I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. ~Henry David Thoreau
So I don't know what I did to upset the devil so much, but it must have been pretty bad.
Ben's cold went from bad to better to worse. Today the watery eyes, snotty nose, and almost constant cough are back. He's tired and cranky because he can't breathe very well, so he doesn't sleep very well. And of course, I can't do much of anything for him.
Yesterday I had a sneeze attack during fourth period, and I've been sick ever since. And I've got the works: nose so stuffed I can barely breathe, aching all over, cough, sore throat, out of control exhaustion...and I can't take anything to alleviate it. And I can't take naps and rest because the little buddy won't.
And, as the cherry on the cake, Matt has pneumonia. So the poor guy is in bed for at least a week.
So while my poor, sick hubby sleeps the week away, I'm switching between blowing my nose, wiping Ben's, making myself soup, feeding Ben, and trying to keep everything as clean as I can so the germs don't take us down for good.
A couple of days ago Ben finally succumbed to his first real cold. He got the sniffles a couple of months ago, but this was the first big one. He was up all night coughing, and in the morning he was all stuffy with snot dripping down to his chin. Poor little peanut. So at 3:30 am on Wednesday, I called in sick.A sick baby is not a fun baby. I felt so bad for him...he was just looking at me with those sad, watery eyes begging me to make him feel better. And all I could do was suck to boogers out of his nose and snuggle him closer. I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before, and since he couldn't breathe very well, his naps were fitful and I didn't get any sleep during the day, either. I was so exhausted and just SPENT. But in the midst of the exhaustion and the fits of coughing and screaming, I felt a strange sense of peace and joy. Because for one day, I didn't have to wear 18 hats. For one day, I could just be a mom. I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep and the constant care-giving. But for one day, there were no twelve year olds, no papers to grade (well, there were--but I completely ignored them), and nowhere to be. I could just cuddle up on my couch with my buddy, both of us in our jammies, and just be.
Ben is recovering quickly. He still woke up coughing a few times last night, but he fell back asleep fairly quickly. I'm praying for a good night's sleep for all of us tonight. And tomorrow's Friday, which means in less than 24 hours I can go back to just being a mom and being with my sweet boy.
No, this blog is not about President Obama. That blog is coming, though...stay tuned. ;)
So lately I've been becoming more and more bothered by an epidemic that has been sweeping through America for quite some time now. I think perhaps my observations and thoughts have become more potent of late because of the increasingly grim financial climate. Who knows...but here are some thoughts. Ahem. Soap box, please.
A few years back the Gap ran a campaign entitled, and I wish I was kidding, "Instant Gratification." I remember seeing those words painted in the store windows and thinking, "Wow. We're not even pretending any more. We've just embraced our depravity..." I think this is a great illustration of the entitlement pandemic that pervades our culture. My students demonstrate this daily. They are twelve years old, and already they KNOW that the world revolves around them. And I'm not just talking about the typical egocentricity that takes prisoner the heart of every adolescent. I'm talking about a serious sense of "I should get what I want, when I want, and if I don't, I have every right to disrespect and spit in the face of anyone who should get in my way." My students also, thanks to MTV, video games, and computers, feel entitled to entertainment. Everything is supposed to be fun for them, and if it's not they don't have to do it. But here's the deal--I almost can't blame them. Because attitudes like that are learned, not innate. I know this because there is still a handful of holdouts that have not succumbed to this disease. However, almost daily I get emails and phone calls from parents saying that so-and-so should not get the late penalty for turning in the project that was assigned a month ago two days late because he had a soccer game. And if I take the points off, they call my principal and complain that I'm unfair and I have out of reach expectations. So I wonder where this sense of entitlement comes from...
It obviously happens with adults as well. In my tenure at Starbucks, I couldn't count the number of people that felt they had every right to scream at me and call me names if they had to wait in line for more than ten seconds.
And here's the nail in the coffin: our economy is fueled by entitlement consumerism. If people don't feel entitled to a new iPod every time a new model comes out, they won't feel compelled to buy one. If they don't buy one, then Apple loses money. If Apple loses money, they have to lay people off. If they lay people off, then those people don't have the money to go out and buy new clothes at the Gap. If they don't buy new clothes at the Gap, the Gap will lose money and lay people off. Then those people will have to buy generic groceries, and the grocery stores lose money. Not to mention all the sales tax revenue that's being lost. Now the state is losing money. And the first thing that they do when they lose money is take it from the schools, who then have to lay off teachers, who then can't pay their mortgages...you know the rest. So now what? If we don't go selfishly wasting all our money on useless crap, our whole country falls apart.
