Self Care is a Mold Free Shower

My little one woke up with a runny nose this morning. Le Sigh.

My eldest started explosively sneezing and swiping at her nose by mid-day. Le Sigh.

We’re doing better this year. We’re healthy for two weeks between illness instead of the one week gap of the previous year. Le Sigh.

So, quarantine again.

Well Fooey. I’m not getting out of jammies. But I WILL clean the bathrooms. Finally.

No joke, I have not scrubbed the shower or bath tub for easily 6 months. I wanted to get that out there lest you think I am one of those uber clean moms who have their sh*%t or motivation or what-have-you together enough to keep a regularly maintained house. I keep the basics (like toilets, sinks, floors, surfaces, bedding) clean and all else are left to when I can drag my ass to actually attend to them.

The thing is, a clean home is my happy place. I don’t know why it is so hard to just do the work. I guess it’s because most days I am so busy getting me and the kids out of the house that I don’t actually make much home time, you know, for domestic things. Just enough time to prepare meals, pick up, do some laundry. No real deep cleaning. And then there’s the piece where I’ve felt totally exhausted for the past 4.5 years…starting right around the time my first-born arrived…you can draw at your own conclusions.

Today, I surprised myself by getting really into cleaning. I mean, getting down on hands and knees, scrubbing the shower floor like a good little Cinderella, even getting the old toothbrush out to get the fine details. Heck, I even soaked the shower curtain edge in vinegar to get the mold stain out AND I soaked all the bath toys…and by the way:

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: BATH TOYS ARE DEADLY! They are mold farms. DO NOT BUY BATH TOYS. That little hole in it? Entry for water that never exits and starts the mold colony. Just use regular plastic toys from the play room that are not hollow. Perfectly satisfying, NOT DEADLY.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, I really got into cleaning. I can’t believe I got so into it and my kids LET ME. We must have turned a corner in their development because they actually left me alone for TWO HOURS while I scrubbed like a maniac.

And it felt GOOOOOOD.

This felt like self care to have spotless bathrooms. It has cleansed me in some way. I feel so…so perfectly domestic…and it’s okay, because for once I’ve aced it.

I’m gonna try and enjoy the scene of my shining, streak free, mold/mildew free bathrooms before the hubs comes home and decides that tonight is the night he shaves his hair (I swear always and without fail, the site of a spotless sink triggers the “must shave” impulse in him), and the kids decide to rampage in with all their toys, smearing tooth paste on the counter, splashing water on the floor and ripping up bits of toilet paper just for shits and giggles.

This is good for my health. This is healing.

I should do this more often.

S

The before

The after

 

How My Toddler Potty Trained Me

I have been a bit of a poop-and-pee-a-phobe. My eldest is four and a half and it has taken me this long to relax into the inevitability of encountering pee and poop on a daily basis, sometimes in an explosive or god forbid, spread out manner. Gah!

I did, at first hold out high hopes of early potty training. My kid was showing all the signs of readiness by age 2. Not wanting to sabotage us right out of the gate, I waited for several months to pass after our second was born before we broached the subject. Then we went all in with that “potty train in 3 days” approach. By day two of being holed up in the kitchen (read: only room with linoleum floors), watching pee cascade down the stool she sat on for the umpteenth time, I’d had enough. I gave up. She seemed fully cognizant of the process, she just didn’t like us wanting her to do something about it. Mommy and daddy playing with her all day, singing “She pee peed in the pottay!” was amusing but…it got old. So I waved the white flag and aborted mission.

I have friends much braver than I. One mama friend was in the process of potty training her girl for…half the time she’d been alive ( her kid has been alive, I mean, though sometimes the other way seems more true…)…her girl was 3.5 when it finally started to click, but she’d started at 1.5 or so. Her philosophy is that once you start, you don’t go back. Stay the course. She’s cleaned a lot of soiled sheets, clothes and floors. I admire her persistence. I am definitely a quitter by that standard. Any sign of resistance and I concede defeat.

I just can’t stand the thought of what I’ve termed Defiant Defecating. Call me crazy. ‘Cuz that is what my kid would do if I pushed the issue. I care more for my couch cushions, it would seem, than never seeing another diaper.

Another mama friend of mine told tales of wiping out in a puddle of pee. Full-on, innocently walking from one room to another only to find oneself unceremoniously on ones ass in a puddle of pee.

Another mama told me the tale of toddlers emerging from the playroom, fecal matter on one kids face but not of their own making. Such a mystery one hopes to not ever have to solve.

