Hey, sports fans...

That dear husband of mine, who does not read blogs or web journals or get a lot of e mail in general, did not know what DH meant. I had asked him to read an entry for me, to see if it hit the right note, and he said- “ I am glad I’m your designated hitter. I’m happy to be on your team, honey.” I asked what in the Wide Wide World of Sports he was talking about. He said – “DH? Isn’t that designated hitter?”

He really is a sweetheart…he steps up to the bat and gets a base hit every time. Ok, Ok, it’s true, I have no idea what I mean by that, because the last time I watched a ball game Mark McGuire was trying for the homerun record. I forget… did he set one?

I just had to let y’all know about that.

Didja ever read something that wasn't there?

I took a peek at my horror-scope today; just a quick glance as I flipped the paper to my puzzles and games. I try to do a crossword puzzle and the Jumble and the Celebrity Cipher every few days to keep my mind from turning into mashed potatoes. I have in my daily routine to nurse the boys, on my lap, until they fall asleep, twice a day. The goal is to the ease them off the lap onto the bed and stay in the room with them, nurse them when I need to, and try and "get something done". I stay with them so if they stir and start blinding rooting around for Mama's Milk Machine I can just plug them in and they won't fully awaken. Sometimes I can get them to sleep for two hours that way. BUT I must be near enough to hear the little seeking noises and to re-attach them before they move around too much, or they're up. I told my MIL when she asked - as she invariably does - how are they sleeping? - that they sleep once in the morning for about 45 minutes and once after lunch for a hour and a half. She said - "Oh, great! I bet that's when you get things done." Yeah, like I am going to wait until my babies are asleep, then leave the house and get a manicure...

Anyway, I was with the boys and they were dozing. One was on the bed next to me and the other was still nursing away, in his sleep, as attached as firmly as a limpet mine. When I folded the newspaper over to expose the crossword and provide a somewhat stiff surface upon which to write, (experienced puzzlers know what I mean) I caught a glimpse of my Horoscope - or Horror-scope, as I like to call it.

I THOUGHT I read:

Irritation becomes more intense - what are your own motives?

I unfolded the paper and read the actual text:

A flirtation becomes more intense. Question your own motives.

What a meaningful mistake! Here I am, tired, hot and as cross as two sticks (British expression - get it - like to sticks are crossed, you know to make an X - har har- never mind...) I was irritated at my leg falling asleep under the weight of the baby and I read the word 'irritation" when it was really "flirtation"...hmmm...

Dear MOT, this is your Alter Ego speaking: step back from it all and take a look. Here you are in a comfortable house, with a lovely marriage to a sweet man, with healthy, absolutely beautiful babies and in good health yourself. Everyone says your two are unusually cute, even the nurse at the pediatrician's office. AND a lot of people, even women without babies, who don't have any experience with a body that has changed drastically, say you look good for someone who had gained almost 80 pounds during a pregnancy. Why be so cross?

Well, Mizz AE; yer right. I must be thankful. After I asked almost every mama I knew and made about a million phone calls for babysitters, I finally have two girls to come over and help out in the evenings. I am sure they'll be great and they both seem very sweet (apart from the fact that they are both cute; no more than 18 and 19; and together weigh less than I do, even when I am on the scale totally naked and first thing in the morning...oh well...youth on the young...) Tonight was the third night, and it worked out beautifully. One of the girls came by at 4:30, helped me feed them, then my DH came home from work, I changed, went jogging for 40 minutes, came home, showered, got dinner ready, we all ate and then she left around 7:30. My inimitable parents have said: Send us the bill. Okay! No need to ask me twice. I am going to try and have someone over at least four days a week. If I can go running and eat a decent dinner four times a week, I will be much better off. So will the babies, no doubt.

A flirtation becomes more intense... With my husband? With my future? With my family? With my happiness? I wonder to what that referred. I think it meant as long as I Keep on Keeping On, head down and blinders on, in the same way I am, I won't get any happier and the situation won't get any better. After all, the insane do the same thing, the same way, over and over and expect different results. I need to grow and change as these boys' needs grow and change, without losing myself in the process. Getting a couple of babysitters/mama's helpers is a step. Getting out jogging is a step. Not drinking 3 cups of heavily sugared double espresso a day is definitely a step. I've been off the java for four days now and really do feel better. Or, perhaps I feel better because I've got a buzz from the replacement chocolate milk I've been enjoying. buzz buzz buzz.

