itself to my ribs? On one occasion the doctor was inspecting me with a look of concentration on his face and stated, “I seem to have found a small lump on your left side.”
My simple reply was “Thank-goodness! Can you find my right one too?”

I was ecstatic when I finally became pregnant! First, I was going to have a baby! Second, I was suddenly an “A” cup! A real “A” cup! Like, I could actually wear a grown-up bra without the worry of finding it nestled up under my arm pits at the end of the day! I’d been waiting 25 years for this.

Of course there was also the down-side. Suddenly as I trotted down the stairs, there were these two lumps on my chest that seemed to have developed a life of their own. They were bouncing! And they were SORE! When I lay on my side at night, they were there… pinching themselves between my arm and body. It took some getting used to (though my husband adjusted pretty quickly). Unfortunately my poor little nipples seemed to be confused and upset by the changes. They hid deeper inside, only coming out in the extreme cold, but rushing back to their hiding places as soon as the goose-pimples had subsided. It got so bad that around the 7^th month of pregnancy, they even started to cry at night!

About this time, I started to read up on breast-feeding. It was made clear through the television and the pamphlets at the doctor’s office that only mothers possessed by Satan himself did not breast-feed their babies! From the looks of it, some states might even have pressed charges in if a mother was found purchasing formula for a minor! But what I read concerning breast-feeding started to frighten me…
“Hold the baby in the crook of your arm. Gently touch his lower lip with your finger until he starts to ‘root’ or look for your nipple. Bring your breast to your baby’s face and place your nipple in his mouth.”
Are we talking about a breast or a garden hose? “Bring your breast to your baby’s face…?” The only thing I was going to be bringing anywhere was my baby to the thing that looked like a halved orange stuck to my chest because I was pretty sure it wasn’t going anywhere! Hmmmm… was this going to be a problem?

So finally my baby was lying in my arms.
“The lactation coach will be here in about 5 minutes.” The day-nurse warned me. Well, looking back I say “warned.” I suppose at the time she “told” me that the nurse would be in.

And in came Girda!

The best way to visualize Girda is that large, Viking woman in the opera, but without the horns (or, at least, you couldn’t actually see them). Vit a very tick German accent she sait, “Tak ovv your tup, pleez.”
“Hi, my name is Leigh and this is my son Jacob.”
“Tak ovv your tup, pleez.”
“What’s your name?”
“Girrrrdahhh. Tak ovv your tup, pleez.”
As I began to wonder if the next sentence would be ‘Vee haff vays ov makink you tak ovv your tup!’ I quickly began opening my gown. Before I was even fully exposed, a large mutton-like hand had shot out and adhered itself to my tiny, sore, orange-half boobie.
“Hmmmm… dis iz nut verrrry goot. Do you haff nipplez?”
“Uh, yeah… they’re just innnn-aaaaaahhhhhh! Um, I guess you found them, huh?”
“Uummmm-hmmmm.”
“Am I going to have trouble because I’m small?”
She stood back with her arms crossed over her ample chest while she scrutinized the situation. “In uull my twenty-fife yerrs ov teaching dis, noboooty walk out ov hospital not brest feetink baby!
(Did the rest of them get rolled out in body-casts? This was not a good start!)
Girda broke my panic-stricken silence with “Let me haff your niplez again.”
Like I had a choice.
“Deez are not too goot for feedink baby.”
She held Jacob against me and appeared to be attempting to stuff my entire breast into his mouth. After torturing us both to her satisfaction for the next 30 minutes, she announced, “Teachink baby to nurzz frum you like teachink him to nurse frum wall. He can nut latch on to sometink he can nut finte. Zo now I tell ladees, in uull my twenty-fife yerrs ov teaching dis, der voss only one who did nut.”
And with that, she left.

While I was sitting there in shock, my husband came in with a bottle of formula.
“What, things didn’t go so well? I was just in the sitting room with Sgt. Neilson’s wife and she said she never even needed the coach.” he said innocently.
As soon as I found my voice, I replied “If you think it’s so damn easy, why don’t you give it a try?”

In the years since that time, I have discovered that babies do fine on formula, you won’t be arrested for not breast-feeding, and a little thing called the Miracle Bra. I have a wonderful, healthy son, a nice figure in clothes, and plenty of extra room in my bra to carry my wallet, keys and makeup. I can proudly state to anyone who asks,

“Yes! These are 100% natural… cotton.”

The Story of Jacob’s Birth Day

Knowing that Jake was breech, we decided on a planned C-section at 38 weeks gestation. I was given the choice of any day from March 13th – 17th. Well, that’s a no-brainer, huh? I’ll be the mom that never forgets her son's birthday and take St. Patrick’s Day, thank-you! Though I was nervous the night before, I had no trouble sleeping anywhere, any time in my third trimester. We woke up the next morning and went in to Irwin Army Hospital, Ft. Riley, KS at 6:00 AM.

