Welcome Home

Many, many years ago, when I was but a naïve doe in the woods, I scared the hell out of my parents by announcing that I was not going to attend college, but instead planned to flee my small town and travel the world for a few years. With my four years of high school French and my first-ever credit card, I envisioned my higher education consisting of sipping wine while perched on the canals of Venice, sunbathing topless in the South of France, and learning about new cuisines, languages and local customs everywhere from Tokyo to remote villages in Thailand.

But my parents had other ideas about my future travel plans. To their credit, through years of living with me as I dyed my hair purple and wore approximately 17 inches of black eyeliner and brought home an alarming array of young men sporting mohawks and nail polish, my decision to travel the world was the first and only time my parents didn’t let me fall on my face all on my very own to learn from my mistakes.

“YOU ARE GOING TO COLLEGE,” they told me.

Although this seems that it was a scant few years ago, it must have been the dark ages of college admissions because in spite of the fact that it was springtime, I applied to a handful of colleges and universities for fall admission and received acceptance from them all. Now, instead of the canals of Venice, I envisioned myself prowling the streets of Ann Arbor, being very smart and witty, wearing scarves and a beret and smoking long cigarettes in this bohemian haven. Ann Arbor certainly wasn’t the South of France, but it was going to have to be a close second by default.

However, financial aid got in the way, as money often does, and left me with one choice: to attend Alma College, which was located a few blocks away from the house in which I grew up and in my hometown, which I loathed and had dreamed of escaping since I was about three. But, Alma College was also where my mother worked, giving me the faculty/staff tuition rate of FREE.

FREE college tuition at a fairly prestigious liberal arts school. Most people would have jumped for joy, but I mourned my inevitable tenure there as if the end of the world was imminent. I spent the summer alternating between sobbing and sulking around our house as only teenage girls are capable. After dreaming of traveling by myself through Europe and Asia, the newly liberated communist block, and everywhere in between, attending college in my hometown seemed not just a major letdown, but also the ultimate sacrifice.

Let me explain a few things about my hometown.
1) It is small and everybody knows everybody. I could not go anywhere within a 100-mile radius of that city or so much as take a sip of beer without it being reported to my parents.
2) It is surrounded by cows and cornfields. For miles. And miles. And miles.
3) There is no opportunity in this little town. Unless your goal in life is working at the local Fashion Bug or schlepping slurpies at 7-11.

As a teenage girl who longed to be a famous writer and fashionista living in New York or San Francisco with a bevy of Latin lovers at my beck and call, I saw my attendance at Alma College as the nail in my coffin, condemning me to a life of a mortgage, husband, and children with more babies on the way. I would never be a writer. I would never be a fashionista. I would never live in New York or San Francisco, and perhaps most importantly, I would never have a bevy of Latin lovers.

But I grudgingly went to Alma College. And guess what? My parents gave me lots of space. In fact, I saw them less than many of my college friends saw their own out-of-town parents. And, the College was so insulated that it felt as if I was in a completely different city. The small classes and excellent professors encouraged my writing and I had opportunities presented to me that may not have been at other larger universities. And best of all, I was surrounded by people that remain my very best friends to this day.

I graduated from Alma College, and moved on with my life to live in lots of amazing places, including many chic, metropolitan areas, and to travel the world multiple times – by myself – where I sipped wine on the canals of Venice, slept on the beach in the South of France, and took writing classes from world-famous writers in Prague. I was briefly a fashionista. I had a bevy of lovers – not all of them Latin. I became a writer. And then by choice, I moved to Montana to a small town where I have a fairly idyllic life with, of all god-forsaken things, a husband, a mortgage, a baby, and another one on the way.

I’m happy, but I get itchy. I always look for new places to live. I always keep an eye open for new jobs. Somedays I think "Northern California!" Other days I think "Alaska!" But two things have remained constant. I miss Michigan, my beloved home state of water and trees and sandy beaches and fudge and Vernors and Bell’s Beer and thunderstorms and grey winter days and lake-effect snow. And, I miss my family – they all live there – my folks, my brother, aunts and uncles and cousins and grandmas. Since giving birth to my son, I miss Michigan and my family about 1,000 times more than I ever did before.

But in spite of how much I missed my family, I never once dreamed or even so much as contemplated moving back to my hometown. I dismissed it out of hand. Too rural. Too small-town. Too flat. Too poor. Too too too too. Too nothing. If I was ever to move back to Michigan, it would NOT be to Alma.

But then a funny thing happened. I went back to visit my parents a few weeks ago and spent several days in Alma. And for the first time, I looked around Alma and actually thought, "This isn't so bad."

After a few more days, I even admitted (only to myself! I would NEVER, in a hundred years, admit this to my parents) that there were a lot of beautiful homes in Alma and that the quiet tree-lined streets are actually quite striking and that the river that winds through town is rather charming. And I also thought it was really nice to run into people you know at the farmer's market and that the folks in the butcher shop knew who I was and told me to be careful driving to my brother's or that the ER doctor knew my grandma and asked about my folks and every other one of my relatives or that I could write out-of-state checks because I was "Fran's daughter" or that people I have known since the time I could walk all came over and ooohhed and aaahhhed over my son and brought him presents or that on nearly every street and around every corner, I had a memory of an old friend.

