Sleep Diaries, Entry 976,302

A new tooth (the next of many, I’m sure – he only has, like, eight, so he needs approximately eleventy-billion more in the next six or eight months), a bit of a cold, regular naptime at school, and a dog are conspiring to keep me sleep-deprived.

 

The thing is, giving up sleep as a parent is supposed to be mostly temporary.  Like, your children are supposed to start sleeping again within a few months of birth.  You no longer have to get up and shuffle your swollen, pregnant body to the bathroom every couple of hours to pee, and the babies supposedly figure out how to sleep for longer than a few scant hours at a stretch.  As a parent, you sign on to stay up all night with a newborn or a teething baby or a sick toddler, you accept that you will worry about them when they are out late in high school, but for me, for us, for this family, sleep loss appears permanent. 

 

I just… I have said all of this before.  And yet the sleeplessness affects my whole life.  It is a running theme in my interactions with my friends and my children and my husband and my employees and my psyche.  It contributes to the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I look in the mirror and see the flab and the wrinkles and the black circles.  It keeps me from eating well because I’m just so tired all the time and all I want is something warm and comforting and probably fat-filled.  I think I drink a bit more (like, a glass of wine every night instead of a few nights a week) because I’m so exhausted by the end of the day.  And it’s more than just fatigue because the fatigue feeds the frustration, which feeds he snappishness and resentment, which feeds the guilt.

 

And I feel, sometimes, like I just do everything for everyone and no one does anything for me, you know?  Okay, so my babies can’t really do anything for me, but it would sure help if they would just let me sleep sometime!  This morning, after Jamie woke up at 5:15 am and finally snuggled down to sleep with me again, Charles woke up.  And after taking off his night time diaper, making a trip to the bathroom, and changing his pajamas, he crawled into my bed with me and Jamie… and proceeded to squirm and move and talk, despite my pleadings and scoldings for him to “settle down!” and whisper-yelling, “your brother’s asleep!”  Finally, when it was clear that he had awakened his brother, I sent them both into Charles room to play while I tried to shut my eyes for a bit longer.  It wasn’t even 6 am yet.  I had been up three times with Jamie and once with the dog that night.  But asking Charles and Jamie to play quietly is like asking Buster to please not eat the ground beef I just dropped on the floor.  No matter what I say, they’re going to play loud and hard. 

 

It’s the curse of a mother to feel unloved (I’m not the fun parent by a long stretch) and unappreciated (I do a lot of damn work for our house and our family and it is often taken for granted), and I am no exception.  The lack of sleep makes the bad feelings worse.

 

And it’s such a terrible thing, really, because underneath it all, I’m a fairly reasonable person.  I count my blessings.  I try to treat my husband wonderfully because he is so wonderful.  I love my darling imps with every fiber of my being.  I think about all we have and all we don’t need.  I am grateful for my life.  But I am also very, very tired.  And because of that, every day contains an element of self-pity, an element of frustration, an element of resentment.

 

I’m just stuck.  Stuck between happiness for my life and anger for it.  I’m stuck in a land of sleeplessness, a tiny house that gets tinier by the day, increasingly demanding jobs, and more and more guilt over my inability to balance anything well.  I feel like I’m trying to turn left but there’s never a break in traffic.  I can’t pull forward and I can’t reverse.

Spaghetti Pie

I made this Pioneer Woman dish for dinner last night and it was delicious.  It reminded me a lot of another dish I make, one that is a lot more complicated, but also a lot tastier, so when I have the time, it pays off.  May I share it with you?

 

It’s called Spaghetti Pie, and I first found the recipe in a retrospective of popular recipes from the 50s and 60s.  I have modified it a ton over the years.  Recently, I’ve seen several recipes for Spaghetti Pie make the rounds of Pinterest, but none of them look to be quite this good… largely because they are all meant to be quick, easy casseroles.  This is neither quick nor easy.  But it is spectacular.  And hearty.  And a crowd-pleaser.  And it travels well.  It even freezes well.

 

Here we go!

 

Set a pot of water to boil and get your spaghetti ready.  You don’t want too much spaghetti, maybe 8 ounces.

