In my quest to not become my mother, I inadvertently became my mother. It finally struck me; 18 weeks pregnant, slippers, 2-year old playing on the floor, fully engaged in tackling the pile of ironing that I have to do every week to keep my husband in his business casual duds. It was like deja vu except instead of me being the kid playing on the floor, I was suddenly my mom. Not the kind of epiphany I wanted to have this early in the morning.

It wasn't the "mom" part that made me not want to be like my mom, it wasn't the cooking, cleaning, ironing; it was the loneliness and isolation. The fact that even though she was unhappy in her marriage for many years, she felt like she had to stick it out because she was uneducated and not prepared to tackle being the bread winner and the homemaker at the same time. I watched all of this unfold as a kid and then later as a teenager. My mom worked her ass of doing any little odd job that she could do from home to help supplement my dad's income. She took in ironing, she watched kids, she baked cakes, she even sometimes cleaned houses. This was her way of contributing. She was also horribly isolated. Back in the late 80s early 90s, there wasn't much support for the stay at home mom. No moms groups to join; no Stroller Strides or MOPS. The way I saw it, they just all trudged through it alone.

My mom's anxiety and unhappiness was often palpable in our house. It caused her to say things to me and my sister that would later shape us our personalities as adults. We knew that she was unhappy. And while my sister, who is 7 years older than I am, was able to rebel and kick and scream to cope, I just spent a lot of time reading and crying and hoping that I would be the kid she wanted me to be and that I could make her happy. This, of course, never happened. Eventually my mom got a job at the school that I went to and a few years after that she decided to go to college and she did graduate earn her bachelor's degree, 2 years after I did in 2007.

As a teenager, neither one of my parents were around much. My dad had never been around much because of his job and my mom had fully committed herself to her career and her studies. And yet I still did everything I could to get her approval. Which turned out to be to my benefit since I was on my own a lot and I never even considered getting in trouble. I just wanted her to be proud of me. So I worked my ass off in school. Took AP classes, participated in every thing I could, I went to conferences, and applied for scholarships and I did a lot of stuff that I probably shouldn't have done too. Don't get me wrong; I was no angel but my adolescent transgressions were few and far between and weren't anything out of the ordinary. I also knew that if I didn't somehow make myself spectacular and go to college, that I would wind up facing the same circumstances that she did.

But still I felt like my mom's past was haunting me. I managed to get out of college unscathed but at 19 I found myself pregnant. My mom having been a teen mom herself, couldn't fathom how this could happen since she had put on the pill at 14 as a way to prevent me from becoming a teen mom. This, of course, didn't go over well. At 19, I also lost my first love to a car accident; my mom went through a divorce at the same age. At 20, I finally accomplished my goal of finishing college. This was enough to make me once and for all decidedly not like my mom, right? Apparently not.

Nine years later, I'm a stay at home mom myself. I'm a wife to a man that works horrifically long hours most of the time and is rarely home. Much like my dad he has a 2 hour commute one way to work. I do what I can to supplement his income by working from home. Instead of taking in ironing and kids, I teach for probably much the same kind of wages my mom earned for her odd jobs. I'm often lonely, though thanks to years of therapy in my early 20s, I'm much better equipped to handle things than my mom was even if it's just reaching out through Facebook or email.

It wasn't all bad growing up; I think it's just sometimes easier to remember the hard stuff. My mom taught us a lot of things that I am really grateful for now. Thanks to my mom, I know how to clean and sew (although I hate sewing). I know how very very important education is; no matter how tight money was, my mom always found ways to buy my books that I so desperately clung to as a kid. I know that because I'm a wife/mother my husband, my kids, and my home are a reflection of me so even though my kid might throw a tantrum in the middle of Target, he's wearing clean clothes and he's bathed and he's probably also throwing a few thank yous and pleases in there.

My mom taught me how to crease pants and iron shirts.

