Why I'm Not Vegan...and I'm not Guilty.

Dear friends,

This is not going to be one of those rants about meat eating being better than being vegan. This is also not a secret way of drawing meat eaters in with a subject title and then trying to convert them to a vegan lifestyle.

This is my, extremely specific story, and I just wonder if it resonates with others.

This morning, I was noodling around on youtube, and this video by Mayim Bialik (Yes, I still think of her as Blossom) came up in my suggested feed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofcUGuMhGGo

Because I'm a technological idiot, that link is to a video where she explains, very honestly, and diplomatically, the reasons she is vegan. I do think it's interesting that she doesn't bring in whether or not she feeds her children a vegan diet, but I suspect that perhaps she doesn't, and discussing her reasons why might cloud her message. I pass absolutely no judgement on her if that's the case, if nothing else, having a baby has taught me that I can make decisions with my own ethical principals in mind, but I have no right to force those decisions on my baby. I have to make decisions for him with his health and safety as the deciding factors first and foremost.

But I digress...

So, back in 2001, when I first entered the world of disordered eating, going vegan was actually my first foray into anorexia.
Of course, that's not how it started at all.
It started with an expose in the October 2001 issue of Adbusters magazine.
I had already started my "project", which is what I called the calories counting and restricting I was using to lose weight, but yogurt was a fundamental part of my breakfasts, and cheese was a large part of my dinners. I had started skipping the meat they served in my school cafeteria because it was pretty nasty, but I got a lot of protein from dairy and eggs, so even though I wasn't eating as much as before, and the approach to eating was still unhealthy, I wasn't depriving myself of vital nutrients.
I was blown away by the expose. It showed unflinching photographs of meat factory farm conditions, and showcased the conditions in other countries where food was either scarce or hunted, and I remember very clearly, it was the first time I felt guilt, horrible, all-consuming guilt, about food. I felt like I could never let meat, dairy, or eggs ever pass my lips again otherwise I might as well be force-feeding piglets or trapping chickens in cages with my own two hands.
I went vegan, then and there.
Immediately, my diet changed radically. Instead of a big bowl of yogurt and granola for breakfast, which kept me relatively full until the afternoon, I suddenly started eating a bowl of grapenuts cereal with soymilk.
I stopped loading my dinner time salads with cheese and eggs and I skipped the hot and buttery garlic bread I'd been eating on the side and started eating salads sprinkled with cubed tofu (this was before tempeh, seitan, quorn, and all those fun meatless products had debuted in grocery stores, let alone college dining halls), and since the only dairy free option for dressing was vinaigrette that's what I used. I also subbed a piece of dry, multigrain toast for my garlic bread.
I remember carrying my tray through the milling crowds of students with their hamsteaks and tator tots. Their cheesy nachos and plates of spaghetti and meatballs. I felt virtuous. I felt like an activist.
I felt like I was not contributing to the horror that my peers were, and that made me feel less guilty.

But I also started losing a lot more weight.

As my weight plummeted, my feelings of virtue increased so that my will power wouldn't crumble. I firmly planted associations of morality to food that still plague me to this day. I had no idea that they weren't about me rescuing pigs and chickens. Those feelings might have been there, but larger than that was the classic anorexic's feeling of mental strength and superiority.

I won't go into the rest of my ED story, since I've already chronicled it here, but I'll talk about how after I started to get help, I still refused to eat meat, not for another 7 years would I begin to be the mindful omnivore I am now.

Now let's talk about the video...

See, I still feel as strongly about the factory farm industry as I did at that first moment of revelation.
In fact, I don't see how anyone, once they know what's going on to get that burger on their plate could be complicit in the industry, however, I would now like to talk about privilege.

Mayim Bialik is a successful actress. She is a scientist, a mother, and many other very cool things, but economically, she's a very well paid actress. Compared to the millions of dollars Brad Pitt gets for sneezing onscreen, I'm sure she makes peanuts, but compared to me, she's doing pretty good.

Unfortunately economic hardship is what determines how parents feed their families.
This is what drives the factory farm industry. The average American family cannot afford to ethically feed themselves because the price of doing so is impossible. The industry has created its own need by using such horrible shortcuts to mass produce meat that they can afford charge cut rates for their products. It's easy any time you go into a grocery store.
I stand next to the eggs and it's 99 cents for a dozen white factory eggs. A dozen farm fresh eggs from a chicken that got to eat regular old corn instead of gmo "feed" is $3.29.
Are you kidding?

I can't afford three bucks for eggs, and I'm guessing neither can the majority of poverty level Americans.

So here we are.

I don't skip buying the eggs.
I hate myself a little, and I promise myself that as soon as we're financially able, I will be buying the free chicken eggs, but my priority right now is to feed my family the most nutritious food I am able.

This is where I use the term mindful omnivore, because, yes, as a society, we do rely far too heavily on meat and animal products. They make up way more of our diet than is necessary.

So I feed my baby eggs, but I also feed him beans.
If I can, I buy the non-antibiotic chicken, and I feed him little bits.
I make as much food as I can myself to cut down on additives, chemicals, and processes which condition our palettes to prefer the industrially produced food, but I do not flog myself with guilt if my budget doesn't give me wiggle room enough to buy organic produce, because the thing I've learned is that I have to feed my baby andI have to feed him well. Everything else is details.

So I guess I will close this by saying, as long as you're trying, as long as you're thinking, and actively making the healthiest choices for yourself, your family, and your babies, don't let anyone, especially a wealthy celebrity make you feel guilty for not being able to support her cause.

I love Mayim Bialik. I love Kat Von D. I love a lot of actively vegan celebrities, and I fully support them and their motives. I am, however, not privileged enough to maintain their lifestyle, and that doesn't make me a bad person or a bad mother, quite the opposite actually. Doing what's best for us, and however that has to be, is what makes me a great mum.

What are you doing?

On Monday my baby turned one.

He celebrated his first revolution around the sun by hanging out with his Mama.
Everybody who was there when he was born was busy.
I got one text from a good friend. After I posted on facebook I got a few hearty
"Happy Birthday Baz"s in the comments, but altogether it felt like the world did what the world does. It looked at the individual and said, "Yeah, so what?"

Something I never anticipated about becoming a mother is how acutely I feel the loss of the love between people. The community has gone extinct at the time that we need it the most. Perhaps more than anything, that is what this recent election has taught me as well.
We are only looking out for our own interests.
Our mouths shape the words of love and commonality, but when it comes time to make those words take shape with their fingers, the action is left undone and incomplete. The arm falters halfway through the swing, and the ball never leaves the hand. The wrist goes limp. There is no follow through.

I too fall prey to this.
I made declarations that I was going to donate to Planned Parenthood right after the election. I was waiting for my check from Refinery 29 so I didn't feel like I was taking money from the family to do so, but the check has yet to arrive, and so I have yet to give money to anyone.

The plight of the stay at home parent is the feeling that none of the money brought in actually belongs to you. You can use it to buy groceries, pay bills, and treat the baby, but you can't bring yourself to spend it on yourself.
You don't feel like you deserve to.
And charity becomes another luxury, like a haircut, or a new pair of boots, or a couple of fancy cocktails.
Tragedy.

I see the images from Aleppo.
Men carrying babies the same size as my son out of bombed out buildings.
I can't bring myself to read the text beneath the pictures.
I can't know if those babies didn't make it.

And even that fear and shock and horror brings with it horrible waves of guilt.

Who am I?

Why should my child be safe in my arms, in this neighborhood, and those men's children not safe at all?

What makes my life so blessed?

And it isn't.
We're always only five years away from complete disaster
or ultimate glory.
The scale can go either way. And we have much less influence over it than we'd like to think.

The only thing we have control over is how we treat each other, especially when it gets difficult.
I see other people.
People better than me, who have less, or the same, and they donate. They give. They go forth with courage and hope.

I want to be them, but my cautious nature trips me up.
My desire to burrow into the ground and hide from the madness is constantly at war with my guilt that I have that as an option. Again, I have to ask, Who am I?

What does it make me if I wait and wait and wait for things to get better, but this is actually the high point before the fall?

I couldn't sleep last night.

I kept thinking about how powerless I feel. Perhaps that's the biggest fuck you of motherhood of all, that by committing the most radical act of creation, you are accepting the horrible knowledge that you have no control over the events that shape your child. You have no control over the things that happen to him or the injuries and injustices done to him. Even while he still lives in your arms and nurses from you, you are moving, daily, away from the ability to protect him.

Are you protecting him when you send twenty dollars to the ACLU?
Are you protecting him when you vote?
Are you protecting him when you decide to leave the country?
Are you protecting him when you move far away from the city, build a farm, and begin to foster chickens?
What are you doing if you're not protecting him?

If you aren't earning money,
If you aren't taking action,
If you aren't giving to the people meant to protect you,
if you aren't supporting the people you love,
if you aren't doing anything except getting from sunrise to sunrise the best you can and praying that as soon as you can you will be able to do more than you can do now,
What are you doing?