Of course, I can't change everything at once. These blogs must needs be done when I can squeeze 'em in. Tonight, for example, my three men are tucked up in bed and I am sitting on the bath mat, at 11:00 PM with my one eyed cat purring between my knees, the laptop resting on his broad, furry back. I think he thinks it's another cat, warm, happy and purring back. Life's little moments.

Don't you know I avoid the sun?

I had to get this out- it was keeping me awake.

When I was in college, aged 18, some of the girls in my dorm called me Vampira because a; I have white skin and dark hair, b; I took mostly afternoon classes and liked to sleep until noon (like many college freshmen, I’m sure) and c; because an admirer gave a dozen roses and I didn’t put them in fresh water, quickly wilting them. The girls joked I killed the roses because I was a vampire – didn’t I scuttle from class to class as swiftly as possible to avoid the sun?  Didn’t I wear hats all the time?  Wasn’t I an oddball with my anti-suntan thing?  This was seventeen years ago and I still avoid direct sunlight as if I were a vampire of sorts.  (Yikes, I was in college 17 years ago?  There were people born when I was in college who can now drive.  Wow.)

I am letting you know this snippet to make the following story understandable. Understandable as to why it’s worth a blog and understandable as to why it might keep me from sleeping, tired as I am. 

I went to see my parents over the weekend.  They have an indoor pool, so I am more than happy to swim in it with my boys – there is no need to fear the deadly rays of our life-giving star.  (Yes, I am aware of the contradiction here.  I think of the sun like red wine – it can be necessary, it can be beneficial, but too much on a consistent basis can do all kinds of damage.)  So I was in the pool, with my father and my twins, just frolicking around having a grand old time.  My father says, in this you-obviously-don’t-know-this stern father voice – “You need to get your moles checked.”  I am fully aware I have a number of moles on my back and arms and legs.  AND I am fully aware that they need to be checked out on occasion.  In fact, I have been to three different dermatologists over the past decade and have a mole map at one local skin doc’s office.  I go see her annually and she measures some of the larger freckles to see if there have been any changes.  Point being – I am on top of it, thank you.  I let my father know this.

Then, once we had the babies out and were all enjoying a little snack, he comes out with another comment.  “Daughter, this is new – you should wear sun block every day.  In fact, you should put sun block on your children everyday too.”  I said to him, through the ringing in my ears and the red mist before my eyes, as steadily as I could manage  - “Tell me something I don’t know.”  I am not sure he heard me, that is, I am not sure he was listening, because he had no reply.

I told my husband this exchange like this:


Honey, would you say I like the sun or avoid the sun?

Sweetheart, you never go in the sun!  Your umbrella-carrying and glove-wearing is part of you.

This afternoon my father told me to wear sun block everyday.  He thought his was something of which I was unaware.

My God!  Doesn’t he know you at all?


That’s what is upsetting me – the forcible reminder that my father has not paid me any mind for the past eighteen years, at least.  I am, to him, a middle daughter; defined by a few funny remarks made in childhood, my clumsiness (which I have overcome, thank you!  You should see me swing dance) and the fact I was born second.  The anti-sun thing is really a big part of who I am as an individual.  It sounds nutty, but it’s true.  I have been carrying parasols for the past two decades.  I coat my babies with sun block on a daily basis.  I wear long sleeved shirts to protect my arms as I drive.  Heck, I’ll wear gloves in August to protect the backs of my hands, because I want to keep them as smooth and white as I can.  Ask anyone who knows me, and they’ll tell you - She stays out of the sun – it’s just the way she is. How can anyone overlook a woman wearing gloves all summer long? I wonder what he’ll say next – just to inform me of something I plainly don’t know…

“Daughter, you should breastfeed your babies until at least one year of age, or longer if you can.”  “Thanks for the hot tip!  I’ll be sure to call my La Leche league Leader and let her know her International organization is now okay!”