 

 

Chunk up an onion and a bell pepper and any other vegetables you’d like to fool your family into eating.  Add a clove or four of pressed garlic and sauté it all in some olive oil.  The onion and the garlic add great flavor, but the rest of them will just be added fiber and vitamins, in my opinion.

 

 

Add a pound of ground Italian sausage.  You could use ground beef or ground turkey, but it wouldn’t taste as good.  If you do use ground beef or ground turkey, make sure to add lots of Italian spices.  After my sausage was browned, I added some spinach (because I had it, and, you know, iron).

 

 

Add half of a Costco-sized jar of spaghetti sauce.  Umm, this is like, 2 cups or so?  I don’t think of cooking as an exact science, so the idea is to keep it from being too saucy.  Then, add a drained can of diced tomatoes.

 

Doesn’t that look lovely?  Smells good, too.

 

And now, the noodles.  Hopefully they’re cooked up all nice in your boiling water.  If not, get on it, the meat/sauce mixture will wait.

 

 

Add two beaten eggs to those hot noodles and mix them up real good.  Do you like my dinosaur spaghetti spoon?

 

Then, add some parmesan cheese to the spaghetti.  I like cheese, so I use a lot – about 4 ounces.  Spread this gooey mess into a 9 x 13-inch pan.

 

 

Next, take a whole carton of full-fat cottage cheese and spread it over the top of the noodles, like so:

 

 

Top this with the meat/sauce mixture:

 

 

Add cheese on top (I like to use parmesan and mozzarella and just simply smother the damned thing) and then stick the whole heavy pan in your oven at 375-degrees until heated through (about half an hour). 

 

 

Make sure to invite your brother over for dinner because he loves this meal.

 

 

Spaghetti Pie:

8 ounces spaghetti noodles

2 eggs, well beaten

4 ounces shredded parmesan (or more, if you love cheese)

1 carton cottage cheese (16 ounces?  I think?)

1 onion

some garlic (if you like garlic, use more!)

other vegetables (things that would be great here: carrots, olives, mushrooms, bell peppers, kidney beans, spinach – you get the picture.  Veggies with lots of water, like zucchini, might not work so well)

Olive oil – a tablespoon or two

1 lb ground Italian sausage

2 cups pre-made spaghetti sauce

1 can diced tomatoes, drained

mozzarella and parmesan cheese

 

Cook noodles according to package directions.  In a big saucepan (because if I don’t use a big one, I slop shit everywhere), cook the onion, garlic, and other vegetables in olive oil.  Add the Italian sausage and brown.  Add spaghetti sauce and drained tomatoes. 

 

Add eggs and parmesan to cooked, drained noodles and mix well.  Spread in bottom of 9 x 13-inch pan.  Spread cottage cheese on top.  Spread meat/sauce mixture over that.  Spread mozzarella/parmesan cheese over that. 

 

Bake at 375-degrees for 30 minutes or until heated through. 

 

Serve with a big ol’ glass of wine.

It’s Your Problem

Do you know what’s wrong with people?  Okay, probably a lot of things, true, but here’s something that’s bothering me today: It’s-Not-My-Problem Syndrome.

 

Somewhat related: last night, Tony and I saw Les Miserables, and it was AMAZING.  I cried.  At least three times.  I told Tony that I could watch that again, and again, and again and he said, “You couldn’t emotionally handle watching that again.”  And he might be right.

 

But the premise, as you know, is that we should show basic compassion to our fellow humans.  “To love another person is to see the face of God” and all that.  Why is that so hard?  I don’t mean that we should give away all our riches or open our homes to strangers without homes or adopt all the homeless puppies or anything so drastic.  There are many small ways to be compassionate, and one easy way to start is to forcefully ignore the voice that so many of us have in our heads that tells us “It’s not my problem.”

 

This morning, one of the storm drains on our street was backed up to the point of becoming a lake that overflowed the sidewalk.  A sidewalk that is used by children walking to catch the junior high bus that picks them up behind our house in the dark of the early morning.  These are not my children, of course.  When I got to work at called the city, I found out that that was the first they had heard of the problem.  Do you know how many people live on my street?  How many others drive down the street and have cell phones and could have called it in?  Lots.  And no one did.  It took me, after my meetings and after I made it to work to do so.  I fully expected my phone call to be redundant, for public works to tell me that they already had a crew on the way, but that wasn’t the case.  I’m glad I called, even though I was too busy to do so earlier.

