Runners High

Friends of mine who run or exercise regularly like to recite the following mantra:
"I looove to run/zumba/do pilates....it makes me feel so accomplished. I get such a high from it."
I'm calling bullshit on all of that.
At least for me. When I exercise, which is about as frequent as never, the only high I get is the elation I feel when it's over. The accomplishment I feel is knowing I didn't die.
My brother-in-law once asked if I got a "walkers medium"....and No, I don't even get that. I sure as shit never, not once, have gotten a runners high.

But you know what does make me feel accomplished? Like really fulfilled and good deep in my gut?

Finding the source of the foul smell in my fridge and getting rid of it. Same for my car. Finding that cup of curdled milk that rolled right between the metal legs of the back row of seats in the vangina and then extricating it.
Building a high chair.
Peeing on a dry toilet seat with no one knocking on the door or calling my name.
Spraying clorox on any surface.
Filling up bags of clothing for Goodwill.
Birthing a child.
Crossing off things on a to-do list.
Waking up at 6:30 am and realize that all my little people slept through the night.
Grooming my offspring. Combing their hair, bathing them, de-lousing them.
Eating a normal portion of clean food. Not wanting to puke after a meal.
Finishing a kick-ass book.

Running just makes me ache.


* Reminder: If you like this blog, go to the top corner and "Join this Site". Thanks*

Thank you note

I'm thankful for:

1.Having a partner to navigate life with. Single parents have my unwavering admiration. I often wonder if I could do it and truthfully, I don't think I could. I mean I would do it if I had to but man, I would do a piss-poor job. As much as my partner makes me question his sanity sometimes and his sense of style all the time, I know he would lay down on the tracks for me and my children. I need that.

2. Having a few amazing women friends. Real friends. They are very few and far between. They know me and love me anyway. I can say really crazy shit to them and know that they get it. I can be irritable and cranky and hateful sometimes. They get it. If I call and say I want to sleep for 2 days straight, they ask me if my meds need to be tweaked. They know that a pedicure makes everything better. They know exactly the kind of book I would love to read. They know when I need to run away for a little bit. They know the kind of bullshit I hate. Thank you ladies.

3. Medicine. I'm thankful that modern medicine gave me 3 beautiful children. I would never have been able to have a family had I been born 50 years earlier. I'm thankful for psychopharmaceuticals. I would never be able to stay in this family without them. I'm thankful for chemotherapy. We have amazing victories because of the arsenal of chemo available today. I'm thankful for insulin. Marc stays alive because of it. So, brilliant people out there who are developing new and better medicine in their sterile labs- I thank you.

4. Education. The ability to learn and be taught. The ability to read. The fact that I could fill an entire planet with things I don't know but can pick up a book and get a rough idea about it. Then, if I wanted to know more, I can keep reading. That's an amazing thing.

5. Publix. Krogers. Target. They are so full of stuff. And I can go and get shit anytime.

6. Abundance of food. Though I have often complained about how food and I have a long, complicated, dysfunctional relationship- I am thankful that if I want pizza and diet coke, I can have it. If I want to invite 20 people over for lunch on Saturday, we have plenty of food. If we don't have enough food, see #5. Our cups runneth over.

7. A house. A messy, cluttered, out-dated and tacky house. It's ours. When it rains, we stay dry. When it's cold, we stay warm. When it's Africa hot in the summer and I want to murder someone, we stay cool. My bathroom is decorated like a 1940s brothel- but the toilet flushes and we always have running water. My oven is from 1962 and only the bottom one works but it cooks the shit out of a turkey. My kitchen walls have streaks of apple juice and dried up cheerios stuck to them but my children have eaten breakfast. My TV room is straight out of the Brady Bunch with wood paneled walls and tacky built in cabinets- but we have a TV room. I need to keep remembering this.

8. My job. I'm employed. I do what I love. I get paid for it. I learn every day. I've met the best people there. See # 2.

