Month: September 2022

Style

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When I was in high school and college, I paid a lot of attention to how I looked. I loved dressing up in certain ways, wearing real outfits that weren’t just jeans and a t-shirt. In college, I fought off depression by spending absurd amounts of money on makeup (admittedly, not expensive makeup, but if you’re buying a bunch at CVS every week, it adds up), and while I never put much effort into my hair outside of the salon chair (blonde for one year, red for the rest, never quite achieving the chunky highlights I wanted and thankfully avoiding a Kelly Clarkson look), I still took care to make sure I looked decent, at least when I wasn’t heading for an 8 a.m. class.

I lost that at some point.

I don’t know when I lost it. Maybe the summer between junior and senior years, when depression hit me like a lahar, knocking me down and burying me up to my eyebrows in mud so thick I couldn’t get out of bed most days. Maybe after I graduated, when I was so panicked about finding some sort of work that the idea of really pulling together a Look seemed insurmountable. Either way, by the time I’d left school and entered the “real world,” the effort required to pull together a cute outfit and do my makeup seemed pointless. I wasn’t quite schlubby–that came later–but I didn’t care. 

It wasn’t really from lack of desire to care; it was more from–I don’t really know. Something sapped my ability to do so. Maybe it was the corporate grind of those early years, the drag from temp job to temp job or retail work to retail work (because an English composition degree doesn’t lend itself to very many career paths) and the slow spiral of untreated depression. I wanted to curate a closet of cute looks, but lack of money and that fucking drag prevented that from really being the case.

And now I’m on the other side, a nearly forty year old parent whose fashion sense can best be described as “pajamas that are (probably) clean.”

I don’t much like that. Don’t get me wrong, I am a proponent of comfort over style, function over form, but I look at myself in the mirror and don’t like who I see looking back at me because it’s not just that she doesn’t care about her outfits or makeup (lol what makeup). It’s that she doesn’t care about herself.

I honestly don’t know when that happened, but I feel like it was a slow decline. Bit by spoony bit, saying, “well, that doesn’t matter,” until the person looking back at me was unrecognizable by most of my standards, and I’m left doing some weird sort of mental calculus every time I want to go out, the math of “how schlubby can I get away with looking.”

And it’s part chronic pain making it hard for me to dredge up the energy necessary to really put work into my appearance, and it’s part being tired all the time, and it’s part “wow, three kids is a high number, and oh, they all have IEPs and you’re constantly emailing back and forth about whatever they’re doing at school? Wow, that’s an even higher number than three somehow.” 

BUT NONE OF THAT IS THE POINT OF THIS ENTRY and also it’s really depressing to think about, so we’re moving away from it.

The point is that I now have the time, some of the energy, and the resources to actually try and make myself less schlubby. I’ve got my Caboodle full of makeup that I can use when I really want to (and/or when I find time to dig up a makeup tutorial somewhere that’s easy to follow and caters to my hooded but not super hooded eyelids), I’ve got large swathes of the day free to play with makeup and fashion, and I’ve got the desire to look less like a sentient pile of (mostly clean) laundry. My only struggle at the moment is figuring out what I want this new fashionable me to look like. 

See, when I was younger, while I was really good at having outfits and wearing makeup, I didn’t really have a Look, per se. It was more just “ooh, this is cute!” regardless of whether it pushed towards surfer chic or vaguely skater-esque or grunge or preppy or goth. My closet had personality, or more accurately, personalities, and I could never settle on just one look. Now as a woman pushing forty, I want to really narrow that down and decide what I want to look like. 

My first instinct is to go wholly goth. I love the goth aesthetic, less from a super edgy look at me perspective and more from a “why yes, I would like to be a vampirewitch all the time, thank you” perspective. 

And I’ve been leaning that way with most of the clothes I’ve bought in the last year. I’ve started to move towards a collection of t-shirts and dresses that are all black, all the time, or at least mostly black or gray. It’s kind of lazy goth, really, because the hardcore goths REALLY go for it in a way that’s a bit more than I’m comfortable doing (largely because it seems like quite a lot of work for a trip to Target). Doing this has made shopping both more difficult and easier–I can narrow down my choices more quickly, but I also really have to dig for certain things (shopping for a dress to wear to my cousin’s wedding at the beginning of the summer was an adventure, and I’m still not wholly pleased with what I got). 

