Real life shit: Underwear

I paid $320 for a concert ticket to a sold out Beyonce stadium show tonight. Face value. There’s a 30% chance I am going to be standing in the rain. There’s a 100% chance of hair-ruining humidity. There’s a 150% chance that I’ve spend the last 15 hours being an 80-year-old woman about this entire thing.

Let’s rewind. Ten years ago (hell, five years ago) a very different gal would be going to this concert. I’d spend the whole morning rocking out to Beyonce. I’d probably take off the day from work, go buy a new, slightly skanky outfit, and start drinking at noon. Beyonce concert day would be a national holiday. Instead, I spend the last four days googling parking, weather maps, rain policies, and how the fuck you do your hair if you have to go to work and then go to a Bey show and you have thin, frizzy hair and it’s probably going to rain.

This morning, I spent over an hour mulling over my footwear– not because I wanted to find the sexiest, most Bey-worthy pair, but because I wanted to make sure that my footwear was comfortable and cute, but not so cute that a deluge of rain was going to make me sad and ruin my shoes. (Landed on Tom’s. I’m 100% certain Beyonce does not endorse Tom’s.) I meticulously packed a bag with a towel (in case I’m wet and get cold in the car), a change of footwear (flip flops, obviously), a change of clothes, a toothbrush (in case I get stranded somewhere south of Boston and have to sleep), my Kindle (because, traffic), two bottles of Fever Tree Ginger Beer and a child’s Thermos of Tito’s. I set two alarms to remember the tickets, took out a budgeted amount of cash from the ATM, and texted everyone going with me the purse policy at the stadium.

In the last few years, I have become the most uncool person I know. And we’re not even to the worst part.

Underwear.

About the time I gave up trying to find anything concert-worthy in my Birkenstock-laden, flowy-mom-top stuffed, sad sack of a closet, I realized that I needed to put on the right pair of underwear. Because at this stage of my life, underwear and make or break pretty much anything.

For many, many years I exclusively wore lycra blended, slightly sexy, lacy hipster undies. They were permanently half way up my ass, but I hardly noticed. My ass was so tight and shapely that a little lace in my crack didn’t affect my day. I looked so cute shimmying out of my jeans that I wouldn’t have cared if I had a front and back wedgie. When I got pregnant, I learned the hard, sweaty way that you should never, ever have anything that is not 100% cotton near your vagina in the summer. Domestic terrorism was a smaller threat than my summer-crotch in synthetic fabrics. Lesson learned.

As I got older (and heavier), I started to dip my toe in fuller coverage undies. Having your entire ass covered (especially when it’s a little squishy), is a mother fucking revelation. The amount of brain power that I was subconsciously wasting trying to ignore my half wedgie was staggering. Not to mention, once your ass is not 25, getting a wedgie out is not a simple tug. It’s a full on dig. You have to search for your underwear between your cheeks. You absolutely cannot attempt to get your panties out in a hallway because your hand can get lost and before you know it, people are streaming out of a meeting and there you are fisting yourself.

Once my whole ass was covered, I started playing around with higher waistlines. Suddenly underwear went from “the thing that keeps me from humping my pants” to a tool. Depending on how high you’re willing to go, your undies can serve a purpose. They can tuck and suck and shape. More importantly, they can give you a little hug and tell you you’re good enough.

Which is exactly what I need my undies to do today. I need them to tuck in my tummy, lift me up, and smooth out the lumps so that my DvF mom top looks like it fits. I need them to hug me during the concert and make me feel safe and confident when it starts raining and I immediately wish I was at home in my bed watching new episodes of Orphan Black onDemand. So while my 22-year-old self would have been delighted in some lacy, scant panties and a pair of fuck me heels, my 32-year-old self disagrees. I found an amazing pair of spandex and cotton miracle undies with a high waist and firm grip. And they’re black, so sexy by default. (Because duh.) I did hold up a pair of black Hankie Pankies, though, and smiled at how cute and useless they are.

With my undies on, my bag packed, and my hair styled in a low bun with $26 worth of anti-frizz product in it, I left my house an hour late for work today. As I was walking out the door, toting a toddler, trying to find my keys, and wondering how much battery was left on my Kindle, I felt pretty good. At the last minute, I reached in the door to grab Aut’s vitamins and I knocked something on the floor. It was a bottle of Xanax.

I went ahead and threw that in my bag. Because who am I to ignore a sign from God?

Find the happy, goddammit.

I went to spin yesterday. I hate spinning. There is not a moment– from the time I start pedaling until the last stretch on that godforsaken bike– that I am not miserable and angry. It’s just one of those things. I’ve tried the FlyWheels and the SoulCycles, the local places, and the classes at fancy gyms and shitty gyms. It’s not a class issue, it’s a sitting on a bike issue. It uses all the parts of my body that I try to keep still. I hate it so much. Just talking about it makes me more hateful. But I go. (Occasionally.) I went yesterday.

For a couple of weeks now, maybe bleeding into months, I’ve been… unsettled. I’ve been impatient and frustrated. I feel angry and constricted by simple things. I’m easily overwhelmed and anxious. I’ve gone from taking a Xanax once a month to taking one just to get into the car and make the drive to work. Traffic makes me insane. I keep thinking I need to do something, but I don’t know what. Maybe my medication needs to be looked at, maybe the weather needs to start behaving, maybe I need to change my diet– I’ve gone through all the possibilities in my head, and I keep coming back to the same thing. This is life. This is what it’s like (for me) to be 32, a mother, a full-time employee, a wife, a person who recently really hates cooking dinner. The older I get, the more knowledge I have and instead of being set free by all the knowledge, I’m crippled by it. I know too much about savings and retirement, interest rates, education, natural disasters (NEVER MOVING TO OREGON), job security, the vague possibility that my child will be killed by 100,000,000 random and statistically insignificant incidences. I spend so much time trying to look breezy and carefree when what I want to do is crawl in bed and eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch out of the box. (Because THAT is a fucking life plan.)

