Obligation

Throughout my life I have had a struggle with people feeling obligated to me without cause. It started with boyfriends in college. You know the kind of relationships where, because you live in the same building and eat at the same cafeteria, you basically move in together on day 2? Well I would just be cruising along in that style when suddenly it would all come to a crashing halt. The reason? The dude felt "obligated" to spend an evening with me when he should have been studying so now he has to break up with me so his grade point average didn't suffer. I didn't ask him to spend every second with me and if he had just said something he might have found out that I was completely willing to give him the space he needed, so how did this happen?

In the same vein, I've helped more guys dump me or not even start relationships with me than I could count. I've had these crazy conversations where they're dancing around the fact that they are not really sure if they should or shouldn't kiss me or make a move and they always ended with me saying "if you have to think that hard about it, it probably means that it isn't the right thing to do." And so it ends. Are guys really that unsure of themselves that they wrestle with the first kiss out of some obligation to the fact that they had been flirting with me for a few days? Good god, then what? After the obligatory kiss then how long are you required to date me before you have fulfilled your obligation?

The final straw was when a guy was living with me, the guy right before my husband came along, and we were struggling pretty intensely with our relationship. One evening he and I are talking through our problems and I'm saying, once again, that if you have to think that hard about it it's probably not what you're supposed to be doing (being with me of course) when he drops the bomb: well I just felt obligated since I am living in your house....

Really?  Um, don't do me any favors?

The thing is, do I really seem so weak and breakable that if you disappoint me I'll fall apart? Is it really better to pretend to me that you're interested or even keep living with me than to cut it off clean and move on so I can find someone who really wanted to be with me? What the hell?

This crap pisses me off. I do not require jack from anyone. If you want to give? Give. If you want to be with me? Be with me. But I am no frail flower. I have stood on my own two feet, quite alone, for many years. The real fact is that I have a hard time leaning on someone. My husband has to struggle to help me because I'm unwilling to accept it. I do incredibly complicated dances to ensure that no one feels obligated to do anything for me or even reciprocate something I've done for them. I bend over backwards to make people feel free to screw me over if its what they need to get by. So apparently I'm living in opposite world. The more I try to keep people from feeling obligated the more they feel obligated I guess. Or rather, the people I tend to come into contact with are intensely guilty people, the kind who manufacture reasons they have to do things they don't want to do for people who don't want them to do it.

And even knowing this? I feel guilty that they feel obligated to me. There's the irony. I feel obligated to ease their obligation that they shouldn't even feel. Perhaps I should change tactics and assume everyone has an obligation to me and the guilt cycle might end.

I wonder, are there guilt free people walking this planet? I haven't met one yet.

Ha ha ha, oh. Damn.

It's hard not writing the same thing twice in a blog when you blog almost every day. I just finished a lovely rant about not cooking only to remember I had already done that a month ago. Nothing new in the recent one, so out it goes. Perhaps it was therapeutic to write it again. Still not cooking though. Clearly little improvement despite the encouragement of friends and 'easy' recipes from my triplet mom friends.

I guess that my concerns are limited these days. Perhaps there's a consistent small collection of things on my mind that rotate regularly. Guilt over not cooking, guilt over not spending enough time with the kids, guilt over using tv sometimes when the kids are too grumpy to stand, guilt over x y and z. Great list. No wonder I'm not funny anymore.

Where are the poop stories? The boogers have stopped so I can't even write about snot. My kids are apparently too well behaved right now, despite A's attempt to create the great flood in her crib the other night. It just doesn't make a whole blog entry. My pregnancy has become somewhat uneventful. You can only write about boobs, flatulence, sleep disturbances and ass growth so many times. So what's going on world? Are you trying to show me that my life is pretty boring? I mean even my mom hasn't given me any good stories as of recent. And she's usually a whole novel of crap unto herself.

Well I guess I'll just close my eyes and rest then. If my life is so serene and positive, other than the intense guilt mom factor, then I might as well quit trying to be funny. Maybe then my life will get funny again?

Oooh that little....#2

Oh them crazy kids. You go through all the trouble of training them at night by not responding to every cry and they start sleeping through the night (say at 6 months of age?) only to find that 6 months later you're right back where you started. Somehow, unbeknownst to you, child A has started a pattern of waking every night at 4 am, sounding like she's had a nightmare. So you rush in, night after night and stupidly wonder, why the increase in nightmares? Maybe she's going through a developmental change? Maybe she's getting sick?