9. My children. They make me buckle my seat belt because I can't die in a car crash and leave them with a single dad. They would wear the most atrocious clothing and never brush their teeth. My kids make me get out of bed every morning and have a purpose. They make me laugh. They make me homicidal. They make me look forward to the future because I want to see their final product. I can't wait to see the kind of kick-ass people they'll become. So kids, save this blog to show to your therapist. It may explain things.

Thank you to the Spirit of the Universe, my Higher Power for giving me all these things. I am truly grateful.

Letter of Resignation

I read a HuffPost article about a female law partner at Clifford Chance handing in her letter of resignation because she couldn't meet the needs of her family while working full time (plus) as a lawyer. Responses were mixed. Some applauded her decision to "put her children first". Some chastised her for giving up her career. The article continued with how the American work environment needs to change for working parents and reflect the realities of the 21st century. We're no longer in the Mad Men era where Dad goes off to work and Mom keeps the house tidy, dinner warm and her lipstick on at all times.

I've never stayed home with my children. As soon as they turned 9 or 10 weeks old, off to daycare they went. I've also never made dinner. Or kept the house tidy. My lipstick, however- I nail that. Don't mess with my makeup. This girl needs her lip gloss and her mascara. Whether I put it on in my bathroom with a kid on the floor and one on the toilet and one bouncing a ball off the wall repeatedly, I am not leaving my house without some cosmetic help. Even if it means putting it on in the poorly lit underground garage at the hospital by the light of my car mirror. My work people call it "garage makeup". Its sort of an adjective to how the morning is going.

If I don't put blush and mascara on, it's the beginning of the end for me. Not to be histrionic-  but seriously. It's the same thing if I start wearing elastic waist pants. Or t-shirts with squirrels on it. Or cut my hair really short because it's "so much faster in the mornings". Or buy Naturalizer pumps because they're so much more sensible.  Its the beginning of the end, ladies. Beware.

When I read her resignation letter, I had such admiration for her clear vision. ..and for how little sleep she was able to get away with.

She knew what she had to do and I admire her for that. She knew she was being ineffective as a mother, and probably as a lawyer trying to do both with equal focus. Its just not possible to do both very well. I'm sorry to all women who think that they can parent effectively and work full-time. You can't. Something has to give. For me- both my work and my children get short changed at different times.

If it's busy at work and I'm running late- I don't get home until after 6pm. When I get home, there are 3 needy, hungry, smelly, cranky little people waiting for me. My domestic partner is an incredible co-parent. He does everything a parent needs to do....but still they wait for me. Until I get home, they all hang out and play/chill out. Then when I get home, the evening really gets going. Dinner, homework, bath, baby, reading, soccer, listening, dinner #2 for #1 now that the patch is out of his system and he's STARVING at 9pm. So here's the thing- I can do it. It gets done every evening from Monday-Friday. But do I do it well?  Does anything else get done that doesn't have to do with fulfilling the immediate physical needs of the family- food, hygiene and sleep? And hygiene is a loose term here. As is food. Dinner at my house would make Martha Stewart cry. (My mother once accused me of feeding my kids gas station food). So, the answer is no. Most nights, it all gets done because it has to get done. The quality is very questionable. Some nights it's blueberry waffles and a quick face wash.
On the nights where my kids eat a hot meal (that dear husband has made) and have all bathed...with soap... and are sleeping by 9pm, I feel so accomplished. There's something primal about feeding and cleaning your offspring. It brings me great peace. And I swear that I am going to do this every night. Then the next night, I'm microwaving fish sticks and hating myself.

Work suffers too. At 4pm I find myself looking at my watch and the anxiety starts to creep up on me. I quickly gauge what absolutely needs to get done in the next hour and what can wait until later in the evening after I'm home. I rush through notes and calls. Any questions from nurses or parents need to be urgent or else they're waiting until tomorrow. The quality of my work suffers. Colleagues who don't have the same expectations to be home can stay and think and do better. They don't have to field the 5:15 phone call from home asking if they're on their way because kids are restless and hungry. Oh, and baby hasn't seen mama since the night before. There are  projects and research ideas that can't be done because the only time to do them would be "after hours" and I have about 3 functioning neurons firing "after-hours". Even during the most productive hours, I'm not as sharp as I used to be pre-partum. I forget words, I get distracted, I need to call the child psychologist and make a well child appt for baby and make sure kids wear the right color for anti-bullying week, I lose my train of thought, I forget names, I need to find a babysitter for conferences, I need to refill a bunch of meds, I can't remember if the Monday morning meeting is mandatory or just strongly encouraged, I get distracted, I forget to pack kindergarteners blanket every single Monday, I get distracted.