We are expecting our second baby (together) in the spring. A much wanted, planned addition to our blended family that currently consists of my husband's two kids from his previous marriage and our two-year old and yet I'm struggling to find joy. I know, it sounds ridiculous, what's not to be happy about? A blessing we wanted is on it's way and I am having a hard time getting happy about it? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me...I find myself wondering if I'm too old for this. Not chronologically. I realize that 29 is a perfectly appropriate age to be expanding our family but emotionally. Am I too emotionally spent to love and nurture another baby?

This year has been a year of hardship for our family. My marriage crumbling right before my eyes, I didn't think there would be another year of having an in tact family moreless a mutual decision to expand our family. In the back of my mind is the fear that if we could were once so capable of screwing up our marriage that we could very well do it again. Old habits die hard afterall. Worry is exhausting.

There's also guilt. Guilt that I won't be able to care for my son the way I once had. All of my time and effort (for the most part) dedicated to him. Will he be jealous? Will he feel neglected? Will I be doing a disservice to him by giving him a sibling? I've never spent a night away from him. No one else has ever put him to bed. Since my husband was deployed while he was born and during the first six months of his life and we lived apart for another six months, my son is only now starting to know what it's like to have both parents around. For much of his life there was only me and him. And I wasn't always the best mother to him. Dealing with my own turmoil and loneliness, there was a period of time when I just couldn't enjoy being a mother. The burden was too great. The exhaustion too debilitating. I still wonder if he will be sitting on a therapist's couch one day saying, "My mom cried a lot when I was a baby." Logically, I know this is stupid. He was too little to remember and he's absolutely fine. He's independent and stubborn and any time we're out and about someone will remark "What a happy boy!" And my boy is happy. I can't say that I want to go through any of what I went through with the separation and the impending divorce again but I can say that without that experience I wouldn't have had the chance to really stop and listen to God and realize that being a mother is a gift and one I should enjoy. With the very real possibility that I'd have to give up my part-time teaching gig to work full time and leave my son in daycare, I plunged head first into enjoying him when there was very little else I felt joy in. Don't get me wrong, he still drives me crazy sometimes. There are days when I just can't watch another episode of Thomas and Friends or I might pull my hair out if I step on another Goldfish cracker. But these things are apart of motherhood. It's a package deal. You don't get the funny faces and cuddles and milestones without the explosive diarrhea and inexplicable bad moods.

I know, I sound like a hypocrite, if one baby is a blessing then another baby is also a blessing. Trust me, I have considered this. I know that trying to talk myself out of having another baby after I'm already pregnant is ridiculous and I know that my worries are mostly unfounded. My son will be fine. He will enjoy having a sibling. My husband and I are now much better equipped to deal with the challenges of marriage than we were in the past and we will be ok. There's the very real possibility that this is just fear talking and not fear of any of the things I've mentioned. Fear of losing this baby. There are so many things that can possibly go wrong. I mean if you think about it, What To Expect When You're Expecting is just a big long list of things that you can flip out about. Since the pregnancy is still so new and it's still so early, I just don't want to get my hopes up. This has become my MO is the past 10 years or so. Don't get excited and you won't be disappointed when things don't work out. Only the strategy doesn't necessarily work and in the meantime, I lose out on a lot of missed opportunities to be joyful. Logically, I know what I need to do. I need to get up (this can be a challenge since the hungover/exhausted pregnant feeling is quite intense these days) and enjoy the last few months of being a mother of one. Then when the baby comes, all I have to do is enjoy being a mother of two. I don't just want to survive motherhood, I want to enjoy it.

Please, God, help me to find joy today. Help me to appreciate this blessing and know that no matter what happens, it is your will and everything will work out the way you intend it to in your time.

