35 Years, Pain and Pleasure....No Regrets

Today I am 35. Life is grand and heartbreaking and strange and beautifully poignant. Life is also dull and dragging and overwhelming. At 35 I am feeling more alive and fresh than I thought I would but I am also more grounded, at peace with crazy things and addicted to learning than I have ever been.

I am living a totally charmed life in many ways but have had some things happen to me that I never thought would occur, things that scared the living daylights out of me. I almost lost my marriage in my 30's. I got arrested and subsequently had to go to court to fight for my fitness as a parent. I held one of my sons in my arms while his lips turned blue and saw him pull back from the edge of death. I have lived in big houses and small apartments and historic properties and left "home" over and over. I've lost grandparents and aunts, had friends break-up with me spectacularly and had a neighbor decided to wage a massive war of hatred over our hedge because she was certain that I was a thief. I have become an aunt, raised baby animals, become a painter, traveled internationally and learned that extended family is one of the sweetest and most humbling gifts I've been given.

 Family drive us crazy but they know us. They help us learn tolerance and can teach us by their irritating rub, to grow past the demons that trip up the clan in all the familiar ways. As a wise man once said, "If you think you are enlightened, go home for Thanksgiving." Family also know us utterly and can accept us despite our super irritatingly uninhibited flaws that flash as soon as we feel "home" and relax. There is nothing like the security of siblings and cousins who tussled and tumbled with you and know the lore and jokes of your tribe. I know its very trendy right now to cut people out of your life if they rub, irritate or hurt you....I think, especially with family, its wiser to learn how to interact. Boundaries within interactions are good, maturity is good and compassion is a must. I am shocked how much I have learned the truth of the fact that that which drives me most monkey-bonkers crazy about my relatives is somehow a shadow quality in myself. Its embarrassing but its there. Not running away but instead learning to be strong and to co-exist with irritation and pain and to take responsibility for our own path, to learn to have allegiance, and even cultivate a fondness for these flawed people with whom we have been tossed up on the shores of life....who love and are driven crazy by us too in the same tortured dance. This is family and intimacy and humility and the great mirror that is long-term relationship.

I am lucky to be me. I am learning so  much about myself and about A and about life. I am utterly grateful for the peace and beauty of my life. The world is gorgeous and I have lived in it so lusciously, I lived a pretty charmed childhood in a log house my dad built by hand, I have four gorgeous sons and have never had a miscarriage, I have had my own chickens and fruit trees and vegetable gardens as well as so many beautiful flowers in every home I've ever had, I have never been in a natural disaster of any serious scale and have never seen someone die of anything besides old age.  I am also so grateful for the things that have happened to me that were painful. People have left me and accused me and hated me. I have been hurt and scared and have felt like I'd made a botch of everything. I have had to do things the hard way and felt like everything was a mess and my life was out of control. I've been embarrassed and felt out of my depth and Its been so good. That's where the growing has been, the humility, the changes, the grit and the healing. I'm so glad that I've had my path.

I'm trying to live with courage and heart and full-engagement. I am so proud of myself for my learning, my resilience and for protecting my sense of fresh amazement at the world. I feel so lucky to be in my life and yet so specifically called to it....I know my life was meant for me, We are all here, where we should be and our paths are divinely laid out. This is my 35th year....a perfect mid-life stopping point for reflection.  I hope I always keep learning, always look up, and always am receptive to God leading me on because my wiggly, slippery story is the most perfectly messy-delicious and useful lesson I could ever have imagined.

“This is an important lesson to remember when you're having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won't feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can't feel real joy unless you've felt heartache. You can't have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can't know what it's like to feel holy until you know what it's like to feel really fucking evil. And you can't be birthed again until you've died.” -Kelly Cutrone

Rising Above, Y'all

Sometimes there are days when its all about kicking your own inner pain and vulnerability to the curb and refusing (even when you don't know if you can) to live in an identity of defensiveness, all strapped into a permanent victim name tag. Sometimes other people don't get you. Sometimes people hurt your feelings and leave you soaking in lonely. Sometimes you make what you think is an obvious plea for connection and understanding and you are rebuffed and told to grow up. But I don't wanna live there. I get that it hurts, even feels justified and its not about lying to myself. Its about the honesty that if I sense defensiveness in myself, then clearly I feel I have something to hide.

I am super over soaking in my bitter angst when I feel wounded. Its the most challenging mental and emotional muscle work I have ever encountered (short of the entire experience of being married and being a parent) but its the right, strong and healthy thing. Its the vibrant thing too, the compassionate thing, the warm thing, the thing that lets you lie down and sleep at night.

I'm trying to learn how to do this and its such a new technique that I have very, very few credits to my name yet. But today....today was one of them. Yes, I cried some hot tears, I ate some pastries I regret in bitter emo style, I angry texted, I snapped at my kids.

