I can't BELIEVE I was talking yesterday about whether or not I should stop taking my medication.  All it takes is one sleepless night for me to completely freak out about my parenting choices again, for no apparent reason.

Yesterday after work, I visited my friend M., who has a gorgeous two-month-old, D.  He is a beautiful baby, very happy, and he's already sleeping a million gazillion hours a night.  I stared at his little face and thought about my friend A. saying that her daughter had begged for a sibling.  We drank wine and talked about how easy her labor had been.  When I got home, I asked my beloved if he thought we would ever want another one, a question he and I revisit about every six months, and usually we look at each other and laugh, because we are So Not Baby People.  Ha!  We think.  Never again.  And he feels good about it, and gives it no more thought.

Still, as I drifted off to sleep, I thought, well, MAYBE another one wouldn't have so much trouble sleeping as the little angel does. MAYBE lightning doesn't strike twice.  I started reading my favorite sleep book again, and with every page the horror of sleeplessness came back to me, the nine months we spent forging through every day with five and a half hours taken in two-hour increments, trying to meet deadlines, be nice to people and not die in traffic accidents.  It was the ultimate in survival mode for me.

Sister Little pointed out how quickly it had gone on the phone this morning, although in the same breath she asked why the heck I would let anyone other than me, including the little angel, make that decision for me. And in all truth, the little angel has never indicated she is aware that other humans might exist in our family unit.  I thought about Sister Little's statement, and I realized that part of my life did not go quickly for me. Don't get me wrong - the happy parts didn't, either - but the sleeping problem was so severe, so completely life-disrupting that at this point, every moment I spent on the floor of her room, listening to her cry and staring at the sixteenth nightlight I'd tried to get the ambiance of the room just right, is seared permanently in my brain.

We've been out of town every weekend in June, and she slept pretty well while we were traveling.  It sort of fell apart once we got back. She's been up every night at two and five again, although usually she goes back to sleep pretty fast.  Last night, there was a cat in heat outside her window, and so she woke up every time it yowled from two until about six a.m.  I took the first shift, but I couldn't stand it anymore by about 4:30. I remember looking at the clock thinking at least I could get two hours of uninterrupted sleep before getting up for work. It was an eery flashback to the bad days last winter. 

So, there you are.  Sister Little keeps telling me the only person putting pressure on me is me, and she's probably right, although I know there are those out there, maybe even you, Gentle Reader, who thinks it's a parent's duty to provide every child with a sibling that they may love or hate.  I did think about it when I accompanied Sister Little to her CT scan last Friday.  Who would accompany the little angel if she had one? But then I also thought hey, I don't have an extra husband or an extra mother or father in case something happens to one of them or they are not available when I need them, so why should I apply that logic to siblings?  I am twittery on this subject, always have been.  And for some reason, every time I don't get sleep, I start questioning everything about my parenting style, not just how I handle her sleeping problems.  I wish I didn't.  I'm confident in the other choices I've made in my life, so why can't I just feel good about this one?  My stomach seizes up with fright when I contemplate going through this sleep battle again.  So why would I even think about more babies?

This morning I went to see my psychiatrist.  Yes, I admit, I have one.  I've had a few therapists over the years.  I've also had a few bouts with depression, every eating disorder in the book and extreme anxiety. And those were in the golden years of teendom and early adulthood!  What awaits me in old age?

Anyway, I'm not above admitting this, obviously, because though it seems we live in a pretty self-medicated world, I also think we live in a pretty obnoxious and overstimulated world.  And that, my friends, is our own damn fault.  1984? We're living it, minus the rats at the end. I don't mean to be negative - I love modern conveniences - but let's not fool ourselves that those very conveniences aren't making our lives even more hectic, our goals more unobtainable and our expectations for ourselves, our children, our marriages and our happiness Just. Plain. Ridiculous.

Tangent over.

This morning I went to see my psychiatrist, which I have to do every three to six months to keep getting my medicine, only to find out that though her office takes my health insurance, my health-insurance provider has outsourced the mental-health portion to someone else, who they don't take. Meaning my psychiatrist is out-of-network. Which is medical profession for "fuck you."

So...decisions.  Do I go find a new psychiatrist and try to explain that the only reason I sought help in this particular chapter of my life was the extreme lack of sleep I was getting last holiday season?  That I spent two hours a day crying because my daughter spent two hours a night doing the same?  That I wanted to kill the next person who asked when I was having another baby because the toddler I had hadn't started sleeping as well as a newborn at 22 months?  It all just seems like so much work. Plus, I'm feeling better now that the little angel only wakes up a maximum of once a night and usually goes right back to sleep.  Oh, and I got a new contract that goes until January, and it's even doing editorial stuff which makes me happy, happy, happy.  And I like my husband and my daughter and my friends and family, and really the only thing off in my life right now is my fear that Sister Little's head might explode or something, but that will probably be rectified with no issues soon.