So, both my work life and my home life often tread water; never really swimming gracefully to the finish line. I often feed my kids soggy nuggets, forget what chemo plan we're following for what patient, lose library books, never remember to pack the god damn blanket on Mondays, show up late to meetings, forgo the agony of 3rd grade homework and miss work related dinners.

I read that resignation letter with admiration.

But as much as I may be treading water, I wouldn't change a thing.

Morning musing

This morning I dropped the kids off at school. The doors of the vangina opened and 5 kids fell out. As the doors slowly closed automatically and I turned the corner, I looked back and saw these little people running into school. So excited. So full of energy. Ready to have a great day. Un-caffeinated, un-alduterated, un-medicated (4/5 of them at least) optimism.
Does anyone remember being that way? Before we were tired and jaded. Before we were heart-broken. Before we became neurotic and fearful. Before our egos developed and we became one big pile of need. Before we saw sad and ugly things in the world.
As I drove home in the blinding sunlight, I felt an urge to smoke a cigarette, open the windows and keep driving to nowhere.
Until I get back to that place of running happily into the morning.

Significant Other

Living in casa de los locos is never dull. And never quiet....Ever.
Unless we're all unconscious.
It's not just the kids and the eardrum splitting din they create.
My partner in life, the man I chose to spend forever with, is the progenitor of all this noise.
Let me tell you about this man.

I met Marc when I was a nurse at NYU and living the sweet life of a single twenty something in New York City. Too bad that's not how I saw it then. I lamented being single at 27 (gasp) and didn't take enough advantage of all the amazing things I could've done with all my free time. What the hell did I do with all that free time? I worked night shifts so was probably psychotic most of the daylight hours that I wasn't in a benadryl induced coma. I lived on 85th between Central Park and Columbus. Prime real estate. Brownstone building straight out of the Cosby Show. In theory.

I lived in that one bedroom apartment with a roommate and our bedroom was actually in the basement level of the building. So living room, tiny kitchenette on first floor and then you go down a spiral staircase into a dark, moist bedroom. That I shared with a roommate. And her various significant others. One time we noticed a putrid, sulfuric smell that was getting worse by the day. No matter how long we left the windows open or sprayed air freshener- it lingered. Finally, the super came and diagnosed the problem as "dead rat in wall". He explained that when an animal dies, its body decomposes and smells really bad. I thanked him for the news flash and asked how to remedy dead rat in wall. He sniffed around the walls and found the rat grave. He drilled a hole in the wall, widened it with a superintendent tool and then throw up in my toilet. He was able to remove the dead rat and apologized profusely for the mess he left. He was a bit under the weather, apparently.

Anyway, my roommate invited Marc over for dinner one Friday night. I was dating someone else so was blissfully blasé about any new men in my apartment. This particular guy was noticeable though. Just because he looked pretty unconventional. He came over for shabbat dinner wearing denim overalls (never acceptable unless you're a toddler), timberland boots, a red wool cap backwards and a hoop earring. Think lead singer of "Come on Eileen" video. But the real kicker was when he told me he was at Columbia getting a PhD....in yiddish. My response was quick and insensitive (an overriding life theme) - "why? ... thats dumb". Apparently, thats when he knew he wanted to date me. Message to single women- speak your mind, the right guy will love you for it.

I didn't see Marc again for a few months. We met again on a hot summer evening on Broadway in front of a kosher BBQ place. He was noticeably thinner, with shorter hair. He traded the denim overalls for DIY denim cutoffs. And a white tshirt with the gay pride logo on it. Well, that was a surprise because I totally didn't get any kind of gay vibe from him. Again, I just asked him "whats with the shirt?". He told me his stepfather got it from a thrift shop. "Why?" he asked. I explained that its a gay flag.
Completely non-plussed and confident (an overriding life theme for him)- he just laughed and said "oh. well I'm straight- you?"..... I then invited him to come for lunch the following week with some other friends.