I mean, it was bizarre. I never once imagined that I would EVER think Alma was a nice place. Was this happening because my life is so insular in Montana that the idea of living in a town surrounded by nothing but cornfields doesn't even bother me anymore? Or is it because I now have to drive an hour-and-a-half to the Gap and so driving an hour from Alma seems like less of a big deal than it used to? Or that I've gotten used to not having any ethnic food available for hours -- unless I Fed Ex it in or cook it myself? Or is it just that I'm in a different place in my life -- a place where family and kind people you can count on matter a lot more than my proximity to the Gap, a really good cup of coffee, and a Japanese noodle shop?

Renewing My Commitment

I'd like to be able to say that I'm renewing my commitment to healthy eating and exercise, but there are just too many potato chips out in the world for me to do so.

No, what I'm renewing my commitment to is gambling -- playing the Powerball, to be exact.

I used to be fairly certain that I would win the Powerball, but after losing for years, I started to think that, perhaps, the odds were against me.

But recently, two things happened that have caused lottery-awakening epiphanies deep within my soul.

1) I went on vacation and did not work for ten entire days. Ten days! This is the longest amount of time I have taken off (save for maternity leave, and I wouldn't exactly call that "vacation time") in years. YEARS. Like probably FIVE years. Five years of work with nothing but the occasional long weekend. And I'll tell you what I think about vacation time now. GIVE ME MORE OF IT. I actually used to think that if I won the Powerball, I would pay off my student loan debt in unwrapped pennies, buy a really nice house and a gas-guzzling fast car, and then I would keep working. Was I completely insane? Had my workaholic father brainwashed me that much that I wasn't sure how I would fill my days without work? Because after ten days of vacation time, I am going to start playing the Powerball again and hey -- place of employment -- I'm drafting my notice now, because I am CERTAIN my numbers are going to come up very soon.

2) One of my close friends actually won the lottery. O.K. So he didn't win enough money to quit his job and start driving really expensive cars. But he won the lottery. Let me repeat that for emphasis: he won the lottery.

After telling me that he won, I admitted to him that I let the computer pick my numbers.

"You do what?!!!" he asked incredulously. "You're NEVER going to win that way! The odds are WAY against you if you do it that way!"

Never mind that a statistician friend of mine once told me that, statistically speaking, you have better odds of being struck by lightning in the same place twice than you do of winning the lottery. I am not winning because I let the computer pick the numbers for me.

Whatever. I have been working on selecting my numbers so that I increase my odds dramatically. But I am also going to buy a ticket with numbers picked by the computer, just to be on the safe side.

28 Months

Dear Michael,

What a month! You and I, we’ve logged a lot of miles – thousands of them, actually. First, we flew from Helena to Michigan to see my family – our first visit in over a year. For months, I have been terrified of flying with you across the country, and for the two weeks before we left, my fear reached a fevered pitch, resulting in expenditures of approximately $3,000 at the dollar store to keep you entertained at 30,000 feet.

But I should have known better. The only time you yelled was when we had to board the plane by climbing up a skinny ladder on the runway with the plane’s engines running. The rest of the time you sat in your seat and played and read and did stickers and colored and ate and marveled at all of the cheaply made garbage your mommy bought for you – exactly as I had never imagined you doing. You really made me very proud – through turbulence and delays and annoying seat recliners in front of us. You even remembered to say to the stewardess, “Apple juice, please!” and to say thank you. My wielding a giant stick for the last two years seems to finally be working.

Then, as we were about to get off the plane in Grand Rapids, you managed to charm everyone on board – except one person. People were standing up to deplane, and the enormous bald man in front of us stood up too.

“HE DOESN’T HAVE ANY HAIR!!! HE DOESN’T HAVE ANY HAIR!!! HE DOESN’T HAVE ANY HAIR!!!!” you yelled at least a dozen times as loudly and as clearly as you’ve ever yelled anything in your life. Everyone on the plane found this enormously funny – except for your mommy, who wanted to crawl under the seat and die, and, of course, the man without any hair.

No matter. Your grandparents were afraid you wouldn’t like them or that you’d be afraid of them or that you’d be homesick and miss your dad. They obviously had nothing to worry about. On our first night there, you were leading them both around by the hand, exploring, asking a hundred questions, and giving them hugs and kisses as if the last time you’d seen them was last week instead of last year.

“Where’d Gwamma go? Where’d Gwampa go?” you’d ask, the second they were out of your sight and then you’d run off in the direction you last saw them go.

Your time in Michigan was spent shuttling between relatives that were absolutely delighted to see you. We went up to our family’s cottage on a lake, where you worked diligently at making seaweed stew and clam pizza, just like I did and using the same toys that I used when I was a kid. You hung out in the boathouse, played with your cousins, and loved being dipped into the water off of the dock. And when your “gwamma” left you to zip around the lake on a sea-doo, you had a major coronary about being separated from the new love of your life. In fact, you cried and yelled so much that it made me cry, because I think I saw, for the first time in my life, someone’s heart actually breaking.

