Most of my childhood is buried in a landfill somewhere near Houston. This is not a metaphor, but rather the sad outcome of foreclosure proceedings on my family's home when I was 12. When we left the white brick house, we moved into a rickety green wooden rental that slashed our living space in half. We took what we could carry in our vehicle -- mostly the necessities -- and left the rest behind. (When your home is being foreclosed, you generally can't afford a storage building.) But the house, and thereby everything in it, belonged to the bank, so they quietly and efficiently hauled off our belongings to a BFI landfill. Family and wedding photo albums, my mom's wedding dress, most of my and my brother's toys, our bronzed baby shoes that hung on the wall as proof of how far we'd come, a wall full of books, the majority of our family mementos and brick-a-brac. The junk that makes a house a home. I'm telling you this because of an angel named Gloria. Growing up, ...

Ah, Christmas - that special time of year when we jingle our bells, deck our halls, and throw all of our musical sensibilities out the window. Christmas albums mediocre and awful abound, featuring tired renditions of old favorites and new music that aims to be the next Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" but lands somewhere closer to Justin Beiber's rap-tastic "Drummer Boy." Some songs just rub people the wrong way. I've heard a lot of complaints about "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas," for example. Other than the distinct possibility of being killed by a hippo, the song is kinda cute. I'd be interested in seeing how a child gives a hippo a massage in the garage, for example. Other people take issue with the violent nature of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." I don't have any problems with this one either; in fact, I agree with the statement that Santa Claus really shouldn't have a driver...

Sunday would mark my mother's 64th birthday, if she had lived past 56. Hers was a slow and miserable decline. While I would never wish to prolong her suffering, I do wish her sicknesses could have loosened their grasp long enough for her to meet my child(ren). But more than that, I wish I could have gotten to know her as an adult. There are bits and pieces I recall of her between the mental and physical illness, but they are viewed through the cloudy eyes of a child. It would be completely differently to know her as an adult, and that's one of the many things her death took from me. circa 1981 It is difficult to be a mother without a mother. There are long stretches of blankness in my childhood, things I can't remember because I was too young or too inexperienced to know what to hold on to. That's one of the things I miss most about talking to her -- there are so many questions I wish I could ask about who I was as a child, and how I am like (or unlike) her as a ...

This antidepressant is stealing all my funny. I've been on medication since I was 12. Without it, I sit in corners of dark rooms and listen to Counting Crows CDs on repeat. That's right, I go straight 1994. And I'm hard core, baby, writing angsty poetry between debilitating anxiety attacks and episodes of Friends. I'm funny, but only in a dark, fatalistic sort of way. Like Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice, except without the shoplifting a few years later. With the help of modern pharmacology, I am lollipops and rainbows. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration. At the very least, I am Cuba Libres, witty one-liners, and imaginative, entertaining banter. I like my meds like I like my men: strong and lab-tested for adverse reactions. A few weeks ago, I flipped the script and started on baby-friendly antidepressants in case our plans for #2 materialize. It turns out I don't do as well on the less-potent dope. Since then I've downgraded from rum and sarcasm ...

Recently, my husband made a confession so shocking that I'm still licking my wounds and figuring out how to handle this newfound bone of contention in our relationship. There we were, having an otherwise acceptable conversation, when he told me he would "be okay" with not getting any more dogs after our two go to that big farm in the sky. It's like I don't even know him anymore. I love dogs. Really, really love dogs. Back when we met, I had my first Boston terrier. He was willful and funny looking and I loved him more than a fat kid loves cake. I made it clear to anyone I dated that the dog and I were a package deal. This guy, however, had never owned a pup and fancied himself the alpha male in the house. When we moved in together, my husband-to-be expressed some concern about how much dog hair would be on the furniture, how much dog poop would be in the yard, and where the dog would sleep at night. I kindly informed him that my dog had been in my bed longer t...

The Kiddo is in the Let's Bring Mom Things stage. It started with the white flowers that grow on the clover in the neighbor's yard. When we would go outside in the afternoons to play, my son would become endlessly interested in something simple, like a throwing a hickory nut fallen from a tree or rolling half-empty water bottles down the driveway to see how far they'd go. I'd be left with little to do besides throw an occasional "good job, sweetheart" his way (Mom of the Year candidate, right here), so I started pulling weeds in the yard. This served the dual purpose of keeping me occupied and keeping the yard nice, since we gave up the yard service when I stayed home with the kid. On those long afternoons he would watch me pulling up weeds and followed suit, indiscriminately pulling up grass and weeds alike. Then one day he plucked a single white clover flower, toddled over to me, and offered it up. I was so overcome with pride and love that I made a big deal...

