Elephant Seals

Elephant seals are my Vietnam. And by that, I mean that I have been traumatized by elephant seals and suffer flashbacks of the trauma from time to time. I don't mean to belittle the gravity and horror of the Vietnam War. I'm just saying that were we to create a trauma graph from "Zero" to "Apocalypse Now" based on my life, my elephant seal experience represents the spike on that graph.

Approximately 6 or 7 years ago, Clyde and I went to California to visit his family as well as to attend a wedding. I do have pleasant memories about this trip; the hotel we stayed at that was right on the coast, the wedding itself which was lovely and had the bride walking down the aisle to "Storybook Love", and the equal parts endearing and frustrating fact that Clyde stuffed his pockets with Hershey's kisses at the wedding reception and then forgot about them until we had done a load of laundry and found all of our clothes covered in chocolate stains. However, those memories merely huddle in the greater shadow of the Elephant Seal Experience.

There was a beach off of Highway One at a place a little north of Cambria which elephant seals are known to frequent. Clyde and his family had visited this beach before and thought it would be fun to take me there. I was excited. I had never seen elephant seals before, not even in a zoo. I'd get to see them in a natural habitat, just hanging out and doing elephant seal things! It would be awesome! We parked the car and made our way to the beach where there was already a throng of people, pointing and taking pictures and chattering animatedly about the seals. I practically skipped to a gap in the crowd where we could get our own look at these no doubt majestic creatures.

At first, I was pretty amazed by it all. The beach was cluttered with these great, whiskered mounds of seals. For the most part, they just lounged on the sand but there were a few more active blokes who heaved their bodies around the beach like tremendous mobile Hefty bags full of thick pudding. Clyde and I pointed in shock and awe at these creatures with their bulbous, floppy noses and bodies covered in battle scars. The females stayed mostly huddled together and some of them even had pups. It could have been a moving and inspiring scene except everything turned awful.

A big nasty brute of a male came flopping and heavily undulating up the beach toward the clustered females, grunting in either anticipation or the effort of hauling his great carcass... or both. Not sure. The one he was after was a mother with a pup. The female tried to shield her baby which actually seemed to do more harm than good because when the brute mounted her, the poor pup was semi-pinned beneath the weight of both his mother and the violently amorous suitor. It was terrible. I remember noises - the big male's grunts that sounded like a giant attempting to suck up the last of a huge milkshake with a straw, the resounding slap as he smacked one flipper repeatedly against the female's side, and the pup's plaintive squeals as it struggled beneath the weight. And then it ended and the male began to slide away, allowing the mother to roll off the poor screaming pup who was only too happy to shuffle to safety. But that's not the end of the horror. Not for me, anyway. As I looked on, I saw a puzzling reddish-orange froth on the sand.

Me: What is that?

Clyde: I don't know... is that blood?

Me: Good lord, did he hurt her!?

Clyde: Wait... there's a trail of it leading to the male... and what's that pink.......oh.

Me: What? I don't get it... I... ohmygod... is that... is that it's PENIS?!?!?!

The image of that screamingly pink organ, covered in frothy orange goop has been seared into my mind perhaps for the rest of my life. I cannot think of elephant seals without shuddering in revulsion and terror. I fear that when I'm lying on my death bed, THAT is going to be the image that pops into my head with my last breath and it will be accompanied by the horrified screams of an infant seal.

I will not leave you with the image that haunts me years later. Instead, I just want you to imagine that you are a female elephant seal basking in the sun on a sandy beach with your sisters and your children and your nieces and nephews. All of the sudden, that peace is broken by the guttural grunts of a horny male elephant seal that has you in its sights.

True story

During the first few weeks after I gave birth to my first son, it seemed that any time I listened to the radio I would hear "Can't Help Falling in Love". Mostly, it was UB40 but a couple of times it was Elvis. I know that the song is mainly associated with romantic love - what you would feel for a boyfriend/girlfriend kind of thing. However, to me, this song is very much about how I came to love my first born child. That statement would probably raise some eyebrows, I guess. Didn't I love my son immediately? Didn't I adore him from the moment I first saw him? From the moment I first knew I was pregnant? Honestly and still a little shamefully, my answer is no.