We also went up to your Uncle Matt’s where you dove into the frigid depths of Lake Michigan as if you were wearing a wet suit and had been doing it your entire life. We adults had to take turns holding onto you in the waves because our feet and legs actually burned and cramped up due to the cold of the water. Finally, with teeth chattering and your skin a rather putrid shade of blue, you collapsed into a blanket to warm up in the sun. Your Uncle Matt and I took turns carrying you back to the car through the sand dunes.

In spite of all of the fun we had with family and enjoying beautiful lakes, I think your favorite thing of all was hanging out at Grandpa’s work, where you got to drive any truck you wanted. Trucks are still your favorite, and I have to admit, it alarmed me just a bit that your two favorite trucks at Grandpa’s were the garbage truck and the sewer truck. Of all the trucks, Mikey! I think if we’d let you, you would have sat in those all day. But there were so many other trucks to choose from. You just ran from front end loader to backhoe to dump truck to fire engine and back to dump truck, asking Grandpa to help you “get in, pweeez.” Surprisingly, our first visit there was marked by your absolute refusal to get in the largest truck there – a brand new dump truck – because you were terrified.

“Gwampa wouldn’t let Mikey drive the new dump truck,” you told me afterwards.

“Really?” I asked you. “I thought you didn’t get in it because Mikey was???”

“Scared,” you replied. “Mikey didn’t drive the new dump truck because Mikey was scared.”

That dump truck remained your Mt. Everest all week. Finally, on our last day there, you literally took a deep breath and asked Grandpa to put you in the truck. I don’t know if I’ve seen you smile any bigger once you got in the driver’s seat and took the steering wheel. And you stayed in that dump truck, happily driving away, for a long time.

Every day it was something new – new place, new people, new activity. You rose to the occasion, overcoming your normally boring, staid, regimented and scheduled life, taking anyone’s hand that was offered, diving into water, running through fields, petting new animals, and eating anything that was offered. And, in spite of how exhausted you constantly were, you remained unfailingly polite, using your very best manners, and actually listening to instructions. I must admit that I found it completely shocking that when I told you to do something, you did it. When I said “Stop”, you stopped. Who was this masked toddler?

“He’s SOOOO good!” everyone told me over and over. “What a polite boy! What nice manners! And he really listens to his mommy!” I let them believe the mirage and didn’t tell them that when you’re alone at home with me, I spend most of my time watching your head spin completely around before I forcibly put you in your time-out chair.

Being back in Michigan, my beloved home state that I always took for granted until I moved to the mountain desert that is Montana, you noticed things that always strike me when the plane first touches the ground. Mesmerized by the many trees and the sheer size of them, you were convinced that it was raining when the wind blew. I must admit, all of the noise from the trees is one of the things I miss most in this nearly treeless landscape we now call home. And, you wondered aloud where the horses were when we drove past open fields. You loved the lakes and all of the water as much as I do. And you remarked over and over again, “There’s a lot of people here. A lot of people.” Sadly, we don’t see much of any of all that back in Montana.

I’m not sure if it was the constant one-on-one attention or the humidity, but you really made a lot of leaps while we were there. Things that you were scared to do in Montana were like second nature to you in Michigan – playing barefoot in the grass and water, sliding down slides, swinging in the park. I took photos of it all just to show your dad when we got back – in case you changed your mind about it once we returned home.

Your use of language also sky-rocketed. Pronouns suddenly appeared on the scene, though you get very confused with “you” and “I.” When you don’t want to do something, you’ll announce, “You don’t want to go inside” or “You don’t want to eat that” or “You don’t want to read that book.” Which is not just confusing, it can be confounding. Because one’s natural response is to say something along the lines of “Well, I wouldn’t have suggested that we go inside/eat that/read that book if I didn’t want to do it.” But after a few stumbles, your slow mama has figured it out. “You” is Mikey. “I” is whoever else you’re talking to.

More than anything though, this trip convinced me that we’re on the right track – that as you evolve into the person you are going to become, you’re more than I had ever hoped for. And most important of all, I can see that you are going to be a good, decent, kind, loving, and open human being. We have a long ways to go – I know that. But as I watched you take your grandpa’s hand and lead him off to feed the birds or to drive his truck or just to play with your blocks, or as I watched you snuggle into the crook of your grandma’s side to read books, or look up at your Uncle Matt with a gaze that is full of admiration and love, or as you pat my back with your small hand, I know that you’re in a good place. You’re going to be a good person. A person with an open heart and an open hand. A person that is full of love to share and to give.

And with that, I am so proud of you. You continue to amaze me and I love you more each day.

XOXO,
Mama

Nursing is for Women in Scrubs and Comfortable Shoes

I realize that what I am about to write here will forever exorcise me from mommy circles everywhere as if I had hooves and a head that spun all the way around, but I'm going to say it anyway.