My uterus has a polyp. It's not getting any bigger, but it's not going away either. It's just hanging out there, doing polyp stuff. Maybe reading a book and eating an apple. Or maybe jamming to the new U2 album. (As an aside, I really hope my uterus doesn't listen to U2. I don't have anything against the band per se, but I would prefer my internal organs' musical tastes lean more toward singer/songwriter than pop idol-turned-philanthropist-turned-corporate sell out.) If your uterus needs a hug like mine does, this pillow is available on Etsy. For real. The good news is the polyp probably isn't harmful to my health in any way. It isn't cancerous or anything scary like that. The bad news is it may temporarily derail our plans to have Baby #2 . We had a tremendous struggle getting pregnant the first time -- one diagnosis of testicular cancer followed by an orchiectomy (google it, I dare you), one diagnosis of low egg count (which meant my ovaries ...

Lately we've been throwing around the wacky idea of having a second child. The truth is I haven't really figured out this parenting thing with the first one yet, but long before he came I made the (perhaps rash and bold) decision that I wanted two children. Double the pleasure, double the rum. Family is a tricky thing. I know better than most that simply being raised in the same household as another kid doesn't necessarily mean you're anything more than relatives. There's no guarantee Kiddo #1 (should I call him Piglet? Bacon? Pork Rind?) would like Kiddo #2, much less be close to him or her. In fact, they might be so not-close that he finds out major family events, like weddings, from facebook. I've been there. There are worse fates. However, I know for sure he wouldn't be close to a sibling if we never had one. In the interest of trying to convince myself that having a second child is a good idea, I've come up with a handy-dandy list of several way...

We've just returned from the kiddo's first multi-day out-of-town trip. It was more challenging than I thought it would be, but I think we all learned a little something about ourselves. I, for example, learned that I do not want to take any more multi-day out-of-town trips with a toddler. Here are a few other nuggets of knowledge I collected along the way: 1. The Golden Age of air travel is over. Welcome to the Brown Age. The flight did not start out great. At our airport gate, the gate associate flatly told me that they no longer let families with young children pre-board unless you're carrying a car seat for them to ride in. That is to say: unless you have purchased a seat for your child, your child's safety and your convenience on the jetway are worth less than a bag of stale peanuts. I was left trying to collapse my stroller with one hand and wrangle my child with the other so he did could not (A) wander into the plane unaccompanied, enter the cockpit, and push a...

I'm a nervous traveler. I arrive at my airport two hours early and make a beeline for my gate. Then I sit at the gate and check the gate number, the gate display info, my ticket, my watch, the gate number, my watch, the gate display info, my ticket, my ticket again just to make sure, my back pocket to make sure I haven't dropped my driver's license somewhere between security and the gate, and my gate number again. My hubs, on the other hand, is rarely rattled. He doesn't get nervous traveling, even that time he was almost arrested on a train in Germany. That's why my husband and I are good travel partners. He is in charge of getting me where I need to go with the least amount of anxiety possible, and I am in charge of making sure all of his underwear fits into his carry-on. It's win-win (especially for the other vacationers who don't have to see his Frank and Beans all week). However, our nice set-up is about to get blown to smithereens when I board a plan...

I am a world-class complainer. I could fill Olympic-sized swimming pools with words of dislike. And you'd need something that could hold 660,000 gallons, too, because the more upset I get the more verbose I become. I wonder how many words per gallon I could get when "he woke up early" becomes "he got me up at the ass-crack of dawn" and "he wouldn't eat lunch" morphs into "he utterly refused to eat a single morsel of the meal I slaved to make him." Apparently I am not alone: the internet is brimming with books, blogs and columnists who openly and ironically start a sentence with "Motherhood sucks because..." and finish it with "...don't get me wrong, I love my kids." It seems the fashionable trend right now is to complain, often humorously, about your family -- especially your children. On one hand, I get it. Man, do I get it. There is a wealth of negative things about motherhood from which it is easy to draw, b...

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that this post needed a follow up. See, I had intended to finish it with some gloriously introspective bit about how forgiving yourself is so important, and how it all happens for a reason. Except I haven't forgiven myself, and I generally don't think everything happens for a reason. (And I didn't have any profound revelations during the kid's nap time while I wrote it.) Regarding the former, I took to google and was pleased and confused to find a Wikihow entry on how to forgive yourself . Whether you're trying to hang a picture or seeking self-help to soothe the soul, Wikihow is there for you! This one came with a particularly helpful clip-art drawing of a blissful woman hugging a heart-shaped pillow bearing the word "ME." If only I could get my resentful little hands on one of those pillows, I'd be THIS MUCH closer to figuring out how to let it go. About the latter, however, I have good news. In my ca...