 

I have tried for years to develop the idea in my head that it IS my problem, and here are the results: I have called 911 for several accidents, including a crazy one a few weeks back in which a double-trailered dump truck LOST ITS SECOND TRAILER IN AN INTERSECTION.  The trailer rolled to a stop without hitting anyone or anyone hitting it, which was a miracle, but traffic was backed up around that for ages.  I have called in stray dogs.  I have picked up stray dogs wandering on the roadway and taken them to the police station.  I have pushed carts that some asshole has left in a parking space or pushed over the curb back to the cart-return.

 

It doesn’t take much, you know.  Just the willingness to spend a few more seconds or minutes of our time to do things that might never be acknowledged.  You won’t get a medal for cleaning up the trash you were about to walk over, and surely whoever littered within sight of that trash can was a jerk in the first place, but you can make a small difference.  And I will support you for feeling self-satisfied for the rest of the day just for calling public works to fix a storm drain.  Or whatever.

More Information

As it turns out, Charles is himself exhibiting a few behavior problems at school.  I wasn’t told about this until I complained about the other kids hitting him and calling him names, which they totally do, but then the teacher told me that Charles has been acting out a bit.

 

And so.

 

I’m not sure I like the way it was brought up.  Like, was she implying that my son brings it on himself?  Apparently, he runs around the classroom like a madman on speed, refusing to sit down at the designated time and in the designated space for whatever activity is happening.  The kid with the behavior problems (the one whom Charles complains about) does hit Charles and throw things at him, but he is also, apparently, one of Charles’s best friends and Charles routinely tries to get this other kid to run around with him.  My boy is the instigator in these situations. 

 

I get it, you know.  Charles has more energy than ten monkeys drinking Mountain Dew, but I’m not sure how to curb this other than wearing him out the best I can.  We started the first of what will be many conversations and daily reminders to listen to the teachers and follow directions last night.  I’ll continue to talk to him about not using bad words, not hitting or hurting others, not running in school, and walking away to have a self-imposed time-out when he’s mad, but he’s like a pot boiling over.  Until I can remove the heat source, he’s just going to keep boiling.

 

It’s a bit tough to live in Washington right now.  Charles and his preschool class do not get to go outside.  When we go to Baby Boot Camp in the mall, Charles runs all over the place.  This morning, I sent him to run up and down the stairs three times, then slide down and bunny hop back up three times, then bear-crawl back and forth between my room and his three times, and on and on and on.  He jumps on the bed.  He asks, constantly, if Tony and I will chase him around the kitchen.  He wears me out long before he gets tired.

 

And, unfortunately, he’s started lying.  Well, he’s four years old, so he’s testing the boundaries and learning to lie, and that’s all normal, but it sucks, too.  When his teachers ask him to stop running or stop playing or stop yelling or stop throwing toys up to hit the ceiling, he tells them, “My mom said I could.”  Oh, brother.  So there’s another conversation we’ve been having regularly.  Do not tell lies.  I never said that.  Your teachers are in charge and it doesn’t matter what mom would say at home, when you are at school you do what they say.  He is chagrinned after these talks, but I’m not sure they stick in his head for very long afterward.  How much will we have to talk before we see a behavior change?

 

And so.

 

We’ve started swim lessons.  We’re going to do more roller skating in the garage.  Maybe we’ll visit Jungle Playland on Friday afternoons.  We’ll do gymnastics when swim lessons are finished.  Anything to burn off that energy so he’ll focus better on the teacher and following the rules.  He’s just so active.  And I realize that, with my work schedule becoming more demanding of late, and the holidays taking over our lives a bit, and the weather being dismal, I have not provided enough activity for him. 

 

The talks about right and wrong, following directions, and not lying and the addition of more physical activity are things I can do.  It feels good to take action, so I’m pinning my hopes on that.

 

And so.  For the second day in a row: Parenting.  Ugh.