I hated breastfeeding. Loathed it. Every single second of it.

Granted, I had difficulties breastfeeding but because of the immense pressure I felt from everyone from my mother-in-law (a La Leche League volunteer of all things) to my son's pediatrician, I kept it up until my son was 7 months old, believing with the rest of mommies everywhere that formula was the devil's food and feeding it to my child would result in his being a fat, toothless, no-jaw-muscled idiot who could not properly form attachments with people because I selfishly did not breastfeed him.

And what did I get for my efforts? Thrush. Scabby nipples. Saggy boobies. And a lot of sleepless nights while my husband snored away peacefully because, of course, he could not feed the baby.

In my delusional, sleep-deprived state, as I sat awake once again feeding the baby while Brent snoozed for an entire uninterrupted eight hours, I developed this theory that the American Academy of Pediatricians started pushing breastfeeding so much because they were a bunch of men and they didn't like waking up multiple times a night to feed their formula-fed babies. So by scaring their wives half to death with tales of what could happen to formula-fed infants and convincing them that medically speaking, breastfeeding is the best thing for babies all the way around, they essentially shirked their modern dad duties of sharing responsibility for the child they helped to bring into the world.

There's part of me that still believes very strongly in this theory of mine.

No matter. Because the fact of it is that women face enormous, incredible, insane pressure to breastfeed their babies -- regardless of their work schedules, their need for sleep, or God forbid, their need to leave the house by themselves without feeling as if their baby will starve if they don't return in the next 45 minutes.

As a result of this pressure, women attend classes on breastfeeding and read books with titles like, "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding." They pay obscene amounts of money to hire lactation consultants to come to their home. They buy breast pumps in sleek black bags complete with a place for baby's picture to inspire those milk ducts to drain. And then they hook themselves up to modern-day milking machines while hiding in supply closets all over corporate America or they set alarms to milk themselves in the off-hours they are not feeding their child or they NEVER leave the house without baby just so that formula never has to pass their precious child's lips. I find many, many things about parenting and the "way you are supposed to do it" completely ridiculous, but this breastfeeding nationalism is at the top of my list.

The clincher for me was seeing a friend, who recently adopted a child, running around with tubes taped to her nipples through which her husband would pour formula as the baby sucked on her real nipples and the tubes for nourishment.

"My pediatrician said this would help me establish a milk supply," she told me.

"You're not supposed to establish a milk supply," I told her. "You adopted a baby -- a baby who has probably been fed formula for quite some time." I wanted to add, "So quit being an idiot -- untape the tubes, button your shirt and be thankful that you can't breastfeed."

But I understood my friend's sense of urgency to do what was best for her new baby. And if it meant Herculean efforts to establish a milk supply that would likely never materialize, then that's what it meant. Because her doctor told her it was best. Because her doctor told her it could be done. Because she was afraid that her baby would suffer all kinds of physical and emotional distress throughout his life because she had not tried to establish a milk supply.

As I prepare for my second baby and think about all of the choices I have in terms of mothering, breastfeeding remains a big question for me. The biggest reason I hated breastfeeding was because I felt tethered to the house. Before Mike was born, I had a great deal of freedom. I did what I wanted when I wanted and if it meant that I didn't come home when I said I was going to, that's what it meant. But suddenly, I had this little baby who needed to be fed what felt like every 15 minutes. It was enough to drive me over the edge.

So I did what any Type A working mother would do. I got that kid on a schedule. I set up certain times of the day and night when I would breastfeed and that was it. He wasn't breastfed when he cried because I didn't want him to associate my breasts with comfort of any kind. My breasts became utilitarian workhorses with one purpose -- to feed the boy -- and just like any worker bee, they had to punch a clock.

After that last paragraph, I know that mothers everywhere are clucking their tongues and thinking that if I don't have horns and hooves, at the very least I surely have a forked tongue and where is the Department of Child and Family Services when you need to make a report? Just because I didn't rip my shirt open at the slightest wimper does not mean that I did not comfort my child. I did -- by singing to him and kissing him and hugging him and holding onto him and rocking him and playing with him and reading to him and sleeping with him.

So will I breastfeed baby #2? Probably, but only for two reasons. 1) Financially, I don't think we can afford to feed a baby formula; and 2) After two years, I am fairly used to being tethered to the house.

When I gave birth to Mike, if someone had told me I should do backwards flips through rings of fire to keep him happy and satisfied, I would have done it -- never mind that I can't do backwards flips and I'm scared to death of fire. But with baby #2, the skepticism that has helped me make sound decisions most of my life has returned and I now realize that for me, being a good mother means writing myself into the equation too.

To Pee Or Not to Pee

Like nearly every other human being on the planet, I take certain body functions completely for granted. Breathing, for example. I breathe in. I breathe out. It just happens, and I do not contemplate it.

Another one of those body functions I have always taken for granted was peeing. My bladder gets full so I sit down on a toilet. Pee comes out and then I don't have to pee anymore. Miraculous.