So with nothing going wrong, am I still crazy?  I know, that's harsh.  I was never crazy.  Extremely anxiety-ridden, but not crazy.  The anxiety does seem to be gone, although after a weekend spent with four pregnant women, I did find myself having dreams about an adult little angel looking at me and asking why I never gave her a brother or sister.  I do have some anxiety about the fact that I don't want another child, but I feel like I should have one just because.  But other than that, pretty good.  Of course, the more I ponder whether or not I'm anxious, the more anxious it makes me.

You can only stop flying missions if you're crazy, but you prove yourself sane if you want to stop.

So here I am.  I don't think I've ever felt normal. From the age of eight I had horrible self-loathing and body issues.  Then Ma's cancer and the years and years of eating disorders and more self-loathing, followed by the anxiety that is your early-to-mid twenties.  I capped that off with marriage, home ownership and the birth of my first child.  I seem to be taking things easier now, but is that because I'm a) medicated, b) 32 or c) I've already faced a lot of Life's Big Decisions?

What does it feel like to feel normal?  How do I know if I'm better?  Anyone?

I composed an entire post about my family's latest medical trauma while waiting for my sister to get a CT of her head on Friday.  I was in Chicago, where she lives. Of course, between that time and now, there have been a lot of wardrobe and suitcase changes, and I lost the whole thing. Lately she's been hearing her heartbeat in her ear, a swooshing noise. This is called pulsatile tinnitus.  Kind of like ringing in the ears, but swooshing instead.  Apparently this can be caused by nothing serious, or it can be caused by myriad horrid things too scary to write about (because if I write about them, it might give them secret powers).

Anyway, she was so nervous about the test that she forgot some important things, such as the doctor's order for the test.  We finally got it figured out, after hearing a story about the receptionist Matthew's St. Patrick's Day incident with his expensive Italian cell phone.  (Apparently he'd been drunk on margaritas and threw it at someone after only six days of ownership.  It was shattering to him to lose it. It was also shattering to the phone.)

In order to do the scan, they had to pump some sort of dye, probably radioactive, into her blood. They wouldn't let me go back there with her.  They claimed it was due to the radioactiveness of it all.  I think they just really don't like visitors in the medical world. Anyone care to comment on that?  Visitors just seem like more people to freak out and/or hold down. I could be wrong.

Sister Little said the dye made her super hot, like she was breathing fire.  It also gave her the disconcerting sensation that she was peeing.  They warned her this would happened and reassured her that though she would think she was peeing, she was not really peeing.  I guess she did well. The nurse told her afterward that about some women like the peeing sensation so much they want to do it again (gah) and some people are so freaked out they jump up and flee from the room, screaming, and have to be hunted down.

After all this, they burned her head images to a CD (which took, like, so much longer than it takes me to burn a CD, even when I have to use iTunes).  I asked her if we could play it in her car.  I wonder what it would sound like. Probably The Cure, or maybe the end of a Prince song.  She said no, she didn't really want to hear her brain on radioactive dye. I thought the little angel might like it. Touche.

So now we wait four business days to find out if she has any aneurysms.  It's sort of scary, so we're both trying not to think about it.  I told the mother of one of my childhood friends (I was also in Chicago this weekend - we all were - for a baby shower of yet another childhood friend) about the whole thing, this woman who has known me almost my entire life, and she said, "Don't invite trouble."  This particular woman has been a widow for at least ten years and has a daughter, one of my best friends, who had meningitis to the point where half her body was paralyzed and had to relearn to walk, was bitten by a brown recluse spider and has always lived on the edge.  Her other daughter, the organizer of the shower, had many medical problems of her own.  So I figured if anyone knew what she was talking about, M. did.  And so, I'm going to try really hard not to invite trouble where there currently isn't any.  At least not any bona fide documented trouble.

So there.