The trouble, though, ends up being that I can’t commit to goth shoes any longer. This fact saddens me greatly, as goth shoes are just. Perfection. Everything about them is perfect. I’ve lived for finding good goth shoes most of my life to this point, starting with a pair of knee high platform boots my mom got me for Christmas when I was 17 (boots that, along with my favorite red dress, frequently got me into trouble during my college years) and continuing right on through to the knee high combat boots and black motorcycle boots I have nestled in my closet right now. I love them. 

But I cannot walk in them any longer. 

Between the wtf of my chronic pain in my fingers and toes and small bones of my feet and the “oh that makes sense” pain of my sciatica, I’m basically relegated to Very Supportive Sneakers. And that’s fine, and I love my Very Supportive Sneakers, but it is a bit jarring to pair a wonderfully curated goth ensemble with a pair of gray and pink New Balances. It’s like a fashion mullet: spooky on top, Dad mowing the lawn on Saturday on bottom. 

Hrmph.

So it’s a work in process. But I’m figuring it out, and I’ll keep y’all updated as I do.

Some Me Time

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All three kids are in school full time now.

Somewhere, some judgmental person is like “how can you be so happy about your babies being out of the house all day???” but listen. I have spent the last eight years with someone either on me or in my uterus nonstop. Today, I got to go on a lunch date with my husband without finding someone to babysit for us. When I had to send emails this afternoon (because being a mom of three school-aged children means doing a lot of emailing), I didn’t have to worry that someone was going to get bored with whatever I’d thrown at them to distract them. I could just email and reply, email and reply. I was so fast.

So now I’m figuring out what to do with these hours between 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. when I used to have to spend 110% of my time making sure Isaac wasn’t bungee jumping from the top of the stairs (that still is a focus between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., for the record), and a lot of it boils down to actually taking care of myself.

Anyone who’s raised twins can tell you that it’s a LOT of work. You essentially have to be in two places at once at all times, even more as they get older and more capable of causing problems on purpose (as they gleefully inform me they’re doing several times a day). Your own needs don’t just take a backseat; they get strapped to the rear bumper with some duct tape and you pray they won’t fall off when you hit a particularly gnarly pothole. And when it’s twins, it’s not a societal thing telling you that mom should give up taking care of herself while dad does whatever. If you’ve got a decent marriage, both parents are struggling and dragging themselves across the finish line at the end of every day, wondering how they survived.

Actually me at the end of any given day.

And then add autism into the mix, with its superpowers and drawbacks, and basically, I’m amazed that I made it to the twins’ first full day of school without actually being committed to a mental institution. 

(note that I did come close, but it was technically a partial hospitalization and it was under extenuating circumstances, i.e., a literal plague, so I still consider it a victory)

This week, self care mostly just looks like having very relaxing days. I was in sleep therapy for a while this spring and summer, and I’m pretty sure my sleep therapist would shit a blue kitten to see how I’m spending this first week with no kids at home. But that would be her problem because I’m sleeping not because I feel like I need to but because I can and I want to. I like sleeping, and I like sleeping even more when I know that I don’t have to worry about my kids while I’m sleeping.

After this week, though, it’s time to really buckle down on the actual self care. Not the forever naps or the eating bonbons or wearing sheet masks type of self care, but actually pulling my body back from whatever hellhole it’s been in for the past two years.

I’d written back in March, when I had time to write here semi-regularly, that I was working on getting a CPAP, and I have gotten one. And I’ve noticed a marked difference in my before and after life, though I didn’t realize the difference until one day, when I didn’t get enough sleep and suddenly, I felt cranky. That didn’t happen before because I was just in this permanent state of exhaustion that never ended, so I didn’t ever feel cranky. I just felt normal. 

