This is what I want.
I find that nothing makes one sit and take stock better than the ear-buzzing shock and subsequent all-day barely-contained squalling freak-out caused by a small girl vomiting on her bed.
First thing in the morning.
And the squalling freak-out? That's ME, by the way. Zoe's fine.
So my first question is: am I a bad mom? . . . okay, no. My FIRST question is: Holy Christ on a crutch, how fast can I get to a hotel?! THEN that bad mom thing. . .
So, am I? Just for the record, I did NOT go to a hotel. I DID, however, fish out the surgical mask I wore during my anatomy and physiology cat-dissection adventure, and slap it onto my face. Wore it for several hours, but took it off when I walked Moe. I didn't want to look crazy to anyone OUTSIDE the house, see. As luck would have it, when Zoe vomited, she immediately started yelling for Daddy, and as I lay there in bed hearing this, I somehow KNEW what was going on. Just a visceral, in-my-bones knowledge that stomach contents were going to figure prominently in the next hour or so.
Zach, because he is so very normal, has taken charge of the girl for the day, knowing full well that my ability (however puny it normally is) to be an okay mother was blown the frick out of the water. I did my part by going to the store and buying Pedialyte freezer pops.
Naturally, Zoe is acting perfectly normal, and ignoring the fact that her mother is just a pale husk of the normally neurotic-but-at-least-present woman she usually is. I must say that even though I acknowledge here that I am completely a dumb-ass when it comes to barf, I am quite proud of myself that I managed to stay in the house and NOT lose it as much as I anticipated I might when I imagined what would happen should vomiting occur. (Which I did think of, on occasion.) I think this is in large part because she vomited once and then stopped. If it was an ongoing thing, I might have reacted differently.
So I really do need to think about so many things! Like, at 41, who/what do I want to be? Seems like an odd question to be asking so late in life, doesn't it? But I really haven't BECOME anything, despite years of schooling and being alive and stuff. If I have to answer the question, there are a few things I want to be.
1. A good mom. That's the first one, no doubt. I want Zoe to grow up thinking fondly of me, and not wishing I'd been someone nicer. I catch myself getting impatient with things she does because I'm forgetting she's a very small girl and not a grown-up. Yesterday, we made cookie-mixes to give to her teachers on the last day of school tomorrow. We ended up with flour and sugar everywhere because her pouring abilities are not yet as developed as mine. And I finally just said, "Who the hell cares!" and swept all the flour and sugar out the back door when we were done. Nobody died because we spilled stuff. And it was much more fun. I want to be able to live my whole mothering life like that. Letting stuff roll off my back more. Less sighing, less eye-rolling, less whining. (And by whining, I mean ME. Again.)
2. A happy person. Most people who have known me longer than a year or so (I won't out you here,) know that I tend to come at things from the negative side. (I can TOTALLY hear a chorus of people saying, "Who, YOU? Nooooo!" very, very sarcastically.) I don't like it either. Is that surprising? I don't actually enjoy being like this. I should stop it. Is there a "Happiness for Dummies?"
3. An effective doggie nurse. This one stands a chance. Not that the others don't, but this one seems a little more attainable to me at the moment, because I've been consistently tested on this stuff, and I'm doing well. If only I could get an A on the "Nurturing a Kid" quiz.
4. NORMAL! Yeah, that's a lot to ask, given what I consider my abnormalities. Let me list for you my various abnormalities, and then perhaps together we can formulate a plan to get me on the path to normalosity.
A: The vomit phobia. Bleah.
B: The anxiety disorder. Suckful.
C: The stomach issues.
D: The vague depression I suspect I've had forever.
E: A propensity to procrastinate, even when what I'm putting off is something I want to do.
F: My slovenliness.
G: My inability to sleep longer than an hour and a half at a time.
H: My whininess and complaining.
I: My constant worrying about what COULD happen.
J: My feelings of inferiority.
K: My vague dissatisfaction.
Okay, I'm going to stop there, because I'm making myself more of D, H, J and K just reading this over. So the question is: what to do about it?
Hmmm. Well, medication seems like a good idea, doesn't it? As a matter of fact, I can imagine that medication could address EVERY SINGLE ONE of these issues. So why am I not taking bucketloads of Prozac? See E and I.
Really, I think the first thing I could do is stop using this blog as a place where all I do is whine about my various issues. Really I should be using it to tell everybody about the cool stuff. Which I do, from time to time, yes. But what good does complaining do? I ask this of Zoe all the time, and I suppose I should listen to my own questions, maybe pose them to myself. I'm telling her to act like a grown-up, but acting like a child, myself.
Pooh.
*sigh*. . . okay.
Next up: positivity! (I'm not kidding!)
I have recently become the recipient of a nice bit of swag from the Hill's people, the makers of Science Diet doggie food. The anatomy atlas above is full of drawings of common issues and diseases seen in veterinary practices. It doesn't SOUND particularly exciting, but it really is. The the part about it that makes ME awesome is that I won it. On our last day of class, we were given a sheet of questions we needed to answer about various dog foods. I had the highest score and was able to choose between this book and a CD with feeding stuff on it. Actually, this book is pretty coveted among tech students--we like pretty pictures of spleens.