The Great White Winter Of Our Discontent

A couple of years ago, I remember the meteorologists warned the upcoming winter was going to be brutal.
They talked about the now notorious "Polar Vortex" and record breaking cold.
I looked at the temperature every morning before I walked my 2.7 miles to work, and I steeled myself, but it was awful.
See, the route between Beverly and Salem includes a bridge, and not just any bridge, a big ass, almost 3/4 of a mile long bridge with some serious elevation.
In the summer it's a gorgeous way to see the harbor. In the early mornings, you can pause there and watch fishing boats bring in their hauls. In the winter time, no joke, I've seen birds fly into the railings and die.
The meteorologists are predicting this winter will see New England suffer another Polar Vortex.
It's not even solstice yet, and today the temperature never got higher than 26 degrees. It's going to be brutal.
And in some ways, I dread this.
I dread this because I already know, I bloody hate winter.
I hate the cold, the dry air, the slight scent of burnt metal in the air from the furnace.
I hate the static electricity that shocks me every time I touch a doorknob, but more than anything, I hate being stuck indoors. If I ever go on a murderous rampage, you can blame cabin fever and boredom for the bloodlust.
With all that being said, it is coming (insert Game of Thrones joke here), and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I have some idea of how miserable it will be. I know already there will be times that I can't stand it and think I am going crazy. There will be times that I want to move to Vanuatu and never see another snowflake again, but I will endure.

I am steeling myself.

Do you see where I'm going with this people?

There is something else we will have to steel ourself to endure for the next four years. A kind of "winter" if you will. We already know it's going to suck. Maybe we don't know the particulars, but we don't have to. The evidence is there, the predictions are in, and no matter how badly I want this winter to just skip us altogether, I don't think it's healthy to delude myself into thinking it will just miss us.

The thing is, I'm lucky.
I'm lucky as hell.
I don't have to walk across the bridge to get to work every day.
In fact, I don't have to be anywhere if I don't want to.
I can just stay inside and be safe and toasty warm with my baby.
I can pull the blinds and plug up all the drafts and turn up the heat pretending the cold won't touch me.
But that's cowardice.

And I don't want to teach my kid to be a coward.

I want to teach my kid to suit up, and step out the door, even when he knows it's brutal out.
And if I want him to do that, then I have to lead by example.

I need to cross that bridge at least a few times this winter.
I need to have difficult conversations and donate money to worthy causes, and stop letting people get away with casual, socially acceptable racism/sexism/homophobia/xenophobia/transphobia. I need to suit up step out and be brave.

It's okay to hate the cold.
But you can't hide from it, and you can't pretend it doesn't exist.
Because sooner or later it finds you, and if you aren't ready...well...just be ready.

Zwiggen: A Mother's Walk into Death

As we approach my son's first birthday, I feel as though I am living in a strange ballet.
I know the steps, I dance them through the rooms of the house, except this time, the baby is in my arms instead of inside me.

Fifty one weeks ago, I was forty one weeks pregnant.

I had appointments for two doses of induction medication waiting for me the next week, and I had a full fledged induction scheduled for the Friday.

I remember feeling like I was in suspended animation then. Zwiggen is what the Germans call it;
a kind of twilight realm where the mother has to walk slowly into the realm of death in order to fetch the soul of her baby and bring it back. It is an altered state of being, where the mother is neither alive nor dead. She is between worlds.
As she voyages deeper into this space, labor begins. In order to touch the spirit of the baby, she has to get closer to death, so she goes closer, unquestioningly, unfailingly. She goes closer until she is barely alive, until she is mostly spirit herself, only then can she touch the baby's soul and grasp it.

This is why so many women, if not all women, reach a point in birth where they say, "I can't do this."
They feel fear like an animal, fear not of what they are doing, but fear that they are too tired to come back out of death. It has taken so long to get there, so long to reach the baby's soul, that bringing it back out feels impossible. Physically, this is the most critical moment in labor, the point at which the baby must pass through the pelvis. This moment is the reason why humans are born after only nine months gestation.
The first three months of a humans life are the most touch and go because technically, a newborn should still be in the womb, but we have evolved to be born prematurely due to the size of our infant heads. A baby at proper full length gestation could not pass through its mother's pelvic bone, and both mother and child would die, so we are born before we are finished being made.
Our bodies are not finished yet.
The souls have not made their way to them yet.
So the mother, must go get the soul, bring it back, and in this last, crucial moment, split her physical self down the middle to all at once let out the baby while giving it its soul and put back her own spirit at the same time.

This is why we falter. The moment of return of knowing we can never go back to the way we were before, it is too big, too intimidating.
A woman is never the same after she gives birth because she has gone into death and back.
There is no being the same after that journey.
It does not matter if you have a c-section. It does not matter what medical interventions need to be taken. If you have had a child, you have walked into death and come out again, and there is no going back afterward.

So I look forward to celebrating my child's birthday.
I am so excited to give him presents, watch him eat cake, and delight in his celebration of life, but for now, I am mourning the last memories I have of being a girl before her walk into death, because I am different now. I have never felt more different, and more alive.

The New and Improved Hallucinogen is Motherhood. Bring on the Lizard People!

Babe woke up at 4am this morning.
Did I stutter?
No. 4. Four. FOUR.
Ugh.
And not just, stir a little, nurse him back down, kind of awake, like, full crawl up on my chest and begin crowing like a rooster awake. My poor Beard tousled the baby's hair and turned over. He has to be up for work at 6:30, and we all know how shitty it is to be woken up and see you have to start your day in a mere two-ish hours.
So I got up, thinking, I'd be able to re-settle the child better in the living room, and maybe cruise around on Etsy looking for Christmas presents.
Forty five minutes of squirming, fidgeting, fussing, and general chicanery, and then the kid sinks his teeth into a nip and I know, we're done.
It's quarter to five in the morning, and I am strapping my kid into his high chair, nuking a mug of yesterday's coffee, and cutting up chinks of banana.
The dog and cat watch us, bemused. I have no explanation.
I turn on the oven because the kitchen is cold and the gas bill is cheaper than heat.
I watch while Baz demolishes hunks of banana. My coffee clutched between claws of injustice.
I notice a butternut squash on my kitchen table and bung it in the oven.
It will make the house smell good. Oh, and, by the way, if you're still hacking away at your squashes, scooping out seeds and placing them neatly on foil lined trays before baking them, don't.
It's way easier to just peel off the sticker and hurl the whole gourd in. Bake it at a lower temp for a bit longer (like 350 for an hour), and then get it out. Let it cool for twenty minutes and then you can cut it in half with a butterknife, scoop the seeds out with a spoon, and it's ready for whatever you want to do with a butternut squash at five in the morning.
Me?
I mostly want to hurl it at the side of the house in some dramatic display of futility and ignominy, but then I'd have to clean it up.
Or blame it on the teenagers in the apartment upstairs...

Anyway...
So I make pancakes. I do this by throwing a generous scoop of baked squash, an egg yolk, some instant oats, cinnamon, the other half of the banana, and some baking soda into the baby bullet. I blitz the whole thing for a minute while a pan heats on the stove, then I fry the pancakes while the monster in the high chair bangs measuring cups and flings gummy banana bits at me or the dog depending on which of us deserves more derision in that moment.
Pancakes made, I serve a chunked up one to the baby. He hoovers it up with a look of glee. The fresh pot of coffee is done now too, so I pour myself a decent cup. I look at the clock, it's 5:55am.
Fucking hell.

This is the Gonzo Mothering life.

I don't know what I'm doing, and I'll never proclaim otherwise.
Well, maybe when I'm sixty five, and this kid is all grown up and hopefully a semi-functional adult, but by then nobody will be listening to me as I'll be a pink haired, rhinestone wearing retiree with a newly discovered passion for ballroom dancing with partners a third my age.
Also nobody will be reading blogs by then. We'll all be getting information uploaded to the insides out our eyelids, where we have surgically grafted lcd screens so nobody has to look at each other anymore. We can all just lie in bed and watch the world as it is fed to us through the information robots.

Wow...getting up at four in the morning makes me get dark fast.

Can I take a moment just to say too, that I am in fact a morning person?

I actually am at my best about two hours after wake up?
I can read whole paragraphs and understand them. I can sometimes string words into full sentences. Two hours after I get up I am raring to go.

I tend to unravel the later it gets.

Today for instance, around six o'clock, I'll be in a corner sobbing hysterically about the state of the world fisting peanut m&ms into my mouth as the baby takes his first steps across the living room floor, and you can bet they'll be away from me.

Dear god, he will be thinking, why is bipedalism so difficult? I'd be miles away by now if I could just figure out this balancing bullshit.

So here we are. It's not even seven, the baby has curled up in my lap for a post-pancake nap, and I am too wired to take him back to sleep and actually get some shut eye.
I think about his instincts though, and I must commend him.
I mean, getting up early because you're hungry, eating a pile of pancakes, and then taking a snooze sounds like every dumb instagrammer's "perfect Sunday" so he must be doing something right.

I on the other hand am now vibrating at a frequency that makes my dog's knees buckle.
There is no hope here in the Gonzo Motherland.
Give me twelve hours,
we'll be in bat country.

Weaponized Food. My Darkest Times with ED. Trigger Warning: anorexia, BED, general ED discussion

Night time used to be my ED's favorite time.

Like most people, especially people with weird work schedules, I often used to look forward to the midnight hour as my only time to myself.
It was only then, when I was in college, and my roommate was asleep, or as I grew older, after Beard went to bed, that I felt I could breathe a sigh of relief and reflect on the day. Sometimes this meant reading, watching movies, or catching up on social media and weird blogs. Sometimes it meant getting done what little writing I had the energy left for.
One thing was certain though, it was always the right time for a binge.

See, when I was in the deep dark jungle of my anorectic behavior, I had a strict eating routine. I could only eat food at the two specific meal times I allowed myself. It had to be specific foods, and it had to be all consumed in a specific time frame.