“Daughter, it’s good to carry your baby in a sling– it will actually help him grow.”  “Great!  I’ll let William and Martha Sears know they have the green light to keep writing books.”

“Daughter, your sister is a Liberal!”  “Really?  What gave it away?  Was it Air America on memory in her car?  Or the copy of Bushwhacked on her bedside table?  Or was it the printed out e-mail from Joe Connason on her desk?”

I love and respect my father, as a dutiful child should, but also because I want to.  I hope, someday, he will want to respect me in return, not because I said something funny when I was 4, but because I am now grown, with children of my own, and, according to my husband, friends, sister, in-laws and neighbors, I am somehow managing to do a good job with them, all by myself.  I know my father is the only father I have, but he should realize I am not just the only middle child he has, but a fully fledged personality too.  He was actually shocked, and I think a bit frightened, by my blog about my brother.  I don’t think he had ever realized I have my own eyes to see people and situations in my own way, not just as the situations appear to him.  After he told me it was monstrous, the way I let loose on my brother, he told me I was a genius and had to write a book.  I guess he hasn’t been listening to me talk about the writing I have been doing for the past four months either.

I swear by all that’s dear to me that I will keep my eyes and heart open and really SEE my sons grow.  I will know who they are.  If they develop a personality quirk when they are 11 months, great.  It is who they are right now.  If they change again when they are a year old, wonderful! It’s who they are then.  I know they will keep on changing and developing and growing and maturing at age 2, age 5, age 12, age 20, age 30, and I will keep up with them.  I will pay attention to them, and I will make myself see who they are as people, not just as my sons. 

And, by God, I’ll be as pale as I can be doing it.

 

I think they think I'm an idiot...

I went to visit a gal pal of mine, who had a baby recently.  The chipmunk is about a month old and was a little on the early side, about three weeks so.  She spent some time in the NICU, so Mommy and Daddy had a few stressful days before bringing her home.  The little one is just fine now and M and D have settled into their newborn baby routine.  However, keeping their situation in mind, how they might be feeling and knowing my duty to keep it light and tension free, I was careful with my conversation.  But not careful enough it seems…

Get this:  I was sitting on the sofa, chatting with Mommy and admiring the new baby, as one does.  The Daddy comes in while we are talking about watching TV, the perils of and the studies by the American Academy of Pediatrics on ADHD and TV watching for children under age two.  The gist is; children under two should not watch TV at all.  Period.  This is one of my two main soapboxes; I avoid the sun like it’s going to kill me and I can’t stand the insipid, contemporary trash on television (except Sex and the City – that show rocks – mainly because I love clothes and I can see it on DVD and don’t have to suffer through the commercials.  That’s what I really loathe; those wretched jingles stick in your mind like barbed wire to an expensive sweater and those misogynistic beer commercials get me so irritated…but I am getting off track here.)  Anyway, the Daddy comes into the conversation just as I said something along the lines of – “Children are so much smarter and more creative if they don’t watch TV.  I plan on not letting my boys see it at all for as long as I can.”  His reply was – “We plan on seeing how much TV she can watch daily, to see how stupid we can make her.”  They exchanged an amused smirk, when they thought I wasn’t looking.

I guess I don’t have the market on thinking other people are idiots, eh?

Another way to drive myself crazy

For all the times my babies are good and sweet and smiling and happy, there are an equal number of times when they shriek in chorus, refuse to eat their nice, organic puree and generally carry on as if they have just been dipped in boiling oil.   Unfortunately, when I have the rare babysitter/helper around they are the former.  I wonder if maybe it isn’t hunger, boredom, or general malaise, but is it me?

With twins there is the challenge of keeping two little needy non-comprehending creatures happy and satisfied at the same time.  Twins may have come in a set, but they are not going to settle for being treated like one entity.  One baby likes to be tossed in the air, tickled and chased around; he will crawl as fast as he can across the bed and pause to look over his shoulder to make sure you are “coming to get him”.  He laughs and shrieks the whole time.  The other baby is a little more tranquil, he LOVES to me carried around, he is the perfect Attachment Parenting style sling baby.  He could sleep in his sling for hours, and he has, too.  So how do I carry one baby in the sling while I run around after the other?  Poor babies, they are having to learn how to wait earlier than many other ten month-olds need to.

