The Neighborhood

Announcing the dreaded return of the hypertonic pelvic floor: incontinence and pain, probably the result of back surgery. I gotta drink less or no coffee and do more kegels. What perceptive morsel of insight can I write about this topic? I am utterly disgusted. Urinating on one's self is an act of degradation, and wholly uncontrollable under these circumstances. It is not enough to soak everything, just enough to send a message that I am revolting. More to the point, I suppose, is that my body is revolting. 'Stop working so hard,' it says. 'Put me to sleep!' Or maybe 'give me some yoga.' Still, when a mini-pad becomes a necessity, and it is reassuring to have 20 pairs of underwear, a gal becomes disheartened.

I am not sure that any other proper human being - like not counting dogs in heat, or gorillas - actually has a hypertonic pelvic floor, except for me. The urogynecologist's office and the physical therapist's office were both strangely empty when I was first diagnosed. Any other female I did see was obviously virginal, pure, and without any unsightly pubic hair to speak of. Not the sorta babe who has painful tightening of the cunt. That would be me, the sexually questionable and gynecologically sordid type who might - in theory only - have an extra nodule inside the vagina from a lousy stitch job after an episiotomy deemed necessary when both babies chose to fly out like criminals. Which obviously, we learn now, they were.

So the plan to reflect meaningfully on this obscure hypertonic not-supersonic-at-all malady remains half-inflated, something like the stretched muscle reaching from the inside of my pelvis to my back. I've nothing clever to say about pissing my bed and cramping up. Okay, one thing: vaginal deliveries are overrated and the unpleasant sequellae go appallingly unreported. My back, my vagina, the whole pelvic neighborhood! Those damn kids.

I'll Just Write Here By Myself.

The fact that very few people read my blog does not bother me at all. I am forty-one years old; I watched Mary Tyler Moore before Nick at Nite was born. I don't mind looking at the statistics that show me that 3 people looked at my blog. It's like being the second-to-last kid picked for the volleyball game. Okay, it was last. But it was a quirk - I had friends, just not friends on that particular team, and I had never played before. I like being oblivious to the opinions of others. It's like receiving rejections in the mail. When I get one, I tell myself "Lucy, this proves that you are confident. Who cares what some snotty literary magazine thinks of your story?" Then I walk around wondering why I didn't get an MFA in Creative Writing after college.

The blog thing is really just a hobby and if people read it, that's cool. If people don't read it, that's okay, too. If a blog takes up space on the web and no one reads it, is it still a piece of writing? My philosophical side says yes, of course. I wouldn't want too many readers anyway because that would be such a fucking awful hassle to think that I might have to respond to them. Or check their blogs all the time - yikes. Then I would have to notice the many very active intelligent bloggers out there. (A friend told me about them.) How could I possibly do that? It would be so draining to have an ongoing correspondence with persons who enjoy my writing. So I'll continue to type into my robot/computer because it doesn't matter to me at all if you read this. Or this. In fact, I am not even awake right now. I am sleepwriting. See you in my dreams, or maybe not.

Read Between the Lines?

Since the ball and chain broke his foot, there is no way in hell that I have any time to do anything. I should be like it's only a few months and some women do this all the time. Well those women are different from me because apparently they don't sleep or their children are robots who do not leave crumbs and sticky stuff everywhere and they do not have things to do like eating and going to school. Certainly those children do not argue, whine, or look at one beseechingly, as if threatening to expose Mom's mediocrity to future therapists, ad infinitum.

I'd like to know what happened to Little House on the Prairie? I hated those books. Everyone was so generous and kind and inherently impossible for a person with my character to relate to. But they did manage to get a helluva lot done. What was their secret? Even if Pa had busted his ankle, dontcha just know that Ma would have managed to feed those smarmy brats? Even if she was on the rag and had to go back to the outhouse every hour to deal with said rag?