He somehow found my phone number and left a message a few days later confirming that we were still on for lunch. I mentioned that I wanted to go to a Sri Chinmoy concert on Central Park Friday night but nobody wanted to join me. Sri Chinmoy is a Buddhist spiritual man who chants/heals and has a following of mostly women who dance a lot. Marc immediately said he would love to go hear Sri Chinmoy! What an amazing coincidence. So we went. It was super weird and fun and not at all for us. In fact, Marc would never in a million years have gone to something like that. He later told me that he would have gone to a lecture on Japanese astrophysics if I had asked him to. Message to single women- a good man will sometimes do things that he's not interested in if it means being with someone he loves.  Because it's not all about him.

So, we had fun. We learned we both have asthma, like Fleetwood Mac, are deeply Jewish, love to read, come from divorced parents, celebrate dysfunction and have only sisters. I never commented on his style- until he got henna tattoos on his neck. That's where I drew the line. He removed them with so much isopropyl alcohol, he had second degree burn. Thats true love. It burns.

So he came for lunch, met friends, we played football in Riverside Park on a perfect fall day. The next day, he called and left a message playing Neil Young on guitar for about 10 minutes on my answering machine. Thats it- nothing but the music. It was nice to come home after a 12 hour shift to that. He then called daily. Message to single women- it's not just stalkers who call every day. Sometimes the one will call you often because he wants to see you and doesn't care about the rules.

He gave me an Ernest Hemingway book "1000 Days of Solitude" and inscribed it and said its his all time favorite book. I read the first few chapters and told him it should be called "1000 Days to Get Through"because it was so fucking boring. He laughed. He showed me his writing. His voluminous amount of short stories, songs, and his pHD thesis. They were amazing. Except for his thesis. That was painful to read and I stopped after the dedication. He introduced me to Mordechai Richler, Paul Auster and Phillip Roth. He introduced me to Blue Rodeo and Lucinda Williams.

It was always so easy with Marc. So calm. ZERO drama. On our 3rd date (2 weeks since we met on Broadway), he told me he had no interest in being friends with me. He had enough friends. He wanted to date me and probably marry me. So if I didn't feel the same, tell him now because he wouldn't waste my time anymore.....Thats Marc. Direct, brutal, no bullshit. We were engaged 10 weeks later.

Because I only knew Marc for 10 months before we got married, I didn't know all of the little things that make him tick. Or should I say "tic". He has this thing that I call his Tourettes. He finds words that "are delightful" to him and repeats them, with different accents throughout the day. Mostly in his head but in the comforts of our home, out loud. My kids parrot this and I have to admit I have found myself doing it too. It's one big asylum.

He wears wool hats indoors all year long. He likes the way it makes him feel. Very safe.
He wore the same pair of brown pants for an entire 16 week semester and then when I threatened to burn them while he was still wearing them, he tossed Brownie down our garbage disposal.
He sleeps with a tshirt covering his eyes because that way Jason from Friday the 13th can't see him.

He is a man of EXTREMES. If he loves you , he will go to the moon and back and kill people along the way for you. If not, you're dead to him.

He can be moody and get quiet and then he gets his bitchface on and I have to field questions of "Is Marc OK?". Yep. He's OK. He just doesn't feel like being loud and extroverted right now. He doesn't hate you. He's not angry. He's in his own head. Leave him alone.

Marc is the most generous man I have ever met. He hates bullies. He cries easily. He loves his family more than himself. More than work. More than God. He has the fashion sense of a homeless man. He wouldn't notice if I shaved my head and tattooed my eyelids. He calls every article of women's clothing "dresses". He makes an obscene amount of noise in my house and adds (creates?) chaos. He forces me to be social. He makes me laugh every single day. He's one crazy dude and his mind can be a dark, tangled mess......

But he's always home.