Don’t even get me started on getting old. I see the writing on the wall. Our society does not care about old people. We are scared and burdened by old people. Unless you have a private– fully paid for– private island or a couple million dollars in the bank, good luck getting old. I could stay in bed for six weeks just obsessing about how terrible it is going to be to be 65-years-old and still working full time because there is no way I can ever retire. EVER. (Cue screaming.) I could depend on my son to care for me in my old age, except for two things. 1. I don’t believe in burdening your children with your winter years 2. There’s just no guarantee I’m going to want to spend my last good years in the basement of my son’s house. What if he lives in a hovel and I hate his wife? (Or husband.)

But what now? How do you take a deep breath, close your eyes, and tell all your knowledge-based anxiety to fuck off? How do you live in the moment and not allow the creeping weight of death and responsibility to give you a panic attack in the shower? Being present is so fucking hard. It’s scary. But it’s also the only thing there actually is. Aut is only 2.75. He is not 3 or 7 or 35. He is only 2.75. And that will pass, but it will pass as quickly and as slowly as everything else. Because time only has one pace. Time is a bitch, but she’s fair. Almost to a fault.

So we’re back at spin. I forgot my shoes and there was a sub and because I’ve turned into an anxious time bomb, those things were enough to put me into a tailspin. The teacher was talking about beach bodies and pedaling so we can eat whatever we want and I’m getting angrier and angrier. I’m anxious and angry and annoyed and my shoes are wrong and this woman will not stop talking about bikini bodies, which is so far from my reality that I want to throw my $4 Starbucks bottled water at her face. But I keep pedaling. And I try to “find the happy.” (I’m actually on my bike, my body vibrating because the music is SO LOUD, and saying aloud “find the happy, Caroline. Find the fucking happy.”) And then it hit a boiling point. I looked at the clock and it wasn’t even halfway through class. I was going to die and explode and I hadn’t even made it halfway through class.

I slowed my pedaling and took a deep breath and asked myself (again, outloud), “what, Caroline? What is the big problem?” And the tiny voice in my head was sad and scared and she said “I don’t know. That’s the problem. I don’t know.” And then I started to cry. And cry. And cry.

I pedaled and cried and pedaled and cried. I climbed the hills and cried a little harder (because it was both self pity crying and just general crying). I cried because I felt so relieved and so silly and so annoyed and free. And then class ended.

If this story were about a different person, I’d be like “and then I walked outside and the sun was shining and I took a deep breath and felt completely renewed.” But it’s not. And when I walked outside it was raining and the barista at Starbucks fucked up my tea. So there was that reality. (Which I realize is nothing like, say, a third world or Syrian refugee reality.)

Here’s what did happen, though. I went to spin. And I finished. And I cried. And then I drove home and I started dinner. (I even cared enough to text a friend about how to cook my fish properly.) I still wanted to go to bed at 8PM, but I didn’t. (I waited until like 10:30.) I got out of my own way and my own head for a few hours and tried to enjoy myself. I made an effort. It wasn’t an overwhelming success, but, like spin class, it was an effort. Which is a start.

And nothing can begin that was never begun. Or something to that effect.

Potting training is a literal pile of shit.

Well, this weekend is going to be excluded from my memoirs.

Aut woke up on Saturday morning with a trucker-sized dump in his pants and the husband drew the short straw. It’s nearly impossible to sleep an extra two hours while your child watches inappropriate television shows in your bed if the child smells like poop. Eventually one of the parents has to sack up and change the diaper, and whomever gets stuck doing it ends feeling exempt from doing anything else childcare related for the rest of the day.

Usually we grumble about how terrible and inhumane it is that our child unleashes that kind of fury upon us first thing in the morning, but eventually we get over it and go have coffee and bagel sandwiches to make everything okay again. Not this Saturday. This Saturday, the husband marches up the stairs and declares, with the confidence of a Custer before his last stand, that he has changed his final diaper. THIS IS BULLSHIT. I am done!

To be clear (and because he reads these posts and immediately sends me all caps text messages when he thinks I’ve painted him unfairly), I was not against the potty training. But I was committed in the same way you commit to a going on a diet with a friend when you can tell her entire commitment depends on you. You say yes, you have some fruit for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and by dinner you know that her self esteem will have risen just enough that you can both face plant into some tacos and Corona…light. I made some off-handed comment about how we would have to go to Target and then we’d have to pay attention to our kid all.day.long, and none of those things deterred him. Never again was he going to wipe shit from another human ass. So off we went to Target.

When Aut was about 18 months old we were those asshole parents who bought like 14 training potties because our gifted child was going to potty train himself before he could speak and we wanted to make sure he had the most appropriate, butt contouring surface on which to do that. So we didn’t have to get a potty at Target. Whew. What we did have to get were two packages of training pants– one with Mickey Mouse Club ALL OVER THEM, and another with all the different super hero logos.

Rather than read anything or ask any experts, we pieced together a “plan” based on hearsay and random bits of information we were pretty sure we got from other people with potty trained kids. Then we gave the kid the rundown.

These are big boy pants. Do not shit in these pants. Do not pee in these pants. Doing that is tantamount to shitting on Mickey Mouse’s head. Do you understand? If you shit on Mickey’s head, he’ll tell Santa and then your whole year will be ruined.

Then we created an entirely too complicated rewards program that was supposed to span the entire weekend. For two days our two year old would stare at the most coveted toy in all of Target and somehow that would motivate him to not shit on Mickey.

Putting aside how fucking miserable it was to explain to a 2-year-old FOR TWO DAYS why he couldn’t have the toy on the counter, everything about our “plan” was flawed. For starters, we went through six pair of big boy underwear in under an hour. Three times we sat him on the potty, read, sang, did humiliating potty dances, only to put his undies back on him and have him immediately pee down his own leg. And insist that that was not what was happening. (Or insist that while his pants were wet, his big boy undies were, in fact, still dry.)

On Saturday night, we were frayed and bitter. I drank an entire bottle of Rose, got into an argument with my husband about something that probably didn’t exist, and then stormed up the stairs to go to bed. Sunday would be a new day.