Dinner was complete by 6pm, and I was not allowed to eat again until 8am the next morning.
Let's review for the cheap seats:
After a measly salad and one cookie (my "daily indulgence"), I was to go a minimum of fourteen hours without so much as a snack.
To do this, I kept myself busy. I was a member of a dozen clubs and I always had meetings to attend, events to plan, functions to organize, and then homework to do.
By ten or eleven at night, my stomach would be screaming for food, but to distract myself, I would begin an arduous circuit of visiting friends in their dorm rooms.
Often, they would be nuking ramen bowls, sharing pints of ice cream, or snacking on popcorn while watching movies, and I always declined, feeling lighter and more virtuous with every, "Oh no thank you," I stuttered through.

In the year and a half of my worst restricting, I recall three binges. At the time, they were monumental. Afterwards, to atone, I would tot up my calories for the day (I obsessively kept my calories between 800-1100 every day, my goal was always 950), and after a binge, they would often run as high as 1900 (remember, the average human, with no physical activity, requires about 2,000 calories every day, but to me, coming it that close to normal eating levels, was catastrophic), and I would berate myself for being so indulgent, so weak and pathetic. I would need to "make up" for those excess calories, and so the next day I would fast.

When the pendulum swung back, and it swung hard, I still couldn't shake that need to compensate for a binge. It became almost religious, the cleansing feeling I associated with lightheaded hunger after a day of not eating, and I would do every trick in the book to get through it.

Then, when night came, and I was all alone, the feelings of loneliness, worthlessness, and often the voice of reason too, finally came through.

"Why are you doing this?" my common sense would ask.
"To be better," was always my reply.
"But you're not," my ED would answer.
"But I want to be," I would say.
"You can't sleep this hungry you know," my common sense would counter.
"I know," I would say, already on my way to the kitchen.
"Just a little snack," my common sense would say, "something to get through until tomorrow. It's not good to go this long without food."
I would agree.
I would portion myself out something healthy, something I could call "good", and I would eat it.
At first, slowly, trying, with every ounce of my will power to make it last, to make it enough for an entire day of restriction.
The problem was, it was never enough, and my ED would seize on this little snack as it's moment to completely destroy me.
It would hit me with shame, with failure, with the sense that I couldn't even make it 24 hours without eating, then it would play it's trump card, "You've already fucked up" it would say "you might as well fuck up big."

And then I would basically turn into a werewolf and demolish the contents of my kitchen.
For a while I even stole food.

I already felt so guilty about what I was doing, it was my ED's reasoning to plan for the next day's atonement, while I was in the middle of a binge. My ED would make me eat every last crumb of something that wasn't mine, a roommate's, my Beard's, if I was at someone else's house, sometimes an entire box of cereal or a container of ice cream that even while I was doing it, I knew would get me in trouble. Someone was bound to find out and force me to face the consequences. My ED was counting on that shame to start the cycle over again, because it was shame that kept me fasting the next day.

My head was always blurry with these three voices. They constantly fought for dominion.
My ED wanted to rule. My common sense (what I now recognize was my body's natural hunger and fullness cues) was trying so hard to tell me what I needed as an organism, and my own voice, that felt silenced and unimportant compared to the others.

In the thirteen years that this disorder ruled my life, I never ate anything because I was hungry, because I wanted to, because it looked good.
Food was a loaded weapon, and I viewed it as the enemy. Either to be avoided at all costs, or used ritualistically to hurt myself.

It didn't matter what I did, my interaction with food never changed, and that's because my needs as a human being never changed.

I needed to eat to survive, and I was denying myself the means to do so.
It was that simple.
I overcomplicated it to the point of madness.
I raced around and around in my head trying to figure out
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME?
But in the end, it was the simplest thing of all.

I was fighting my body, and my body knew what was best for me.

Imagine caring for your body is like taking care of the cutest, sweetest puppy in the whole world.
It loves everything about life.
It wants to play, to go outside and romp around.
It hates being too cold, too wet, or too hot.
It loves eating when it's hungry because food tastes good, especially when it's full of the things you need most at that moment, protein or carbohydrates, fat and sugar, or vitamins and minerals.
The fact is, you would never deny a puppy food to punish it.
Even if it pooped on your floor every day.
Even if it bit your ankles, chewed your shoes, and tipped over the trash at every opportunity.
It would never occur to you to do something so cruel as to deny the creature food as punishment.
You might use other methods to discipline the animal, but because you love it, because it's just a baby doing what babies do, you never think to actually, willfully hurt it, which is what starving it would be.

Now apply this to your body.

This was a revolutionary concept to me.

I couldn't learn.
I couldn't improve.
I couldn't just be a better version of myself.
Because I was using food as a means of reward and punishment, which it has no business being.

I had to take everything I had taught myself about the meaning of food and throw it out the window.
My body was an adorable puppy, and when my stomach growled, it was the same as that puppy scratching at an empty food dish.

It may sound silly, but this metaphor saved my life.

When I started thinking of my body as something that deserved my care, something that I was put in charge of and deserved to be treated as well as it could be, I stopped hurting myself on purpose.

And that meant listening for those tummy growls.

It had been so long since I had actually responded to my body's hunger and fullness cues that it took me a really long time to be able to understand them. I had to look and listen for the obvious physical symptoms, because the more subtle ones couldn't get through to my brain at first.

If my stomach growled,
I ate something.
I reached for the thing that looked the best to me at that moment.
If it was a yogurt and a banana, then that's what I ate.
If it was tortilla chips and salsa, then that's what I ate.
If it was chocolate chips, then that's what I ate.
Nothing was off limits, it just had to be the honest answer to the question: What do you want the most right now?
If the answer was a glass of water, then I drank that, waited ten minutes, and if my stomach growled again, then I asked the question again.
I kept doing it.
And every time I finished eating the thing, I took ten minutes and then I asked, are you still hungry?
If the answer was yes, then I went back and got another thing.
If the answer was no, then I didn't
If the answer was, I can't tell, then I waited ten minutes more and asked again.
But there were never any foods off limits, and there was never a 'wrong' time to eat.

So for a long time, my body was confused.
It formed weird habits.
It craved foods I had previously denied myself.
I ate a lot of chocolate and peanut butter because those were huge trigger foods for me.

Then one day, I reached for the bag of chocolate chips, and my body said, "no, that's not what I want."
So I waited.
And instead, it directed me to the bananas, and the peanut butter, and the bread.
I made a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and it was exactly what I wanted.
And I didn't feel like I had to eat the rest of the peanut butter with a spoon afterwards because I knew that it was there if I wanted to do that. The question was, would that make me feel good? Was that really what my body wanted me to do?

Last night,
the baby got me up at 11pm. We'd been asleep for about two hours, and he wanted to nurse.

Since I've been going to bed early with the baby, my schedule's kept me away from my trigger time (the deep dark hours of night).
I've been either too tired to think about eating, too lazy, or not hungry.

Last night, I could see the trigger moment coming toward me as clearly as a pothole in the road.

I thought to myself:
It is 11pm.
Nobody is awake.
My stomach growled.
My ED said, "You should go binge on something you would not allow yourself today," which ten years ago, would have been everything, but the magic of listening to my body meant that I had an answer for it.
"But I allowed myself everything today. There's nothing I missed out on, or need to make up for."
My ED got quieter, "Yes, but..."
Instead, I asked my body, "Hey puppy, what sounds good to you right now?"
My body said, "The sweet potato pie leftover in the fridge from thanksgiving."
I said, "Okay."

So I got myself a slice of pie.
I had some plain yogurt in a container, and I liked the idea of a nice, tart, cool counterpart to the sweet richness of the pie, so I plopped a blob on top of the pie.

I ate it slowly, while the baby nursed, enjoying the feeling of the food filling my stomach.
I drank a glass of water, and about half an hour later, I went back to bed, and I slept wonderfully.

I remembered, as I lay there, the baby snoring next to me, how in the depths of my ED, I used to never be able to sleep when I was hungry, and then I was never able to sleep when I binged.
Both ways, I was so uncomfortable that all I could do was think obsessively about why why why I was doing this to myself.

Last night, I had a nice, happy tummy. I didn't feel overfull, and I didn't feel hungry.

I felt content.

And I fell back to sleep in no time flat.

EIGHT REAL REASONS TO BE HAPPY WHILE EVERYONE AROUND YOU FREAKS OUT

I recently read an article on a site that I should know better than to read (Ravishly).
It was titled 8 Things to Make You Feel Better About How Terrible The World Is.

In typical fluff piece fashion it included things like babies and puppies (yes, seriously). In delving for more emotional depth it cited clean water, food, and the internet (well duh, privilege of any kind is a creature comfort when times are scary), and then it got desperate and started listing things like full jars of nutella and leggings (dear god could we stop assuming all women want to do to feel better is binge eat their feelings?).

Now that I've pissed off a ton of people who love Ravishly, puppies, and cookie dough for dinner, I would like to counterpoint with 8 real things to make you feel better about how terrible the world is.

I'm going to avoid the obvious things like food, shelter, and family, because they are not givens for everyone, and even people who don't have the luxury of affordable healthy groceries and who might have to feed their kids mac and cheese, or people who had to move back in with their parents because they lost their jobs, or people who don't speak to their families due to abuse and trauma, or flat out loss, deserve to feel better during a time period when it seems like every adult I know has abandoned reason and logic and decided to hide under the bed.

1. People Are Actually Helping People
There are a shit ton of people supporting the effort to stop the DAPL.
If you would like to feel a little better about the world and can afford to donate, this is a great link to do so
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/help-standing-rock-sioux-dakota-access-pipeline_us_583480c9e4b000af95eca013?