But then the other day, I didn’t get as much sleep as I had been and had to function on this insignificant amount of time. And I was cranky. I was so upset about everything and I was like ??? what is going on? Until I realized that oh, I was acting like I hadn’t slept because I hadn’t, and boy was that weird. I was so used to getting such bad sleep for so long (roughly 70%-80% of my nights were spent not breathing) that I didn’t know what being sleep deprived felt like anymore because it was just my normal. 

So I’ve taken care of the sleep aspect, at least, but a lot of me is still tired. This is partly because I’m still recovering from however many years it’s been that I’ve had sleep apnea and been getting zero sleep. This is also partly because, increasingly, I’ve been dealing with absurd amounts of bizarre pain.

I say “bizarre” because it’s pain that I can’t really explain with anything simple. I can explain my knees and hips and ankles hurting because I am fat. That makes sense to me. I cannot explain why my toe knuckles and finger knuckles hurt pretty much all the time. As far as I know, I haven’t been running around all night like a gorilla, balancing on my fingers, or learning to dance en pointe. My fingers and toes have hurt for the last two years off and on and it’s just very, very weird.

When I spoke to my primary care doctor about it (not intending to, by the way; I went in to speak with her about a completely different matter, and Kyle said, “hey, while you’re there, why don’t you talk to her about your fingers and toes hurting?”), she basically diagnosed me with “being fat” and spent the rest of the appointment meticulously reading through the list of ingredients on the Dr. Pepper I confessed to drinking. Which… yeah, pretty par for the course when you go to the doctor as a fat person. And, mind, I’m not saying that I’m either healthy or not fat; quite the opposite, really, and I know the steps I need to take to improve my situation. 

But.

Anyway, my doctor thankfully also ordered bloodwork to check for autoimmune issues, because when you have the symptoms I have (nonsensical joint pain, skin that gets hot when it’s in the same universe as a day over 65 degrees, fatigue even when you’re getting decent sleep), it tends to indicate something autoimmune going on. One of the results came back elevated in a range that, from what I’m reading, tends to be consistent with autoimmune situations, so that’s exciting.

I do not want to have an autoimmune condition, I should add. They all sound wretched. Bare minimum, they sound like a lifetime of pain and medication to do away with the pain that has awful side effects of its own. But I’d also like to know what the fuck is up with my body already hurting. Like my body already hurts; I don’t need an autoimmune diagnosis to make that a thing. 

(as to why I never brought it up before, quite simply it’s because between the pandemic and raising three kids with varied special needs, my own needs were, as I said before, strapped to the back bumper with duct tape)

I have an appointment with a rheumatologist in late October, and I really hope that she isn’t dismissive, that she says, “yeah, no, drinking soda isn’t good and you should exercise, but neither of those things should cause your knuckles to hurt like this.” 

So in addition to alllllll of that, I’m looking to start exercising properly, now that I actually have free hours during the day. I don’t know when I’ll be doing that exercise, but I figure ~30 minutes a day, 4-5 days a week of moderate cardio should do the trick of getting my heart pumping and my body saying, “whoa, hey, we’re taking care of ourselves now! Neat!” We have a membership at a local community center that I plan to use for that purpose, and that’s something I’ll be doing starting next week.

And in between all of this, I’m also getting my tubes tied. With all the new bullshit laws happening across the country (side note: if you agree with any of those laws, you and I are not going to get along) and with any future children I’d want probably coming from a freezer at this point, tubal ligation just seems like a good option to me. And that is happening on October 3, and I am pretty jazzed about it. Hilariously jazzed, too, considering literally everything I went through to have the kids I do have, but honestly, having power over my own body is a good feeling and one I want to maintain as much as I can, all things considered.

(those things being everything I talked about above)

And I’ve got plans to clean out a whole bunch of stuff from our house and I’ve got plans to write again and I’ve got plans to take my camera out places and and and 

Basically, I do, in fact, miss my kids somewhat during the day… but I’ve missed myself a whole lot more.

Messy Houses

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Our house is a mess.