That night I did have the good sense to consult with my friend Lauren, who did her best not be painfully smug about her gracefully potty trained daughter who basically shares a birthday with Aut. She also had the good sense not tell me all at once what douche canoes we were being by assuming our kid would be successful in a day. (She let those texts come to me over an entire weekend, culminating with a Sunday evening text that began “at the risk of sounding like a dick…”) She suggested instant gratification, which made sense. Come morning, I was giving my kid M&Ms for breakfast if that’s what it was going to take.

And come Sunday did. Kid slept til nine, woke up dry (in an overnight diaper, I don’t have a hole in my head), and we immediately did that dumb parent thing where you get SUPER EXCITED about something that makes young, single people think you should be shot.

YAY FOR BIG BOY PANTS! YAY FOR ANOTHER LIFE-RUINING DAY OF WATCHING YOU PISS ON YOURSELF WHILE WE CHEER FOR YOU AND GIVE YOU CANDY! THIS IS SO FUN! CLAPS ALL AROUND! YOU’RE GOING TO HARVARD!

He was stoked. He peed on command and I told him to go tell Pups and then he could have one whole M&M. He went to the kitchen and in the time it took to walk the six feet from the bathroom to the kitchen he actually couldn’t remember why he was getting an M&M. We almost had a meltdown because he thought the husband was denying him his M&M, when all he was trying to do was get him to say “I peed, therefore I get M&M.” You know CONNECTING THE FUCKING DOTS. Fail.

Thirty minutes later, I asked him if he needed to potty and then watched him make The Face and turn red while telling me no. He told me “no” while simultaneously shitting his pants. In front of me.

The husband and I kept having to talk over Aut’s head, reminding each other to keep it positive.

Don’t yell! Encourage his progress! Clap! I know you’re holding a cloth Superman baggy of human feces, but don’t let him know you hate him! SMILE! Ask him if he needs to read the potty book for inspiration.

The real clencher was when we took him out in public. (I want for you to know that writing this all down makes our choices seem even worse, which I didn’t even know was possible.) We took him to a lovely baptism/birthday garden party at a friend’s house. He waited about 12 minutes before peeing down the front of his pants. The good news is that it didn’t get on their floor because it all pooled in his shoes. So, silver lining.

I immediately grabbed a pull up, went to the back door, and yelled across two quiches, a nice quinoa salad, about about 30 people at my husband that our child wet his pants and whizzed in his shoes and I was calling uncle. The kid was putting on a pull up and we could talk about this later. Like in a year.

To seal our defeat and humiliation, upon arriving home we had to give our kid the toy. Totally undeserved, but he had no idea. He probably thinks peeing in his shoes was bonus points that fast-tracked him to winning the game.

Then we revised our strategy.

This morning we dropped him off at daycare with a pack up pull ups and nicely asked the daycare to potty train him.

Tiny Velociraptors

Aut bit the shit out of the husband yesterday. Not like a precious 2-year-old love bite, but a full on, Hannibal Lector bite. On the tit. Through two layers of clothing. Flesh was affected. It was an ugly scene.

Biting does crazy things to people. It’s not like tickling or foot touching. No one likes to be bitten (sexual exploits aside; no judgments). If you want to watch a nice person turn like a junkyard dog, bite them. I once bit this guy at a gay bar. One minute we were drinking cheap Pinot Grigio and dancing to Cher videos and the next I was being escorted to the exit while a Nathan Lane-esque fat man was held back by two waif-like Twinks wearing eye shadow. It seemed fun and playful at the time. He disagreed.

Biting hurts. Even fleshy gay men. Lesson learned.

Biting is also a game ender– and that’s why it’s so tough to get biters to stop biting. Whomever finally caves and bites the shit out of the other person wins. Kid at daycare steal your truck? Bite him. It’s swift corporal punishment and it achieves everything that could otherwise take years of trust and relationship building. Want to be feared? Bite. (Full grown men are afraid of being bitten by three-year-old girls. They’re like lock-jawed, unpredictable piranhas.) Some bitchy six-year-old block the slide? Bite her. She loses control of her faculties, slides down the slide, and TADA! it’s your turn.

But here’s what tiny biters don’t fully understand. When you’re on the receiving end of a bite, there is ZERO reaction predictability. Which means that if you bite a 34-year-old man on the tit, there is no guarantee that he will not “accidentally” throw your tiny body across the room with the strength of ten men. He doesn’t want to paralyze you for life in his fit of rage, but he’s in the middle of a post-bite seizure. He’s unpredictable, essentially blacked out. The most primal human instincts kick in when your brain realizes you’re being bitten. I’m no scientist, but I’m certain there is science to support my theory that the fight or flight instinct that governs biting actually can’t–in the moment– decipher whether it’s shark, bear, or tiny human. Jaw clamps, adrenaline kicks in, and bitee immediately starts poking at eyeballs and using stupid strength to survive. It’s only in the aftermath, when you’re toddler is laying slack jawed on the carpet, that you realize your mistake.

Oh fuck. You’re not a bear.

And then there’s the parenting part. The part of you that knows you need to breathe, walk away, and then calmly reapproach the bear to teach a lesson about pain and biting. But what you want to do is rip your shirt open to reveal your tender and bleeding tit and make him understand on a deep and mature level what a irreversible human wrong he has committed. Your parenting brain is like heistwoheistwoheistwo and your human brain is like I don’t fucking care if he’s six months old. MY TIT IS BLEEDING. OFF WITH HIS HEAD.

But what really kicks you in the dick is when your reaction to being bitten is so severe, like in the case of the husband and the bleeding tit, that your child falls into an uncontrollable and hysterical fit. As if, for the first time, he realizes his father is not a human at all, but a North Korean dictator. And then, whilst clutching your tender, eviscerated breast you have to console the child.

And at some level, that’s kind of what parenting is. Having your tits ruined and then apologizing.

We are going to try something new.

This October marks 10 years of the Half Truth. For many of you, this birthday is meaningless. (Understandably.) For me, it’s maybe, sort of, kind of the most significant birthday/anniversary in my life. Ten years of blogging might be one of the biggest commitments I’ve ever kept in my whole life. With the exception of my husband and my love affair with mayonnaise.