I digress. Back to the entitlement issue. It's fueled by our free-market economy, and it's built into the fabric of our nation. Manifest Destiny was not limited to continental domination. It still reigns in the hearts of most Americans. We feel entitled to everything.
I'm just as guilty as the next person. I whine and moan because of my "crappy" apartment. If it's cold outside, it's freezing in here. If it's warm outside, it's a sauna in here. So I complain because I feel entitled to a comfortable temperature. Says who? We're not entitled to anything. Not TVs, air conditioning, new couches, new iPhones, or Starbucks. No one owes us anything.
In fact, we're the ones in debt. We produce very few of the world's resources, yet we consume most of them. Sure, we buy Product Red lattes. But we also take a lot more from Africa than we give back.
And what does entitlement cost us? I think it costs us our joy. It's a prison that takes us captive and steals our satisfaction and gratitude. I'm one of those people that hates it that Christmas starts earlier every year. I think the fun gets sucked out of it that way. Christmas is special because it's a season. If we celebrate it all year, the special-ness and magic gets lost. I think entitlement has the same effect. If we expect everything from the world, we lose the joy in the gifts.
So what would it take to change? What if, instead of buying Starbucks every morning on the way to work, we only get it once a week. Then it's a treat to look forward to instead of a given that's expected and mourned when lost. And what could you do with the extra $4 a day that you saved? Maybe pay off the credit cards that you used to buy all the other useless crap. Or maybe you could keep those extra fives in your wallet and give them to the people that wander the parking lot asking for spare change. Maybe you could over-tip your tired, abused server. Maybe you could put it into a bank acount for your kids.
What if, instead of buying a new iPod every time a new generation comes out, you feel satisfied with the one you have. And what if, instead of redecorating your house every year, you buy a bit of fabric and replace some of the pictures in their frames and move the furniture around? What if you buy used books instead of new ones sometimes?
What if you don't spend money on anything you don't really need for Lent, and see what happens?
What if we refused to play the world's game and were grateful for and satisfied with what we have instead of waiting for the latest and newest?
Today you are six months old! I can't believe you have been blessing our lives for a half a year already.
I am really loving watching you grow up. You are adding to your list of accomplishments almost daily. At five months and one day you started sitting up all by yourself.
Soon after, you started pulling yourself up to stand using Mommy and Daddy's fingers for support. Now you can stand up holding on to the furniture.
Since you started sitting by yourself, your world has really expanded. You love your toys now (you used to ignore them), especially your donut stack. (Not sure what it's really called, but that's what I call it.)
You're little personality is blossoming as well. You're pretty shy, but you love to observe the world around you, and you smile all the time. You laugh more and more, especially when we tickle you or blow raspberries on your tummy.
My favorite new thing that you do is your babbling. You've discovered consonants, and now you ramble on and on all day. You talk to your toys, to us, to yourself in the mirror--even to no one when you're in the car.
We love you so much, Ben, and I can't wait for the second half of your first year!
This emotional outburst is long overdue, but this is the first real opportunity I've had to air it.
So for Christmas break I had the great pleasure of 14 virtually uninterrupted days with my little guy. We were busy, to be sure. We packed in four Christmases and plenty of other activities. On top of it, Ben had somehow gotten on a horrific nap cycle of very little sleep and a lot of fussing and crying. There were many times when I was very overwhelmed, utterly exhausted, and yearning for a reprieve. But come the Monday morning of my return, all of the difficulties and struggles of those fourteen days came in a distant second to the pain of leaving and returning to work. It felt like October all over again, except it was infinitely worse. When I went back to work in October, I had moderate postpartum depression and a touch of cabin fever. I was this strange mixture of exhausted and refreshed. On the one hand, I was very ready to get out of the house and have some baby-free time. I craved something I could pour myself into that wasn't going to empty itself into a diaper. I wanted to figure out if there was more to me than mother; if there was still some semblance of the person I used to be. I wanted to be around other human beings and exercise my mind. On the other hand, all I wanted was to spend every waking moment (and even some sleeping ones) with this new, perfect little person. I wanted to be there for everything. I didn't want to miss out on any firsts, seconds, or thirtieths. I missed him so much it ached. The first week wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I was settling back in to work and too busy trying to remember how to do my job. It was the second week that it kicked in. I cried every day on the drive to work. My mind was elsewhere half the day, and I missed Ben terribly. Eventually I settled in to my new life; well, as much as I could settle being somewhere when all I wanted was to be somewhere else.