Because sometimes, life is random.

life preservers

beach balls

duck bills

goose feet

tennis shoe liners

miniature staplers

regulation basketballs

notebook covers

the little angel's Gymboree pants

pencil erasers

night lights

workout shorts

Vitamin C pee

liquid soap

barrettes

the center of the sun (I'll bet)

swizzle sticks

umbrellas

construction worker vests

road barrels

those triangles on the back of Amish buggies

Nemo

circus peanuts

Cheetos

Fanta

orange zest

L. L. Bean socks

my beloved's boombox speakers

my college bookbag

raincoats

Sybil's cat food cover

tulips

Tuesday mornings in June

crayons

government cheese

chicken waddles

Legos

Kleenex boxes

sippy cups

happiness

I haven't been feeling too attractive lately. I'm pushing maximum density on these jeans, and the five pounds I lost when the little angel started crawling has crept back on due to a steady diet of stolen chicken nuggets and french fries.  I hate my hair.  I wish I were tan.  I wish I had time to do the thirty-mile bike rides of yesteryear, the ones that always whipped me into shape for summer without me necessarily having to do anything else different.  It's hard to ride thirty miles on a highway in ninety-degree heat with a two-year-old. 

I did read the results of a poll lately that said mothers feel more attractive than childless women.  Initially I laughed - the stereotype for mommies is bad hair, no make-up and atrocious denim - but then I thought about it.  It didn't say we LOOK better, it said we FEEL better. 

I was thinking about that and trying to decide what I thought when the little angel walked up to me and examined my pink flip-flops. 

Little Angel:  "Mommy has pretty shoes."

Me: "Why, thank you."

She peered down at my toes, my non-pedicured toes, on which I had slapped a bright coral polish the day before in an effort to seem more "resort," less "white trash."

Little Angel:  "Mommy has pretty toes."

And despite my cellulite, crow's feet and forehead wrinkles, I did feel pretty then.

Where did the little angel get all of these bug bites?  Was it at home?  Was it because she plays with chalk too close to the Puffer?  I should bail out the Puffer.  I hate that boat cover.  We should've bought a new boat cover in the Ozarks. We need one that will be tight, like a drum. 

I wonder if my parents still have my old snare drum from high school?

I need to buy bug spray for the little angel, so she doesn't get eaten.  What if she gets West Nile?  S. had West Nile and couldn't work for six months.  But she's two now, and everyone knows two-year-olds can sustain anything an adult can.  It says so right there on all the medicine bottles. Sort of. At least they're in the dosage chart.

I hate bug spray.  I hate DEET. It sounds too much like DDT.  Which is worse, letting her get eaten by bugs and possibly contracting West Nile or covering her in poisonous toxins every day?  Why are even fucking bugs more scary now then they were when I was a kid?  I can't let her play in the yard without supervision because I know there's a rapist two doors down thanks to that damn sex-offender web site, and I can't let her just get a bug bite because I know she could get sick.  IGNORANCE WAS GODDAM BLISS.  I hate how not ignorant I am. I will now aspire to being more ignorant, at least as far as parenting is concerned.

I can't forget to go get the Nuvaring. I can't believe I brought an empty box to the Ozarks.  Now we'll have to use condoms.  If we have sex. But I want to have sex!  I want lots of sex!  Hotel sex!  I will not be getting hotel sex.  Will he laugh at condoms?  Do I remember what size he wears?  He'll be pissed if I get the wrong size.  Maybe I should just buy really big ones, just like I'd want him to buy smaller underwear than would fit me.  Hmm.  This is why men should have to buy their own shit.  How am I supposed to remember how big he is compared to the rest of the world so that I can buy appropriately-sized condoms?  Damn Nuvaring.  Do I know how to reset that timer?  I bet it works just like my PDA.  (pause while sticking paperclip in hole in back of timer)  Yup.  God bless industry standards.

Don't eat the Play-doh!  DON'T EAT THE PLAY-DOH!

The cat was locked in the bedroom all afternoon and pissed all over my bed.  I'm really mad about the bed.  But I feel kind of bad for the cat. I'm sure it reached about 95 degrees in there. Poor Sybil.  She didn't ask for it. BUT MY BED!  WAH!!!!!!! MY BED!!!!!  Be nice to the cat - you don't know how long she'll live.

Nuvarings cost $39?  WITH INSURANCE?  You've got to be kidding me.  Is my lack of organization and memory worth $25 a month?   Wait a second - how much does the little angel cost a month?  $800 for daycare, $30 for diapers, probably $50 in food and milk, $40 in broken/lost/outgrown clothing/toys/play-doh/sidewalk chalk...yeah, Nuvaring is SO worth it.

Why is it that every time I get in line at Osco the check-out person looks at me as though my order is the world's hardest Sudoko? Like this is a life-changing experience for them?  Are you standing at the crossroads of your check-out career?  Just take the damn red pill and check me the fuck out.  And quit staring at my kid like that - she's missed six meals in this line.