No. She's just training your stupid butt to get up every night at 4 am and pat her. Sure the first time was innocent, she probably did have a nightmare. But nights 22 and 23? Probably not so much. So it takes an aside question, asked while at the doctor's office for freaking hand, foot and mouth disease, about supposed increases in nightmares around this age to be set straight. Because the kind doctor in all his wisdom basically tells you that you're being taken for a ride.

How did I not recognize this for the 89th time? I mean how many times does one of my children have to take advantage of my kindly sleepy stupid self before I realize it on night 2 instead of night 22? Or rather, before someone else calls it to my attention? I mean duh? Every night at 4 am she has a nightmare? Really? Is sleep that predictable?

And another question I'd like answered. How is it MORE disruptive to B's sleep when I go in and shut that girl up within moments (tiptoeing silently as humanly possible) than leaving her caterwauling for 20 minutes? But oh it is! The minute I turn that doorknob, silently mind you, because I have developed the instincts of a ninja when it comes to making no noise, that boy is up and looking for attention. And god forbid I give attention to the screaming child first, he then screams himself. Or heck, even if I give the screaming child second shrift? He still screams when I give someone else attention.

So, my nights are about to get easier. I have, for the past 2 nights, lain in bed listening to the varying cries of my daughter, and she is inventive I must add. I have struggled, felt guilty, analyzed every nuance of those cries, because she changes them up just to throw me off. And yet, she is alive in the morning. Smiling, happy. And we are both more rested. What a freaking paradox children are. Now the trick is to find all the other ways they are fooling me. Think I stand a chance?

Mom's a crab

You know, when I was a single, stupid, ignorant fool, I thought my friend was a little hard on her kids. She had three pre-teen to teen age girls (actually she had 5 but the other two were all grown up) and I hung out a lot with them. She would place them all in the back seat of a car and within 10 minutes there was whining, crying, or complaining about the abuse from the other occupants of said backseat by one of the three if not more. She would very rapidly move from talking normally to telling them in no uncertain terms that they could be left by the side of the road to walk home if they did not SHUT. UP. Well she never used the words shut up, but you know what I mean. Speak and die.

I always cringed a bit, I mean, I was one of those in the backseat once and it is HARD to get along for too long together with your sibling. Isn't it? I thought, I know they're annoying but shouldn't you have more patience? But I knew I thought she was a great mom and the kids honestly loved her to bits and her life is hard so I decided to drop my judgement and assume that she knew what she was doing. But I didn't forget feeling like maybe she needed to chill a bit.

Well. Hmm. Lets see here. Due to the lack of sleep acquired during 4, count 'em, 4 bouts of colds with triplets that has now even devolved to the point that two are on nebulizers to stop wheezing, which means I have not had a REM cycle in approximately 8 weeks and actually means I feel more tired than I did with three newborn triplets, I officially hang my head in shame. Oh that I judged a mother of many children ever. I mean, these kids are lucky I haven't left them out for recycling yet. By accident at least if not on purpose. I AM TIRED.

And if they have one more fight over the one toy out of a thousand that they own that two of them wants at the same time? I am not responsible for my actions. I have confiscated toy after toy some days because of this endless battle. As soon as one kid picks up a toy someone else wants it too. They love sitting in the toy box that does not comfortably fit 2 of them in it but god knows, they will all three try to climb in once one of them has. The toy box itself has been removed from the room when the only other choice was to stuff them all in it and close the lid, which, I'm told, is child abuse unfortunately. But at least they'd all be happy that they were in it? Not?

People, I'm losing my mind. The universe is trying to kill me one night at a time. I am now that crabby mom I always wondered about! I hope to heck my kids remember me as happy. Perhaps they will once they stop picking up every illness being passed around. Perhaps it's just a mom of siblings thing? Maybe the fighting just wears so fast that you just end up snapping faster than seems called for. Because it is also inevitable that the most fighting happens when everyone is the most crabby from being sick or tired and that is just a recipe for disaster.

Free me!