And then Christmas break happened. I was all set to enjoy my two weeks. And I thought that after the two weeks were up I would probably be sad to go back, but hopefully I would feel rested and "filled" with enough Ben to get me through two more weeks until the next three day weekend. Nope. I was a wreck. And I think something my brother said on Saturday is what tipped me over the edge. Now, I know my brother would never dream of hurting me, or of intentionally saying anything that would upset me. My brother and I have been freakishly close for most of our lives, and we love each other very much. But he said something that struck me to my core. We were all playing with and admiring Ben, and he started a story about a friend of his by saying something like "My friend so-and-so has a kid, and her mom is raising him just like mom with Ben..." and that's all I heard.
It is my deepest fear, insecurity, pain, whatever you want to call it, that by going to work, someone else is raising my kid. I am beyond blessed that it is my mom that watches Ben rather than some strangers in a daycare. But it pains me to the very depth of my heart that most of his waking hours are spent with someone other than me. And I fear that my mom (or whoever else is watching him once she goes back to a "real job") will know him better, or that he will know her better. That if he fell and both of us were standing there, he would go to her for comfort.
I'm sure there is so much that goes into this. There is, of course, the part of our society that sometimes tacitly, sometimes loudly, judges working mothers. That we are bad moms because we leave our precious children in someone else's hands while we go do our own thing. That it is my responsibility to parent my child, not someone else's, and that I'm selfish for having a job. Then there is the church, often echoing the same strain. And then there is the selfish part of me. I want it all. I want to be there for every first. I want to be the one he runs to when he wants comfort. I want it for me. But then there's the part of me that wants it for him. I was a latchky kid, and I hated it. I resented my mom for working. I know now the reality of things, but I didn't understand then. I didn't understand that I needed food and shelter, and that in order for me to have that my mom had to make a sacrifice and work. I get that now, but I didn't then. All I knew was that I was being abandoned. I hated the thirty minute walk home from the bus stop to an empty house. I hated being home alone for two to three hours while I waited for my parents to come home, particularly on those winter days when it got dark long before they came home. And it didn't help that I was abused by my babysitters when I was five. I don't want that for Ben. I don't want him to feel those things. I want him to know that he is the most important person in my life, and that I would do anything for him; that I love him and would never abandon him. I don't want him to sit crying and afraid in a dark and empty living room, wondering if I'm going to come home.
There's this part of me that knows that I'm doing the right thing in going to work. If I didn't, I would be spending the next ten years paying off $30,000 in student loan debt for a job I don't do. If I don't work for at least two years to clear my credential, I lose it. And if I didn't work, we would be living in a studio apartment in Santa Ana paying off those wasted loans and eating Top Ramen for every meal. And while I don't think I'm a materialistic person, I don't think it's materialistic to want your family to be a little more comfortable than that. I don't want to live in fear that we won't be able to pay our bills or that we can't buy clothes or food for our kids. I want what's best for my family, and as long as my mom can watch Ben, giving him all the love and attention he needs even though it's not from me, and we can put food on the table, that's what's best for him.
Then there's the other part of me...the darker, sadder part that thinks maybe I am being a bad mom by going to work. That if I really loved my kid, I'd stay with him no matter the sacrifice.
So which sacrifice do I make? And how do I live with the consequences?
1. Cleaning up Christmas is waaaaay less fun than setting it up 2. I should have had yesterday be cleaning day 3. Dry heat + Santa Ana winds = sad, bloody-nosed, head-achy Shannon 4. January is for cold weather, not 80 degree summer weather 5. Sometimes I really like hot dogs 6. Babies produce a lot of laundry 7. I'm tired of living in a crappy apartment 8. Our honeymoon was really great...I wish we could have taken more trips together before we got pregnant and had the boy. I'm excited to take trips with Ben...but having our first romantic getaway be our last (at least until the kids are in college) is kind of lame. 9. Twilight is really stupid and I love it 10. I can't wait for the Golden Globes tonight. Celebrities (particularly Meryl Streep) + booze + acceptance speeches = funny 11. I also can't wait for 24 tonight. More specifically, I'm excited about Dave Barry's running commentary on 24. 12. I'm torn between which to watch live: the Golden Globes or 24. 13. I'm glad Ben and Emily (Clements) finally got to meet last night. 14. I don't want to go to work tomorrow. Or really ever. I want to stay at home with my kid and play with him. 15. I'm tired of going to work all day with 12-year-olds and coming home to cook, clean, and take care of my family. I like all of it...it's just a lot to fit into one day. 16. We're getting a free new couch this week. I'm really excited because it's the exact kind of couch we wanted (an L-shaped sectional), and it's usually thousands of dollars. We REALLY needed a new couch (we are the fourth owners of our current couch), but we have absolutely no money. And this one just kind of fell in our laps. Thanks Wes and Terry! Now if we could just find new homes for our current couches...