That is, until recently. As a pregnant woman, I wake up on a regular basis throughout the night to pee. After being awakened by the urge to pee, I trot downstairs to go sit down on the toilet and try to pee and...nothing. Nothing comes out. And I still have to pee.

The first night that this happened, I reached for my handy "What to Expect When You're Expecting" book, which is essentially a "how-to" manual for pregnant women. Sure enough, right there in month 3, was a small section on "inability to urinate", which is, according to the book, often caused by a uterus that tips and then squishes the urethra, basically cinching off your pee tube as you would a garden hose. Thus began my nightly aerobics and gymnastics program to try to get my uterus to tip back off of my urethra so that I could pee.

While this was highly annoying, it certainly wasn't life-threatening. I just did my stretches and backbends and sidebends and all of a sudden, when I tried to go again, all of the pee would come rushing out. I didn't think of it as all that unusual because if there's one great thing about the "What to Expect" series, it's that the author makes you feel as if any whacked-out biological thing that is happening to you happens to millions of others, so get over it already -- it's all part of the fun of being pregnant.

Then the Tuesday morning before I left, I woke up at 4 a.m. I sat down on the toilet, and nothing came out. Not a single drop. So I began my now-regular routine of pacing the downstairs, sitting up, sticking my butt up in the air, and doing deep-knee bends. After every exercise, I sat back down on the toilet and tried it again. But there was nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Two hours later, I decided to give up for the time being and go backupstairs to get some more rest. But I couldn't go back to sleep because I had to pee so badly. So instead, I laid awake and wondered about the phrase, "My bladder is going to burst." Did bladders really burst? Was I at risk of imploding? Would pee leak into my body from my exploded blader and affect my organs until one-by-one, they just all shut down and I was nothing but a pee-filled vegetable, unable to walk, talk, or think because of my pee-filled brain?

By 7 a.m., I was frantic enough to call the emergency number for my doctor’s office. Of course, the doctor I do not like was on call, and his immediate instructions were to go to the ER and have a catheter put in.

“A catheter? At the ER?” I asked him. “Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

“You could try putting your butt up in the air,” he said. “But I think being catheterized is probably going to provide the most immediate relief. Or you could wait until 8 a.m., if you can, when our office opens, and we’ll catheterize you in the office.”

I’m not sure why exactly waiting another hour and getting the same procedure done in my doctor’s office seemed like a good idea to me, but I decided that was what I was going to do. In the meantime though, I decided to try some more of my stretches to try to do things naturally. Or as naturally as having to do a bunch of whacked-out yoga poses in order to pee actually is.

Since I’d already sat with my butt up in the air, I decided to do some drastic gymnastics and woke Brent up to help. He held onto my ankles while I stood on my head and tried to shimmy my uterus back into the right place. And when I sat down again to try to pee, I was rewarded – with a very small trickle. Which was definitely better than nothing, so I tried standing on my head some more, without any more success.

At ten minutes to eight, I bolted for my doctor’s office, wanting to be the first patient of the morning. I explained what was going on with the front desk people, who didn’t seem to be too sympathetic to my cause, and was told to go give a urine sample and then to have a seat.

It's times like these that I think it would be to my advantage to carry a whiffle bat in my purse so that I could whip it out and hit people over the head with it when they told me to do stupid things like pee in a cup when I just finished saying that I couldn't pee. But since I was whiffle bat-less, I dutifully took my plastic cup and went into the bathroom.

And lo and behold -- suddenly I was able to pee. It wasn't everything that was in my bladder, but it was enough that I thought to myself that I wouldn't need catheterization for another two hours. Which is lucky because that's how long I sat in the waiting room, contemplating my filling bladder and my squished urethra while reading People magazines and learning how quickly movie stars lose baby weight.

Finally, I was called back and decided to give it the ol' college try (whatever the hell that is) one more time. I went in; I sat down and I peed. And I peed. And I peed some more. I think it is possible that I peed enough to fill up a five-gallon bucket.

In spite of the fact that I had emptied my bladder, I still had to see the doctor, all so that she could tell me that I probably didn't pee out as much as I thought I had and that perhaps one of the reasons I couldn't pee was because I didn't have to go. It was definitely another whiffle bat moment.

But then she admitted that my uterus could be tipped and squishing my uretha and perhaps I should learn how to self-catheterize in case it ever happened again.

And I just wanted to say, "Excuse me, but self WHAT?"

Back when I was in grad school and I partied all of the time, I had this grand idea as I was standing in line waiting to use a restroom at a party one day. I would call it "Catheter For A Night" and I could definitely see the party set/football-game-going/long car trip driving folks as markets for my snazzy new invention that would allow you to self-catheterize and then never have to use a public restroom again. I dreamed that it would make me milions.

But I certainly never anticipated that I would have to self-catheterize, for chrissakes.

So I declined her kind offer of a long tube, catheter bag, and iodine and went about the business of trying to determine what it was exactly that made it so I couldn't pee. Since it only happened at night, I determined that what was likely causing my uterus to tip was the fact that I was laying down. I vowed right then and there to NEVER lay down again until after I had this baby.