When I started this blog, I was 22 years old and had graduated college with one of the top five least meaningful degrees available to a college student. After waiting for my phone to ring with an insane job offer–doing what, I had no idea, but it was going to be amazing and come with a HUGE paycheck– and eventually realizing the phone was not going to ring, I went to a staffing firm. Heather Harold (real name) was a tall, tanned, thin woman in her late thirties who told me, on no uncertain terms, that I lacked even the most basic professional skills and it would be a miracle if she could get me a job as an entry level secretary. And she felt she was letting me down easy. I wanted to be indignant, but she had a point.

I was married that September and returned to Boston from a whirlwind Napa wedding and Tahoe honeymoon to a tiny, air conditionless North End apartment, and a letter from my dad with my final rent check. With few-to-no-options, I called Heather Harold back and told her to do some Anne Sullivan shit. I needed a job. In 2006, title inflation was just starting to sweep the country. After lying on a typing test and inflating some filing experience from my father’s law firm the summer I was 14, I managed to land a temp job as a Corporate Services Manager at a corporate real estate firm. To clarify, I managed nothing and I didn’t even work for a corporate services department. Essentially I ordered office supplies and made sure the printers had paper. I was terrible at it and spent most of my days trying to get people to like me enough to 1. do my job for me 2. give me a leg to stand on when they inevitably tried to fire me.

And that’s how the blog started. I just needed something to do while sitting at a computer for 8 hours a day. I wasn’t a writer– in many ways I’m still not a writer– but it was, and is, the only thing that could save me. When no one else could make me laugh, I could make myself laugh. (A weird and not entirely enviable talent, but I do sometimes think I’m funny.) When I looked around at what a miserable failure my life seemed to be, there was comfort in knowing that 221 people I didn’t know were reading my words. The first time my blog got 500 views on a post, I drank an entire bottle of Cakebread at a Hillstone and nearly blacked out. It was silly. It still is silly. But it really did mean something to me. It meant that no matter how terrible my job was, how little I was contributing to the world, I still had my words. And 221 people who saw them.

And in a lot of ways the blog did change everything. When I didn’t have a resume to prove myself, I had the blog. When people didn’t know whether to trust that I could tell a story, I had the blog. It was the most unorthodox means for landing any civilized job, but it worked. If it weren’t for the blog, I’d probably still be lying about how much tabloid sized paper is in tray 6 of the Brother printer on the 14th floor.

And through it all, the blog itself has remained fairly insignificant. My commitment to it waxes and wanes, my confidence in sharing my stories and experiences here does the same. I worry that my becoming a mom has turn people off, or my boring suburban life has left me with nothing insightful to share. But my deep down desire hasn’t changed at all–I want to be a writer. It’s the only thing I’ve ever truly thought to be proud of. I’ve been a lot of things, a strategist, copywriter, creative director, content person, brand guru, and those things are wonderful (and pay well…) but I want to be a writer. And it turns out that there’s only one way to become a writer.

You have to write.

People constantly make suggestions to me… You should write a sitcom! Oh my god, you should be writing a book. Have you ever thought about a screenplay? Have you tried standup? But at the core of all of those things is material. Real stories about my boring, suburban life.

So I am going to try something new. Rather than think and stew and marinate on topics, I am going to try to just…share. I’m going to tell you weird stories about the husband falling asleep in the car on the ride to work and how I want to murder him by dropping tablets of rat poison in his open mouth (just kidding! sort of.) and stories about A putting on a suit and tie over his jammies and walking into the kitchen and asking me to dance.

And you may find that many of these stories are super fucking boring, but I have to write them down. Because they’re all I have.

And I’m going to be a fucking writer.

Successfully Failing at Motherhood

A few years ago I wrote a post called “But what’s it really like to have a baby?” It ended up getting picked up by the Huffington Post (front page) and for 24 hours I was the most equally lauded and hated woman on the planet. Mothers and childless women from across our great country gathered their spatulas and absurdly limited legal knowledge and campaigned (anonymously, online) to have my child removed from me. Why? Because I just didn’t think being a mom was the super greatest time ever. In equal contrast were the others– the mothers and childless women who were relieved to hear a version of the truth that, in some small measure, mirrored their own feelings. The feeling that children, while chock full of charm and adorable (sometimes), are also a full contact, full time sport. There’s no beginning and end to parenting. It’s not just a sacrifice of your vagina and lower abdomen (which becomes a sideshow), but your actual life.

In those two years, my baby has become a toddler. And frankly, my feelings about motherhood haven’t changed much. In the same way that I love cake and hate baking, I love my child, but I really don’t love motherhood. And as hard as it is for some people to reconcile this, or even accept it, I don’t really feel much guilt about it. My journey now has been about how to balance the choice to have a child and catapult myself into a role that neither comes naturally to me, nor gives me much satisfaction, and maintain my sanity as a human being who craves a life less consumed by the unending demands of motherhood.

For many, there’s a simple, vilifying argument. “You chose to have children. Your selfishness is disgusting.” To those people, I say “fuck you.” If you truly believe that our society pays even the slightest of lip service to the reality of motherhood in a modern age, you are naive. We’re still taking a page out of a book that has men bringing home all the bacon, women who were groomed from a young age to become mothers and accept the role that was offered, and zero social media pressure or scrutiny. In a day in age where maternity leave is a luxury, leaving early to pick up a child from daycare causes both personal and professional duress, and the choice between children and a career is only possible if your career affords you incredible flexibility or cash, the “reality” of motherhood has been rewritten, but never published. (For example, on top of childcare, which can run about $1600/month [down from $2400 in Boston], I pay nearly $800/month to have someone pick up my child from daycare because I simply cannot leave work early enough to fetch him. I get home between 7:00/7:30 and begin the one hour sprint through bath, dinner, books, and bed.)

I was chatting with my mother on the phone the other day, relaying the plight of the modern mother– the guilt and balance and dissatisfaction. Thinking she’d have some insight (she did have THREE children), she replied, “I don’t really understand that. I was just so happy.”

Welp, there you have it. Thanks, Mother.