But, I also:

    ....got good advice, cleaned off a shelf in a cluttered closet, ate a fresh orange, took pictures of beautiful things, thought through ways I'd been clumsy in the conflict, I talked it out, I solved my own problems, I told myself that I mattered, I listened to spiritual comfort, I sat in the sunshine, I smiled and I drank more hot tea. 

And by the end of the day, I had clawed my way back up.

Its so hard but I'm really frickin' proud. Every little bit a tiny victory.

Must Tune In

I know that pain, stress and sickness has a mysterious ability to manifest in the body...even randomly, a little bizarrely. Yesterday, I suddenly got a searing shoulder pain which felt like somebody had walloped me with a sledgehammer.

I've been stressing about things:

•  the baby's high lead test results (old house renovation project bites back)
•  the heat we'd been having
•  my tyrannical to-do list
•  parenting my oldest who constantly tests my limits and my beliefs in my capabilities
•  asserting myself healthily in my marriage
• not painting as much as I'd like
• planning the rest of the summer stuff we mean to enjoy
• my need for connection with friends + my desperation for space and time alone
• keeping up on the summer reading program at the library
• the chaos of organizing and culling through our basement
• the baby's constant pain from teething all his molars at once
• my sister's high-risk pregnancy scares
• etc.

You know, that sort of thing. 

Anyhow...I had a little insomnia (a once in a lifetime thing for me) during the heat wave, and then the baby kept waking up and the big boys went through a week of waking a lot and then I stayed up late by myself to catch up projects and blow off steam.....and then suddenly....

POW. My shoulder went out. 

This morning on the way home from taking A to the train station I was a genuine mess. With a cup of coffee in my system, only two hours after waking up, I was nauseous, impossibly grouchy, aching and so tired I was falling asleep at the wheel on the 10 minute drive back to the house. It turned out the kids dentist appointment was actually tomorrow and the whole day had no commitments. In the driveway, I sat there with my head on the steering wheel and I had an epiphany. I needed rest and space and recuperation and I needed it now. Pretty genius, eh? I know it sounds obvious but it seemed like a real breakthrough in the moment. :)

I set the boys up with a nest of pillows and blankets and a steady stream of gentle Kipper The Dog programming on the floor next to my bed, closed the bedroom door behind all of us to reinforce the cocooning plan and curled up to nurse Pom and myself to sleep. 

I woke up in the afternoon. 

The soft British accents from the boys show in the background, Pom snoring next to me and the quilt all coiled around my jeans and a smile on my face.  I feel so much more crinkly and alive. I am damp wiping down all the floors where there might be paint chip dust, resolving to bathe the baby more regularly, scheduling follow-up blood testing, reading some boosting advice about personal boundaries and loving assertiveness, praying for my sister, scheduling dates with myself and with friends into the calendar, and making piles excess to give away and store. The world will be okay. I will be okay. Sometimes you just have to take a hint when God hits you in the shoulder with a sledgehammer because tapping you on the shoulder didn't seem to really get through. 

Note to Self:  "Must tune in."

Pregnancy, Fitness and Mind Abuse

 Since it is January and all I'm thinking again about fitness. I'm back on board writing down the things I eat along with A who is fantastically consistent at it and keeping track of my nutritional intake on Fitday.com's handy little iPhone app (I still sometimes use the more comprehensive website, so don't be shy, non-smart phonies!) and I'm weighing myself every morning.

Image by Justin Liew via Flickr

 I genuinely regret slacking off on my running and then throwing in the towel. Summer heat is a major enthusiasm killer for me and I think the time period where it really started to get warm out is when I quit. Lots of people think the idea of running in the cold is crazy but for me it doesn't seem nearly as daunting as running in heat. When you run in winter you warm up and feel okay but in July running sounds like a completely terrifying thing to me.

Pregnant with Nib, no real prenatal shots this time around yet.

Truth be told there are several factors at work with me and fitness. One of the last times I ever ran was when I was in Florida on vacation with my in-laws and I think the combination of social intimidation ("Let's all go for a group run!") coupled with warm weather ate me alive. I tried to feel brave but honestly, I wimped out and walked back after quitting part way through our planned group run. I've been thinking frustratedly lately about intimidation and fear and all the crazy triggers I have for panics regarding fitness and exercise (being watched, sweating, physical pain, falling, feeling embarrassed...etc.). Consciously, when I think about it I realize that none of those things is going to kill me, none of them are objectively bad and lots of them would maybe even have something good to offer me.

This is where a personal trainer in my back pocket would really come in handy. One of the great things about a trainer is that they can order you through the blocks you set up for yourself, believe in you ceaselessly, know better than you about limitations and safety and not allow you to fink out when things get rough even if the rough is mental. Anyone have any great ways to stay fit while pregnant and/or brilliant ways to be your own personal trainer and order yourself to keep on and develop discipline even though you're scared? I've love to grow this way.