I have to reschedule Parents As Teachers. Why do I do that?  Last time she told me that if you want to make your kid smarter, you just put more books in your house. I have never seen a finer example of misinterpreting statistical results in my life, especially displayed by someone who is charged by the great state of Missouri with teaching me how to parent.

Why do we have to iron clothes?  Why?

Are the sheets done yet?  Damn, Sybil - are you missing your box now?  There is cat pee dribbling across my floor!  EWWWW!  She is so geriatric, it is not even funny.  That cosmetic surgeon I sat next to on the flight to the coast last week told me that if people knew the truth about how dirty animals are, no one in their right mind would live with one.  And now Sybil is so totally proving him right.  But I so love her even though this is the second life-sustaining surface she has peed on in eight hours.  Damn cat.

I should get the little angel to drink from an open cup. She's probably old enough for that. I don't know if I can take away any more security objects right now. I feel weary. I should potty train her. It's summer.  She never wants to sit on it, though. Should I force it?  I think I might've shot my parenting wad on getting her past the paci and crib phase.  I have nothing left to give. 

Do I really have to bleach my teeth with these strips for 14 nights?  What about maybe a week? I feel like a boxer with these things in.  Why do I care what color my teeth are?  Or my hair or my skin?  Why is everything on me bleached or stained darker?  What does that say about the human condition?

I think I'll go read The Devil Wears Prada while I bleach my teeth.

Did I wash off the little angel's bug spray?

On Friday, my beloved and I celebrated our five-year wedding anniversary.  Five years ago, we frantically packed ourselves up and flew to St. Pete Beach, Florida, to stand toe-to-toe in white sand and promise to hold each other up long after we've ceased to be hot or intelligent. 

Although we intend to celebrate more in July when my parents come down to watch the little angel for a night so we can stay in a local hotel and pretend like we don't really live three miles south of it, we did manage to slip away from my beloved's work summer regional conference (read:  Drink the Kool-Aid and Play Nice With the Others) and hit a restaurant in the Ozarks that served crab legs on paper towels that you smashed to bits with little wooden hammers. Though the little angel had chicken strips instead of crabs, she thought smashing things with a hammer was great fun.  I told her it is even more fun when you can drink wine while you're doing it, but like many, many other fun things (like paying a mortgage and holding down a day job), you have to be An Adult to do it.  She smiled and dipped her chicken strip in ketchup, preferring to think about all that on another day.

There might have been better, more glamorous ways to celebrate five years, but the crab shack seemed okay. We weren't looking out on an ocean, but the Lake of the Ozarks is at least wet.  It was also both fun and not fun to have the little angel along on an attempted-romantic trip down memory lane.  It's surreal to me that three years ago she did not exist except as an unfertilized egg, down there in my body with all the other unfertilized eggs, this glorious little human being who has taken over my life.  It's sort of surreal to me sometimes that I'm married at all.

In my head, I'm still 23, fresh out of college and wondering what to be when I grow up.  Somewhere along the line, I managed to meet and marry a kind, witty, intelligent guy with broad shoulders and good fathering skills, a man who believes in doing the laundry and equal effort in childcare, a man who had roses waiting for me when I got home from my three-day, last-minute business trip to the coast.  How did the 23-year-old Dater of Idiots managed to snare this one?  I ask myself that a lot, especially when I'm listening to people complain about their husbands or reading essays by women whose husbands refer to watching their own children as "babysitting." 

I also managed to make the right decision to throw my many, many concerns to the wind and get pregnant.  And now I have this amazing daughter who is so sweet and kind and cute.  When I had a headache yesterday, she reached over and touched my brow with one pointer finger.  "Are you okay, Mommy?" she asked, and I almost cried.

So things are pretty good.  It's been a completely odd five years, and mostly that is because I'm realizing that I don't have to wonder what the rest of my life is going to be like.  There are some variables, sure - I have writing goals and career goals I want to achieve. There are trips I'd like to take and adventures I'd like to have.  But I know with whom I'll be sharing those adventures, and that is a really great feeling.  I should realize that more often.

So, even though he doesn't read this, happy Father's Day and anniversary to my beloved, who has been the foundation on which I daily build and tear down my houses.  Thanks for being you, and for choosing me.

My friend S. has been dieting for quite awhile now.  She looks great.  Part of her regimen includes a workout called the Cardio Party that is Guaranteed! To! Burn! Up! To! One! Thousand! Calories!

Since we were trapped indoors at the lake on Saturday, we four girls decided to attend the Cardio Party.  The invitations looked nice.  And, because the only other thing we were doing inside all day was washing down Oreos and Cheese Puffs with boxed wine, it seemed like a prudent thing to do.