My dear husband finds it difficult to change two diapers at once.  Admittedly, is isn’t easy wrestling one little one while the other yanks on your clothes and howls to be picked up.  Also, there is the man-mind thing – you know, one thing at a time.  Women’s multi-tasking abilities have so clearly come from the hunting-gathering-keep-the-baby-quiet-at-the-same-time part of our human history.  (Stop the baby crying!  The saber-toothed tiger will hear him and come into our cave to gobble us up!) I have grown very accustomed to feeding them together, changing them together, carrying them around together, doing everything as a unit, that when I find myself with just one baby, I feel a bit at odds, as if a part of my essential equipment is missing.  Have I become too wrapped up in the Mother of Twins identity?  Can I operate with just one?

A terrific thing about writing down what’s in my head, my feelings and impressions, is that it triggers a thought process that may not have otherwise been developed.  Here I am; being a mama and struggling to make it work; sometimes I feel successful, other times I have to slap my cheeks to try to calm myself down.  Here I am as well; loving being a mama, loving the feeling that they look to me for comfort and happiness and afraid of not being important once I can no longer say – they NEED me.  Right now their needs are relentless and overwhelming.  Am I too busy being their caretaker to have fun?  Too busy performing the series of tasks necessary to keep them safe and fed and comfortable that I am neglecting making them happy? 

Or am I just looking for another way to make myself crazy?

My mother calls my baby Vegetable...how can I stop her?

My mother calls one of my babies Vegetable.  She says it’s because he is round and plump and juicy.  My sister says it’s because she likes to irritate me.   You know – push buttons to get a reaction.  In that way my mother and I are quite similar; I too can be confrontational for the sake of the conversation it may spark.  However, she tends to be too Stiff Upper Lip, and avoids conversations about love and fears and hopes and emotions.  You know, all the kinds of things new mothers need and want to talk about.  I'll ask her about her pregnancies or how long I was nursed, or something like that and 9 times out of 10 she'll say - "Oh, I can't remember that!"  But she can recall, in detail, how one of her children learned to crawl, or something funny we said.  Am I the only mama who retains both good and bad memories?  Is there something wrong with holding on to difficult situations for the lessons they teach?  Or, to paraphrase Big Boi (Antwan Patton) in Flip Flop Rock - Am I on a whole 'nother plane and a whole different lane?  Is my kind of motherhood a whole 'nother game that I'm playin'?  Yo, Mummy, can't you understand what I'm sayin'?  Hmmmm...you can see  one of the reasons why I need a blog. 
 
Anyway, my mother and I are constantly having the same conversation about that annoying name, Vegetable. True, the little sweetie is round and plump like good garden produce should be, but I find the nick name “vegetable” to be rather insulting. The other day, when she trotted out her - “Hello Vegetable!  How is my little Veggie today?  Veggie veggie veggie-matic” I said exactly this – “Please don’t call him Vegetable.  It bothers me and I don’t like it.  I am sure you can think of a better name for him.”  She replied – “But I like calling him Vegetable.” 

 Have I mentioned she’s a therapist?

How you have changed!

I was talking with an old friend the other day who expressed concern for me at how I had changed. Apparently, I am not the same carefree, fun-loving gel I was a few years ago, when I lived down South.  She told me she had read some of my blog postings and wasn’t sure it was really me.  We have communicated by phone and a lot of email over the past 5 years, and according to this friend, since the birth of the twins my manner and the manner in which I write have altered.  She said – “I felt stressed out just reading about your life…how can you actually live it?”  Another lady in my acquaintance has said the same sort of thing – “You seem to have lost your sense of humor.”  (Except she also said I have a hard time taking a joke and have always been like that, as long as she has known me.  Huh, go figure.) I wonder; have I really lost it, or have I just found that trying to find the funny side of things even more exhausting than being grouchy?
 
