I Lied

I was going to get a good night’s rest tonight before my GMAT tomorrow. Incidentally, this is also the test that will make or break me. And then I couldn’t resist clicking the links to some blogs I follow and seeing what everyone is up to these days.

My heart hurts from it. I know it shouldn’t but it does.

I am so happy for my friends who have children who are whizzing through their milestones. I was going to comment. And then I stopped because it hit me.

My baby is amazing. He is smart and funny. He imitates sounds. As soon as you finish a drink at the house, he snatches your glass or cup and promptly runs it to the kitchen sink because he knows that is where it goes, damnit. He has a better sense of direction than I do. He climbs and runs and jumps. You can tell him, “Zachy, give me the phone/ book/ remote/ toy of whatever name/ paper/ pen/ any other obscure object”, and he knows exactly what you want and will hand that object to you. He is, by all rights, a toddler. He has wants and needs now. He is playful. He is fucking unbelievably adorable and people come up to him all of the time in public.

Yet the second reason why my heart hurts.

Because he is toddler and people expect him to say small phrases. Or respond when they ask his name. Or when they say hello or goodbye. Instead he looks at them. He won’t speak. He won’t even attempt. And there is this awkward pause. And he has the wants of a toddler, but he cannot tell us. Sure, they are teaching him to sign. He can now tell us ” more” or “drink”. But that doesn’t tell us if he wants milk or apple juice. or whether “more” means food or play or bedtime stories. And while you are trying to figure it out, he is wanting it and having a meltdown because he does’t understand why in the fuck you will not help him out right then.

Today, we got his hair cut. And the stylist was trying to talk to him. For the first time, I had to explain that he understands but he won’t speak. And then, as if there was something wrong with him that I had to make excuses for him, I followed up by blurting out that he was almost 2 months premature and he is behind is all. As in “please-don’t-think-he’s-a-freak-he’s-not-a-freak-he’s-a-fucking-miracle”. Why? Why do I feel like I have to make excuses? Better yet, why the fuck am I crying right now? Zach is fine. He isn’t even slow, cognitively anyway. When they assessed his cognitive development, he scored above average. WAY above average. The problem isn’t with Zach. The problem is with me.

We want our children to run faster , learn more, be cuter than the others. And then when they don’t, we tend to internalize that like I am doing right now. And when we hear a child is having probems, we assume stuff. Mom smoke/drank/ did drugs while pregnant. The parents are stupid or uneducated or come from a low socioeconomic background. Or they got no prenatal care.

What happens when the mom got the best prenatal care around by some of the best specialists in the field of maternal/fetal medicine? What happens when the family is from a middle class environment? And both have college educations? And the child has an older brother who is freakishly gifted? And when mom is no dummy, was a merit scholar, labeled gifted all of her life? Or maybe mom and dad work too much and noone works with the child? But no, because mom and dad make sacrifices so that one parent is with the child at all times. Went through hell to give the child breastmilk, organic baby food, nurturing, and more. What happens when the parents have done everything right? Well then to have a child have something wrong just slaps everything we believe right back in our faces. Because if all of these things apply to us and there is something wrong, then that means there is no control. That means it could happen to any fucking one of you, too.

So when I tell you my kid won’t talk, and you have that awkward pause, is that what is going on in your mind?

And now it’s worse. Because today, we got Zach’s hair cut. And he is a little boy now insead of a baby, so instead of just a trim, he has a little boy style. It is so fricken cute I cannot stand it. But he looks like a little boy now, which means people will expect more. More awkward pauses.

So if you are one of my mommy-blogger friends here in the blog world and I follow your blog, and you noticed that I haven’t made comments, please do not be offended or think ill of me. I am not wishing this on anyone. I am glad that your children are doing well. I want for them to continue to do so. One day, hopefully soon, I will take pleasure in reading about the new and amazing things they are doing. But it is very, very hard for me to read of the things that your child is doing and mine should be doing and is not. I get angry at our situation, hurt, and then feel guilty for even feeling like that, all because I read a blog post. And then what should I say? “Gee, be glad your child is normal?” No, because then it will make you feel bad for taking pride in the things your child is doing, and I don’t want you to feel like that, either. You should be proud! So I will be abstaining from commenting on some subjects. At least untill I heal a little bit. But I am still reading. I’m still there.

 

While I Was Away

I’ve been busy. I’m sorry. I’m a horrible blogger. And the truth? I’m still busy. I honestly have no business creating a long list of catch-up posts when there is so much I should be doing. So I am going to try to catch you up in this one post, if you are still out there.

School: I’ve got a couple more classes under my belt. More A’s. I’ll be finished with my business degree in September. I’ve been working on the MBA applications. More on that in a sec.