Hard Lessons

Charles had a rough week at school last week, and this morning he didn’t want to go.  He didn’t kick or scream or refuse to leave the car when we got there, he just did that pitiful whining thing that simultaneously breaks my heart (because he is sad and you can hear it in his voice) and annoys the shit out of me (because it’s WHINING).  He generally gets over any hesitation he has about going to school by spending the first ten minutes or so of the day in the toddler room with Jamie.  And I always leave reassured by his love for his brother.

 

At the end of the day, he is usually bursting with stories of how he played drive-through taco stand or firefighters or painted some mittens or put together a puzzle or even, right before Christmas, proudly relating that he created a makeshift air hockey table with some giant checkers and a willing buddy.

 

But last week he came home upset every day.  Some kids at school told him that he was ugly.  They said his whole family was ugly.  Another kid (with acknowledged behavior problems) has been throwing things and hurting Charles.  People are fighting.

 

Some of the kids in Charles’s classroom have, for lack of a better term, dysfunctional families.  I know this, and I know that it won’t be the last time Charles runs into people who don’t know how to relate to others without insults and violence. 

 

But I just don’t know what to do to make it better.  Tony and I argue, but we never shout at each other and we don’t use bad words or ever insult each other.  I probably insult myself in the kids’ presence too often, but I’m aware of it and I’m trying hard to change (it’s tough – I’m going through a period in which I see no life improvement even though I am working so hard on so many fronts) so I can hopefully break the cycle and show them that it’s not okay to treat yourself the way I treat myself.  Charles doesn’t get to watch any movies that aren’t animated and geared toward very young kids, but I know that many of his friends watch more adult movies (Transformers, Batman, Spider-Man) with violence and swearing and adult themes, and of course Jamie doesn’t get to watch movies or TV at all.  We try to teach Charles to be kind to his friends, that it is never okay to physically hurt someone and it certainly isn’t okay to retaliate when someone hurts you.

 

Words like “ugly” are reserved for situations – never for a person or their creative outlet.  We had to explain the difference when a radio announcer was talking about the Seahawks and an “ugly” play.

 

So, bottom line, we’re trying to set a good example and we’re trying to talk to him about why kids are sometimes mean, without delving to deep into why kids are sometimes mean.  How could I?  How could I possibly make him understand that some kids’ parents are mean to each other and their children?  That at home these kids don’t get enough love to know how to be kind to one another.  Sheesh, some of them don’t get enough food.

 

Compounding the issue is that Charles is a pretty sensitive kid.  I’ve watched him play with other kids his whole life, and he wants nothing more than to play heartily with anyone around.  He gets a bit too physical sometimes, and he has the normal issues with sharing common to his age group, but overall, he just likes having friends.  He doesn’t understand why some of them don’t want to play or can’t give and take during play.  He gets sad.  He is extremely social so he gets lonely. 

 

I remember being in about 5th grade and crying to my mother because the other kids in my class didn’t like me.  Sometimes they were mean to me and said terrible things, other times they just didn’t include me in their fun.  It hurt so badly to not be able to relate, to feel like I was always saying or doing the wrong thing or that it was all just a setup and they were going to ditch me and make fun of me later.  And now I know that it probably hurt my mom just as much.  I like to think my struggles with friendship and (un)popularity made me a better person as an adult.  The embarrassments and the missteps and the social faux pas had to have served a purpose.  Else, why the pain?

 

Oh, parenthood.  Thank God the good outweighs the bad.

 

The Beauty Idiot Strikes Again

This morning, I bathed for the first time in three days.  Which is an explanatory statement meaning: I was kinda gross.

 

The longish story is that, because of the holiday Tuesday, my schedule was off, and I went an extra day without a shower because it seemed silly to shower in the morning and then go work out in the evening.  Even though that is what I used to do all the time.  I don’t think I smelled particularly bad and I got compliments on my hair the whole day (I did snakes hair – two French braids, largely because on the third full day of no washing, there is little one can do besides keep it contained), so I’m calling it a win.

 

This whole dry shampoo thing is a bit of a revolution for me.  Even with a newborn, I tried to get at least a quick shower once every 24 hours.  Well, okay, 48.  Okay, fine, fine, 72, but that was the max, and I spent those first few weeks in bed or on my couch with newborns, so who’s to judge?  But dry shampoo?  Killing it.