If you are not in a position to afford to donate take a moment, realize that there is a multi-billion dollar corporation trying to do something truly horrible. It is being supported by the local law enforcement, BUT IT IS STILL BEING FOUGHT. The little guy, the guy who just wants clean drinking water for his family and respect for his sacred land, is standing tall right now and refusing to back down, and people are FLOCKING TO AID THE LITTLE GUY. If you can't be one of the flock, then appreciate that even though times are scary, people are still bonding together in the face of evil. This is a brave and beautiful example of human courage.
Take ten minutes, close your eyes, sit in a quiet room, and send them good vibes.
It may sound silly, but it's not. The people fighting the DAPL need good energy as much as they need everything else we can send them. So take a part of your day and direct good energy to them. It is a real, non-monetary, viable way of helping, and it should make you feel better too.

2. We Are Making a Difference
China is reducing it's air pollution.
This may sound distant and unrelated, but think about it.
Bejing has consistently ben reported to have the worst air quality in the entire world, but in 2015 there was a 16% drop in the most deadly air pollution over the city.

Read more in this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/china-air-pollution-2014_us_568e592ce4b0a2b6fb6ecb73

I find this heartening because if we can reverse something as precious as the poisoning of our air, then we can reverse a lot of environmental damage.
The point is to contribute to the solution a little bit, every day, not to contribute to the problem.
It doesn't matter where you live, but do your part.
Recycle your recyclables.
Walk distances shorter than a mile rather than driving them (and as a bonus, save on gas, and get a wee bit of fresh air!)
Turn off your lights and electronics when you aren't using them.
Compost if you can, and if you don't have the yard to do so, find out if there's someone in your neighborhood who needs compost, or if there's a community garden to which you can bring your compostable waste. If you're as lucky as I am, perhaps your town has a community compost pick up that you can sign up for.
It's small, but it's helping, and helping makes us feel less powerless, and when we feel like we can make a difference, we feel less afraid.

3. Body Positivity is Hitting the Mainstream

If you've read anything on this blog, you know I am a huge supporter and proponent of the body positivity movement.
I believe, (shockingly, radically) that people (especially women who have historically been conditioned to hate their bodies) are not allowed to love themselves at any and every incarnation of their health and size, but they SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO LOVE THEMSELVES PERIOD.

Why make this my business?
Whose business isn't this?
Sorry about the double negative there. What I mean is, if you have a body, you deserve to love it. You deserve to feel good about that body. You deserve to care for that body, to give it pleasure, and to experience everything the world has to offer you through that body.
The hatred most people internalize toward their physiques is not natural. It's only been thanks to the advent of modern advertising to sell us the notion that our bodies and lives are lacking unless we purchase products that has undermined several generations of people from enjoying any sensual pleasures their body can provide.

Until now that is!

This article cites how body positivity is gaining momentum and hopefully predicates a return to people just loving the shit out of themselves for who they are, to which I say HIP HIP FUCKING HOORAY!
http://time.com/4437468/women-body-image-obesity/

If you want further inspiring proof of BOPO gaining momentum, check out

http://www.themilitantbaker.com/

http://www.ashleygraham.com/

http://www.refinery29.com/2016/09/123724/afropunk-topless-woman-double-mastectomy

4. This Election Was An Old Man's Game. The Future Looks Better.

Hey, we know you're depressed about the President Elect. So am I.
But it was overwhelmingly the baby boomers who came out and put their ballots toward the fascist cheeto.
Millenials showed a strong Democratic majority with 1 in 10 18-29 year olds placing a third party vote.
This means that in the years to come, as the racist dinosaurs die out (and no, I'm not hating on baby boomers at large, just the overwhelming majority of them that put that troglodyte on the path to the white house), our generation will take the majority, and the stats say that we're all a hell of a lot more interested in a better future rather than a "great" regression.
And remember, millenials already outnumber baby boomers population wise so if we can nut up and show up in 2020, we can get back on a path that makes sense for this country.

Read more about it here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-09/what-this-election-taught-us-about-millennial-voters

5. There's More Coverage, but Violent Crimes Are Actually in Decline

It's easy with facebook's evil little headers, and the huffpo's leading headlines, along with the constant connectivity of modern life to feel overwhelmed by the violence and awfulness in this country, but homicides have actually declined in the last twenty years.

This is in no way supposed to overshadow or "make up for" the number of police brutality deaths, the misuse of power, the number of murders, or any time a human has used a gun to take the life of another human, but this article put things into perspective.

I don't know about anyone else, but back in the 90's the news was on in my house for an hour every night, and it was scary, and it was dark, but after that hour, we turned it off, and carried on with our lives.
I can't comment on whether or not it's better to be in the dark about the state of the world or whether blissful ignorance is a better state of being, but I can say that my parents were no less informed during that time period, and they weren't being bludgeoned by headlines designed as "clickbait" every time they turned the tv on. Every website, every social media outlet we log into, is trying to sell us the newest, freshest most dramatic horrible thing it can come up with, and if you're logging into a site several times a day, you're getting hit with horrible news that many times, so is it any wonder that we feel like things are so much worse than they really are?

I repeat, I'm not downplaying any of the violence that is or has occurred this year, I am only offering this article as a means to pose the idea that maybe things aren't the worst they've ever been, and we can take a breath.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/08/why-america-feels-so-violent-right-now/


6. Last Year Americans Were Record-Breakingly Generous

It may be a goofy thing to take note of, but in 2015 Americans were the most generous and charitable they had ever been.
https://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2016/

I don't know about you, but when I feel like all hope is lost, I like to see that people are still taking care of each other. While I know it's easy to say, "If I were rich, I'd give away tons of money," and it's much more difficult to reach into your pocket when you're say, clipping coupons, living paycheck to paycheck, or waiting on unemployment, but the fact of the matter is, it makes us feel good to help one another.
I've been truly inspired by folks who, rather than greet hatred with justifiable rage, are doing incredible things like buying dinner for their bigoted neighbors and then signing the check with their wishes for them to be more tolerant.
It's easy to get angry. It's easy to let a situation escalate, but the sourness, the leftover anger, and the wave of nauseating fear and guilt (just me?) that follows an altercation is never something that leaves us feeling better about the world.
If we show we can rise above, and keep looking out for one another, our moods alone will be brighter, more optimistic, and hopeful, and not only that, but perhaps we'll have made a difference to someone who was really struggling.


7. We Live In The Future

It's easy to take for granted.
iphones, iwatches, livestreaming, skype and facetime, online shopping, fitibits, and many other technological advances that are the norm today were inconceivable twenty years ago.
Maybe it's because I'm in my thirties, and I am dreading the day my kid looks at me and says
"Wait Mom, YOU WERE BORN BEFORE THERE WAS THE INTERNET?"
the same way I said to my parents,
"Wait, YOU WERE BORN BEFORE THERE WAS TELEVISION?"
It's crazy, but I say it, and I believe it. We live in the goddamn future.

If you take a look at any of the pop culture future touchstones of my childhood (Star Treks: Voyager and Deep Space Nine and Back to the Future), the crazed imaginings of those tv shows and films included things that seem ludicrous and funny now.

If you were to travel back in time to say 1996, however, and show the average person your iphone, they'd lose their mind!
A camera, phone, voice recorder, alarm, calendar, camcorder, stereo, digital library, with voice command and access to the worlds most expansive database?
They'd burn you as a witch in no time.

Every so often, think about that little flip phone you had about ten years ago. You know, the one that cost thirty cents a text, and think about how far we've come in just a decade.
It's pretty magical.

 http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/08/03/the-top-7-technology-trends-dominating-2016/#5b9bd961de34

8. Modern Medicine Has Never Been More Effective
Back in April, doctor's discovered a new drug that could help target cancer cells in Leukemia patients without also wiping out healthy cells and thusly making the patient horribly ill while undergoing treatment for their cancer.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/DrJohnson/story?id=117508&page=1

Along with this stunningly wonderful news 2 days ago this article was published in which scientists reveal they may have finally figured out a way to suppress the viral load in HIV positive patients to almost undetectable levels.

http://www.itechpost.com/articles/57635/20161124/cure-hiv-reduction-through-wonder-drug-now-possible-help-semen.htm

It will never cease to amaze me the leaps and bounds science takes every year in its efforts to treat the horrible diseases that plague we fragile humans.
It used to be a death sentence when the doctor gave you a cancer or and HIV diagnosis. I am so ecstatic to see the progress we are making against these illnesses. It seems not impossible that we will see viable cures within my lifetime, and that is something worth celebrating.

BONUS REASON:

Your Tribe Exists

This last one is a little hokey, but thanks to the magic of social media, and the somewhat endearing transparent trend of "letting one's freak flag fly" there is no reason why you, yes you, the person who feels incredibly alone and thinks there's nobody else out there like you in the whole wide world, can't find your tribe.
With the world wide web at your fingertips you can enter any interest you have and immediately be launched into a million different discussions about the finer points of your passion.

Before now, if you admitted you liked something gauche, you had to risk that you were going to get laughed out of the party by the neanderthals. But with the rise of popularity in things like Comic Cons, Horror Cons, hell even Rennaissance Fairs, and Rocky Horror fan clubs, there is no reason you can't get together with likeminded folks and revel in your collective weird.

I am not passing one iota of judgement.

In fact, if I had the time, I'd go to a couple of the events on this magical list:

http://costume.org/conventions.html

The point being, we live in an amazingly accepting age, with support, common interest groups, and conventions to suit every possible collection, hobby, tv or comic fandom, and enthusiast in existence.

In conclusion,
Here you have eight truly relevant reasons to be glad you live where you live right now in the time you are living.

It has never been a healthier, more friendly, generous, self accepting, hopeful time to be alive, and that's with all the stuff that people tell us is crappy going on!