We're going to Minneapolis in a few weeks for a work thing for the Hubs. This has got me thinking... How big is Minneapolis? Because I have an ex-boyfriend who lives there now, and I really don't want to have to slap anyone in front of my child. He's too young to understand, "He deserved it, sweetheart." In college I heard a comedian say, "before you meet The One, you will meet The One Who F's Up Everything." Minneapolis guy is T.O.W.F.U.E. Although I haven't seen him in almost eight years, just the idea of accidentally running into him gives me anxiety. My stomach starts to knot, I break out in a cold sweat, and my head gets a little swimmy. I get this fear frequently when I'm in airports, because you just never know who you might run into at an airport. One time a friend of ours was stared at malevolently by Michael Keaton at Pittsburgh International Airport. He was drinking whiskey by himself. Because 1989 Batman can do whatever the hell...

There will come a time when you walk in the bathroom to find your husband peeing and brushing his teeth at the same time. Here is how you proceed: 1) Freeze. 2) Back out slowly and silently. 3) Calmly and rationally discuss WTF he was doing at a later date. Whatever you do, do not yell, " What are you doing?!? " and meet his eyes in an uncomfortable deer-caught-urinating-in-the-headlights stare. This could severely impair his aim, and that's a mess you'll have to clean up later. This is among the things I have learned since getting married.

We have new neighbors next door. They're a nice young couple. It's their first house, so they haven't had time to collect the finer accoutrements of suburban living, like pruning sheers or a shovel. With fall coming on soon, they also haven't put much effort into sprucing up the neglected landscaping. I don't mind. My bushes need a trim too, and that's no euphemism. There was one weed in particular growing in their side yard, right up against the house, that seemed very nasty. Actually, it looked like at any moment it would take the house hostage and begin making unreasonable demands. I should have taken a picture, but frankly I'm not sure it would show up in pictures. Like a vampire.

Recently I read something online that resonated with me. Since I didn’t share it in my facebook feed, or pin it to pinterest, or email it to myself – my three primary modes of organization these days – I can’t find it again*. So I’m going to paraphrase it for you, badly, no doubt: Two moms are sitting near each other at a park or a playground or some place where kids gather, and so too do moms. They’re both watching the kids play. Mother 1 has a sleeping infant, and she says to Mother 2, “They’re so loud, aren’t they? Even when they’re sleeping.” See, Mother 1 was new to this whole motherhood thing – at least the way I pictured it in my head, anyway. And she was discovering what I have discovered. Motherhood is very loud .

There are people whose deaths you can see coming. The elderly, of course. Celebrities who party too hard, dabble in the more-than-occasional use of drugs, or are infatuated with fast cars. Adrenaline junkies who are drawn to extreme sports. That idiot down the street who always runs that stop sign. You look at these people and think, well, it was just a matter of time. You are sad for them, for their families, for the future that will never be, and then you move on. Robin Williams was not one of those people, at least not for me. I was aware of his cocaine-fueled ‘80s and his struggle with alcoholism. His battles with depression, however, weren’t as publicized. So news of his death was heartbreaking and hit especially close to home, since I have grappled with depression myself since I was about 12. (“You? You seem well-balanced.” “That’s because I’m heavily medicated.”) I think many fans had no idea he fought so fiercely with deep and all-consuming depression – how could someone ...

My father is one of the reasons I chose to have a child. Not to honor him or continue my lineage, but to fix the parts that he broke.  Too many of my memories are of a childhood and family irreparably damaged, achingly sad, or completely dysfunctional. I wanted to replace these memories with positive ones of my own creation, and to experience through my child’s eyes the childhood I didn’t have. Sure, it’s terribly selfish and probably more than a little misguided. But people have had children for far worse and far fewer reasons.  For example, take the playground. My father rarely played with us in the yard. There was no kicking soccer balls, throwing baseballs, no balls of any kind really. We grew up food-stamps-poor, so there were rarely any trips to local museums or science centers or cultural events. But we did have Sunday Family Day sometimes when I was little, where the four of us would pile in my father’s shit brown Ford mini pick-up truck and go somewhere l...

Many years ago I read or heard the line, “We were like strangers who knew each other very well.” I have more or less adopted this quote as a description of the relationship between my father and me. More than strangers but less than estranged, we talk on the phone a few times a year but we stick to surface streets. He thinks I am closed off and private; I know where his post office box is located but don’t know where he sleeps at night. He lives 1,200 miles away, so at least I am spared the awkward side-hugs and desperate attempts at normal conversation. My mother is dead and my brother has ceased contact, so he clings to me like his last hope at family.  That about sums it up. Father’s Days are tough. There just aren’t any greeting cards that accurately reflect our relationship. So a few years ago I decided Hallmark or American Greetings needed to get on this. Along with a friend, I came up with several gems I was going to pitch to them. The best one was: (front) When...