Fortunately, a friend came to visit me for a coupla nights. She is a fellow sloth and encouraged my decadence, including "I Love Lucy" DVDs and pizza. She left this morning, though, and I found myself in K-mart shopping for toilet paper, junky shelves to help us pretend my daughter's room is larger than a walk-in closet, and sexy, loose-fitting sweatpants for the gimpy husband. I bought necessities in bulk. I bossed the kids. By the time we left I was ready to go back to bed for the night, but it was noon time.

The blog started with the idea that women don't talk enough about certain things. Yet this is the stuff we talk about all the time: I have too much shit to do. Does anybody thank the pharmaceutical industry? Does anyone say Hallelujah, Welbutrin? Without it, I would be folding and re-folding one piece of laundry; but with it, I am able to cook, shop, clean, counsel, and manage all sorts of self-care activities (brushing my teeth, for example). I'm like that mom from Desperate Housewives who takes her kid's ADHD meds. I am ethically superior, however, because these were legally prescribed to me. My mind, like my bedroom, was genuinely in disorder. And lo, like the Desperate gal, I can rush my tuchas (ass) all over the place doing motherly errands.

I am thinking that the secret of Laura Ingalls Wilder was not the devout belief in the Puritan work ethic, but perhaps the motivating and organizing medications that Pa brought back after the hunt. There was that episode when she complained of dry mouth and the long wait at the pharmacy wagon. Certainly there must have been something other than meat drying in preparation for the winter. I'm considering looking back at the books and giving Ms. Wilder another chance. Even on the t.v. series, Michael Landon looked a little baked to me. His hair was so long - he must have been doing drugs! And the wife - she stayed so calm. Not because of her faith in Michael helping her career, but because she knew at some point someone would score her something so she could stand being on the set with that little prissy Gilbert girl. That was the episode when the traveler called him a 'hippie-repressed fried husband,' and they ended up breaking brownies together.

Fuggetabout it - all those Stepford wives and their ilk were morons because they were too fucking tired to give a shit. No drugs, no time, no no no. Write me up as this week's winner of the Rumpled Apron Award.

Calgon, take me away!

Lazy-Ass Interrupted

I am so goddamn tired because my husband hurt his fucking ankle he broke it and where does that leave me? I know, it's sad, his foot hurts, but I am not the laundry, bed-making, walk-the-dog-in-the-dark, neaten-up type. I'm creative, imaginative. I flow with my own mess. My stacks of things slide around like towers of Jello and my papers are everywhere. I am way too busy listening to my daughter's stories, drinking tea, working, reading, talking to my son, writing, lying in bed, and rolling over to do the fucking laundry! As I told my husband 14 years ago, when he had a momentary psychotic break and assumed I'd do a lot of housework because I had a little baby to look after, I am not Betty Fucking Crocker!

But now actually, I am. And I don't want to be. I work the whole day, for crissakes. There is no time to add an egg, mix, and bake. I grew up in an upper middle class household, but I am a parent in a middle class household. That means there is no cleaning lady, except for my husband. We pay two women to clean for a couple hours every two weeks so that mold doesn't grow in the bath tub. Apart from that kind contribution, no one is doing any housework around here now except me. For at least two months. And I am sad. Lucy Ricardo wouldn't put up with it. Lucy from Peanuts wouldn't put up with it. Why must I?

Do I sound obnoxious because I am lucky to have a roof over my head? Well, I know! But that does not preclude me from kvetching (complaining) because cleaning sucks. Is there someone around who likes it? Are we, like, proud of a neat house? What am I, Lady Stepford? I would rather spend my time picking a zit - as long as it didn't bleed all over and ruin my face for weeks - than clean the house. I would rather eat bleu cheese, which tastes like vomit. I would rather do just about anything. But I have no choice, lest I be written in the Bad Mother Book. Thus far, I've received only a footnote, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Goodbye, naps. Goodbye, couch. Goodbye, good books. Goodbye, tidy house.

Aw, crap.