And I didn't. I slept sitting up for about a week, until one night at my parents, I very stupidly reclined all of the way. When I woke up, I once again was unable to pee.

Since my previous experience had indicated that if I sat up long enough, my uterus would tip back to its correct position, I decided to wait it out (though I secretly regretted not learning how to self-catheterize.) By 11 a.m., I had broken out in a sweat, and could feel my heart racing -- not to mention that I couldn't even walk anymore, so off we flew to the nearest ER.

Upon arrival, a very nice nurse sped through all of the health questions and took my heart rate (170 bpm) and blood pressure (182/93). Then she took me back to an ER room and catheterized me. I cannot even begin to explain how completely orgasmic it was to have all of the pee drained out of me approximately 3 seconds before my bladder really did burst. My catheter bag was almost immediately filled with nearly THREE LITERS of pee, so let's all say hip hip hooray for my extremely malleable bladder.

Later, I had to talk to the ER doc, who assured me that I was not a biological freak and asked me about my grandma, brother, mother and entire extended family. He also took the baby's heart rate (166 bpm), and was delighted to tell me that my heart rate and blood pressure were that of a stroke victims or of someone who had experienced massive trauma. By the time I was released from the ER, my heart rate had gone back to normal (82 bpm) as had my blood pressure (110/54).

And I have made a special vow to myself -- to never fully recline again, no matter how tired I am or how much my back hurts -- and, as soon as I get back to Helena, to learn how to self-catheterize.

On Vacation

I will be leaving on a jet plane June 9 and returning sometime the week of June 19.

As We Prepare to Leave

In preparation for my long journey across the country in a small confined space 30,000 feet above the ground with an overactive toddler, I have completely given over to my control freakish nature and am trying with all of my might to control the uncontrollable.

One of my biggest concerns is a major flight delay out of Helena, which would result in an even longer journey with the aforementioned freakishly overactive toddler. So, in an effort to control the airline industry and U.S. weather patterns, I have begun what can only be described as obsessive-compulsive checking of the status of my flights on the Northwest Airlines Web site. Approximately every other hour, I visit nwa.com and punch in the airline codes for Helena, MT and Grand Rapids, MI, and see what's going on with my flights for that day. My MFA in poetry certainly does not scream statistician, but I am guessing that I have a 50/50 chance of having minimal delays that would result in our landing within a half-hour of our scheduled arrival time.

Normally, I would not worry so much about flight delays. They are inevitable. They are part of flying. As American as apple pie. But then I think of extending my time, alone I might add, and with my freakishly overactive toddler either on the runway or in an airport and, quite frankly, I want to throw up.

A major source of my anxiety in relation to delays is because the last few times I have taken this flight out of Helena, Montana to other parts of the world, the flight has been delayed. Not delayed for a few minutes. I am talking delayed to the point that I have had to cancel dinner plans with friends across the country and eat the fajita platter at the TGI Friday's in the Minneapolis airport.

Being delayed for hours and hours is a miserable experience by oneself, especially when it results in consuming food at TFI Friday's. But being delayed for hours and hours with my son would suddenly seem as if months passed before there was another connecting flight, and I am fairly certain that it would take years, maybe even decades, off of my life.

In addition to my obsessive-compulsive monitoring of the Northwest Airlines Web site, I have also taken to prayer. Perhaps this would not normally be considered unusual, but it should be noted that I put more stock in four-leaf clovers and rabbit's feet than I do in an intervening God who will somehow guide Northwest Airlines to deliver me on time during my journey. But, praying, (and praying hard, I might add) is exactly what I've been doing and sweet Jesus, if there's a time to prove the "power of prayer," let June 9 on NWA flights 4748 and 379 be it.

Then there's the approximate $3,000 of cheap toys I have purchased to keep my son entertained for what could turn out to be six months if my flights are delayed the way I am envisioning them. Not to mention the 850 new library books I checked out, the 237 sticker books I have bought, the muffins and cookies and bread I have baked, and if I could find a gymnastics class where I could finally learn to stand on my head and do backbends to keep that child entertained, I would sign up for it. I am going to need to hire a sherpa just to get my carry-on luggage on board.

All of this and the estimated 17 hours of worrying and fretting that I do a day about this trip, and my son will probably act like he normally does -- that is, he will likely be delighted to have one-on-one attention and new toys and good food to eat, and he will sit in his seat just like I have never envisioned him doing, and he will be absolutely perfect and people will compliment me on his behavior as they do whenever (save for one horrifying restaurant experience) we go anywhere in public.

F is for Food and Family

A few years ago, I received a scholarship to study writing in Prague at Charles University. I was so excited by the possibility of travelling to a foreign country and studying with world-famous writers that I did not take into account one of the things that makes or breaks travel, actually life, for me and that is food.

If you have ever been to Prague, you would immediately understand why Czechs are so much thinner than Americans. It is because their food blows.

Because I was on scholarship, I stayed in the dorms with my friend Diane, which meant that we received a free breakfast every morning. Which meant we started our day by staring headcheese in the eye(s).