Take heart, my friends.
We're all going to make it through this to that.

The Sleepy Following Stars Hollowing

Let's be honest.

We're all a little obsessive.

Some of us understand obsession is a necessary means to an end. When used correctly, it acts as drive, ambition, and  becomes the vision of the prize that keeps us working hard toward our dreams and aspirations. Without a little hint of obsession, we'd all be hummingbirds, zipping about never getting much accomplished.

There are others, however, who fall into the pit of obsession like an olympic diver.
We make a bunch of distracting arabesques and then slip silently into its depths with hardly a splash. In fact, we're so efficient, if you turn your head at the right moment, you'll miss our descent altogether and then wonder at how we can show up to the gatorade stand soaking wet.

I belong to that class of people mentioned in the latter paragraph.
I love a good obsession. When young, I equated obsession with passion, love, magic, creativity, and everything else good that I had no idea how to get hold onto.
As I got older, I realized it wasn't necessarily my friend, and for every extra mile it helped me run, paper it helped me finish, story it helped me conclude, or adventure it drove me to pursue, there was a number of nights I forfeited sleep and a decent meal; afternoons spent sobbing as I compared my progress to that of others in completely different circumstances of my own; events I should have enjoyed but instead spent fretting because I wasn't getting to do the thing I was obsessed with.

Since my child was born almost a year ago, I have had truck with a couple of obsessions.
Of course, I am obsessed with my baby. He's the best, so obviously, but there were also little side obsessions and those were and are how I keep my little brain buzzing during nightfeeds and teething tantrums.

I became obsessed with baking blogs: No surprise here. Once I went gluten free for the baby, I had to figure out how to sustain my muffin devotion (answer: creatively). I also liked the free wheat porn. Many a night I have had dreams of slow motion pizza slices and seductive donut burlesque.

I became obsessed with The Gilmore Girls: This may surprise no new mothers, but with a newborn/baby, I could not watch a movie or a television show that required any kind of attention span. I couldn't keep track of plot development, I never picked up on subtleties, nuances were lost on me, oscar worth performances went before my blurring eyes, and I began to hate everything on netflix. Stranger Things? Couldn't stand it. Why? Because it required attention, and I had none. All I could focus on was Winona Ryder's awful haircut and a strange new desire for eggo waffles. How I Met Your Mother, too noisy. No matter how low I had the volume, the jarring theme music woke up the sleeping baby, and I just couldn't risk it. Finally, one dismal midnight, I tried out the fast talking cutesy show set in Connecticut, and I HATED IT. Oh my goooooood how I hated it. The characters were so archetypical as to be insulting. The plots were transparent and boring. The relationships unrealistic, not to mention every single character is a variation of the exact same person. They all speak in the same vocabulary, cadence, and with the same over-educated sly referencing pretention, whether they were high school drop outs, octogenarians, blue collar workers, or societies elite, nobody had a distinguishing style.
At first, my hatred kept me going back, waiting for the show to reveal its "magic" the reason it became so phenomenally successful, but it never came. If nothing else, it got more boring as seasons continued constantly rehashing the same storylines and romantic interests. Then, one night, as I stuck a nip in the babe's face, I clicked on the show's episodes, and as it loaded, I saw i had somehow gotten all the way to the third season.
How had I watched forty odd episodes of something when I hated it, and more importantly, why couldn't I remember anything that had happened in them?
That's when it hit me, I could ignore it, and I didn't miss anything.
I could doze off while the baby nursed, blank out for fifteen minutes while I mentally composed the reasons Bastian could possibly be screaming so much. I could miss entire scenes, chunks of dialogue, and it never mattered.
I didn't care, and it was beautifully liberating.

I thought I was going to write a blog about how much the show is a giant, flagrant indication of everything wrong with our generation's white feminist movement: it's superficial, selfish, judgmental, and privileged. It purports itself to be for everyone when in reality it is very specifically designed for one demographic and its chardonnay swilling hoards.
Then I realized, it's not who watches the show and likes it, it's WHY they like it.
When I am capable of paying attention, I enjoy watching this version of a New England town the way I think people attend Disney's Epcot, knowing it's an utter forgery, that the characters are buffoons and caricatures (not to mention insulting stereotypes), and still taking a moment to marvel at the dedication to the flawed vision, not to mention pitying the ludicrousness of the facade that must be maintained.
I fear more for the show's devotees who love it in earnest. Who say they are "such a Rory" or some poor guy they know is "a total Dean." It makes me want to remind people that just because you are watching something does not mean you have to accept it's message.
In fact, as an independently thinking individual, it's important to engage with media (especially fictional media) with a shrewd and analytical mind. I'm not saying you can't just enjoy something for entertainment value, but don't forget to ask yourself why do I like this? Or What is the reason I keep coming back to this? Do I identify with a character or a storyline? Is it escapism from my completely serious life into a completely non-serious confectionary reality?

What keeps you coming back?
Usually I have to either think a story is fascinating, the characters are so clever and interesting I want to see what they'll do next, or I can't actually predict what is going to happen.
With GG, there has yet to be an episode whose storyline a seventh grader couldn't see coming a mile away, and so for me to tune out, or go braindead for ten minutes, I never miss anything critical, and when I return, there's always some pretty postcardy new englandness and some chatter warm and benign as a hollandaise sauce waiting to envelop some eggs and an english muffin and lie to me about it all being very distinguished and fancy.

I'm sure there are people who will read this who genuinely enjoy the program, and who will be super mad that I write about it so derisively, especially when the long awaited reunion that fans have been slobbering over is about to be released this Friday. I say to them,
"I do not fault you your enthusiasm. As someone who was made fun of for being obsessed with a lot of things deemed 'not cool' in her life, far be it from me to judge you one iota, but if you haven't stopped reading this yet and decided we can never be friends, let your take away be this:
Always ask yourself why you like something, and force yourself to answer. Sometimes it's not at all the reasons we think it is, and often we can surprise ourselves by what the investment in our favorite entertainment can reveal about our current emotional state."

Never let your obsessions go unchecked, lest they say something about you you are not willing to admit.

Crow! It's what's for Breakfast.

I have about 5 followers on Twitter.

Because of the lack of exposure, I tend to be a little more blunt on twitter. Nobody's paying attention, I think, I may as well say something incendiary, something a little naughty, a little more daring.

I mean, nobody's been paying attention for the last five years, who could possibly be looking now?

So last night, after spending about an hour on Instagram looking at accounts ranging from the super body positive and incredibly encouraging to the magnificently stylized ones that generally make me feel like crap about myself, I started thinking.

Now, we all know that thinking gets you into trouble in general, but let's add to that the fact that I was on my way to falling asleep with a baby nursing at my side, and I had a kind of long and emotional day (thanks to some shitty personal biz), and I just started thinking about all the things that women are sold to make themselves seem unnaturally pretty.

I thought about how acrylic finger nails, hair extensions, false eyelashes, photoshop phone apps, tummy control leggings, make up and all the other stuff marketed toward women by images that tell them if they leave the house in their "natural state" they aren't "good enough".

I realize this is my personal opinion.
I realize this is my personal opinion as a white, cis-gendered female, with a history of low self esteem.

I wasn't thinking about that though when I lazily pulled up my twitter account and decided to write the words:

Dear Women,
Fake eyelashes, hair extensions, and acrylic nails 
are another way of saying 'I don't think I'm enough.'

I typed it because it was what I felt at that moment.
It was what I wish someone would say to me at that moment.

I was thinking I would say something along the lines of,
"Hey Girl, I know it's difficult to feel good enough about yourself in this world without a whole industry designed to sell you shit to make you look slightly better telling you that you need a bunch of items to accentuate what you naturally have already because that's not good enough."

But you know, 140 characters, tiredness, pigheadedness, whatever.
That's not what I typed.

I fell asleep and forgot I wrote the tweet.

Around three in the morning, when my baby got me up, I was settling him down, and I thought I'd diddle with the social media again to pass the time. I opened up Twitter and I was shocked. I had 17 notifications.

Again, I would like to repeat how few people actually follow me on there. 17 notifications is a big deal when you're used to oh...none.

So I curiously swiped through them, and I was shocked and dismayed when I saw that they were all from various people telling me what a jerk I was.

I looked at my tweet.

Yeah...it was a bit rude...

Then I looked at the responses.
One was a woman in the beauty industry who was angry because without things like false eyelashes, acrylics, and hair extensions, she'd be out of job.
Another was a feminist who very eloquently said I had no right to tell anyone what they do with their body, male, female, or otherwise.
Another was a person who quite simply posted a video of Kristen Bell flipping someone off.
Shut the fuck up. They said.

And you know what...

They were right.

I should have realized.
No matter how few your followers are,
no matter how ignored you feel,
your words matter, especially when discussing something as delicate as what women use to tell themselves "I am enough".

As long as they aren't hurting anyone, whatever anybody does to make themselves feel good is really none of my business.

I thought about how I have friends who've gone through chemo, who lost all their hair and for whom wigs and false eyelashes are a way of reminding themselves of their natural beauty.
I thought about how insensitive I was to those women.
I thought about children with Alopecia and how they deserve to wear whatever makes them feel better.
I thought about how there is no excuse to make anyone else feel bad about what they decide to do with their bodies. I mean, I've been calling myself a feminist since the 10th grade! This is stuff I already know! And yet, in the face of my own insecurities I decided to pass judgment, glib, unfair, prejudiced judgment. How many people have I seen do this exact same thing? Hundreds, and I've been disgusted by them.
I have stood next to girls who refuse to shave their legs, boys who love eyeliner, non-gender conforming individuals who practice self care and beauty regimens they have developed like armor to shield and protect themselves so that when they walk down the street, they feel good about themselves regardless of who does or does not approve.