Mi Vida Loca (Or How I Was Introduced to Little Loca)

Yesterday was one of those rare March New Mexico days where it was just warm and not hot and the wind wasn't blowing at a speed that would cause a cow to blow pass your window. We took advantage and went out in the backyard to play in Sam's new sandbox and his little blow up swimming pool. While we were outside, the neighbor's extremely aggressive and obnoxious little dog come right up to our gate to bark at us and growl. My husband shooed him back into his yard but the dog kept coming back and snapping, growling and barking. Yes, in our yard. So we did what anyone would do. We called animal control. The neighbors weren't home in the middle of the morning on a weekday so there was really no other recourse unless we wanted to cut our fun short which we were not going to do for some stupid little dog. You better believe that they would have had hell to pay if that dog had attacked my son, especially if he had attacked my son in our yard. We had absolutely no reason not to call animal control. We didn't (and still don't) even know their names so obviously there was no cell or work number we could call and say, "Hey, your stupid, aggressive, needy-for-attention little dog is in our yard and hostile." Animal control came, chased the dog up the road and that's the last we heard of it until later that night. Around 8pm we were on our way home from picking up Sam at my mom's house. We knew something was up as soon as we turned the corner onto our street. The shitty dog neighbors and their next door neighbors (who also have shitty yappy dogs that get out all the time and bark even when you're no where near them) were all outside. Both sets of neighbors have school age kids, both sets of neighbors are rarely outside and when they are it's way after my kid is already in bed so there's really no common ground. As we pulled into our garage, before we were even fully out of our car, the neighbor who will from here on out be called Little Loca, came charging up our driveway in full on "I'm gonna kick your ass" mode.

Little Loca, she's down for Legends West. You better believe, ese. (Ok so this is not what Little Loca really looks like but I would guess that she probably did at some point in her life. It's like the old say goes "You can take the girl out of the hood, but you can't take the hood out of the girl.")

She didn't have anything productive to say. She was as angry, aggressive, and yes, as dumb as her dog. All she could do was yell, "You stupid fat bitch! You called animal control on my dog! That's a chicken shit way to solve the problem! My dog wouldn't have done anything to your kid; he doesn't do anything to my kids. What do you do all day besides sit on your ass at home? Are you even educated? You stupid fat bitch." This was her tirade. For what seemed like hours but was really minutes. "Put your baby down and come out in the street and fight me. Put your baby down, you stupid fat bitch." The only thing that stopped her from physically attacking me was that her husband had the sense to hand her their own infant son so in order to hit me, she would have had to have risked putting her own baby in the middle. Which clearly she was not prepared to do. "You better watch your back, bitch! I'm going to fuck you up! (as long as I'm not holding my baby and there are not witnesses like their are right now.)"

This is like one of those experiences you have when you go to public school in a bad part of, in my case, the state (it is debatable whether or not the entire state of New Mexico can be considered the bad part of the state but then you have places like Santa Fe with all the celebrities and artists and over priced real estate that just screw this whole scenario up). I was jumped in 7th grade by a group of girls who sounded not unlike Little Loca. Except in 7th grade, they were unlikely to call me a fat bitch (I wasn't fat at this point in my life, it's actually debatable whether or not I'm fat now, but I digress). More than likely those bullies called me a slut or something along those lines. I honestly don't remember. In that case, the physical altercation was one sided. I let them beat me up which really just resulted in some pulled hair and a couple of bruises (none of which were on my face). The girls that jumped me really didn't put any heart into. In a case of 5 on 1, they probably could have done a good bit of damage but they didn't. It's like they didn't actually want to do it but they were all probably egging each other on as 7th graders will do.


In this case however, you're talking about moms in what's essentially a suburb in their late 20s with kids (infants and toddlers alike) standing by and husbands (well mine anyway) trying to diffuse the situation. Let me set this scene up a little more clearly, we live at the end of a cul-de-sac. We all drive SUVs or mid-size cars which are parked inside our open two car garages, there's kids playing basketball outside. Can you see it? Are you grasping the ridiculousness of this altercation? Both of us are holding babies, both of us are wearing denim capris. Both of us have our brown hair tied back in pony tails. Both of us are Hispanic. My eyebrows are drawn on with a pencil but it's not a Sharpie and I don't shave them off and then draw them on so that hardly qualifies as part of my hidden chola mystique. Perhaps if I had been wearing black liquid eyeliner and some brown lipliner, but I wasn't. As far as I could tell, Little Loca wasn't wearing any makeup. Not surprising; given, you know, that we're moms, in a well to do neighborhood with small children. Here are some more photos I've Googled to help illustrate my point.