My, oh my!  This is awful!  I can’t lose my sense of humor on top of losing my figure and my sanity!  How can I let lack of sleep, lack of regular and nutritious meals, lack of mental stimulation and lack of regular exercise get to me like this?! I must do something and fast!  I know; I’ll ask the people who know me and love me to come over on a regular basis, say, twice a week, to help me out with the twins so I can take naps and go for walks and have hot meals!  What a great idea!  Oh, wait…I’ve done that already, and it ain’t workin’. 
 
Don’t fret, my dears!  I still have my antennae tuned to the vibe of the funny and absurd – I wouldn’t be getting down the details of my life adventures and sharing them like this if I had no sense of humor.  Come on, you must see that I find a lot of what I am going through as hilarious as it is pathetically sad.
 
Example:  When I was in the hospital, and the boys were just one day old, my parents came to visit, and ostensibly keep me company.  I was, (to put a finger on the most pungent parts of my emotional state) completely freaked out at suddenly having two babies to take care of, nervous about getting them to nurse, and just plain old afraid of not being a good mother to tiny, helpless babies.  Besides, according to two docs and an anesthesiologist, I had almost died the day before.  Anyway, here they were to see me and the boys, but after about 20 minutes of – how cute! and - you need to get some sleep! they said – “Your poor husband needs to get out of here, he must be exhausted!  We are taking him out to lunch; there’s a new place Zagat’s guide gave a 20 for food.  Bye!” And they took off, leaving me with a bell for the nurse and a morphine drip to keep me company.  Now even I, the victim, can see that situation was as hilarious as it was sad.  If I didn’t laugh about it now, and add it to my repertoire, then you could say I don’t know anything about humor.
 
Yes, ladies, I’ve still got it…

What was I before I became a MOT?

What did I do for a living before I lived for my twins?  I cannot remember doing anything important at all.  I was a mediocre student (too lazy to study) so I went to college in a big city and got a degree in art – how useful!  Then I moved to England and got a degree in culinary arts  - that was more useful, at least I got a job cooking.  At first it was fun, like a game –hey!  I have a job! I’d never had to work before – I know, Spoiled Miss, getting a monthly check, but believe me, it reads a whole lot better than it lives.  Can you imagine being 20 years old, going to college and living in NY, with no money apart from an insufficient allowance and no idea how to work, let alone how to get a job?  I knew I needed more than the monthly check provided, but it didn’t occur to me to GET A JOB.  Finally, a friend suggested I try waitressing.  Well, at my first interview at TGI Friday’s, (why I picked that place, of all places, I can’t remember) I was asked – What experience do you have, I said –“None whatsoever,” and was hired for my honesty!!!? Anyway, to make a short story even shorter, I was there for about 4 nights, spilled a tray of drinks all over a customer, decided the job was boring and anyway I was too good for waitressing and should concentrate on school, so I took in a roommate for the money and quit the job. 
 
A few years after I graduated, I found myself in London, working at various restaurants and going to cooking school.  It seemed like such a game.  The paychecks, miniscule as they were, seemed like a treat – Hey!  I’m being PAID! Wow, real money… Of course now I look back and see I was totally underpaid and overworked – I mean 70 hours of work and about $100 pay a week…no joke!  Then I came back to the US, got different cooking and catering jobs, finally left the cooking racket, worked in a department store.  (Boy did that seem like a game after sweating my brains out in a kitchen.  I got to wear heels and makeup and look pretty all day.  I worked at the store at night and at an office as receptionist during the day.  Once I got to the cosmetic counter kind of tired and droopy from a rough day on the phones, and I heard a co-worker tell someone over the phone – “Oh, She is working tonight!  We’ll have fun for sure now!  Gotta go.” That perked me up like a slug after a rainfall.  I used to be such a trip to be around…).
 