I daydreamed about the baby that I would soon hold in my arms. I was petrified of any possibility of losing him. Any twinge I felt, any little pain, had me frantically dialing my OBGYN for advice and reassurance. I impatiently counted the days until my due date and often couldn't sleep due to the anticipation of it all. My husband seemed to be amazed by how quickly it was all happening while I was losing patience. I wanted my baby! I wanted my baby right now, damnit!

My memories of the immediate aftermath of Benjamin's birth are a blur. I remember seeing him for the first time and the sensation of having every word I could speak and emotion that I could feel ripped from my mind. I was overwhelmed and overawed. Suddenly, I was holding this little person in my arms and I was struck with the realization that I was responsible for him. After the months of waiting, all of the discomfort, the indescribable feeling of having a tiny being inside of me, here he was. He was crying and utterly confounded and hungry. And, actually, so was I.

It wasn't until we were all home and away from nurses and blood tests and distractions that I felt the ton of bricks hit me. Ben didn't sleep for longer than an hour and a half before waking and shrieking. We would exhaust all of the reasons - is he wet? dirty? gassy? hungry? cold? too warm? - and then sit dazedly with him in shifts through the very long nights. Making things worse was the fact that my husband didn't get much paternity leave. Before I knew it, it was just me and Ben left with nothing to do but figure each other out. It wasn't easy and it certainly wasn't immediate.

During the day, I was just able to keep it together. I dressed Ben up in the seemingly endless amount of adorable outfits that came flooding in from friends and relatives. I took an insane amount of pictures and nursed Ben while I uploaded them onto my computer and sent them out in emails. Everyone told me that I needed to nap while he napped but I began to believe that my new baby did not want me to sleep. Ever. He would seem peaceful and completely asleep and I would try to lay down and make up for the lost sleep during the night. The moment my head touched a pillow, however, the screaming would start. This also happened whenever I tried to eat anything. I would either gulp my food down quickly enough to guarantee heartburn or just go without.

The nights, however, were the worst. As the sun went down, I felt a separate darkness start to enfold me. It was a darkness full of fear and desperation and loneliness. It was claustrophobic and unrelenting. I would huddle on the couch, panicky and sobbing, while Ben would cry from the other room. I had heard of people "snapping" or "losing their minds" but I had never understood it or felt so close to it than during those horrific night-time hours. Later, during a conversation with a new OBGYN in Vancouver, I would learn that I had been going through postpartum depression. At the time, I was too ashamed and horrified to really let anyone know what I was going through. I was supposed to be in bliss, after all.

Through it all, I kept hearing "Can't Help Falling in Love". At first, I felt like I was being mocked or admonished in some way. I resented it while at the same time forcing myself to listen to it to really try to feel the way the song told me to feel. I wanted so badly to fall in love with this small, helpless stranger that had completely taken over my life. I wanted the contented sighs and feelings of wholeness that I had read so much about. However, wanting it only reminded me that I didn't have it. Wanting it reminded me that the stupid creeping darkness was on its way in a matter of hours. I hated myself and I hated Hallmark and I hated Gerber and I hated Kodak and I hated every freaking thing in my life that took hold of me and shook me and told me that I was an awful mother, an awful human being. I thought I would drown in all of it.

But during all that madness and all that self-hate and frustration and terror, there were moments that couldn't have been more perfect. There were little pockets of peace when Ben was in my arms and nothing had ever felt better. Moments when I would look at him and he'd look at me and it was the profoundest discovery that could be made. And little by little, those small moments began to happen more frequently. Being a mother started to feel less like an obligation and more like a privilege. I didn't want to go to work because it hurt to be separated from Ben. I'd think of him and smile without trying. Eventually, one day, I realized that the darkness wasn't there anymore. At least, not in the gigantic way that it had been before. I had fallen in love with my child.