Before we started the Cardio Party, there was a lengthy discussion of the Mushroom Phenomenon.  The "mushroom" refers to the area of fat that hangs over one's bikini bottoms or underwear on the sides, creating a mushroom effect.  A man would call it love handles.  I've also heard this fat referred to a "muffin top," which seems a little more endearing to me.  If you're going to comment on my fat, at least be cute about it.

We compared muffin tops and decided to bump the Cardio Party up to the top level.

Big mistake.

The workout wasn't bad in terms of all the workouts I've ever done, but joining the Cardio Party after two kickboxing-free years ensured I would walk like the protagonist in March of the Penguins for the rest of the day, barely able to raise my foot higher than twelve inches.  There was some cursing involved, usually directed at the hostess of the Cardio Party, who told us at the beginning of the DVD that she's birthed two children, recently, and insisted we were having fun. Bitch.

After about forty minutes of huffing and puffing and kicking and punching and doing some scary thing called "The Wheel" that simulated King Kong eating New York, we collapsed on the floor.  I dragged myself outside into the freezing June air and looked longingly at the normally warm lake, which at the time featured rain blowing off its little whitecaps.  A few geese, confused by the winter in June, huddled under the boat dock.  Then I heard the little angel wailing herself awake from a nap that lasted exactly the length of the Cardio Party.

So I did what any responsible adult would do.  I tapped the box of wine.

After driving three and a half hours alone with the little angel on Friday, I finally picked up my beloved at the Des Moines airport.  The little angel, who had begun voicing a disconcerting "There is no more Daddy" in her best Charlton Heston voice the night before, ran screaming to him in a fit of toddler joy, then immediately demanded ice cream.

After we calmed ourselves, we drove another hour or so to my best friend's parents' lake cabin.  I've been visiting this spot since I was about seven - my parents honeymooned here. It's a man-made lake that started off crappy and has grown rather opulent in the past few years.  Going to the lake is one of my favorite, favorite, FAVORITE things to do, which is why we were doing it even though it was supposed to be cold and rainy on Saturday. 

On Friday when we arrived, it was a balmy 85 degrees.  The little angel and my godson, J., ran blissfully through the yard like a baby Ralph Lauren commercial, Millie the Dog hot on their heels (for visualization purposes, Millie looks and acts like the adorable but disobedient Toto).  We grilled out.  We lingered in the golden sunlight, drinking wine.  The children fell asleep exhausted.  All was right with the world, or at least with central Iowa.

Then we woke up.  It was raining and barely sixty degrees.

There is a certain terror that strikes the parents of small children at predisposed times.  They include:

• Airplane rides
• Church
• Funerals
• Weddings
• Show and tell
• Meeting a new babysitter
• Rainy days

Thankfully, my childless friends, smart girls, had brought earplugs and slept until 10 a.m.  We parents were up shaping pizzas out of Play-do for several hours before they graced us with their presence.  At one point, when the pizzas started to include frog legs, heart monitors and suitcases as ingredients, we realized it was time to try something new.

And we did.

And we did.  At about fifteen-minute intervals.  For about fourteen hours.

At times, we braved the frigid June outdoors, swinging the children in bedsheets and showing them how to throw rocks in the water.  We admired the neighbor's statue of an owl.  We encouraged the children to run screaming around the yard.  We did this ourselves, but not for the same reasons.  We did it because it kept us from beating them.  They did it because it felt good.  We pretended we were in New England in November.  Then it started to rain, a pelting, freezing rain, and back inside our 1,000-square-foot playpen we went.

All in all, though, the kids were really good, and my childless friends were really patient, like goddess-patient, though I could see their souls starting to bleed out their eyes a little bit by Sunday morning.  I can't imagine what it must've felt like to them, but I know I was more exhausted from two straight days of trying to keep the little angel happy, quiet and not eaten by Millie the Dog than I was from an entire week of single parenting in the dog-free and childproofed luxury of my own home.  Although, as with most weekends spent with great friends, I wouldn't have given up watching J. and the little angel play together or the conversations we all had after the kids went to bed and we relived the undistracted conversations of lake trips past, when all we had to worry about was the future, not the present.

This morning I left on a two-night business trip to somewhere that is most certainly warm and sunny.  Added bonus:  It's for an exciting new project which should keep me happily getting paid until January.  And I'm writing!  Whee!  Normally, I hate being away from the little angel for more than one night, however now, one day out of my rainy weekend and two days away from my beloved's work "Family Weekend" in the Ozarks, I can think of nothing I need more than a hot bath, an iPod and a room of my own.

With a deadbolt.