I am so proud of anyone and everyone brave enough to wear and walk their truth, and far be it from me to tell them anything.

What I should have said in my tweet was that I felt the current standard of beauty put forth by the media in this country is impossible for the majority of women to reach.

What I should have said that the cult of youth, and the pressure to look a certain way are bogus measurements of anyone's worth.

What I should have said was that I am a human who has struggled with feeling like I am never going to be 'enough' and that sometimes means I pass judgement on people who adhere to that standard of beauty. I am not speaking for anybody else, just me, and sometimes I am wrong.

What's funny is my previous tweet (before the one that got the negative attention) was about how I wanted to see Dustin Hoffman's Hook and Bette Midler's Winnie Sanderson do battle, so if that's any reference point for how clever I think I am, there you go.

Anyway, I just wanted to say, I'm not going to delete the offending tweet because I think that would be easy. It would also be cowardly. I said something without thinking, and it ticked people off.
I feel awful about this, but it even hurt some people's feelings.

It stays up as a reminder to me not to be so glib, not to be so judgmental, and not to take for granted that even when you have very few people paying attention to what you say, you should never take for granted that those people deserve every consideration you would like given to yourself, your loved ones, your children.

Thanks for keeping me honest.

Survival of the Species

Today I want to talk about change.

I remember when my parents told us we were moving to America.
I was eight years old. I was nearing the end of Year 3 at my school. I was friends with every girl in my class, and I loved my life. I loved swim team. I loved birthday parties. I loved my house on the hill with the big tire swing and the dead tree. I loved my puppy, Shelly, and I loved the games I could play with my sisters roaming around the countryside where we lived.
The idea of leaving all of that to go someplace new, someplace foreign, where the people talked in strange, harsh sounding consonants, ate weird food, and called most things different names. A place where you didn't wear a uniform to go to school, and school had girls AND BOYS (GASP!). A place that had snow, and long winters, and strange wildlife that was all either brown or grey instead of the myriad colors I was used to. There were no kookaburras to laugh outside my window in the morning in America. There was no vegemite for toast.
There also was no other option.

I remember the month of preparation as a blur. We sold our house, almost all our furniture. We got rid of dishes I had eaten my first bites of food off of. We gave Shelly away to a family who could care for her. I said tearful goodbyes to my friends and my classmates. I remember getting on the plane and my parents telling us over and over that this wasn't the end, it was a transition. It was an adventure. It was change, and change was hard, but you ended up better afterward, stronger, wiser, and you knew something you couldn't possibly know before; you knew you could survive it.

For months after we moved to the states I would just sit in my room and cry. I went to bed and dreamed I was back in my room in Australia, the sweet smell of gum trees and pine pitch wafting through the window, then I would wake up, and I would realize where I really was, and it all seemed like a terrible joke.
My sister tried to run away. She'd get angry and pack a bag and just take off. She always swore she was going back home. Only once did she get as far as the on ramp for the highway. Then she turned around and came home. We know this, because my mother confessed -years later- that she had followed Alex in backyards and bushes the whole way to make sure she was all right. She watched her daughter wondering when she would have to jump out and stop her, and then the little girl decided on her own to go back, and she had to run to beat her back to the house.

It was a tough time for our family. The career opportunity that had convinced my Dad to pack up his family and take them halfway across the world dried up, and we were left in less than ideal financial circumstances. We had to move to Canada to be closer to my Mum's family while we figured things out, got back on our feet, and came back to America when I was thirteen.

I had a really hard time accepting the election results on Wednesday.
Like a lot of folks, I had assumed that the country was going to be divided, but it couldn't possible go in the direction that it did. I assumed that there couldn't be that many hateful people to vote. I assumed we were safe.

Over the past few days, as the reality of the next four years has settled in, I have thought about this new future and I have felt a kind of groundless, stomach churning fear I hadn't felt since that day, when at eight years of age, I stepped aboard my first plane to leave the place where I'd been born forever, and to trust that the future was a place I could accept, even if I was determined not to like it.

The most important thing I brought with me from Australia to the States was my family. It's corny, but we could use some well intentioned corniness right now, and it's true.
I remember my Dad saying houses weren't homes unless the people you loved were there. I remember my Mother saying we could be scared of this new world, and we could have all the problems in the world adjusting, but we had each other, and we loved each other and that was a lot more than most people had.

To this day, I attribute my ability to adapt, to go with the flow, to change plans on the turn of a dime, to this huge event in my life. I also attribute to it, my desire to survive, my desire to hold onto what really matters when times get hard, my insistence that love is the most courageous act a person can do.

Here we are, America. The world we knew is shattered. We can never go back there.
In this new world, there is much to be feared, there is much we need to prepare for, to learn, and to arm ourselves both with knowledge, but also with kindness, with compassion, and with love.

So I am concentrating on that.
I am concentrating on taking the best care of my family and my tribe in this new place. I am concentrating on accepting that this decision changes everything about this environment, but it does not change who I am, what matters to me, and what I will or will not tolerate.

I can adapt. I can evolve. I can hold fast, batten down the hatches, dig deep, and make due.
I can get through this to that.
I can accept that this decision was made without my permission and that it does not reflect my goals, values, or ideals. It is not easy, but I can accept this.

But know this,
you must accept that i am very very strong and very very clever, and I am resourceful, and I will use all of my power, my mind, and my love to withstand this change. I am determined to get to the other side of this with my loved ones and my dignity. I want to be able to look myself in the face in the mirror and say, "I am proud of you."
I am one of many who will do this.
I am one of millions who will emanate love and healing in the face of this change.
And I am living proof that this approach makes us stronger.
I am living proof that we will survive this, and learn from it to make sure that the next big change doesn't surprise us. In fact I am living proof that the next big change will be on my terms, our terms, the terms of love.

Hold fast.
Dig deep.
Make Due.
Batten down the hatches.
And love love love, in all the tiny and majestic ways that you can, love ferociously, love heroically, love incessantly, and without fear.
Love is how we change for the better.

Pantsuit Fever

Can I take a minute to talk about NOT THE ELECTION?
Cool...
So, I'm going to assume that if you're one of the three people who read this blog (hi mom!) you probably know what you're doing Tuesday. You have either read a lot of stuff and avoided as much hoopla as possible; or perhaps you ate up every last crumb of hoopla, watched all of the debates in a cloud of disbelief, and still have no idea.
The first and last serious thing I will say about it is,
Please vote. Just show up and do it. Please.

Anyhoo, so the important topic.

Pantsuits.
Specifically HRC's Pantsuits (capitalization required).

There's been a lot of commentary on the Pantsuits, a lot of joking, a lot of friendly ribbing about their many colors, styles, and shoulder pad presence.
There's been the use of the Pantsuit as parody, as symbol, as solidarity, and as goofy fashion choice.
What nobody seems to be acknowledging is this:

WHAT THE FUCK ELSE IS SHE SUPPOSED TO WEAR?

Think about it.
When you're a male politician, you wear a suit.
You pick your color. You pick your tie. If you're feeling dapper, you have a pocket square. Maybe you choose a tighter fit, or a skinnier tie, or a single breast or a double breast. Maybe you get a slim leg trouser or a wide leg. Perhaps you get daring and go for pinstripes. There's lapel width to consider, collar starch levels, cuff links versus buttons, etc.

The point is. When you are a male politician, you wear a suit. One might even call it the official uniform of the position.
So why is it so weird that this woman who is running for President would wear a suit?

 Why is it her Pantsuit, which has not changed much in the way of style but only in color, is the strange emblem of her candidacy?
Remember back in '08 when Obama was running for his historic role as the leader of the free world, and that amazing Shepard Fairey Hope Poster became his emblem? It represented hope and possibility. It became parodied, satirized, and ubiquitous in the same way as the Pantsuit, but it was a portrait of the man! It showed a serious contender for this role in the country's future. While not commissioned by the campaign the work of art obtained approval from Obama and became a symbol of the change this country was ready for. Wasn't there even a facebook app or something so you could change your profile picture to match the style of the poster?

Now, eight years later, we have another historic candidate running for the position. She has set her sights on becoming the first woman president, and I don't know...maybe it's because she's older than Obama, not as sexy (let's be honest sex sells everything), and has spent a considerable amount of time in the political limelight already for good or for worse, but the symbol chosen for her campaign is her OUTFIT. Her clothing, people. What the ever loving hell?

This is a wee opinion piece. It is not meant to convince anyone on whom to cast their ballot this Tuesday, but I believe the subject is a reflection of a serious discrepancy between two historic candidates.

But Jess! You might be yelling, the unofficial Trump emblem is his hair! The unofficial Bernie emblem was his receding hairline and glasses! These things are superficial too!

They are, yes, but there's been a long history of presidential candidates physicality being used both for or against them as suitable for the job. There's also this amazing thing that men are allowed to do in our society which is insist that their looks don't contribute to their ability to do a job, something women applying for employment anywhere are still somehow not allowed to do.
Sure, Trump's hair is parodied, but like Clinton, he's kind of embraced the the circus. Besides, it's been his look for decades.

HRC came to the Pantsuit game when she got serious about her public image as a politician. As FLOTUS she sort of put a nineties spin on the Jackie O wardrobe sporting matching jackets and skirts in many hues. She wore respectable hemlines and big sunglasses, pastels and boucle, but almost always a skirt. Funnily, if you compare HRC's wardrobe to anyone else's the closest political match is Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister. Hmmmm...