Little Loca continued to yell insults and, yes, I hurled some of my own right back at her. I'm not proud of that but I am only human and being totally blindsided by the severity of this attack, there wasn't much time to think about taking the higher road. She eventually shut up, but didn't calm down. I eventually realized that provoking her wasn't going to solve the problem. Her husband, though not able to actually do anything about her intense, psychotic rage was able to shut her up long enough to actually have a semi adult conversation with the rest of those present; Little Loca was mad dogging me the whole time. In case you don't know what mad dogging is (if you've never seen Mi Vida Loca) it's basically a stare down, you know, an intimidation tactic. I'm not easily intimidated by the human equivalent of an aggressive, stupid, yapping little dog so her attempts to get me quaking in my boots were futile at best (I'm not easily intimidated by anyone except those that I consider intellectually superior to me. My former professors, experts in my field. You know, educated people. Not surprising since, according to Little Loca, I must not be educated because I am at home most of the time.)

The whole stupid thing ended with her husband saying that the dog would never get out again and him ushering her inside quickly and without ceremony. We stayed outside talking to the other neighbor about his yapping dogs and explaining that his dogs get so wound up when we're outside that there have been times that one or the other of them has actually gotten stuck in the fence or wrapped up in it's chain, which is an unsafe situation for any dog to be in for an indeterminate amount of time. He seemed ok with it. Or as ok as you can be when someone is telling you that you suck as a pet owner because you never trained your dogs and they lack attention because you're never home so they get themselves into dangerous situations because the people whole live across the street are outside in their yard. We also had the opportunity to meet another neighbor was 100% not psychotic and was surprised at the aggressiveness of Little Loca because, although they've been neighbors for years, he'd never actually interacted with her. The other surprising little tidbit about her hostility and her threats is that we live in a neighborhood that is saturated with law enforcement (my husband included although unfortunately, he doesn't get to bring a marked car home). Little Loca didn't seem to process this. And since she had already decided that I am uneducated and fat and my husband is "retarded" (a word I loathe because I believe that only truly ignorant and stupid people use it as an insult) she didn't give a second thought to how we could afford to live in this neighborhood. Oh and speaking of chicken shits, she never gave us her name. Her husband offered up their first name but not their last and never offered up her name either. Since she didn't give us her name, I had no choice but to make an appropriate one up for the purposes of this blog post. Admittedly, last night was a rough night. When you're dealing with someone who has no control over their emotions, it's nearly impossible to predict what they are going to do. We did call dispatch and some police officers came over to make a report so there's documentation of what happened in case Little Loca does decide to make good on her threats. Besides the adrenaline rush which took quite a while to come down from, we we also on edge because my son's bedroom is in the front of the house and ours is in the back. So presumably, if she were to actually try anything stupid, it would have been my toddler that took the brunt of it. Today, we rest. Tomorrow, we are having a security system installed and the day after that, who knows? I hope this is the last I hear from Little Loca. I'm not the type to hold a grudge but I'm also not "uneducated" enough to try to reason with an aggressive, stupid, yapping chola.