But then I got to thinking about it. When she comes to visit, she relishes all the stuff that makes me want to poke my eyes out. She’s on all fours, pretending she’s a pony, coloring Elsa, watching Mickey Mouse. She thinks letting him pick out ridiculous, mismatched outfits is hilarious and cute. (No. Just no.) She can build Lego towers and knock them down for HOURS. I approach Legos with a mind for building something elaborate. A color-coordinated palace with symmetry and functional exits. To A, that’s sacrilege. We build it high and then we knock it to the ground. Then we repeat that… for the rest of the week. I don’t want to be sitting there thinking about being anywhere else, but that’s what happens.

I hate that on weekends, I look forward to time to recharge, relax, and get things organized, and instead we are held captive by the whims of a 37 inch person. Rain strikes fear into the core of my being. I want to eat at a restaurant, but I’m gripped with anxiety about whether it will be a fun and worthwhile meal or an ill-fated nightmare that leaves me feeling like I wasted $100 and 2 hours of my day. Keep them indoors and they bottle up so much energy you will live to regret your decision for days. Take them outside and they’re hot, cold, hungry, wish you brought the bike and not the scooter, need to pee, don’t like the way the sun is shining, think the slide is too green, the other kids are looking at them, or want to be pushed on the swing. For the rest of the day.

And I fucking hate “mommy friends.” I don’t mean my friends who are mommies. I mean people in the world who are supposed to be my friends because we both have kids. What the fuck kind of sense does that make? I don’t like you, your husband, your politics, or your approach to life, but since we both have children born in 2013, let’s hang out and have some wine. I’D RATHER DO ANYTHING ELSE.

And mostly I hate that I’m always fighting with my husband about nothing. We aren’t even fighting with each other, we’re fighting with the invisible blob that is parenthood. The intangible piece of shit that is blameless and evasive, so you have to yell at your physical spouse. Because obviously the husband deserves to take the entire blame for the fact that I’m wound like a top because my child thinks it’s absurd that we don’t kick people in the tits, I haven’t been able to eat lunch without a chopstick flying at my face since 2013, every dollar we make is assigned to childcare, college funds, savings, mortgage and alcohol, and every time my kid finishes a bag of ANYTHING, he flings the crumbs around the backseat of the car. (WHATTHEFUCKISWRONGWITHYOU?! JUSTPUTTHEBAGDOWNLIKEACIVILIZEDGENTLEMAN!)

I miss energy and free time. I miss the gym. I miss extra cash flow. I miss investing in stupid shit like absurdly expensive sushi and shoes. Because as terrible as that sounds to other people, I love both of those things.

But the very, very worst part is that I know I will miss this. Because as much as I don’t love motherhood, I love him. I love his tiny face and his absurd lexicon. I love watching him learn things and his enthusiasm about damn near everything. I love that he thinks we are the absolutely greatest. (Though frankly he far prefers my husband to me. I’m sure you’re shocked.) I love that he wakes up first thing in the morning and asks if today is the day we get to spend the whole day together (weekends). I even love that he tells his entire swimming class that his Mups’ boobies are falling out of her bathing suit. (They weren’t.)

I know that there will come a time when motherhood does become me. At some point, some age, the winds will shift and motherhood will too. What my child needs and wants will be something I can offer. The sacrifices will become less physical and more emotional. And I’m sure that hindsight, that bastard, will be 20/20. I’ll laugh at what seems like petty, long-ago misery and cry as he walks across a stage or down an aisle.

This idea that we as humans are expected to sacrifice our lives for the lives of others isn’t sustainable. I want for “motherhood” to be a parallel journey to the bigger one that I am on, the journey of life. I don’t want to feel that choosing to have a child means choosing to jump track from continuing to become the person I should be to dedicating everything I have to someone else’s journey. I want to set him up. I want to help him find his path, but I want to stay on mine too. I don’t want to be consumed by motherhood. I just want to be a woman whose journey includes a child.

And I think that should be okay.

Living a qualitative life.

Can I just say, “fuuuuck.”

That’s how I’ve felt about life over the last year. “Fuuuuuuck.” Say it long and slow and be sure to really dig in on the “ck” sound because it’s scientifically proven to make you feel better. Endorphins and shit. (I made that up.)

Before you start rolling your eyes and making comments about my White Lady Ivory Tower– shut it. I get it. Terrible things are happening to good people. But that’s not my point. Life is hard and I’m not talking about the “can I make ends meet?” stuff, I’m talking about the things that take some combination of your head and heart to figure out. How to raise kids. How to focus on who you are, not what you are. How to be optimistic. How to find happy. Find balance. Find focus. I’m talking about the qualitative parts of life– the parts of life that are the great equalizer. When you strip away your money and your stuff, all that’s left. The stuff you can commiserate with anyone about. THAT SHIT IS HARD.

Most of my “fuuuuuuuuuck”ery over the last year has stemmed from a conscious shift from the known (quantitative) to the unknown (qualitative). And what I’ve learned is that, increasingly, I know less and less about… everything. I have this tremendous weight that pushes down on me all the time and when I sit down to diagnose it, I realize the weight is just the unknown. I don’t know what the right choice is. I don’t know whether we should go down path A or path B. But what’s worse is that I don’t seem to trust myself anymore. I can’t even decide whether I’m ready to completely abandon slutty underwear for comfy ones.

It’s easy to plot your life out according to numbers. It’s tangible and comparable. There are datasets and averages. People love that shit. I am okay because I am above average. But what does it actually tell us? What does being above average actually mean? Does being above average make your food taste better? Does it make you exempt from obligatory weekend sex? Does it make your car not smell like rotting unidentified child substance?

And then you have a kid. And numbers make you want to kill everyone. Because you know who doesn’t deserve to get compared to a set of numbers and averages? A child. They are perfect and happy and trying their very best and then BOOM we do our best change that as early as possible. (Let’s see how you’re doing at being human compared to this here chart.)