I didn't go through all of that the second time around. My OBGYN at that point was apprised of what I had gone through and was determined to keep me from going through it again, as was I. Everything was a little easier. I don't attribute it all to the difference in temperament between my boys or the fact that I was proactive. I think that knowing what I had gone through, all the pain and terror and exhaustion, made me realize that the pay off - the deepest and most complete love I've ever felt - was worth it all and I could face it if I had to. So this is my cheesy blog about my first born and how he made me helplessly fall in love with him and how that opened me up to let myself fall in love with his little brother.

Head fluff

The thing about me is that 90% of the time that I'm being quiet, I generally have an internal monologue going on in my head. The topics vary depending on the mood I'm in/how tired I am/how hungry I am/etc. Also, sometimes I'm interviewing myself in my head which is disturbingly narcissistic and also lots of pathetic. I think I mainly do this to figure out if I'm worth talking to, after all. If I bore the crap out of me, I can't expect others to remain riveted. I try to catalog the things that amuse me to use for future conversations with other human beings but I usually forget by the time that happens so I really shouldn't bother, I guess. And I still have friends so I suppose I'm not completely boring or horrible. Unless all my friends are pity friends.

I just took a break to go get myself some eggnog and the whole time I was preparing it, I was talking to myself (in my head) about the nog. I call it "nog" in my head. I'm too gangsta to bother with "egg", yo. See? That crap is what slips into my head on a regular basis. So now I'm sitting here, with my nog, and thinking about how I spend my time when I have time. I have started to stay up really stupidly late because I enjoy "me time" once my kids have gone to bed. Basically, it just means that I get to watch crappy TV and dink around on the internet without feeling guilty. I also color in my kids' coloring books. It relaxes me. I get all uptight when my kids break out their coloring books and crayons because they never stay in the lines, they break all the crayons, and they don't know crap about shading. I'll watch them and offer encouragement until I can't take it anymore and I snatch up the least broken crayon I can find and try to instruct them on the proper way to color. I'm probably stifling their creative impulses but I want to leave a legacy and part of that legacy includes coloring within the lines. It usually just ends with Ben telling me to color everything while Ethan takes advantage of my diverted attention to decorate our fireplace hearth.

I also draw non-elephants. I have a drawing of a non-elephant sitting next to me at this very moment. It's my friend Jonathan's* fault and I should probably say no more about it.

My dinking around on the internet has pretty much boiled down to YouTube, Hulu, and the blog "Hyperbole and a Half". I both love and hate that blog. I love it because it is hilarious and creative and snarky and wonderful and I hate it because, well, that's what I wanna dooooo (I'm whining, flopping my arms around uselessly, and stomping my feet. At least, that's what you should picture). Imagine that you have figured out what you want to do with your life only to discover that someone else is doing the exact same thing, they started before you did, and they are infinitely better at it. Son of a bitch. Anyway, my blogs have been less about being funny and sarcastic and more about being whiny and defeatist in a not-funny way. Not what I was going for, mind you.

The truth is, if you haven't figured out yet which I doubt, I have no idea what the heck I'm doing. I read some pointers on how to create a successful blog and they included things like "be about a specific topic", "know your ideal demographic", "be capable of forming complete sentences", "lay off on the constant whining because it just makes people feel embarrassed for you". Clearly, I'm doing it wrong.

* You won't find anything about non-elephants in Jonathan's blog so don't go there if you'll be disappointed by that fact. However, Jonathan's funny and stuff and he does yoga. That's cool.

Have I mentioned that I hate shopping?

I should have taken it as a sign when my car refused to continue up the small hill leading out to the street after I had stopped to wait for traffic. I had to pop it into reverse and then floor my break as I slid backward into the parking lot before coming to a very slow and reluctant stop. That should have told me right there to go no further. Park the car, get the kids back inside, lock the door, and don't even think of venturing out until the light of day. But I'm stupid stubborn. So I made it out of the parking lot after getting a running start up the hill and after minimal slipping and sliding, ventured into the night for groceries. (No, I don't know why I waited until dark.)