The Note

There was a note on Sam's backpack when I picked him from school yesterday. I didn't even notice it until we were already at home. It said "Please bring Sam's Valentines by Wednesday. Thanks." That's it. Nothing more. And yet I felt like it was accusing me of something. It might as well have said "Hey lady! You know how you failed your husband? Now you've failed your kid too! Get your shit together, go to Walmart, and pick up some flippin Valentines for your kid!" It's amazing how one stupid yellow Post-It can send my mind into a tailspin. But I did what the note "said." I took Sam to Walmart, he/we picked out some Valentines and we were all set to pay and then the line was too long. The cashier was too slow. There were too many people. We waited in that stupid line for over 20 minutes. Sam kept kicking my legs, pulling my hair, trying to bite my fingers, anything to keep himself entertained. He was tired of sitting. Tired from an afternoon at school. Hungry for dinner. Hungry for home.  I was tired of standing, hungry for dinner, hungry for home. Hungry for the kind of normalcy that's been so disrupted the last few days and will probably continue to be for a long time to come. And I couldn't handle it. I stood in that line trying to convince myself to be patient, to wait, that the Valentines were all we needed and we should get what we came for. But I couldn't do it. While one part of me knew I should stick it out, the rest of me wanted to curl up in a little ball and cry or stand on top of the counter and yell. I was just so incredibly angry, in that moment. In line at freakin' Walmart. I am trying to give a shit. Trying to care about those Valentines  because my son needs them for school. But I don't care. Valentines is a huge crock and I'm too angry, too bitter, and too alone to even think about how cute it would be to watch him "sign" his cards. The wound is still too fresh. I haven't even begun to think about what bandaging it. It's just bloody and raw and exposed. So I did what any sane person would do, I took it out on the manager who came out of her office at the  behest of another frustrated Walmart patron to see what the problem was. If only I could have told her, "Look I'm not truly angry at you. Any other day the slow cashier and the long line would have just been a passing annoyance. But this just coincides with a whole list of things that are wrong in my life right now and I am incapable of the logical thought it would take to just stick it out and pay for my stuff. I'm really angry at myself and I apologize that you have to take the brunt of it. It's either sound off on you or cry and I really am tired of crying. If it makes you feel any better, I will cry later. When Sam is in carseat and can't see my face, after he's gone to bed and the house is quiet and I am truly and completely alone. I'll cry in bed before I go to sleep. I'll cry when I realize I can't reach the stupid fan to dust the blades. I'll cry when I am vacuuming to cover the sound. I'll cry when I wake up in the morning. When it's too early to move and  my eyes are heavy from not enough sleep. But I can't cry here in this line of angry people. I can't let anyone see my face and see how ashamed I am that this has happened. That I've let this happen. That I've failed. Because even though they won't know and probably won't care why I'm crying, I will." But I didn't tell her that. I handed her the bag of Goldfish crackers that I had opened to try to buy some time before Sam demanded dinner and I left my cart full of Valentines, odds and ends, and Drano to pour down the stupid slow moving drain in front of her and stormed out of the store. Nearly running with my 30 pound toddler in my arms. A race with myself, to see if I could make it to my car before the tears really started going. And I made it. That was my only victory yesterday; I made it to the car before anyone could see me cry. This morning, the note is still on Sam's backpack. That accusatory note that sent me on that failed mission. And today I have to try again.

Rock Bottom

A few months ago I wrote about some problems I was having with my husband. Things got better for a little while and now they are worse than ever. He just walked out and I don't honestly know if he's coming back. I don't have anyone to talk to about what's going on; it doesn't really seem like anyone can empathize with our situation and that's just how it is for now. Lately, I've been feeling like a huge failure as a wife and a mom, and now he's just confirmed it. I know that I suck right now. I'm not myself. I'm stressed out and tired all the time and I'm lonely. I know that I shouldn't take it out on him and I try really hard not too but sometimes I mess up and messing up always seems to lead to a gigantic fight with yelling and screaming and name calling. It's horrible. Horrible to go through it and horrible to watch my son watching us fight. Thank God, he doesn't understand yet what is really happening but that doesn't mean it's not damaging or painful for him to witness. And that is just one of the many ways I'm failing as a mother right now. What I wanted and needed was a little compassion. I am a single mom most of the time. Our situation is such that my husband lives and works two hours away and only comes home on his days. We only see him 6 or 7 days a month because every other "weekend" he has, he spends one day with his kids from his previous marriage who live in another town. That means that I handle the bills, the house, our son, my jobs, and the million other little odds and ends on my own the majority of the time. I also recently found out I have a herniated disc in my spine. Despite medication and a steroid injection to help with the pain, I'm still in pain the majority of the time. You can imagine how good I feel after a full day of chasing after a 30 pound toddler. The reason we chose this arrangement is because his job is in tiny little town and there's no opportunities there for me or my son. There aren't even any grocery stores open past 7pm. His job is extremely demanding. He's on his feet hiking 8-12 hours a day. We tried living in a bigger town that was only an hour away but that didn't work either. He was home more, but that basically translated into him being at home asleep more and I was then left to try to keep our son occupied while he slept. I was very lonely there as I am here but there was worse because there wasn't a mall or park to take Sam to when we needed to get out of the house. And of course, now there's my job. Teaching one class isn't much to a lot of people but it helps me stay sane and I enjoy doing it. I couldn't do that if we were still living a commutable distance to his job. I like it here, I like it here so much that I want my husband to be here. I want him to get a job that allows him more time to be at home with us without the commute and without the crappy schedule. He's unreliable and unreachable the majority of the time. He has no cell phone reception in the areas where he works and in order to get a message to him I would have to call the station and they would have to relay a message via radio. Calling the station is a last resort that I've only done twice in the history of our relationship. I can't just call every time I miss him or have something I want to share. A lot of the time, he's so tired when he gets back to his apartment from working that he doesn't have the energy to talk to me. He'll text me that he's off work and safe and that's pretty much the only communication I get from him most days.