Evan: Evan is still…Evan. They’ve changed his meds several times. Some of it has been good and some bad. The bad changes are the ones that had him literally awake for days, dark circles under his eyes, palor. It broke my heart. Until one day when his teacher called and said he fell asleep in school and we had to bring him home and let him sleep for almost 2 days straight, only waking him to get some fluids in him so he didn’t dehydrate. I hate it all and would love more than anything to just be able to take him off of all of them and get them out of his system, but I kow he can’t function without them. Now things are finally looking up. He came home last week, excited and proudly presenting this flyer from school. Turns out they are having baseball sign-ups and Evan wants to play. We signed him up. He’s never played a sport before because he has never shown interest. But we jumped on this, even taking him to get fitted for a glove and bat, getting him training gear. He’ll start practicing here at home this week, since he is too old to play tee-ball, and this is actually pitch baseball.

Zach: Zach was officially assessed at the 12-month level, developmentally speaking. He has started therapy after officially being labeled as developmentally delayed. I had some very overwhelming days where it struck me that I have one child with Asperger’s and another who is DD. I had to get past that to carry on. In the meantime, in absence of any verbal communication, the therapist has started teaching Zachy to sign what he wants. Simple things like “more”, “drink”, “all done”, “eat”, and “help”. He can finally express what he wants to us instead of having a meltdown because we cannot understand his grunts and shouts. And with this development has emerged some attempts to be verbal. He can get the intonation of the syllables of words, but nothing anyone can understand yet. But he is trying, which is more than he was doing a month ago. He continues to be social and adorable and loving. And he is so smart. He can clearly understand anything you say to him. He hs favorite places and knows the routes to those places and will cry if you turn the opposite direction in the car. We just have to catch him up a little bit.

Grad School: I got letters of recommendation from my direct supervisor and department director at work. I wrote a stellar cover letter and drew up a new resume. I had my transcripts sent yesterday. Yet about a month ago, I was having a weak moment, so I scheduled a time to go into my first choice school and speak to them about my potential for admission. I was armed with nothing more than an unofficial printout of my undergrad work. She basically told me there was a very little likelihood that I will be turned away with my academic record. But I have to take that damned GMAT. You may recall that I took two weeks off at the end of January to prepare for and take the test. And then I psyched myself out and wouldn’t do it. That was the low point where I called them and made the appointment. And then I bit the bullet and scheduled the damned thing. And tried and tried to prep for without the advantage of time off from work or school. As a matter of fact, I have finished two more classes and started 2 more in that time frame. I still feel underprepared. My stomach has been in knots for days. As in butterflies and queasiness. The exam is tomorrow. If all goes well, I will be started at one of the top-ranked MBA programs in October. Oh, and that’s another thing: because I went back and did an undergrad business degree and will be fresh from that with immaculate grades, I am elegible for their accelerated program. In other words, they will give me credit for my undergrad and I will only have 8 classes left to my MBA. So by Summer of 2013, I will be an MBA. Yeah. No pressure. I have to get in. Have to. No other options. I even submitted all of the financial stuff for grad school, and at a very expensive private university, I will even have all of that falling into place.

So there you have it. While I haven’t been present in the bloggy world, I’ve been doing plenty. I look forward to catching up on everyone’s blogs and hopw you’ll forgive me for my absence.

I Shall Call This One “Someday”

Because…..

Someday, I will have time to make a dent in this 6-inch thick GMAT prep book.

Someday, I will have a day off of work.

Someday, Evan will go back to school.

Someday, Zach will start speaking and stop doing the whining/ grunting/ pointing thing.

Someday, this house will be clean. And neat. And organized.

And I will finish the 1000-page book I started reading out of a lapse in my sanity. Because for some reason, aside from GMAT prep, working like a dog, the questionably Aspergian high maintenance oldest child and the terrible-twos toddler, and all of the other shit I have to get done, I thought I would have time to read the damned thing.

Someday, I’ll relax.

Or maybe finish the apps for grad school.

Or maybe eat a dinner that is home cooked because we had time to cook.

Someday, there will not be sheer chaos in this house.

Someday, I will finish the 50 gazillion blog posts I have started about the different things I wanted to tell you all about but have not have the time to finish. On our Christmas. Or our anniversary. Or Evan’s progress and Zach’s delay.

But not now. Because right now, the tv is blaring, Zach is screaming because he doesn’t have the words or ability to tell John he wants apple juice. I am waiting for a phone call from the developmental interventionalist because I am finally worried about Zach’s speech delay to do something about it. And once I get the call, I have to go through the gu-wrenching possibility that my treatment during the pregnancy did something to him just when I thought it was all okay. And it is finally snowing outside, mixed with a bit of rain and freezing temps that are sure to make my commute a living hell.