I got into the little gown with my butt hanging out and stuck out my arm to have the IV put in. Because they can never get a vein in my hand, they stuck me 5 or 6 times in the arm before getting a good one. Because I’m legally blind, we had made special arrangements for me to wear my coke-bottle lens glasses throughout the procedure so I could see my baby and test to see if the OR lights were capable of starting a fire through the two magnifying glasses on my face.

Around 7:30 AM, my butterflies and I were wheeled into the OR for the spinal. I had taken childbirth classes at a local hospital, and the breathing techniques (controlled hyperventilation/panic) came in quite handy! I’m terrified of needles, so I was careful not to look at the one they were about to stick in my spine. (If I’d seen it, they might not have needed any anesthetic as I would have passed out.) I sat on the gurney and leaned forward against a nurse as the anesthesiologist gave me a shot of Novocain and then inserted the needle and tube for the spinal. Slow inhale 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8… exhale… … 3… 4… (fight panic attack) 5… 6… (don’t wiggle) 7… (Yeah, right!) 8…

I warned the staff prior to the procedure that I have a history of resistance to anesthetics of every kind. I don’t think they believed me. I was lying on my back and I could feel my legs going numb. What a strange, tingly feeling! I was pretty well numbed (I thought) and couldn’t move my legs so they strapped me down spread eagle, stripe-ass naked on a wide gurney. They put a screen up in front of my face and my husband stood to my left. The surgeon prepared to make the first incision and…
“Um… I can feel your hand on me – is that normal?” I asked nervously.
The doctor responded, “You may feel some pressure or believe you’re feeling something, but our minds play tricks on us when we’ve been anesthetized.”
“Ok” I said, “but it feels like your fingers are just below my belly button, and your thumb is near my pubic hair-line.”
Silence…
“And now you’re making little circles with your finger…” I told him.
“Can we give her more?” The doctor asked the anesthesiologist.
The anesthesiologist replied, “It’s a Spinal, not an Epidural. Maybe it just needs another minute.”
“And how about now?” The doctor asked me a minute later.
“Feels like the palm of …” I started.
“We’re going to have to knock her out…”
“…Jesus… um, yeah… the palm of Jesus… has just taken all the feeling away” I gasped.
“Are you sure…” the doctor asked in a dubious voice.
“Can’t feel a thing!” I grinned innocently. Gulp!
Luckily the spinal worked well enough to cut out the sharp pain, though I could still feel every move they made. I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to meet my baby for the first time in the next few minutes! I think the nurse to my right who was monitoring my pulse was on to me, but simply whispered “Just let me know if it gets too bad.”
I was so excited that it wasn’t bad at all. I just used the breathing techniques I had learned, and I was fine.

After a few minutes, the doctor yelled, “We’ve got a science experiment in here! Get the camera and invite the gang to look at this one!”
“What’s…?”
“Don’t worry about it.” The doctor snapped in my direction.
(Yeah, right! The gang? Here I am strapped down like a beached whale, Nekid, with most of my innards lying on the outside of my body and you want to bring the Gang in? And what science experiment…?)
The doctor continued, “Now I’m going to make the incision… and break your water… towels! We’ve got a turtle-neck! Umbilical is wrapped three times around the neck!”
(Um, yeah – Panic Attack!)
And then I heard the most beautiful sound of my son crying and gasping for air. My euphoria was broken short by the doctor’s shout of “We’ve got a PREEMIE here! Get the cart STAT!”
“What…” (Am I on an emotional roller-coaster or something? I think I just wet myself… oh yeah, my catheterized bladder is in a spoon-clamp-thingy and sitting on my right hip.)
Suddenly the room was full of people rushing around with strange-looking equipment and yelling stuff to each other. Of course I was trying at this point to sit up to see where my baby was and find out what was going on. The OR team had to hold me down to prevent the rest of my innards from rolling out onto the table.
The pediatrician called out, “First APGAR is a 9... Second APGAR is a 10! It’s just a runt.”
“A runt???” (Did I have a baby or puppies?)
The nurse by my side whispered, “You just have a very little baby. We’re going to run some tests, but he seems to be fine. That pediatrician NEVER gives 10’s! That’s a really good sign.”
Finally, my 4lb 12oz squalling baby was brought over and placed on my chest. His crying stopped completely, and his little brown eyes opened up and looked directly into mine! I started crying, whispered “hi” to him and told him how much I loved him. My right hand had been released and I was able to hold him for just a minute.

He was taken from me to let his daddy hold him, and then whisked him off for tests. The doctor had started working to put me back together, and at this point I looked at the nurse and said, “Um, excuse me, but could you tell the doctor that that clamp on the left side is pinching a bit, and his hands are kind of cold?”

That was the last thing I remember before waking up about 2 hours later in recovery. Evidently they gave me enough of something to knock out a small elephant. I rather looked and felt like a small elephant too, but I slept well knowing my tiny little baby was just fine.

I later found out that the “science experiment” within me was a uterine anomaly where only half my uterus had developed. Cute, huh? The deformity is called a Unicornuate Uterus and it may explain in part my trouble conceiving that time and in the years to come. God forbid I could just be normal for once. Honestly, I knew even before they told me that my beautiful son was nothing less than the most wonderful miracle in my world.