I’ve experienced something similar at a play date when we’ve found a deposit of poo and the kids gathered around, poking at the mystery object. One doesn’t know whether to scream, flee or vomit. Maybe all of that all at once. And then clean it all up while looking with wild eyes all about to see where there might be additional deposits and smears. On more than one occassion I’ve found myself walking around my house, nostrils flared, bent low, seeking the scent, hoping I don’t find it…

On the first time I ever met my now close mama friend, I helped her douse the play structure with water from my water bottle to help rinse the pee that her daughter had happily deposited there. What an ice breaker. We bonded over that embarrassing, what-the-fuck moment. I was happy to help, and happy my kid was still in diapers so she couldn’t ad to the mess…because she would have.

I’ve been holding out hope. Hoping that my kid would one day, just choose to be potty trained. Like one mom said, her girl would not use the potty…until on her third birthday she decided she wanted undies, and that was it; never missed once.

Her story was a beacon of light.

Well, my kid’s third birthday came and went. I waited for the miracle. It didn’t happen. I waited some more, then came the crisis of faith. I, unfairly tried to apply pressure with words. I immediately regretted it. I let it go. I waited.

And you know what, one day, for whatever reason, she decided she wanted to try on her own terms. So, having tried coercion, potty training methods, etc. I decided I’d just follow her lead.

Her lead was meandering to say the least. We pottied for two days, then not for a week. We peed in the potty, but pooped in our diapers. We decided that diapers were easier because mommy does the cleaning. Then we decided that the big potty was fun because her older friend used it. Sticker charts and rewards were the bomb…then they were yesterdays news ( the Christmas Peppa Pig reward book I was sure she’d earn before Christmas, wallowed well into the New Year).

Through it all I just deep breathed and told myself “no one goes to school still in diapers…or do they?”.

I am so proud of me, because even when she wanted to try sleeping without diapers, something I knew she wasn’t ready for…I let her. I LET HER! And yes, I cleaned quite a few sheets. Often many within a very short period of time. But, she learned from that ( and I learned better how to pee proof the bed by increments) and decided on her own, that when mommy suggested pull-ups as a back-up, it was actually a good idea. She would never have arrived at that if I had insisted or told her she had to.

We’re not all the way there yet. But we are getting really good. She, at holding her pee for long stretches of time, using the “big toilets” at new places, telling me when she needs to go with some potty scouting time to spare (most of the time); Me, at holding my tongue when she wants to try a method that may involve clean-up on my part, at not using coercive/pressuring wording to get the result I want, at not reacting negatively when there is a miss.

She trained me.

When my youngest, who is already starting to show signs of readiness, is truly ready, I will follow her lead.

S

The Undoing of Not Doing

I feel like a crazy person. Most days I can’t put a cohesive thought together. I also cannot hold a train of thought. I flit from one idea to the next. I’d be an odd sight to some omnipotent viewer, they’d see me stop mid step in a room of my house and change tracks, bending down to pick something up, rearrange, sort, spin around, leave a space only to return, stop and stare. At any one time I might have some trash in my hand I found on the floor that I meant to toss, but on the way to the waste bin, I picked up a dirty sock for the hamper and a toy that needs returning to the play room. I walk around sorting and completely out of sorts.

Here’s the thing. I’m a creative and curious person (I think I am reading four books right now, each a different genre..will I ever finish any of them? I hope so?). I also happen to get the most excitement to do something about those creative urges some time around 10 am. At ten I’ve woken up, the sun is shining, everything seems possible….except actually doing any of the creative things I’m thinking about because my girls need me to feed, clothe, wipe butts, change diapers, organize play dates, play etc. etc. My most inspired time is the exact time when I cannot do anything about it. It is so hard and so frustrating to tear myself away from thoughts of what I want to do, in order to focus on the things I don’t….like play act a superhero for the umpteenth time. So I do all the stuff that needs to be done, but reluctantly and in a scattered way.

And then, by the time I get to the evening, the wondrous time when the kids have fallen asleep, I am so beat I cannot bear the thought of doing anything except lying down somewhere spacing out or sleeping. My brain is fried. Done-zo.

I caught myself this evening, as I cooked dinner, trying to do a million things and actually doing nothing…except cooking a dang meal. The girls were otherwise engaged watching a show (yes, a show. I have surrendered to the occasional show, ok?!) and I suddenly had a hunk of time to myself. This is how it went:

While the curry simmered and the rice cooked, I sat down to read a few pages of the one book I’ve almost finished (it has literally taken me 6 months to read it. No, I’m not kidding and it may be an underestimation). Mid sentence I got inspired to start making the sour kraut I’d bought the cabbage for. So I did that…on the way to the fridge I saw all the rotting bananas and remembered I wanted to freeze them for smoothies later….so I went to the dish rack to get the zip lock I’d cleaned to re-use just for this purpose. As I looked at the kitchen sink I realized that I should probably unload the dish washer to reload with the stuff in the sink…and the kitchen was a little disorganized, I needed to start to really think about where I want everything to go in our beautifully renovated kitchen, but, I think, maybe I should really be putting my mind towards working out the new pricing on photography packages I’ve been wanting to market, I also need to get on-line and see if there are any deals on lenses…I really need some new equipment, wouldn’t it be amazing if there was someone selling what I need for cheap? Gosh it would be great to have a model right now to take some experimental shots in the rain…the girls would never stay still, would they? No, I’d need a model…maybe put out a model call on social media, I’ll have to think of how I’m going to run that…but I’ll have to make a nice graphic first…oh, and I meant to call the school to see if they’ve done their lottery draw yet, I hope we get in…I should try writing everyday, like that author suggested…or maybe just do a blog entry…

Somehow I managed to get bananas in a bag to freeze. Then the almost empty bottle of elderberry in the fridge got me thinking about how I needed to make another batch…but first, the kraut…

I don’t think I ever returned to the book, because my hubs came home starving. Food was hastily set on the table lest he start snacking and thus I fed my barbarians.

All the while I was straining on the inside, thinking about all the photo editing I still had to do…how great it would be to knit something…how I felt an itch to get some paints out and start a canvas…how amazing it would be to sit with a hot tea and read a book to it’s end without falling asleep.

It’s my undoing all this wanting to DO,  but it not being the right time. So I do other things, the necessary things while I dream up ideas that can’t come to fruition. I get irritable. I am not the mommy I want to be because I feel cranky when my “me time” is so rare and seemingly unattainable.

I know that I just need to surrender to what is. Or, what is it? Oh yes: Prioritize. Set aside time. Carve out time.

I know.

What did I do, this evening, after all that not doing the stuff I wanted while doing the stuff that was needed? I paused, mind blank and despairing. And then I thought “Just DO!” So I left the dirty dishes in the sink and pulled my ukulele off it’s hook and I played. I played while my hubs made chocolate cake with the girls and protected my time ( I love you hon). And I was grateful. And it felt good to do. Not just do, but do something I wanted to do, for me.

For a brief period, I undid my undoing, by doing.

 

 

 

S

My Husband is a Dish Breaking Clutz, and It’s the Best Thing That’s Ever Happened to Me ( Okay, That’s a Slight Exaggeration)

First off, he does dishes. His momma raised him right. He is a man of this generation.

He does, however, attack the dishes like they are the enemy. Sometimes, they just outright make him mad. Whatever the reason, he breaks A LOT of dishes. I mean, I haven’t made an actual yearly tally, but it is well over 10 items a year.

I used to despair, even dramatically cry out “AGAAIINNN?!?”

I made snarky remarks about his penchant for breaking things when we were with his family and friends. Talk about passive aggressive. Not pretty.

I sometimes got really angry, thinking he didn’t care, that his carelessness was a sign of disrespect for my things (I am the main cook in the kitchen).

I’d often find that in his shame and disappointment in himself, he’d simply and quietly dump the broken object in the trash and cover it with other things. It was often a treasured ceramic I had made or acquired, something that meant something to me because I am a total collector and memory keeper via objects. I’d be shocked and angry when I happened to find it amidst the kitchen detritus.

I tried to explain to him that he needed to slow down, treat our kitchen stuff like he’d treat his climbing and biking and woodworking gear/tools.

And then I stopped.

First of all, I realized that I felt ashamed of shaming him. He is my partner in life. Yes, his breaking of the objects I hold dear is exasperating. Yes, I can choose to see it as an affront; sometimes I even suspect it is a tactic to get out of doing dishes. But I know that a lot of my reaction is the result of my monkey mind making up stories.

So,throwing him under the bus as a brunt of my mean spirited jabs, trying to coerce him to change via public embarrassment? Not cool. I could not take that shit myself. He is stoic and takes it, doesn’t say anything, but, I knew I couldn’t go on doing that. What would his inner life be? I don’t want to wake up one day and find I’ve silently become his enemy.

So I learned to bite my tongue.

My kids …do I want them to learn to subtly mock in order to get what they want instead of just asking? No sirree bob. Na uh.

I’ve been doing the work of refraining, and every day it gets easier. I feel lighter, more happy. To not hold on to events like they are a slight to me, is liberating.

I guess what I am saying is that, you’ve got to choose your battles. My man is a hard working, earnest, kind, generous human. I want him to feel at home at home. I want him to never feel like he has to hide what he’s done/broken. I want him to love and cherish me and not have that tainted by my bad behavior.

I want him….to still do dishes.

 

S