 

I bought Suave, which is cheap, and seems to do the trick.  Everything is mega dry and static-y this time of year, so once I use the dry shampoo, I then have to rub some lotion or something on the ends to keep them from being to crinkly.  But the time I have saved!  The water I have saved!  The TIME.  I’m on a regular schedule of bathing Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday morning – essentially after every workout and also before I ever go three days again.  It’s a big step to make it to two days between washings, so I think I’ll hang out there for awhile.

 

It still makes me feel pretty dumb, in a way.  Like, I am 31 years old.  How did I not know about all of this before?  How many hours have I wasted over the years bathing unnecessarily, primarily because my hair looked greasy after 24 hours?  I’ll just bet that no one else out there showers every day.  Like, duh, Amelia, that was just something we did in junior high because we were so self-conscious.

 

Oh, sure, some of you might say that one can still bathe and not wash one’s hair.  I say, if I’m going to take a shower, I’m going to wash my hair.  I don’t need to shower every day.  I don’t smell.  I don’t sweat unless I work out (that might, nay, probably will, change this summer – then, daily showers are necessary for getting sunscreen residue off of my ghost-like, descendent-of-a-redhead skin).  I would probably shower after eating at a Mexican restaurant or Five Guys because I don’t deal well with grease odor.  Otherwise, every other day suits me fine.  Especially now that no one small is barfing partially-digested milk on me every few hours.

 

My skin has calmed some, too, though I wash my face as often as I did before I cut back on the showering.  I think this largely has to do with a tiny, nearly overlooked piece of advice I found regarding adult female pizza face: change your pillowcase daily.  Bacteria being the number one cause of skin craters in a woman’s reproductive years, and the pillow being the number one place to lay one’s face every night for 6+ hours (if I’m lucky!), it only makes sense that having a new, clean pillowcase each night might lead to fewer breakouts and less re-infection of offending bacteria.  Take that, acne!  I’ll just do more laundry!

New Year, New Baby Website

Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!  Is this thing on?

 

Oh. My. Gawd.  You guys.  I feel like a new woman.

 

The stress of the past month was so extreme that I’m sure I was no picnic to be around, but it’s OVER.  We have turned the corner, given birth to a brand-new website, and now, much like after the birth of my human children, I have to learn how to cope with being a new parent.  Some things are the same, but other things are different.  There are problems and issues to solve that we never even thought about before.  Ultimately, however, we envision that our lives will be better with this new addition.

 

You see?  Running one’s own business, growing and making changes, really is like having another child.  Sure, there’s no love and affection from my business, and there’s lots of stress and there are sleepless nights, but my business will eventually pay me.  I’m guessing that will not be the case with Charles and Jamie.

 

While I might have been a stone bitch this past month, stressed out, not showering as often as before (thanks to the miracle of dry shampoo – yes, I’m a total convert, I have not showered in three days and I’ve totally gained a cumulative hour of sleep, which is nothing to sneeze at), AND I’m pretty sure my extended family wants to divorce me, those kiddos have had the BEST mom this past month.  It’s like I was able to push all the aggression and frustration and exhaustion out of my body when I was with them.  I have spent more time playing toys on the floor, chasing small people with my monster tickle hands, and running around the kitchen like a fool (which garnered me several new bruises and a skinned knee) than ever before.  It’s fun.  It feels great to be the mom who has nothing better to do than be with my kids.  It relieves some of the guilt I have over leaving them at preschool seemingly all the time.  And maybe, just maybe, it takes away some of the disgust the rest of my family feels for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sigh.  They’re getting so big.  They play (mostly well) together, without any major injuries so far.  Oh!  Except that Jamie has fallen down the stairs TWICE in the last week (he’s fine).  Awesome.  Learn some balance, kid.  And also, Jamie likes to smack Charles as hard as he can in the face whenever the opportunity presents itself.  Payback, I guess.  Overall, though, they’re sleeping all night long and they’re growing like weeds and eating like pigs and are just so damn lovable that all I can think is lucky.  So lucky.