A good breakfast day meant that someone had hard-boiled some eggs or set out some coffee-flavored yogurt. Otherwise, it was headcheese and bread. Headcheese and bread do not a happy writer make.

Diane had also travelled to Prague from New Orleans, and so before we drifted off to sleep at night, we would comfort ourselves with thoughts of home to provide us with the sweetest dreams. Our litany always started off the same: "A glass of iced tea." Sometimes, it is the most simple things.

But from there, we went through iced mochas from PJ's and iced lattes from CC's to the red beans and rice, fried chicken, and cornbread at Jacques Imos to the crawfish at Franky and Johnny's to the shrimp or oyster po'boys at Pats to the General's Chicken at Five Happiness to the bread pudding souffle and the turtle soup at Commander's Palace. We talked about the Italian ice cream at Angelo Brocato's and the pizzas and antipasto platter at Figaros; the fresh-shucked oysters and cold beer at Cooter Browns and the pate plate and the salad nicoise and bread at La Crepe Nanou. By the time we were both asleep, we had probably visited over 500 of New Orleans' finest eating and drinking establishments.

Near the end of our stay in Prague, Diane and I discovered two restaurants: one that served an American breakfast -- with eggs and bacon and toast, and one that had been started by a French chef, and served many of the foods with which we identified our adopted home of New Orleans. We began to eat breakfast every morning at the American Cafe and dinner every night at the French restaurant, where they served bowls of chocolate mousse that were as big as my head. I cannot remember the names of either of those restaurants, but I can still envision Diane and I sitting together -- at the scratched wooden tables of the breakfast place and the white tablecloths of the French restaurant, and laughing and talking about a million different things, feeling very at home in this city where we did not speak the language, our worlds brought together by food.

Prior to and immediately following my trip to Prague, I had had the good sense to decide to travel through whatever country would have me by myself. I met incredible people and journeyed everywhere from Croatia, where I sampled homemade cottage cheese and developed an affinity for red wine and Coca Cola mixed together, to Italy, where I made a habit of sipping wine in outdoor cafes overlooking the canals of Venice and eating pizza and ice cream sold out of vendor carts to Barcelona where I ate tapas late into the night and mangoes off of sticks to the south of France where I slept on the beach and lived off of rotisserie chickens and olives from a small market.

I must have realized that I had always had a special affinity for food, but I think on that trip, my "foodiness" crystallized for me. Food was not just important to me; it was my memory bank -- how I recalled people and places and special events, even entire segments of my life. I can recall the interiors of many restaurants better than I can envision my own car, which I have been driving now for nearly four years. Food was an absolutely vital experience for me because it was how I remembered the experience.

That does not mean that the food has to be great for me to appreciate it (headcheese excluded). It means that for me, eating has as much to do with the company and the ambience as it does with the food itself. I'm not a "high" eater or a "low" eater; I'm just an eater who loves food, friends, and family. In my mind's eye, my grandmother's homemade bread slathered with her own still-warm pink applesauce goes head to head with the chocolate croissants I had in a Parisian bakery.

So as I prepare to head back to the small town I grew up in later this week, I have been calling my mother on an almost daily basis and requesting that she prepare certain foods from granola to hamloaf to macaroni and cheese to sun tea. For a Christmas gift one year, my mother compiled all of our family recipes for me. And when I'm feeling lonely or there is a grey day that reminds me of Michigan, I often whip one of my grandma's or great-grandma's or mother's recipes out and mix something up from my childhood. But I will admit here that there are many recipes in that box that always taste better when my mother makes them -- no matter what.

I'm sure that we'll do most of our eating at home while I'm in Michigan. Keep in mind that I grew up in a ridiculously unerpopulated town that was surrounded by nothing but cows and cornfields. The word "gourmet" was some high-falutin' person from the East or West Coast, and who mainly consumed things we'd never heard of. I think while I was growing up, there was a total of four restaurants in town. One was a McDonald's. One was a Burger King. And the other two were pizza places.

One of those pizza places is called Pizza Sam's. In the town where I grew up, Pizza Sam's, both the man and the restaurant, are institutions. Pizza Sam's is where my mom and dad used to go on dates when they were in high school, and decades later, it is still going strong. I can only estimate the number of Pizza Sam pizzas I have consumed since I was old enough to eat solid food, but it must number over 10,000. I still have their phone number (463-3881) memorized, though I haven't lived within 2,000 miles of Pizza Sam's in nearly 15 years.

Pizza Sam's is not the best pizza in the world, though anyone from my small town might argue with you about that. But eating a slize of Sam's pizza is realizing you are home again. It is one of my "must-do" agenda items, and I am sure I will eat more than one Sam pizza during my very brief stay.

When I moved to Montana from Chicago (after also having lived in New Orleans, Detroit, Philadelphia, and the Jersey shore), my friends all warned me about the lack of decent food out here. I must admit, it was a shock to my system that the nearest sushi restaurant was over two hours away and that there isn't a single Japanese noodle shop in the entire state. I would estimate that at least once a week, I go on a rant about the lack of decent food in Montana. And, though I used to wonder what would cause a person to absolutely have to get a package there overnight, upon my arrival in Montana, I became one of Fed Ex's better customers and shipped myself everything from Gulf shrimp from the Lil' Fisherman in New Orleans to paczki from an unprounceable bakery in Hamtramck on Fat Tuesday. You simply cannot have Fat Tuesday without paczki. There should be a law about this.