My office jobs were usually as a secretary or such, which were okay, and I could have worked at them for longer, but I had to leave the last one due to pregnancy related complications.  I wasn’t sorry at all – I really didn’t like that last job at all.  My co-workers were, for the most part, immature, whiny, complainers and, since it was over-the-phone customer service, I had to soothe immature, whiny, complainers as a job.  Yuck.  I liked working as an Executive Assistant much better.  I used to be the glorified secretary to the president of a large corporation.  (Great job for someone who doesn’t know how to type…) Anyway, that was a cool job for all the perquisites, but the hours got to be a bit much (staying until 7:00 three out of five nights a week, the calls at home on Sundays) and when the job encroached on my personal life (the president had a senior assistant – an Executive Adviser, or some wacky name – who hinted I not date the man who is now my husband because he wasn’t quite high up enough in the company, and to be careful with the “pillow talk”!! Those were her exact words.  As if I didn’t have enough to talk about without having to spill company secrets), I left to join a different team in the same corporation.  But I got canned from that position for using the Internet during work hours, everybody did it, but I got busted, and went to my (Ick Ick!) Customer Service job.
 
The point of this L’Histoire de Moi is that I have not exactly had a brilliant career.  I do believe I have suffered from a lack of guidance and structure.  I wish there had been a guidance counselor in my Prep school.  Well, there was one, but - honest to God - he had a brain aneurysm my senior year, so I went off to college without any ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I never thought I’d be an unholy blend of two parts classic frustrated suburban house-wife, three parts amusingly acerbic mother of twin boys, and a splash of my former, fabulous, self swimming to the surface of the shaker from time to time…I’m quite an overwhelmingly intoxicating cocktail.  (Good thing my husband has strong head for drink.)
 
So here I am now – living for my babies.  They are my reason for being, my full time job, my joy and pain (sunshine and rain – give it up for all the Rob Base fans!)  What will I do when they are older and not so needy?  When they don’t nurse anymore, or need me to help them go to sleep and when they go to school all day, what will I do?  What will be my excuse for being around?  Will I still feel important, as I do now, or will I go back to the somewhat insecure and drifting existence I lived before?   Will I ever feel I have the right to complain again?  I was always unsure of who I was “professionally” and insecure as to who I was allowed be personally.  I used to think, and still do sometimes, do I have a right to tell my family what I really need from them, because I am a hanger-on, a slacker, and should be glad for whatever I get?  I don’t deserve attention/assistance/my own back because I haven’t worked for it.  
 
Once one of my sisters-in-law, in own, her inimitable way, asked me – “How can you justify being a secretary with your intelligence and education?” Obviously she was just trying to hurt my feelings.  That question makes no sense! What fantasy-land did she grow up in to think that a degree in art and a glib tongue equal gainful employment?  My parents raised their children to marry well, not to work and do well for themselves.  Well, I did marry a man who is able to support me, as did my sister, actually my brother married someone who supports him too, so I guess Mummy and Daddy’s plan worked out.  I am just waiting for my SIL to ask me now – “How can you now justify not having a “real job” at all?” Well, let me wake you up to reality here, my dear – right now I AM A MOTHER OF TWINS and that is all I can be and do.  I am proud of my babies and proud of myself for still being somewhat sane (as if I was ever completely sane to begin with).  This motherhood position I now hold, and it was a HUGE promotion in ranks, is so much more than any kind of paper pushing job could ever be.  The only catch is I am terribly afraid of what will happen when I am made redundant by their maturity. I need them to need me.
 
BUT, in the midst of this love-fest, there are moments when I can’t stand these helpless, little, needy, crying, whiny creatures.  They want so much of me all the time and are very unpredictable.  They want to nurse, they don’t want to nurse, they want me, they push me away.  I take them outside for a change of pace and one of them will cry bloody murder because he wants to be inside but the other is happy to be in the fresh air.  One of them likes to be in the car, the other shrieks and carries on like he is being eviscerated on a car trip of any length at all.  I try to go jogging in the morning with them, but the little guy wants to be carried, which defeats the purpose of a jog.  So I try going earlier, to see if they'll sleep (at one point I got up and went running at 4:45 AM - Christ Almighty, what was I thinking?) but you can't trick these babies of mine.  They cry at night when we are trying to put them to sleep, they both want me all the time, at the same time, and it can make you CRAZY!!!
 
Good thing I am a Gemini and used to going back and forth all the time.  I am confident in being a mother to these boys because my instincts and impulses have served me well so far, but I am worn out and resentful of their relentless neediness too.  The $64,000 question, asked by Mothers of Twins is: how can I resent them at the same time I love them?  I want them with me and want to make them happy; they are my babies, and the only valid reason I have for being alive.  But I need to live for me a little too…
 
Goethe wrote: Enjoying simple pleasures one ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  To speak a few reasonable words on a daily basis…I try, but is anyone there to hear me? 
  