I think that's it. I've just been accumulating these random thoughts, all blog-worthy, but maybe not enough for a separate blog for each. So here they are, all jumbled together in no particular order for your reading pleasure.
At last our Christmas story came to its close yesterday. My mom, Tauni; step-dad, Curt; and brother, Jared all came to our place for our fourth and final Christmas. We had some snacks and chatted. When Ben woke up from his nap he was all smiles and showed off all his new tricks and talents to his grandparents. We opened presents and shared a nice meal.
Every year (well, most years) I do something fun and creative for my borther's gift. The gift itself isn't usually that interesting...but I make him work for it. It started I think back when I was in high school. My mom was going to give my brother a hundred dollar bill for him to buy his climbing gear or something. Because it was technically just a little piece of paper, she asked me to wrap it creatively to make it more exciting. So I put the bill in a picture frame and put the frame in a giant gift bag. Then I went outside and got a brick, which I wrapped in tissue paper and also placed in the gift bag. It got wilder every year. I've sent him on scavenger hunts, put trashbags all over the house with his gift in one of them, wrapped it inside a box wrapped in another box, etc., burried it in mac and cheese...I honestly don't even remember all of the weird things I've done. Last year my brother took it took a whole new level. He hid my gift and made a detailed treasure map on distressed paper, complete with cryptic directions. I was giddy with excitement. So this year I had to do something good. So I sent him on a scavenger hunt with photo clues. My poor little boy was in every clue. I'm pretty sure my charade bordered on child abuse with all of the strange places I put him in...but it was totally worth it. In the end, my brother found his new towels in the bathtub. It was very fun.
My mom, step-dad, grandma, and step-grandpa got Ben a high chair, so we were very excited about that. Ben didn't like it much at first, but he seems to like it now.
All in all it was a (mostly) quiet (my step-dad, God bless him, is anything but), casual afternoon, and it was great to get together with my family.
After they left we spent a little more time with our fussy little boy, put him to bed, then had a nice, relaxing evening curled up on the couch watching a movie.
While our two weeks of Christmas were fun and action-packed, I have to say I'm glad it's over. We really enjoyed spending time with our loved ones, but we are looking forward to moving back to some semblance of normalcy. Well, kind of looking forward to it. But that's a whole other blog.
So because I'm so cool, I rang in 2009 by sitting on my living room floor watching TV and putting together Ben's baby book. I know. You're so jealous. I party hard. Matt's celebrating 2009 by taking a nap, and now Ben's celebrating 2009 by screaming his head off because he's overtired. That's how we roll at the Millers' house.
This is the time when I suppose I should make some New Years resolutions. I don't usually make resolutions; I've been around long enough to know that I will continue to make the same resolutions and continue to abandon them within a few weeks (0r maybe days), because that's the American way. Also, I think it's lame to decide to change and become a better person only when it's time for a new year. I mean, shouldn't we always be resolving to be healthier, spend more time with God, and be better people? Well, we don't. Because we're people.But hey, maybe this year will be the one, right? Maybe this time I'll keep all my resolutions, and next year I can just say "this year I resolve to continue to be the awesome person I became last year." Or I can become super great this year, and then next year I can resolve to be EVEN MORE AWESOME. We'll see. But for now, let's have some goals.
Because I'm a woman and a Christian, of course I have the requisites: 1. Eat better and exercise (this baby weight is clearly not going anywhere on its own, despite the strongly worded conversations I've had with my belly and thighs) 2. Spend more quality time with God 3. Be a better wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, teacher, etc.
Now for some more personal specifics: 1. Read 25 books (The funny thing is, a few years ago I read 108 books in one year. Ha ha. Having a kid changes things.) 2. Take the CSET in history 3. Find myself (Shouldn't I have done this in college? Well, I did...but then I got married and had a kid. Now I have to figure me out again.) 4. Spend at least a couple of hours each week relaxing and not stressing out 5. Get out more and spend more time with my friends 6. Go on more hot dates with my hubby
And what have I already done to make these things happen? 1. Bought Billy Blanks Taebo Funk. You know you're jealous. 2. Bought whole grain wheat products at the store today (if you know me and my irrational hatred of the texture of whole grain wheat products, then you know this is a big deal) 3. Got a sitter for tomorrow night for a hot date with my hubby 4. Actually contacted a couple of my friends to hang out at some point 5. Whipped out Satanic Verses. Yep. Me and Rushdie are going to spend some time together at last.
Maybe next year I'll still be fat, isolated, and spiritually weak, and I'll go into a shame spiral some time in February because I feel like a failure. Or maybe I'll actually follow through. Let's hope for the latter...
So I don't know what I did to upset the devil so much, but it must have been pretty bad.