And so, thanks to Fed Ex, Montana began to feel a little more like home. Slowly though, I am adapting my tastes so that there are now things in Montana that I wonder how I would live without if I ever moved away. Coffee from Morning Light. Chocolates from the Parrot. Old world Italian bread from Park Avenue. Cinnamon rolls from Sweetgrass.

But for now, Michigan, here I come. My mom has her oven warmed up, I hope. And Pizza Sam, get ready, because my mouth is already watering.

Let's All Hold Hands and Sing "Cumbahyah!"

There’s something about being pregnant with lots of hormones surging through your body, wearing underwear that cuts into your newly developing thunder thighs, and finding most food completely repulsive that makes one a bit edgier than normal. So let me preface this next post by saying that it doesn’t take much to irritate me lately. But as much as I love my husband, I must admit that I am more than occasionally taken aback by his complete lack of sensitivity – especially when it comes to being a preggo.

I have decided to compile a list of his most offensive comments, the ones that after I hear them I have to stop and repeat “Do not abuse husband in front of son” over and over again, so that other husbands of pregnant women do not commit the same offenses and risk dismemberment or divorce.

1) “I’m tired too.” Before I ever got pregnant, I used to think that I knew what tired was. After all, I had worked two jobs in grad school and attended school full-time and given away huge quantities of plasma in an effort to support myself. After graduating, I worked obscene hours, traveled all over the country, and partied like a rock star with the rest of my time. But then I got pregnant. And I assure you that until you are growing another human being inside of you, working, mothering a toddler who apparently shoots up speed when I have my back turned for a second, maintaining a house, and trying to maintain your own identity, you have no idea what tired is. So please, until you grow a uterus and can enjoy the fun that is associated with having a parasite sucking away all of your life force, I have absolutely no interest in your condescending commiseration.
2) “I feel awful.” This is on the same level of the “I’m tired too” quote. Because trust me – unless you’ve got the flu and mono, you feel better than I do.
3) “Do you really need to get your hair cut/colored again?” In the past week, I have gotten so fat that I must roll my underwear underneath my vastly expanding belly. My skin alternates between flaking off and breaking out in huge, unsightly pimples. I am growing facial hair. And soon, I will have varicose veins and hemorrhoids and stretch marks. I don’t have much, but I do have my hair. And if I want to go every eight weeks to try to maintain a decent haircut and color, then get out of my way.
4) “You have to go to the bathroom again?” In a word, yes. I am not saying that I have to pee every 40 minutes because I want to examine every public restroom this side of the Continental Divide. I am saying that I have to pee because I have to pee. So pull over/hold on to the baby/go get the key for me because I have got to go. Now.
5) “We’re pregnant!” No. We’re not pregnant. I am pregnant. I am delighted that you want to share the joy with folks. But you are not pregnant. Because if you were, you would never say such a completely asinine thing.
6) “That shirt/pair of pants looks kind of tight.” Really? Because it feels kind of tight. As a matter of fact, even though I’ve only gained five pounds, my clothes seem to be under the impression that I’ve gained 50. My waist has started to disappear; my thighs are significantly bigger. And let’s not get started on my breasts – which may weigh upwards of 22 pounds EACH. Yet maternity clothes are still too big. Short of wearing sweats and t-shirts to work, I am going to endanger all that come in contact with me by wearing clothes so tight that there is the distinct possibility that I will burst all of my buttons and permanently wound/scar/disfigure someone.
7) “Are you sure you can’t eat (insert latest food aversion here).” For me this time it’s ground meat. All ground meat. That means no sausage. No hamburgers. No meatloaf. No potted meat products, including Spam. I am gagging as I type the words “ground meat”. I do not want to see ground meat. I do not want to smell ground meat. I do not want to be within a block’s radius of any ground meat product. I do not want to so much as glimpse ground meat at the grocery store. Because it makes me want to barf. Hurl my guts out. It is very simple, and I am not sure what makes it so hard for you to understand. But trust me when I tell you that I am unable to eat ground meat in any way, shape, or form, I am not saying it just because I don’t feel like hamburgers for dinner that night.
8) “Passing a kidney stone is worse than having a baby.” Really? You’ve had a baby? You’ve been in labor for hours to days with all of your muscles contracting as a 7-10 pound human being that has already exhausted you by living as a parasite inside of you for nine months prepares to exit you through your vagina? I’ve never passed a kidney stone and I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to do so. But please, let’s give credit where credit is due. Pushing a baby that weighs several pounds out of a normally small opening is hard work and it hurts like you cannot even imagine, and there’s only one reason why women always say they forgot about the pain of it: so the human race may continue.
9) “Why are you so crabby today?” See above and then piss off.