I’m not going to pretend that shifting from quant to qual hasn’t had anything to do with the realization that I’m never going to make a million dollars. Because it totally has. When you get to be thirty-something (WTF), the path ahead seems a little clearer. Those pipe dreams of having money not matter (because you have so much of it, obviously) are replaced by the reality that if you spend even one more second thinking about having more, you’re gonna miss opportunity to love anything you have. You’ve got food, family, shelter, and alcoholic beverages. After that, you’re getting greedy. But when I can’t compare myself to a numeric goal or statistic, how do I know if I’m doing okay?

I guess I have to ask myself.

And there’s the problem. I don’t ask myself anything anymore. I ask an expert or a friend. Rather than asking me how I’m doing, I ask someone else. My ability to self identify has been completely obscured by my dependance on quantitative data. My Google history is a humiliating list of all the shit I secretly check with the world about. Is a size 12 fat? What qualifies as middle class? Do all couples want to beat one another with cast iron pans? Am I a lazy asshole for not getting out of bed at 4:55AM to go to spin? Am I fucking up my kid? Are children always so fucking obnoxious?

If I would have just asked ME and then turned off the goddamned computer here’s what I would know:

This isn’t about your size. If you’re unhappy with how you look, change it. Or get over it.

Why do you fucking care? Being in a different class doesn’t change how much you make.

Yes. Sometimes heavier objects.

You’re not lazy, just an asshole for blaming it on the weather, work, alarm clocks– you just don’t want to go. Go or don’t.

Yes. No. Kind of. Love him and try not to be unfair.

Unquestionably.

This journey I’m on is worth it. I know it is. Even though I have no idea where it lets out, I really do believe that shifting my perspective is going to make my life feel more like mine. I also know that if I don’t do it now, I am going to waste a lot more years chasing an invisible standard– one that’s left me feeling anxious and overwhelmed and misguided.

But it’s hard.

Because life is hard.

The Perfect Person’s Guide to 2016

This is the year. I can feel it. This year you are going to set some goals, step up to the plate, and finally do that thing that we’ve all been listening to you talk about– but never do– for the last five or so years. This. Is. Your. Year. I’m sure of it.

On second thought, probably not. It’s not your year. And here’s why: people who actually do things, long-term, sustainable things, do them on every single day of the year EXCEPT January 1st. January 1st is international quitters day. It’s the one day when quitters around the world band together to make commitments that they really do intend to keep for one-to-three months. Depending.

And that’s okay. I come from quitters. I can quit with the best of them. I’ve lined up, signed up, read up, anted up– you name it, I’ve done it. I’ve joined the gym, the team, the group, all with the best of intentions. Because by December 29th, we’re all feeling the need for a change. Yes, you’ve actually been fat since May (of 2006), but in December, in the hard light of a dying Christmas tree, you feel it more acutely. You have overdone it. You must take this opportunity to reflect and make changes. But therein lies the rub. If you were committed, you would have started yesterday or last week. You would have done something about it the moment it became clear you were orca fat, not after you realized you were orca fat, ate your way through the holidays, and now have post-season guilt. (You know how I know? Your resolve is melted by three simple words: Super Bowl Party. The mere mention of this dip-laden, pigs-in-a-blanket festooned, beer guzzling football holiday makes your nacho molars quiver with anticipation.)

But all is not lost. Having been on the other side of this surge to purge and slide into inevitable failure, I have learned many things. Namely, I have learned not to make resolutions or, if I do, I keep them to myself. My failures will be my own personal burden. I don’t need the whole family texting me under the guise of support.

I find that rather than focusing at this time of year on the myriad ways I can do the hard work of truly changing, it can be simpler and, in some ways, more rewarding to just create the illusion of perfection and accomplishment. In much the same way that some folks create a life of glitz and glamour by incurring incredible credit card debt and suffering in silence, it can be painfully easy to just fake your way into gilded perfection. It just takes practice. And some guidelines.

Stop. Just stop. Whatever you’re doing that’s ridiculously over-the-top and completely unnecessary, stop. Quit making your own mole from scratch. Quit sewing your own stockings. Quit faking those orgasms. Not only are you making yourself crazy, you’ve completely missed the point. Why do something in 2 hours that can be completed in twenty minutes with a debit card and creativity? I’m not suggesting that you remove all love, attention, and personality from your life, but for fuck’s sake you could be getting three times the credit in half the time if you just bought some Rick Bayless mole (it’s better than yours), ordered the stockings from some nice old lady on Etsy, and acquired a vibrator and a few strategic migraines. Life does not have to be so complicated. The less time you spend complicating, more time you have to appear perfect. A mole wielding, perfect-holiday-mantel owning, one-woman show with a post-coital, self-induced glow. BAM.
Put champagne in your fridge and tea in your cupboard. It’s pretty much guaranteed that 90% of the time that you ask an unexpected house guest if they would like anything, they decline. They usually don’t want to stay. They are only sitting in your living room for a few short moments as not to be rude or giveaway how horrified they are about your homemaking skills. By doing the above, you achieve two very important things. 1. By the very virtue of suggesting that you keep those two things on hand, they begin to question all of their assumptions about you. There is no way that someone with iced champagne and loose leaf tea on hand can be the hot mess that I have come to believe. 2. If they accept, and you are called upon to produce the aforementioned champagne or tea, their minds will immediately explode at the magnanimous gesture of opening a fresh bottle of bubbly for the mere task of supplying them with refreshment. You cannot lose. You have beaten your foe and they have been left confused and in awe. So all those resolutions about being more organized or better at keeping house are bullshit. Buy the refreshments.
Buy an oversized cashmere sweater. Whether the issue is your orca fatness or your inability to remember to bathe, an oversized cashmere (or very nice merino) will solve all of your problems. (I believe this to be true for both men and women.) You do not need to jog, neither do you need to resolve to bathe more frequently. What you need to do is buy an expensive sweater that is appropriately baggy and then perch yourself on your couch with a warm mug of who the fuck cares and watch people marvel at your effortless grace. I for one have never, ever seen someone lounging in a cashmere sweater and thought “what a fucking failure.” I immediately self-note how comfortable and expensive they look. If possible, you can buy a book– a smart people book like a Pulitzer or Man Booker winner– and leave it dogeared on the table near you. No matter what time of day, it should always appear that you were startled out of a deep intellectual mating with a book. Your haphazard hair and barefeet are simply the price you’ve paid for your intellectual pursuits. Do not feel self conscious. Your shapelessness is the product of expensive wool. Your hygiene forgivable under the circumstances.
Curate your goddamn social channels. If you keep posting what a selfie-taking, self-indulgent hot mess you are, it’s going to be an uphill battle to convince anyone you’re not. The first rule of any resolution is mystery and in order to maintain a sense of mystery you need to be MYSTERIOUS. No one cares what you ate for dinner. No one wants to read your veiled cries for attention. (If you want for me to pray for you/send good vibes/talk to my invisibles, do me a fucking solid and tell me what about. Your vague “today is going to be incredibly emotional, pray for me” makes me angry and spiteful.) Also, that mirror face you’ve perfected that you think makes you look jaunty and sexy actually makes you look like a frightened sloth, so unpucker your lips, quit giving your 786 friends– who include your mother and grandmother– the fuck me stare, and smile for the damn camera. The golden rule of selfies: if it’s a good picture because you’ve contorted yourself unrecognizable, it’s actually not a good picture.
Buy good candles. Congrats on peeling the sticker off your Glade multiscent candles. Too bad it still smells like the bathroom of a Hobby Lobby in your living room. Nice candles are an indulgence, and likely not on the top of your budgeting priority list, but consider this: if you want people to think you’re successful, it makes sense that you’d be burning money. At at $80 a piece, there is no question but that a Baxter of California candle is the same as lighting a Benjamin on fire after doing a number two. Plus, to my knowledge, when someone asks where you got the amazing candle, the sexy response is almost never “Walgreens.” Just buy the damn candles. Hell, steal them.
Go for a jog with just a enough frequency that you can reference it in casual conversation. “I was jogging by their house the other day…” “Whilst jogging on Thursday I thought I saw her…” “I wanted to go out but after my jog I realized I was too tired.” You are not resolving to be a jogger. You are resolving to appear like you have your shit together and that includes physical exercise. Plus you never know what those endorphins are going to do for you. You may actually lose weight.