This isn't a post about a car accident. I made it to Safeway without incident or injury. Once in the store, however, I received a psychological thrashing courtesy of my wee angels. (Shrek is playing in the background right now, hence my use of the word "wee".) Honestly, it started off okay. I got through about a third of my shopping without drama and I think that might be a record. Things went all pear-shaped once Ethan figured out how to kick his boots off. At first, I thought they had simply slid off his feet. They're rain boots that actually belong to Ben so they have nothing by way of fasteners and they are a little big on Ethan. So, I picked the boots up and placed them back on his feet and continued shopping until I heard a couple of tell-tale thumps and discovered that the boots were once again on the floor. I eyed Ethan suspiciously and the little imp giggled and pointed at his boots while extending his feet. Okay. I picked up the boots, put them back on his feet, and slowly continued down the aisle. This time, I caught him kicking his boots off and he knew I caught him and he thought it was hilarious. He stuck his feet out once again but I wasn't going to play his game, damn it. I stuffed his boots on the lower shelf of the shopping cart, gave him my best "that'll learn ya" look, and resumed my shopping.

That's when the screaming started. Ethan's scream is legendary among those of us who have had the great misfortune to experience it. He wails at such an offensive pitch that you can feel all the tiny bones of your ears shuddering in agony. I have literally placed my hands to my ears to check for blood during these screams. I imagine that parts of my brain liquefy from the assault, precious memories and bits of knowledge that I will never recover thanks to the superhuman vocal abilities of my baby boy. If we were home alone, maybe I would have handled things differently but I had to consider the innocent bystanders. I did what parents are told never to do. I relented and gave him his boots back. At first, I tried just placing them next to him in the cart but that only enraged him further. He threw his boots down the aisle and inhaled deeply for another auditory attack. Given that he threw his boots, which is extra bad, I really shouldn't have put them back on his feet. Lord help me, though, I did. And that act signaled to Ethan that mommy would play his game and we played it for the rest of time we were there. He was so delighted.

I shopped. Thankfully, the checkout line wasn't the hell that I was fearing. Ben, maybe sensing that at least one of them needed to consider my sanity, helped me place the items on the belt and didn't even whine for candy. He did, however, grab a giant handful of plastic bags that he proceeded to crumple and scatter while attempting to "assist" the girl who did the bagging. He was being polite about it, though, so I let it slide. The girl would have to fend for herself.

The drive back was a smidge harrowing because the brakes in my Buick aren't being completely reliable right now. I was driving slowly and very defensively but really didn't encounter any angry drivers until right when I was about to turn left into the parking lot. The guy in the truck behind me lost patience and then illegally passed me, nearly causing me to run into him. Jerk.

Getting everyone back inside our home turned out to be kind of interesting as well. I grabbed all the bags and headed for our place while Ben and Ethan wandered off in the opposite direction, apparently intent on disappearing into the night. I called to them repeatedly as I hurried as fast as I could on the slippery sidewalk to deposit my groceries at my front door so I could go retrieve my kids. Ben was making very slow progress to our home on his own but Ethan ended up being rescued by one of my neighbors. He was holding Ethan's hand and guiding him to the sidewalk while Ethan slid all over the place, whining in protest. What do you say to your neighbor who has just discovered that you will, in fact, abandon your child to the elements (albeit briefly) to set down some groceries?

I just reread all of this and realized I should have just written "I went shopping and it sucked" and left it at that. Oh well.

Mom flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Have you ever gone crazy and then come out the other side? I think I might be there. We have reached a level of absurdity in our home that no longer warrants anger or discipline, just helpless laughter and hyperbolic threats of decapitations and trips to the black market to look for potential new parents for our heathens. Want to know what happened last night to round out our lovely Thanksgiving?

That's Ethan, covered in Cetaphil. Granted, something like this happened months ago but it was not quite to this scale and I was certain we had put it all behind us. However, I ventured upstairs to check on the kids last night and saw Ben crouching behind the rocking chair, squishing the lotion in his hands and attempting to hide the fact that he had an ample amount of the stuff worked into his hair. Silly me, I thought that was the extent of it. And then I stepped further into the room and got a glimpse of Ethan. I was at a loss. I mutely took the jar of Cetaphil out of his hands and went downstairs to 1) grab the camera and 2) inform Clyde that his kids needed him. Drama ensued along with a hose-down and a load of laundry.