And right now, I have to go to work. Again.

Fuck.

The Bad Neighbor in the Blogosphere

That’s me. I suck and I’m sorry. Here lately, I have missed out on some of the blogs I love. The little free time I have left after work, family, and school has been spent either on my own blog or reading something for non-academic purposes because I love to read, and well, there never is enough time, is there?

I promise you all that I will be a better Bloggy neighbor. I swear. Please forgive me.

300

You won’t believe this, but I had this post here, and when I went to publish it, WordPress decided I needed to be punk’d. As in the entire post was blank except for a couple of tags. So now I can pretend that I came up with some really witty awesomeness and WordPress just deleted it and thus you get this shitty post instead. But…

Look at those pictures. I like the first one best. He looks like he is mighty and powerful, and is about to unleash more than a can of whoop-ass. And then there’s me. Pasty in the green glow of a laptop screen. Tired. No makeup. And most definitely not in Sparta. But it is my 300th post, peeps. And if you have read any of the crap I have ever written, you know that I am what I am: tired, busy, blah. And if I am staring into the webcam of a laptop, it is in-between the writing of papers, reading the hundreds of pages of text for class, feeding/ bathing/ playing with the baby, working a gajillion hours, helping Evan navigate the world around him, being John’s wife…Essentially, if I showed you a photo of a fresh-faced, perfectly coifed and made-up person, your first thought would be, “Mmmmhmmm, that bitch Photoshopped that shit.” But instead, I am choosing to give you the real me.

By some, this blog has been a failure.I don’t have a massive following. No one is going to be powerfully influenced here in my little corner of the internet. And I make zilch from it. In fact, I suck so bad that I couldn’t even fathom getting paid for this shit. But it’s mine-all-mine. And coming from the chick who has tried and failed to keep a journal about a million and one times, the fact that the Being Veruca/ Bitchypants combo has been going for well over a year and for 300 posts  is pretty amazing to me. Also in the amazing files: that I have made no improvement whatsoever. But I have done what I initially set out to do: talk about my crazy-busy life, chronicle my thoughts and experiences, and make a couple of online friends. Mission Friggin’ Accomplished.

But I’ve found that, despite the degree of suckage and lack of a mass following, I like being able to do this. And I would like to stay. And if you are reading this, thanks. I hope you’re up for more of my crap.

God Help Us All

… because Andrea has found the way to blog from a cell. HOLY SHIZNIT!

I mean, really. The world is now my oyster. I should sing from the rooftops or something. Of course this means you all are in for it! Because now there is no limit. I can share all sorts of useless crap with you. Looooooove it.

>I’m a Techno-Moron

>

So my computer died. And I went running and screaming like a little girl this very afternoon and now I am feeling all proud of myself and ultra-cool and high-tech because I bought a laptop instead of a desktop. Not my MacBook like I wanted, but a Dell. And I just had to blog about this because I am laying on my living room floor and blogging and am uber-excited about it. Incidentally, I am playing with this new toy and some of its gadgets that I must tell you about, but I feel like such a dork because I am so fricken excited that I can do this.

I should explain that I can recall the day when one had to use DOS prompts to start a computer. And I remember sitting in my english class for gifted and talented nerds like me when our teacher came into the room telling us of this article he had read where you would one day be able to play cd’s on the computer!!! Yep, the invention of the CD-ROM. I witnessed it. And the Challenger disaster. And the fall of the Berlin wall. I remember the first Mac, with that fancy little invention called a mouse. Yep, I’m that old. I also remember when cell phones required a shoulder bag/battery and the receiver was the size of a fricken cinder block. So I am sure, with all of this in mind, you can forgive my reluctance to switch from desktop to laptop. And you can forgive my dorky excitement that I have taken my huge cyber-leap.

Now, this new toy of mine has Windows 7 on it. Not sure if I like it or not. It seems better than my desktop, which had yucky Vista on it. But there is one new feature I am loving that prompted me to write a new blog post: Windows Live Writer. It’s like blog magic, I tell ya! It asked for the web address of my blog, as well as my user name and password, and basically I am typing this like I am a word document, but somehow, it is coming up with my blog. It looks like a Word window, with the task bar and everything, but it is like I am writing live on my blog. Even the font it publishes in and everything. I’m in love. I’m retarded. But there you have it!

Next up: I’ll take a pic of me typing while I do it with the integrated webcam. That’d really be fancy, y’all!