There are so many triplet moms out there who do so much more with their kids than I do. I feel like I've been trapped inside my house for years since it started when I was an 800 lb pregnant woman. I mean, sure, we go to the park in the mornings and we've been to the zoo and the Discovery Museum in Sausalito (which rocks) but being on Facebook puts my life in a sad perspective. These women are off to lakeside cabins, barbecues, trips to mountains and beaches, playdates and relatives' houses far away.

What am I doing sitting on my arse? I thought it was a triplet thing that had me so homebound. You know, my usual shtick about how you all with the one baby can miss a nap and only have one crabby baby but I am NOT having three missed naps and crabby children. NOT. I mean I'm not insane right? Kids who have missed naps are miserable. Nightmarish even. They look like this:

Actually I have no pics of angry children because we never. miss. naps.

The one time I took a 'vacation' with the triplets about 3 hours north to a beach like area it felt like more work. I mean, I do have a nanny to help most mornings and on vacation? Not. So how is it a vacation when it's more work and harder than my 'regular' life? How would a lakeside cabin be any fun if I can't actually sit still on the porch and look at the lake? Except after bedtime? It just doesn't work for me. And as for barbecues, I'd have to run after children in someone's possibly unfenced backyard or a crowded beach area constantly. How do I enjoy that? I suppose friends would chip in and watch one or more kids for me while I stuff a little ribs in my face?

I mean I go to weddings where people get to bring their one beautiful moody baby but the couple can take turns. We can't! I couldn't get an appetizer down, much less a whole wedding dinner if I brought the triplets. So I guess I have to take my hat off to you much more adventuresome moms. You're amazing. You're fantastic! You're....out of your freaking minds! Or is there a trick? Tell me please? Because I have been counting the days until I can take the kids to carnivals and fairs and go on a freaking vacation and they still seem years away.

Oh but I AM going on a Disney cruise when I win the lottery. SO. AM.

In contemplation of the noble tantrum

What is the evolutionary principle behind tantrums? Can you imagine, just imagine, cave mamma Ugg with child #1 standing just outside cave mouth #43 on Cave Mouth Street grinding corn or preparing to go out and gather and little cave kid Ugg Jr throws himself to the ground and pounds his tiny fists and kicks his tiny legs and screams like a bear to get what he wants? Do you suppose she rolls her cavelady eyes and hands it to him? Because I don't. I see cave mamma taking her club out and giving him a good whack.

Imagine, again, Mayan momma standing in the hot sun after harvesting corn (oh I'm not an indigenous tribe specialist get off my back) watching Mayan girl baby screaming to be allowed to play with that last ear of corn, because it had become her toy, and not giving it to Mayan momma immediately upon being asked. Do you think she might be tempting the Mayan god to select her for the heart sacrifice? I think I'd tread a bit more carefully if I were that kid.

And imagine, if you will, prairie settler family Miller just put prairie kid Joseph to bed and he throws a tantrum to the point of barfing on his bedcovers. Do you think that in an era of no washing machines and no multiple sheet sets he was allowed to do this time and time again for no apparent reason and not end up sleeping amidst his barf particles? I think not. I think he'd be washing his own sheets pretty soon in the river with bloody knuckles of his own. I think he'd learn pretty stinking fast not to barf in his bed. His mom wouldn't be running with his barfing self out of the nursery to try to stop the inevitable sheet change one stinking time. I don't think so. Heck, he'd be lucky to have a bed. And if he barfed in mom and pop's bed? I think he'd be hoeing a row of crops before he was 2.

I mean how did tantrums achieve anything until the current parental administration where we overindulge such children? In the last, what, 50 years there's been a sea change from children being a necessary production of help mates for the household to children being our entire reason for the sun coming up in the morning and goodness knows you better not wake/upset/scold/deny/deprive them. So I see how it's evolutionarily useful now. It works like a charm to lay your tiny little body down in the middle of a packed grocery store and go to town with tears and snot because you bet your mom is going to scoop your butt up and get you anything to shut you up so she can finish shopping because this is the one stupid chance she gets all week to get groceries and if she can't now you'll all starve.