Grabbing the camera speaks to the fact that I just might have given up. I am aware that swift discipline was the appropriate response but I don't think I see the point anymore. This is just going to keep happening and it's going to keep escalating as my kids get more and more creative. Not all that long ago, this is what awaited me one seemingly quiet evening when I allowed the boys to play together before going to sleep:

They don't get to play together unsupervised in their room anymore. I know, I know... I brought this on myself. And then there's what happened to our new keyboard when I was making the kids their dinner.

There's also the crayon drawings on various surfaces, the big hole in our living room wall (yes, the kids did it but I doubt they would have accomplished it if our walls weren't actually made from a material as crumbly as shortbread), the Sharpie tiger stripes that Ben drew on himself and the incident that continues to live in my nightmares although it happened over a year ago. Ben "decorated" the walls in their room with his own feces. Yeah. I had to call some friends over to supervise the kids while I cleaned the horrifying mess. Actually, I believe my exact words on the phone to them were "please come over and keep me from killing my oldest son".

Time has passed. Both kids are alive and healthy. Something has happened to me, though. I have entered a state of bemused hopelessness. I will keep my children from killing themselves and each other but the rest is just so much extraneous fluff. I briefly considered cleaning the house today but that can wait til the kids move out. If I've gotten them to that point, I haven't completely failed.

Holy freaking crap, it's snowing!

It has snowed for the past three days. I have awoken each of those mornings to a landscape increasing in white-fluffiness and winter wonderlandishness. At first, a mere skiff. A light dusting, if you will. The next day, a larger blanket of glittering whiteness. And today, possible blizzard conditions and enough snow to sneak into your shoes if you're not smart enough to wear boots. I have encountered a few people in these past three days and most of them have made remarks about the "ridiculous" amount of snow and how it's "crazy" and how the cold is just "insane." And each time I have heard these remarks I have had to restrain myself from gripping the speaker by the shoulders in order to shake him/her vigorously and exclaim "THIS IS MONTANA! MONTANA! IN WINTER! WHAT DO YOU EXPECT?!?!?!" Instead, I just nod and mumble something vaguely resembling agreement while I slowly back away from these clearly unstable individuals.

Thankfully, though, I haven't encountered the full-fledged panic-induced nuttiness that we encountered in Washington when snow dared to fall from the sky. Admittedly, though, snow in Washington is a little scarier than Montana snow because it's wetter and has a tendency to immediately become black ice upon meeting the ground. However, there are ways to deal with this without checking your sanity at the door before you head out to work. It seemed like the prevailing opinion was that the snow would be less scary if you made your way through as quickly as possible. My trips to and from work on those few snowy occasions were harrowing, white-knuckle adventure rides as I made my way through and among the speeding metal wheeled death projectiles. It was nearly enough to make me find religion. Nearly.

I'm not afraid of the snow here nor do I find it "crazy", "ridiculous", or "insane". During my family's first winter in Montana (when I moved here as a kid), we had FOUR FEET of the stuff keeping the town from functioning at full capacity. Every winter since has seen wimpier and wimpier snow falls. Last winter was barely deserving of the name. When you live in Montana, snow in winter is not scary. NO snow in winter, however, is a problem. It pretty much guarantees that the state will burst into flames during the summer. My only complaint is that our stupid fireplace chose this week to stop working. Stupid effing fireplace...

Something else that I find kind of amusing is Benjamin's insistence that he loves snow even though evidence suggests otherwise. Every morning he has gasped wide-eyed at the snow and announced that we have to go outside to play in it. All through breakfast he babbles excitedly about going out to play in the snow. When I haul out the boots and coats, he squeals with delight and claps his hands and sings about going to play in the snow. He eagerly allows me to stuff his feet into his boots and bundle him up in his coat, hat, and gloves. He stomps his feet in barely restrained glee by the door. Then, we go outside and he's so happy! He kicks the snow around! He picks it up and hurls it at my face! He delights in his footprints.