Yet, since pursuing her own political career became the Clintons' goal, she has shifted to the suit.
Yes, just suit.
Why not Pantsuit?
Because last time I checked all suits came with pants. All of them, and being, as previously established, a suit is the unofficial uniform of the serious politician, what else was she going to wear if she wanted to be taken seriously?

If you enter the words Hillary Clinton Pantsuit into Google, your top search results are how much they cost, followed immediately by commentary on their variety of colors, and in third place an article on PopSugar addressing their Glamour.

Tell me, in the history of any Presidential candidate, have we ever demanded to know how much the dude was paying for his Armani?
Don't tell me Trump is showing up to a debate in a $400 Brooks Brothers situation, and how much were Obama's suits? George W.'s?
Nope. Nobody gives a crap if Joe Biden's wardrobe cost more than the annual budget of Iceland, but the minute a woman takes the stage as a serious political contender, all roads go directly to her clothes.

Personally, I don't care if the President wears a foil hat and a pair of leather chaps if he or she can do a decent job running the country.

Women police officers, women in the military, women in uniforms are assuming a position with a certain image to uphold. They don the clothing to maintain the authority, respect, and dignity of the position they hold. When a woman runs for President, it makes perfect sense for her to wear the uniform of the position for all those same reasons. Color, style, fit, cut, none of it has any more impact on her platforms than the little U.S. Flag pin on her lapel.

All the discussion of the Pantsuits does is reduce another powerful, professional woman to her fashion choices, which has always served as a great way to undermine any real potential of her being taken seriously. We can't possibly have a woman President! I mean, look at her!
Imagine how much flack she would have received if she'd kept wearing skirts? Nobody would take her seriously. She's be lambasted for "using her sexuality to sway votes" as if Obama shooting hoops in a dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up didn't make excellent use of his figure...

Anyway, while I understand people like the Pantsuit as symbol (I'm With Her flashmob reference anyone?), it saddens me that with so many slogans, images, and emblems to choose from in this historic race, the woman candidate has been boiled down to her boiled wool.

Maybe we should be looking at her resume, rather than her jacket label?
Just a thought.

The Day I Became A Stereotype

Back when the babe was first old enough to play, do tummy time, and wasn't spending ten hours a day screaming with colic, I made a few goals/rules.
I was going to do as much stimulating, educational play as I could with him, at the very least three separate hour long sessions. We would not turn the television on during the day. I would only turn it on after 6pm, and then , only when he was nursing so it didn't damage his brain too much.
I was going to eat three balanced meals a day with him to encourage him to have healthy eating habits, and hopefully never develop the disordered relationship to food I struggled with for so long.

So my days are a lot less like my goals and a lot more like this.

5am-Baby wakes up and starts climbing and squealing. I rush him out of the bed before he can disturb my Beard too much, because he has to get up and go to work in an hour and a half. I sit at the computer and nurse the baby for forty five minutes or so, an episode of Supernatural on Netflix, typically.
5:45am: We rug up and take the dog out.

6am: I put the babe in his high chair with a toy while I make him breakfast, usual a few spoonfuls of pureed fruit and oatmeal. Between feeding bites of mush, I drink half a pot of coffee.

7am: I put the baby in the Pack and Play. He screams for ten minutes then sits and amuses himself for twenty. This cycle repeats for an hour. I scramble to use this hour to do work. The herrband leaves for work in there somewhere.

8am: I put the baby in his bouncer and shower. Sometimes I am ambitious and try to do mommy and me yoga videos from youtube. It's usually about ten minutes of frustration trying to keep the cat away from the baby and the baby away from stuffing whatever hideous thing he's pulled out of the carpet into his mouth. As soon as the big tears start and the howling begins I know it's nap time.

Nap time is my chance to get errands done and fresh air.
I strap the babe into the ergo, put my wet hair up in a bun and grab anything I can think of that needs doing, bills that need to be posted, library books that need returning, money traded for laundry quarters, whatever. I have to remember what it is while the baby struggles against the carrier and yells and sticks his fingers up my nose and in my eyes because he is crankiest right before napping.

I run out the door. Is the baby wearing a hat?
No.
Fuck.
I run back.
Put hat on baby.
Did I lock the door?
I have no idea.
I'm not going back.
If we get robbed we get robbed. I don't care anymore.

About ten minutes down the street, the baby falls into a heavy sleep, and I breathe a sigh of relief. I run my errands. If I'm feeling fancy, I buy a latte or a chai. I walk by the ocean and berate myself for not enjoying autumn more. I think about all the things I should be doing but am not. I wonder how I'm supposed to get a real job after taking a year off with the baby in a country that insists doing so indicates my laziness and unworthiness of gainful employment. I work myself up to and talk myself out of several panic attacks. Sometimes I call my Dad for help with that.

10am: Home again. The baby wakes.
Shit.
I haven't eaten anything yet today, and after all that coffee and running around I am ravenous.
Bung a banana and a yoghurt into the blender with a handful of twigs or cardboard bits or unidentifiable green shredded thingies scraped out of corners of freezer.
Drink concoction and chase it with large spoonful of peanut butter eaten directly from jar, all while baby is hanging from nipple.

Baby is really awake now and requires attention.
11am: try to do another hour's worth of work while he screams and briefly entertains himself in Pack and Play.

Noon: Strap baby back in high chair. Feed him puffs, sometimes bits of banana, or spoonfuls of yoghurt. Enjoy having my skin all to myself for ten minutes.
Herrband calls to check in. He reminds me of several things I was supposed to do today and have completely forgotten about (calling pediatrician to switch appointment date, email his mother about baby's changing clothing size, cancel this subscription to that thing). By the time the phone call and the reminding is done, I have a choice, get more work done while baby naps at boob (because he refuses to sleep anywhere else), or strap him back into the carrier and run out the door for another hour.
The decision always ends up being whatever gets the most done. If I need to do more work, then it's boob time. If I need to get groceries, or if the Beard has reminded me of an errand that I forgot to take care of that morning, then on goes the baby and out the door I fly.
A couple of times a week, I actually have nothing more to get done of a grown up nature, and I get to meet up with a friend. We get coffee, or lunch, and we walk a bit. If the baby wakes up, we play with him and I feel significantly less subhuman and lonely.
Most of my friends are still childless, however, and have exciting lives. I'm often by myself with the baby from the moment the herrband leaves until he walks through the door. There are some days that go by so quickly it's all I can do to keep up. Other days, I find myself sitting in front of the television, pinned down by a slumbering, nursing baby. I've already done everything I can think of, and my sleep deprived brain is rapidly disintegrating. I am physically incapable of napping, so I put on a movie.

I can't focus on the movie about half the time I'm watching it though because I am having terrible guilt about how none of my parenting goals have been accomplished. I am exposing my kid to too much screen time. I am not contributing enough to our household financially. I grocery shop twice a week. Food costs are stupefyingly high and somehow we still have a completely empty fridge, and I don't even buy organic!
I should buy organic anyway.
My kid is going to have three eyeballs because I am feeding him GMO infected, pesticide soaked food.
My kid is going to have three eyeballs, breasts, and be addicted to screens, and we will most likely be destitute and homeless all before his second birthday because I am a horrendous mother.
I decide I am the worst.
Sometimes this decision prompts me to read a chapter in a book I should have finished reading months ago, back when I read books quickly because I could concentrate on something for longer than three minutes. Most of the time, though, I just silently berate myself while the movie plays.
If there is any food nearby me, I inhale it because sitting still will always remind me how hungry I am. It could be a bag of chips, a bowl of fruit, or a thanksgiving turkey, if it's within arm's reach, I will destroy it.

I have become a stereotype I think.
I read the mommy blogs. I watch the clever Buzzfeed videos. I know it's all designed to make legions of women feel less guilty about not being able to live up to the shining paradigm of motherhood the media brainwashes us is the expected norm.
We're all supposed to be wearing leggings, embracing our postpartum bodies, letting our hormone addled emotions fly, whether we're in public or screaming unreasonably at our partners.
We're supposed to drink obscene quantities of coffee and joke about how we don't remember the last time we showered. We're supposed to go to yoga classes, but be terrible at them.
There's this terrifying mediocrity we're meant to aspire toward. This flawed ideal that can't be too flawed, but can't be too perfect because then you're not likable.
And maybe that's why I struggle with it so much.

I can't stand not showering. I really miss running when the weather is nice.
I hate how cloudy I feel when I'm really sleep deprived, and I hate how forgetful it makes me.
I am struggling with intuitive eating and listening to my body's cues because my body's cues do not take precedent over my baby's needs. This means that occasionally I find myself standing in front of my kid while he plays in the high chair funneling a bag of tortilla chips into my mouth because I forgot to eat all day.
Afterwards, the flush and rush of shame is the same as it always was when I was bingeing and restricting as a lifestyle, but I have to breathe and tell myself that it was my body's natural response to the situation and I am not going to go back into the depths of my ED just because I ate a bag of chips.
Then of course, I realize the baby has been screaming for the last ten minutes because he threw his spoon to the dog, (oh shit, did I remember to feed the dog today?) his diaper is wet, and I have been having a self hatred/self love stand off instead of being caretaker.

I soak in my guilt as I clean him up and change him and pour extra dog food in the bowl.

A lot of times, I can't fall asleep at night because of how guilty I feel.
Please tell me I'm not alone in this.

I'm so tired. I waited all day to be lying in the dark with my baby, in my bed. I have a solid four hours before he'll wake me up, and I. CAN'T. SLEEP.
My brain races through the day's activities playing them over and over and correcting all the decisions I made that it deems shitty.