At the end of the year, what really matters is not how you’ve decided to change for the world, but rather how you’ve decided to change for yourself. And the truth is that it’s okay to decide not to change. It’s okay to look at yourself in the mirror and think, “That’s a damn good looking work in progress.” Sure, you may need to lose some weight– and you should do that– and you could improve your organization or housekeeping skills, take up camping, buy a buy, go for a hike, but none of those things should be forced upon you in the darkest, coldest, saddest month of the year. I’d argue that what the world needs most is not change for changes sake, but rather true and meaningful reflection. Valuing the insight that comes with connecting to who you are and how your existence plays into the larger picture. Because when you stop and really think about it, how tiny and insignificant you are in the grand scheme of things, you start to realize that your resolve is of no consequence to the universe. The most and best that you can do is seek joy and kindness and try your best to contribute to the harmony of another year. So quit panicking, buy the cashmere sweater and get on with the business of being you…

The Art of Jogging

I can walk forever. Even swiftly. I have no problem whatsoever with endless walking. However, the second walking breeches brisk and becomes even light jogging, everything goes to shit. Suddenly I can’t breathe. I’m sucking on air like it’s a blocked oxygen tube. I begin to turn a Care Bear shade of pink and red and purple and I lose control of my faculties. Rather than gazelling gracefully towards an unknown destination I start to claw at the air and throw my body forward in twitchy gestures of desperation. And that’s usually just the first 100 yards.

Unlike most exercise programs where “just getting there” is half the battle, running (or jogging if we want to be all specific) is a constant state of terrible suck. Just getting there is the easy part. I can lace up my sneakers and put on some Bieber and get all #gocarolinego with no problem at all. It’s when my legs begin to carry me forth and my thighs start trying to start a campfire that shit gets serious. There are stages to all fat kid jogs that are universal and well known, but for those who are in shape, I will document for you.

To begin: The initial leap.

I can imagine that there are fit people who LOVE this moment. It’s no longer acceptable to casually walk along, it’s time to commence the jog. THE MOMENT HAS ARRIVED. I usually try to pick a point at which I have made a blood pact with myself that I will start jogging. If I don’t, I can happily meander along for miles listening to high-impact tunes that feel incredibly motivating but don’t keep very good tempo with my nature walk. For me, the issue is that I have never come to truly accept that there is nothing buoyant and light about me. I think that transition to jogging is going to feel empowering and freeing, but instead I feel like a hippo trying to get going on a trampoline. Everything heaves. I can feel every extra ounce rise up in solidarity and then come crashing down against the pavement. Never, ever have I thought “YES! HERE WE GO, SELF!” I immediately begin a subconscious mantra of “fuckthisfuckthisfuckthis.” Remember ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING.

And then: Bartering.

I have been jogging long enough to know that you do have to “jog the kinks out.” I have not been jogging long enough to remember how that can sometimes take 2-3 miles. (Seriously. Sometimes you have to jog the first 2-3 miles just to get past the suck, then it gets easier. Or so I’ve heard.) Unfortunately, when I’ve gotten jogging tunnel vision I can’t think rationally, instead I begin to barter. Get to that tree, lard ass, and then you can walk for three steps. Get to that fence post and you can pick your underwear out from the clutches of your hungry labia. One more lap and then you can listen to As Long As You Love Me on repeat on the way home. What generally happens is that I can barter my way through the first mile and then when it doesn’t INSTANTLY become the most magical jog of my life, I begin to get angry.

The Anger Period.

I recently started pepping myself with a chat about progress. This doesn’t happen all at once, Caroline! You’re doing great! This is only day two! You are such an inspiration to yourself! Your brain makes you beautiful! Unfortunately, in the moment, I believe approximately zero of this and instead of powering through with the knowledge that I am a warrior princess, I cruel argument ensues between my two selves.

Warrior Princess Caroline (WPC): You’re amazing! You’re out here doing this at night! In the rain! Against all odds! Phil Collins is singing TO YOU.

Regular Caroline (RC): You’re an asshole.