Living apart is not a new thing for us. He was deployed in 2011 for the entire year, so we've done the separation thing As a matter of fact, at this point we've spent about as much time living together as we have living apart. It's hard. It's hard on me. It's hard on him. And we are struggling. Still. Still struggling. I know that if I feel lonely or tired that I can't blame him for it. I know that I shouldn't take it out on him. I need to learn to live my life the way it is and not get overwhelmed by the circumstances that are beyond my control. All I've asked him for time and time again is a little compassion. Some flowers would cheer me up and let me know that he does think of me even when he's not around. If he would let me sleep in or go get a pedicure and handle our son by himself, I'd have a chance to relax just for a little while. I'm exhausted. I've been raising our son, working, handling our finances, and the house and everything else by myself for a long time now and it's hard work. I'm not afraid of hard work. I'm just plain tired and what I want from him is a pat on the back once in a while and some time to myself. The only conclusion that I have come up with is that I'm being selfish. I have a really hard time asking for help. I've never been good at it but I figured if there was anyone I could ask for him, it should be him but it doesn't work and hasn't worked and I need to figure out a way to move past feeling like this so that it stops being so damaging to my marriage. I haven't come up with anything yet though. How do I feel appreciated on my own? How do I stop wanting the flowers or the pat on the back? How do I juggle everything without getting overwhelmed? My husband is angry with me because he says I'm stressed out and I try to stress him out too. Maybe he's right. Maybe I just need him to be stressed out with me. Or maybe I just need a full time there for me thick and thin husband and I'm not cut out for this. I feel like he's choosing his job over our son and me and in a lot of ways he is. At this point, he's not trying to transfer or find a job closer. He loves his job. He had the job before I was round so the job has seniority over me and the job usually wins. What's really heartbreaking is that I feel like he chooses the job because I'm not enough for him and maybe that is really what it is. I need to be better. I need to be a better wife, a better mom, a better woman in general and learn to let go of those negative feelings. I told him last night, long before this morning's fight, that I feel worn out right now and need some encouragement and support to get back to being me. At this point, I shouldn't ask for anything because I know that he can't give it and I don't think that he wants to. Why should he invest the time and energy here when here is not where he spends the majority of his time?



Maybe I just need to prepare myself for the possibility that he's not coming back. If he is unhappy then he has every right to leave. I just keep praying that God's will be done. I can't pray for him to come home and I can't pray for him to leave. He has to do whatever he feels is right and God will get me through whatever that is. Lord knows I need strength right now. Strength and patience and clarity to see what it is that I'm doing that needs to be fixed and the perseverance to change. I need God to teach me not to need the pats on the back and time off. I need to suck it up and keep moving because that's all I can do. I need to be my own shoulder to cry on and my own cheerleader. I didn't realize how weak I truly was until I couldn't be strong any more. My weakness has caused this and I can't do anything to change the past. All I can do now is be stronger, be better, be more than I have been because that is the only solution I can see right now. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, there is no better days are coming, this is the way life is and it might very well be this way for a very very long time.