Our house has basically been a mess since we moved in, but it’s been messiest in the four years since the twins were born because taking care of small humans takes a lot of work, and sometimes, it’s all we can do at the end of the day to stare at the scattered toys and papers and books and crayons and say “meh. I’ll worry about it tomorrow.”

It’s gotten better. A few weeks ago, in anticipation of some friends coming up to visit, Kyle and I dove into a whirlwind cleaning spree, throwing out so many things and leaving the main living areas of the house look more “lived in” than “disastrous.” Our entryway now has a nice little set of cubbies for everyone’s shoes (or at least everyone whose shoes are below a size 5). Our bathroom, while not spotless, looks nice and usable. Our dining room is usable. Our kitchen is still a disaster, but I think we need a full day for that alone, so I find it forgivable. 

But the house is a mess anyway. And I have lots of reasons for it, like my increasing physical disability (update on the CPAP thing: definitely getting more restful sleep, but that’s just one problem solved, and my fingers and toes and everything have been in pain for about two years now, so let’s see what happens there) and the fact that all three of my children have some sort of special needs, visible and invisible. Frankly, as long as people aren’t tripping over things or existing in filth, that’s good enough for me. 

But that said, I still get a sinking feeling whenever something happens. Fellow parents know what I mean.

Something like the twins are being too quiet, so I go to investigate and find that they’ve gotten into our supply of foaming hand soap and used it to create a rave. Things like they’re playing tattoo shop and have covered themselves with marker drawings or they’re playing beauty parlor and have painted themselves and the couch with nail polish. How did they get the nail polish? I have no idea. It wasn’t there a second ago. Twins are their own mischief engine.

It happened today. Carrie was playing school with me, using the wall and her magic wand as the pointer to teach me words; I obediently repeated the words she said as she said them (“cat,” “Baby Box,” “DJ Catnip,” “Mercat,” “Cat Rat,” because we are on a Gabby’s Dollhouse kick) and ignored it when she used the wand to scratch at the wall as if drawing. After all, it’s a plastic magic wand, so it wasn’t going to leave a mark. And then Isaac joined in and it was all good fun.

Except Isaac did not have a wand.

Isaac had a crayon.

And I had that sinking feeling, because I imagined someone coming into my house and seeing crayon all over the living room walls, which are themselves a disaster. The chair rail is cracked in half in one place, held on with duct tape. The paint has peeled off in other spots, and there’s a large white plaster patch underneath the window AC unit. When I can trust the kids more to be less destructive, I’m looking forward to really making it look gorgeous. Maybe I’ll paint some designs on one wall or maybe I’ll just hold off until the economy figures out what the fuck it’s doing and save any further painting/chair rail destruction for the inevitable renovation that I’ve been vaguely planning in my head since we bought the house.

But right now, there is crayon on the wall. Marker on other walls and on all of our furniture. Our couches have nail polish and a lot of mystery stains, most of which are water but some of which are probably something else that I couldn’t identify if I tried. Our carpets are just sad and waiting to be torn up and replaced with vinyl. 

It’s embarrassing on some level. I remember friends I had when I was really young who had been in foster care for a little while. Their mother was so afraid they’d be taken again that she would bleach the walls of their house. Any mess was a disaster because she never knew if a social worker would show up. And that was always a fear in the back of my mind, maybe based in that or some off handed comment by some other adult in my life when I was young, that if you didn’t keep a perfectly Martha Stewart Living esque home, someone would come and take your children away.

I hate that. 

Because the truth is, my kids are happy and healthy. They scribble on the walls because they feel safe at home. Are they supposed to? No. Did they get in trouble for it? Yes. But honestly, I’d rather have a home where my kids feel safe enough to do something like color on the walls than a home where they’re so afraid of messing up that it gives them an anxiety complex. I want them to know that no matter what they do, no matter how messy things get, they are loved and they are safe. Nobody in this house will ever stop being loved because of crayons on the walls or mystery stains on the couches or ground up crackers in the carpet. And they’ll be helping to clean up those things, as they always do, because when you make a mess, you clean it up. 

But they’re safe. They’re happy. And that’s what really matters.