For 15 minutes.

At that point, he switches gears entirely. He crams his hands into his pockets and looks completely stricken once he realizes that it is cold outside. I begin to see the first traces of panic as he notices that the snow is melting on his pants and getting them all, gasp, wet! He is not having fun anymore. Snow is not his friend. Snow is ruining his life. He tells me that we have to go back inside now. Ethan, meanwhile, has thrown himself spread-eagle into a snow drift and is quite pleased. So I gather up my snow-covered youngest son and we head back to our home. And all the while Ben is whimpering and Ethan is thrashing for all he's worth. Once inside, all Ben can think of is how to get warm rightnow and he starts stripping off his wet clothes while demanding "new pants, mama! New ones!!!" What really gets me is that he manages to completely forget his misery and we go through this again the next day. And the next. And the next.

Mommy, dearest

I have dropped the ball. I have dropped it and it has rolled into the gutter and on down the street into traffic. I have lost the ball. I have lost it so completely that I'm not even sure that I had it in the first place.

I don't know what I've been doing with myself. Actually, I do know but I'm terribly ashamed. I have been wasting time. Lots and lots of time. I have not been doing anything of any value or meaning. I stay up way too late, I get up way too late, I feed the kids, I break up fights, I feed 'em again, I break up more fights, I feed 'em some more, I break up the last fights I'm willing to put up with and then the kids go to bed. Of course, there are some smatterings of happy times in there. I play with cars, I color with the boys, I tickle them, I read stories but I know deep in my heart that I am falling drastically short of being the mother they deserve. Ben needs to see a speech therapist and I'm positive it's my fault that he's not speaking at an age-appropriate level. I have tried on several occasions to sit down with him and teach him sight words and how to write the alphabet but he gets frustrated and I get frustrated and then we give up. I shouldn't give up.

We are all terribly tired of each other. I know that it is completely horrible for me to say that I grow tired of my kids, but it happens. It's very difficult to converse with them.

Ethan: Mama!!!

Me: Ethan?

Ethan: Thomas!

Me: Yes! That's your Thomas train.

Ben: Mama! Mama look at me!

Me: Ben, please don't jump on the couch.

Ethan: Mama!

Ben: Look at me!

Ethan: Mama!!

Ben: Look at me!

Ethan: MAMA!!!!!!!!!

Me: Ben, please stop climbing on the back of the couch!

Ethan: MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me: What, Ethan?!

Ethan: Thomas!

And so on and so forth. Ben tells me on a fairly regular basis that he wants me to go away and prefers to be with daddy. He also told me that he'd like a new mommy. Ethan tries to hit me in the face when I refuse to connect his trains together after I've already done so about two dozen times in the last five minutes. Having kids has taught me that I'm not as patient as I thought I was. It's a pretty nasty revelation. I'm basically a jerk. I love my kids so much but I'm having a lot of trouble with putting my own ego and my own needs away so that I can focus on my boys as much as I should. I have read so many quotes regarding how children are supposed to bring the best qualities out of their parents but Ben and Ethan pretty often get the worst of me. As I am losing my cool with them, there's a voice in my head that tries to get me to take deep breaths and calm down but the giant flailing octopus of anger gets its way most of the time.

To make matters worse, Ben is turning into a master when it comes to guilt trips. I will be at the end of my admittedly short rope and both boys will be climbing all over me, screaming in my ear, pulling on my clothes, and anything else they can think of to clamor for my attention. I'll be trying to read or hold a thought in my head while Ben calls "mama" with increasing volume and intensity. "What?!?!" I'll snap. And then Ben will look at me with wide blue eyes and his lower lip will tremble and he'll say "I just wanted to say I love you."

I can't escape the feeling that I need therapy and/or more medication to deal with this side of myself that I can't stand but takes the reigns so very often. And I also can't escape the feeling that I'm the world's biggest moron being this surprised that parenting is, you know, hard and stuff.