Well not this mom. That kid and I will either be standing there annoying the rest of you until he's done with his theatrics or we leave and we starve. I know it looks bad to the other judging eyes and I've been them too, but you know once you're the parent that the difference between a tantrum and a true cry is so obvious to you at some point early on in getting to know this kid that you can not allow yourself to indulge the former. Because that only means more in the future. And those judging eyes? They can go have triplets of their own and then judge me. Well, maybe not even then. Because this is my kid, and for some unexplainable reason tantrums are there in the animal brain, even though I'm pretty sure that our ancestor apes used them to better effect and they should have been extinguished as a useful strategy somewhere around the 1300s, BC, and there is NOTHING. I. CAN. DO. ABOUT. IT. So smile sweetly and move on rubberneckers. Nothing to see here.

The guilt factory chugs on

One of my favorite bloggers, Bad Mommy Moments, wrote a great blog yesterday about guilt. Got us all thinking about the guilt that most moms feel about just about everything, and she offered us a chance to dump our guilt anonymously. Lots of moms didn't need to be anonymous because they knew that they would not be alone with their particular guilty "sin" and posted what they had done right out in the open. But I would be willing to bet that all of those guilt dumpers had at least 463 other things they felt guilty about, and I started thinking about my own trip down guilt lane.

The most unbelievable part is that it begins the minute you know you're pregnant. You are apparently supposed to be the model pregnant lady, eating right, exercising, planning the nursery, being excited, and so on, right when you're in the middle of something quite traumatic and stressful. I mean, get this, I felt guilty all of first trimester, a period of 24/7 nausea and unbelievable starvation colliding on a minute by minute basis. Why did I feel guilty? Because rather than barf repeatedly because I ate something 'good for me and the babies' or fall down dead from hunger pangs that hit every hour, I ran out to Taco Bell and had me 3 stinkin' crunchy taco supremes. Because that was all I could stand to eat. Now, did I create this situation with some sort of conscious effort? No. I planned on eating veggies and fruits and grains and avoiding trans fats like the plague. But honestly, if I had to choose between barfing and eating crap? Eating crap wins every time.

Then, you give birth. I gave birth at 32 weeks. Why? Because I was practically dying with pre-eclampsia. For those of you who don't know, pre-eclampsia is basically a condition that means all of your organs are shutting down and you will die if you don't get those stinking babies out of you, and I mean fast. So, what did I feel guilty about? Um, giving birth 'too early.' Not making it to the magical 36th week (full term for triplets) despite the fact that I had not once ounce of control over that situation. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Talk sense into my liver and kidneys? Tell my blood pressure to please lower itself for just another 4 weeks? Go on some sort of heart/lung/liver/kidneys bypass machine to give those babies 4 more weeks? Oh my God, get real lady. But not a chance I could avoid that guilt.

So, then there was the NICU time. Other multiples and non multiples parents of preemies were in the NICU 8-12 hours a day visiting their babies. Where was I? Laying in my recliner at home because my blood pressure was still hovering around 150/100, my iron count was low despite two blood transfusions, I was still suffering from gestational diabetes, and, lets be honest, that ridiculous incision they make to take babies out of you? Um, that sucker hurts no matter how much vicodin you use. Oh, and don't forget I was pumping every 4 hours round the clock! Never mind that most nights I felt like I couldn't breathe and had to sleep sitting up with lights on to not freak out totally. But what did I feel bad for? Not being in the NICU all day. Only being able to sit up and hold a baby or make conversation for 4 hours even though to get me there my MIL had to roll my butt to the NICU in a wheelchair from the front door. Oh, I felt guilty. I mean really.

So, I could go on, because once babies get home, that's when the real guilt begins. You're not breastfeeding exclusively, you're not getting them to sleep correctly, they're not burping, they're not sleeping long enough, they're not eating enough, they're not whatever enough or too much and for once, I will admit that having three at once may actually multiply your guilt by three as well. Because whatever you failed at with your one baby at a time, I failed at with all three simultaneously. Not to mention that I could not even try to pick every child up the minute they cried or rock them to sleep in my arms regularly or comfort them the minute they cried. Because likely as not, I had a different baby in my arms.

What the evolutionary principle behind mommy guilt is I couldn't tell you. But it is pervasive, all encompassing and such a ridiculous waste of time. I'm here to start a revolution. Oh who am I kidding. I'm guilt riddled and bound to stay that way. Especially once they learn how to manipulate me. Oh, I'm in for it. Imagine three sets of puppy dog eyes....