That bill you were going to pay? You forgot it.
You watched The Little Prince instead of a documentary on climate change while the baby slept.
You didn't do the laundry.
You forgot to email your mother in law.
You baked cookies instead of making a proper lunch for the baby and let him eat cheerios while you had a hot cookie and a cup of tea for the first time in six months.
You didn't go outside.
You forgot the baby's hat when you went outside.
You got mad at your one friend who made plans with you because she forgot and scheduled a dentist's appointment for the one hour your baby was going to let you hang out with her. You want to forgive her because you would have done the exact same thing pre-baby.
You will never forgive her because you'd been looking forward to talking in full sentences to an actual grown up all week.
You picked a fight with your husband just because you missed him so much.

Sigh.

I finally fall asleep after looking at instagram for an hour to find inspiration for the baby's first birthday cake.
I am already dreaming about the cup of coffee I'll make myself in the morning.

Baby's First Halloween

For the first eight years of my life, I lived in Australia, where I hear now Halloween is actually somewhat celebrated. In the early eighties however it was not, and my mother (Canadian by birth and transplanted by marriage) was dreadfully homesick for this North American holiday.
I remember clearly my mother trussing me and my sisters up for the end of October, though it made no sense to me as a little kid, I thought it was just another reason to play dress up, and I wasn't going to complain. My Mum even went around to the neighbors and asked that they have a couple of treats on hand for her kids so when we marched up their steps and bawled "Trick or treat!" at the tops of our lungs, there were freddos and caramello koalas to flop into our pillow cases.

It never really made sense to me though. My mother didn't insist on cooking a turkey at Thanksgiving, and she didn't seem to mind that it was hot at Christmastime, but Halloween she missed, and so she went to all this trouble to enjoy it with her bewildered offspring.

It wasn't until we moved to Canada in the early nineties that I understood the torch she carried for the holiday. We weren't wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, and we lived in the middle of nowhere-seriously, our bus ride to school was an hour each way; we were the last stop-but my Dad made a bunch of scarecrows, and we constructed costumes out of the dress up box and trick or treated down a street about a two miles away. Yes. We only trick or treated one street. Because we lived so far away from civilization, there were probably only a dozen or so kids who trick or treated in the area, and so the adults would give you a ridiculous amount of candy. After about eight houses, we'd barely be able to lift our bags.

These are some of my fondest halloween memories. Even though in Canada, you had to wear longjohns under your costume and there was the chance that the festivities might be cut short due to snow, I remember how some people decorated their houses so elaborately they felt like real haunted houses, with huge figures bent over steaming cauldrons, twinkling orange lights, flashing strobes, sticky spiderwebs, and speakers crackling with haunted house noises and random screams.

Around the second or third house, you'd become infected by the hysteria of the spookiness, and you'd start squealing and shrieking at every little thing, running down steps after collecting your candy, and tearing through shrubs and hedges cluttered with plastic caution tape convinced that there really was something chasing you.

I was thirteen when we moved to the states, and so I only trick or treated one halloween here (technically). At the age of fourteen, I declared myself too old and began helping my Dad with the scarecrows and in the guise of a kindly fortune teller or friendly witch, I dedicated myself to handing out the candy to the kids who braved our driveway.

No, I was never cool enough to go to an actual halloween party.
In fact, I didn't go to haunted houses, hayrides, or my first actual halloween party until college. Sadly, I didn't even know they existed because I had just assumed that once you were a teenager you put aside these childish things.

It's funny, when I think about my adolescence, I used to self impose all kinds of weird "rules" about growing up. Things I was supposed to give up or put away because I had outgrown them, that nobody would have minded, let alone noticed, if I'd kept my interest in.
As an adult, I have actually dedicated a lot of my time to recapturing those thrills of childhood and embracing the innocent joys of the holidays and the things I used to take pleasure in.

It's not an act of rebellion. I don't do it defiantly.
I do it because I think we talk ourselves out of joy almost constantly.
We laugh at people who are too excited or too involved in things as though they're missing some vital adult component, when in reality they're having a much better time than the person who disparages the fun as immature or juvenile.

One of the things I am thrilled about, as a parent, is sharing in the delights of the holidays with my babe. Especially this one.
My husband helped me lift the last vestiges of restraint I had about celebrating with abandon, and in the decade we have been together, I cannot think of a Halloween we have not marked with elaborate costumes, tons of treats and trickery, lots of decorations, candles, parades through graveyards, chicanery, and spooky tales traded with friends.
Leave aside the fact that we live in Salem, MA, the halloween capital of the Northeast.
It's impossible to ignore the magic of the season here.

And this year, I am very grateful for that because for the first time in a long time, my energy to enjoy this festival of creepiness is practically zilch.

I remember last year. Eight months pregnant, I dressed like a black widow and we handed out candy on a friend's porch right in the center of historic Salem. It was glorious. Afterwards, we walked the pitchblack backroads to another friend's costume party and drank punch and ate some bone cookies and I reminded myself that this would be so different when the baby came.

I have never been so right.

The last three weeks have been a miasma of teething and sleep regression.
In the last seven days, he has started his day at 3am on two occasions, 5am on three, and has yet to allow me to sleep through the night. That's right. At almost eleven months postpartum, I have yet to sleep more than three consecutive hours.

We are at the beginning of the fourth week of this nonsense, and I have been up since 4:30am.
My Beard has a costume for his work Halloween party and a different costume for handing out candy tonight. I didn't realize that I hadn't even thought of a costume for myself until yesterday.
This will be the first year I haven't dressed up for Halloween in memory.
I'm sure I could run down to CVS and grab a cheap make up palette and make myself into a sugar skull or a zombie or something, but as the babe has a habit of whacking me in the face and teething on my chin, make up doesn't seem like a wise idea.
I haven't carved a jack 'o lantern. I bought a bag of mini snickers last week and crushed it in three days while trying to nurse the babe back to sleep during the midnight screaming times.
I haven't been apple picking, hayriding, or haunted house traipsing. The closest I've come is the daily walks I take with the baby which I've been extending longer and longer so I can enjoy the various local cemeteries in all their autumnal splendor.

Tonight, I will swathe myself in black, cradle my babe in his bright red onesie with his devil horn hoodie, and help the Beard hand out candy on our spiderweb sticky porch.
Maybe I will watch Hocus Pocus in the midnight screaming times.

I will try really hard not to think about the halloweens past that were spectacular, and I will try not to think of the halloweens in the future when I am taking the babe trick or treating, or working with him on his costume, or baking treats for his class at school, because I look forward to all that weirdness. I really do.

I will try to enjoy sipping hot apple cider on the porch in the cold, moonless night, and remind myself that life is funny, and I could always be thousands of miles from my New England home in the city where I was born, where the world is exploding into a tropical spring, and Halloween is more devised to sell cocktails than a thrill you get in the pit of your stomach as you watch clouds move darkly past a church steeply and think perhaps you see something solid, something ragged and familiar, streaking through the fog.

A Brief Thought on Mindfulness and why it can go straight to hell.

Sitting at home, watching Baz play with a sock, and wondering how the hours of the day just fritter away...
Why the fuck is mindfulness en vogue of all sudden?

It's as if on top of everything else we're supposed to be doing, we're now also supposed to be "living inside the moment", "relishing the fleetingness of time", "appreciating our here and now".

Does anybody else suck at this?

I mean, sometimes I'm not too bad.
I watch the sunrise or feel the softest little breeze, or actually slow down when I'm housing ice cream and let the sweetness melt on my tongue for a moment, and yes, I've got it, I feel good, it's lovely, and I am happy to be alive, to have a corporeal form that allows me such things as physical pleasure.
But there are other times that we shouldn't be mindful.
We deserve to get swept up.
Like kissing.
Am I the only person who has ever just ruined a make out session by suddenly getting stuck in her head?
Instead of being all, "oooh this is so nice and lovely and tingly and might be headed towards more nice lovely tingly things..." I got stuck in my head, and thought, "Oh this is a mouth, this is a squishpit full of round, polished bone things that I have to avoid lest I suddenly forget everything I ever knew about kissing and accidentally become a dentist who diagnoses with her tongue" or "why do we do this? I think I read somewhere that kissing originated during pagan marriage rituals where the two newlyweds placed their mouths on top of one another's to symbolize giving one's beloved the breath of life. If this is true, then isn't making out some form of pointless struggle? Am I currently fighting with this person attempting to breathe them full of my air as they strive to fill me with theirs? Or are we literally sucking the breath out of each other?" or (and this is a favorite) "huh...mouths are weird. My mouth is inside a mouth right now. Oh fuck...I'm supposed to be swept up in this. Come on Jess, get all jiggly in the knees again, think about how nice a face this person has, how delicious their skin is next to yours, and how magical the gift is-is a mouth a mushy mouth mouth mouth, flesh, gums, esophagus, stomach, intestines, this mouth leads to poooooooooop! AAAAAAAAAH STOP THINKING ABOUT POOP AND GET BACK TO THE NICE KISSY FEELINGS WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY BRAINNNNNNN?!?!?"

Yeah...
so mindfulness isn't always the best practice.
It's great if you rush through life and then don't understand why you didn't enjoy more of it, but I sit here, and I watch a baby playing with a sock, and I think, maybe it's a bad idea to tumble down the rabbit hole of thinking how much I love this baby, how precious he is, how soon I will be packing him off to college where he will disregard his socks all over a dorm room floor, and then I will die, and he will die, and dead mouths don't maul socks.

Maybe it's better that I just take the sock away, and play with him instead.