>My First Time

>My first Bloggy award. Yayayayayayayay. Thanks to SarcasmInAction for thinking of Lil’ Ol’ Me! If you haven’t yet, check her out. She cracketh me up! So I’m new to this award thingy, but I think I now have to tell you 7 things about myself. I assume it’s 7 things I haven’t mentioned yet, so here goes:

1. I played classical flute for 12 years. Which makes me a band geek, I think. Instead I tried to shrug this off and categorize myself as one of the uber-cool ones who was a Serious Musician. Ha! I actually majored in music during my first drunken go-round at college. Then my mother died, I dropped out of school, and since she was my biggest fan, I eventually stopped playing. Every couple of years or so, John tries to get me to buy a flute and rekindle that part of my past. I never have…

2. I am such a nerd that I think one of my favorite smells has to be new text books. Just don’t ask. I lead a sad, sad existence.

3. I have 36 pairs of work shoes, I swear. WTF, you ask? Well it goes like this: I’m a fatty, and I work hellacious hours on my feet. On concrete. Running to-and-fro to codes and emergencies and impending patient disasters. And my poor fat feet scream in pain at the end of my shift. As a result, I am always, always in the market for the miracle shoe that will reverse the force of gravity and make my feet not hurt. I don’t think there is such a shoe. The closest I have found was a high-end pair of Asics running shoes. I had worked twelve 12-hr. shifts in a row and my feet hurt so bad that I went to Dick’s and told the sales guy that I really didn’t give 2 craps about look or price. And when I tried them on, they felt so good that I embarrassed John by actually tearing up. They were $190. And the ugliest shoes I have ever seen. And that next night at work, they got splashed with puke during a suction-canister misshap in the middle of a code. Sigh…

4. I’ve never had a glass of wine. Everyone talks about wine, and I want to be cool like that, but wine kind of scares me. I mean, have you ever shopped for a bottle when you know nothing about it? The vast selection and type and etiquette surrounding it…Gah! I want to try it. I want to be the cool, hip chick who returns from work to a nice glass, but there are some problems with this. A) I return from work at 7AM. To have a glass of wine then seems like borderline-alcoholism. B) I don’t have wine glasses. My Curious-George husband breaks everything that isn’t plastic or doesn’t bounce when it hits the floor. How pathetic would it be to drink wine from a plastic cup???

5. I have no social life. Seriously. Before I had Zach, I went back and forth to work and school. The little time had in-between was reserved solely for my family. Now I work like crazy and am getting ready to go back to school in the aftermath of the Pregnancy from Hell. This Sunday, I’m going to a baby shower for a coworker and it will mark the first occasion where I will actually leave the house without my entire family. Although I’m taking Zachy, so I don’t even know if this counts…

6. There are a few songs that can reduce me to a blubbering, sobbing mess right now. Amazing by Janelle, Wires by Athlete, and Miracle by Celine Dion. I discovered this the other day becaue they are on my mp3 player. I didn’t put them there, but it automatically syncs when it is plugged into the computer to charge. So as I’m going to work the other day, one of them started playing and I started crying so hard that I had to pull the car over and let it pass. And there’s a story there. When I was enduring my 5 months of bedrest with Zachy, and I was having 30+ contractions an hour and just trying to hang on, I would search preemie videos on Youtube daily. A baby at 30 wks, 31 wks, 32 wks, and on and on, to encourage myself. To show myself what I was fighting to avoid and also to show myself that if it got to the point where I couldn’t go any longer, that Zach would be okay in the long run because those babies were. And almost without fail, those were the songs in all of the videos. And when I hear them, I can simultaneously feel those damned contractions and see Zach’s face. They got me through a pregnancy, but it is all still too raw to revisit.

7. I have OCD when it comes to the appearance of my offspring. I’m a little more laid-back with Zach. When Ev was a baby, I would literally match his pacifier to his receiving blanket to his outfit. And if he would spit up and the outfit had to be changed? The whole ensemble was switched out. The problem with this was that Evan had the reflux of a preemie and would spew like a fricken fountain. I’m not this crazy with Zach. Zach is clean and well-dressed. You will never see him out of the house in a Onesie (Onesies are underwear for babies!) or a sleeper (Do YOU wear footed pj’s to the mall????), but other than that, I’ve turned the crazy down a few notches.

So there are my seven. My neuroses wrapped up just for you. Now I have to bestow upon 5 fellow Bloggy peeps this same honor.

Drumroll…..

Mama Ferris at Not Your Average Ferris Wheel . Why? Because she’s awesome.And she helped get me through some of my darkest days. And her babe is adorable. And her husband is uber-talented.

Quincy at Learn to Enjoy. Because she is the coolest young woman and the world is her oyster.

Mary at The Gift of Fat. Funny, funny woman that she is…

And Jenny at I’m A Coach’s Wife. Her thoughts make me laugh and remind me that I am somewhat normal because she has them too. Maybe.

Amanda at It’s Blogworthy. Because she’s also funny as hell. And also has a Cutey McCutester baby.

Run with it, Ladies.