Related articles

• 10 fears that keep people from the gym (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Pregnancies linked to a healthier heart (nation.com.pk)
• Tips and Workouts For a Strong and Fit Pregnancy (fitsugar.com)
• Chicago Personal Trainer Shares Most Common Fitness Mistakes (prweb.com)

Painless Monday

 Orchids in bloom indoors, although most of the houseplants 

have fled to the back patio at this point

The garden is growing on apace, I put in some perennials and some potted bulbs from this winter this afternoon and we had the most perfect gardener's rain this morning. Ru and I both have a square of peas in our raised bed veggie garden and both of them are growing happily, all teepee'd now and ready for climbing, the first tendrils reaching outward. There are lettuces, almost ready for harvest and broccoli that's getting its fourth set of leaves. And indoors there are velvety baby tomato plants getting their first set of leaves. I'm a little tardier than I would like getting those going but, hey....I have several varieties, they seem happy and they're started...that's the key. I am telling myself that they may have a mad growth spurt anytime now. I'm rather pleased that they survived a round of hockey stick throttling and overturning by a wee boy last week. I was on my hands and knees tenderly scooping soil back into the little peat pots, searching carefully with my fingertips for the seedlings, and then tucking them back in hopefully. We didn't have a 100% survival rate but, every variety I'm growing has at least one living seedling and that makes me very happy.

Tomato babies, post clubbing

The other big news around here has been the constant right hip pain I've been in. I made it through the California trip with just perennial discomfort but some nagging extra pain by the end and, I kid you not, when we drove into our drive from the airport I found myself suddenly in such unbearable pain that I couldn't make it from the car to the house without a lot of help. I braved it out for a few days, hoping to "sleep it off" repeatedly but, when I ended up in a puddle of tears because I'd tried to crawl up the stairs on my hands and knees and couldn't manage to pull it off any longer, I decided it was time to do something. So, a little handy googling and I found a chiropractor in our area who specialized in prenatal work and called her and got into her schedule for that very afternoon (this was Wednesday of last week). After a lot of painful wrenching and crunching noises, some illustration with plastic skeletal models and a signed debit slip, I was on my way again. Honestly, I've never been to a chiropractor and wasn't sure what to expect or how much it would help, I was just desperate. I was in such severe pain though and am also married to an utter alternative medicine skeptic that I really hoped it would help...at least in some small measure or else I might keel over and die of pain and/or endure social misery at the hands of my bitter I-told-you-so mate. Heh. After she worked on me, I thought when I stood up that I felt a little better but, on the short walk from exam bed to registrar to our minivan I lost all faith. I still really hurt and I held onto the building all the way to the very end of it, hobbling along miserably and then thought when I reached the corner and saw the parking lot stretching off between me and the van "HOW, am I going to make all the way to the car?" *sob*

This is what I look like these days

And then I slowly improved. And by the time I went to pick-up A from work I wasn't limping much anymore and wasn't holding onto anything to walk. It was just a slow burn. I wonder if my ligaments and tissues around the site of the pain were just so inflamed that once the bones were back in a better place the irritation just took a while to go down? Not sure what it was but, by evening I was sure I was going back for the follow-up appt. I'd booked for this morning. This appt. was similar...I wasn't sure it had helped at all until as the day wore on I noticed more and more of a difference and by this evening I was no longer limping at all and could even walk fast if I wanted to. I can officially say that I pretty much am no longer in pain. I am looking forward to one or two more appointments putting things in final position so I can begin the maintenance exercises to strengthen the muscles around the bones and hold everything where it ought to be. Whew. Not hurting feels really good. And chiropractors rock.

The big boys in the way-back!

New seat for Baby

We are also getting more and more ready for Baby. We're down to once a week midwife visits now and on Saturday we brought home the birthing pool that we'll use once things really get going. On Sunday, A moved the two older boys carseats to the backseat of the van and installed the carseat for Baby Bird to boot. We're almost completely ready. There is a short list of stuff I already have in the house that I need to lay out in a basket for the birth (receiving blankets, towels, the hot water bottle, a flashlight...etc.) and tonight we plan to take one more big bite out of our boy baby name list which, is still not finalized. We're getting closer!

My feet are only somewhat puffy, just enough to 

legitimize putting them up while eat my bon bons. Heh heh.

 

Bruiser!

Having a skateboard and being too macho to wear your elbow pads has its caveats.

 Poor little toughman is all scraped up and honestly, it looks a good deal worse in person than it does in this picture. He's a dedicated little boarder though, still gung-ho to keep rolling through the pain and not crying over it until he was indoors and trying to get ready for bed. So, we've had a generous coating of triple antibiotic cream and a little dose of Tylenol to calm to tears and at dinner we rolled his bum sleeve up greaser style so the cuff wouldn't touch the raw skin. Poor little wincing sport nut. Hope it feels a lot better in the morning like I heard A telling him as he tucked him in. Its easy to forget how much those sliding burns across pavement hurt...man do they sting like the dickens!