WPC: You’ve got this. Just a little at a time. Make it to the tree and then reassess. Breathe in through your nose. YOu’ve got this!

RC: Get to the tree and you’re still an asshole.

WPC: Getting here was half the battle and you’re here. Do this. You’ll feel so much better after you’re done.

RC: You’ll feel better. But you’ll still be an asshole.

WPC: Eye of the Tiger, Caroline. EYE OF THE MOTHER FUCKING TIGER.

RC: If you stop we can sit. All the pain will stop.

WPC: Just make it to the trashcan. You can make it to the trashcan. GO!

RC: Or make it to that bench so we can sit. Asshole.

The False Sense of Security

I cannot speak for real joggers, but for me there is usually about twenty feet in there (usually after about 6-8 minutes of jogging) where I become invincible. Suddenly I realize I am not going to run four laps, I am going to run six. And then I am going to do some arm dips on the park bench and then some high knees across the common to cool down. It’s usually in those twenty feel that I make a fatal error: I allow my hallucinogenic state to increase my speed. That is always the beginning of the end. Like a total asshole I increase my pace from fattitude appropriate faux running to ambitious prancing and within seconds I am panting, gasping for air, and telling myself that I have to stop due to legitimate medical concerns. I don’t want to stop, I have to stop. I need to listen to my body.

The Wind Down

In the end I settle for trying to run between 1.5 and 3 miles, no matter how ugly. If I can’t do that, I at least sit on a bench for the equivalent amount of time so that Corey doesn’t get suspicious. Then I have to Carl Lewis the half block to my house so that I look good and exhausted when I walk in the door. (An all out sprint for 8-10 seconds can take me out of the game for 3-4 hours. I’d like to blame it on my age, but it’s actually because I’m disgustingly out of shape.) The real issue with jogging is the 2-3 hours after I get home where shit just isn’t right and what I think could make it better is cheese. Which, oddly, isn’t listed as a medically sound recovery tactic. My half ass attempts at stretching out are a disgrace to my yoga background. I mostly just writhe around on the floor and yell out to Corey about the cheese, which he refuses to bring me.

The Retrospective

When you have a baby, everyone tells you about this magic phenomenon where you forget about how terrible child birth is. I didn’t believe it because there was no way I was ever going to forget about awful that whole experience was. I actually did think I was going to die. Instead I shit all over some poor nurse and survived to tell the story. Turns out you really do forget. You convince yourself it really wasn’t that bad. The exact same thing happens with jogging. No matter how terrible, you begin to romanticize. The beautiful moonlight jog, a light, late summer rain, a breeze from the ocean. You’re an asshole, but it’s not your fault. You can’t remember that you looked like John Candy on a pizza run. So you sign yourself up to do it again. And, if you’re anything like me, you go online and spend a couple hundred dollars on some legit new gear to subsidize your efforts.

Because you’re an asshole.

The Before

First of all, and I try never to express gratitude on the blog, as it implies that I believe there are real people out there reading, but I was almost overwhelmed by the support and camaraderie that yesterday’s post inspired. If it takes a village to lose weight, it appears I am in luck. So many folks sharing their struggles and desires to follow my own journey as a way of motivating. As an aside, that is a TERRIBLE idea. I support you, but I am the last person to be motivating anyone.

Many people emailed/commented about Kayla Itsines’ Bikini Body Guide. I went ahead and sunk some money into buying the guide, not because I’m committed, but because at this point there’s no sense in NOT throwing money at the problem. I downloaded the workout guide and spent some time last night reading through the workouts carefully but not actually doing (or even considering doing) any of them. I need to wrap my head around all that jumping. (Side note: I also have to buy some Depends if I am serious about any workout that involves a jump rope. On the long list of things I never got back after having the baby, my ability to keep the liquid IN my bladder is there at the top. A rogue or ill-timed sneeze can be the end of a perfectly good pair of pants.)

Kayla (we’re on a first name basis now that I spent $75 on a collection of photos of her doing physical exercise) feels very strongly about progress photos. She even puts little notes throughout the book reminding me how much she wants to see my progress photos. Initially I didn’t even consider taking “before” photos, but after a couple of hours I reconsidered. I thought that maybe if the diet doesn’t work and the exercise is a flop, my self-inflicted last resort will be to get thin because I have to take a photo of myself every week. And let me tell you, that shit is terrible. Just awful.

Corey asked if I needed him to take the photo for me, which I balked at because the whole point of these photos is to take them yourself because you have a selfie FREE PASS. I am not taking selfies because I’m a narcissistic asshole, I’m taking them because Kayla asked me to. She wants to see me. I also balked because there was no way in an unfrozen hell that I was going to let him be in the room while I figured out how to cheat on my before photo.

I was mindful that if I was successful losing this weight, the worse The Before, the more awesome The After. That was tempered, however, by the knowledge that if I don’t lose the weight, I’d like to be able to look at The Before and be like, “oh please. You don’t look that bad.” Turns out, the second scenario is completely impossible. It could have been my choice of horribly unflattering neon sports bra and striped shorts, but it’s more likely that when you put my tits and my gut into anything you’re going to get a bad photo. See below. (It looks like I’m in a halfway house. I’m not. Just my bathroom.)

I’ll give you a second to regain your breathing and have a sip of water. For reference, I’ll share a few of the before and afters on my friend Kayla’s site:

Not exactly a bunch of fatsos. I agree that the girl in the wind shorts looks like she may have eaten a taco before her photo, but I’m also willing to bet the farm that her tiny little love handle isn’t muffining over a size XL. Those striped gems in my photo are an XL and I look like a ate a taco truck. But whatever, we all have our cross to bear.

So that’s pretty much it. The Before. It’s done. My next photo is supposed to be next week but that seems entirely too soon. Plus I think since I spent Day One reading the workout instead of actually doing it, I should probably delay the timeline by a smidge. I don’t want y’all to get bored.

Tonight I will attempt to NOT eat Aut’s dinner as an appetizer to mine and then I’m feeling really positively about spending 28 minutes with Kayla and a jump rope. After I get some incontinence panties.

the half truth of a whole life

the way things seem to be turning out so far.

Author: linabeau