 

My father thinks I'm a monster

My father had a look at my blog today and read the article about my brother, his youngest child and only boy. (Which I have actually deleted from this blog, "coz it was a little rough. If you're interested, send me a comment with your email and I'll forward it on.) He was a little annoyed at my slamming of my brother – at least I think he was annoyed because when I asked – “Whattya think?” He said – “You are a monster.” I also think he was a little scared. Scared at the sarcasm and vitriol, and also scared at my ability to pinpoint what was troubling me and capture that in words. He asked – “what do you write about me?”

Well, I haven’t got there yet, Daddy. Whilst I do have many, many stories to tell about the relationships within my family and the corresponding emotional results, I am not going to expose ‘em here. I'll save that for the novel (in process!!) and for the visits to my therapist when I have the time to find a therapist and to actually go. This blog is about ME, ME, ME, and how I see the world around me now that I am a mother; a mother of twins. This is a place for me to boo hoo about how tough it is for me and to try and make my fans laugh (insert chuckle here). I am not out to hurt anyone’s feelings or to act like a monster, I am out to let other MOT know that they are not alone in feeling not a single soul on God’s green earth can possibly understand what life is like as a Mother of Twins. I know there are other women out there in cyber-land who have sisters and brothers and parents and in-laws and who love them and are enraged by them in the same moment. What I have discovered within me since the birth of my boys, and I don’t really know why it hasn’t surfaced before, is the freedom to speak. The freedom to say how I feel, in person or on line, and the freedom to feel it is okay to have negative thoughts and feelings; it’s normal and healthy and realistic. What is not normal or realistic is to expect everything to be David Bowie Hunky-Dory anytime soon. Everyone expects me to "be better soon" but I am still in pain, still in a daze and still, sometimes, in a rage. I get these awful burning angry feelings boiling up in me like milk in a sauce pan. You hear it, you can see it and you know it'll make a big mess if you let it go, but sometimes, you just don't catch it in time. Don’t worry about the babies, I have my temper tantrums in my head and on line. But I have them...

In my latest, very mainstream, Parenting magazine, and in a corresponding Baby Center Bulletin are articles on Feeling Good about your Post-Baby Body. Some women had responded to the posted question – How do you feel about your body NOW, and I ( of course) had to chip in a comment of my own. Here’s what I posted in the “your comment here” space:

How do I feel about my post-baby body? Lemme tell ya: I carried my twins for 39 weeks, therefore, my body is ravaged. My twins are now 10 months old, so what I see now is what I have to keep. My feet are a full size larger, my carpal tunnel hasn't gone away, I have spider veins, a HUGE scar from the emergency C-section, a nasty, flabby flap of skin half hanging over the scar, but not covering it, and my stretch marks have stretch marks, like seersucker fabric. I have stretch marks on my thighs (I gained almost 80 pounds) I was a size 8/10, now I am a 10/12 because my belly flab, even in control top panties (yes! I'm wearing a girdle!) is pretty big. However, my rear end is almost flat, so all my jeans are baggy in the butt. Nobody's body could look worse than mine. But then again, no body's baby could possible be more adorable than either of my boys.

I haven’t checked the site to see if there were any comments on my comment, but I am really not that interested in other people’s opinions (or have you already figured that one out?) I am trying to get back into some semblance of my former sexy self - I go running almost every day, and watch what I eat, but alack alas! only cosmetic surgery can save me now. My generous husband has said, several times, that he would be happy to look into a tummy tuck if it will make me happy (and shut me up at the same time, no doubt), but I don’t want to do it. I almost died whilst having the babies – I had pre-eclampsia and absurdly high blood pressure and all the complications that go with those conditions. If I decided to have a "routine cosmetic procedure", and then died, for real this time, under anesthesia or something, I would feel like a real idiot. No, I’ll just keep on keeping on and continue to hate my belly and love my babies. Battle scars...they are battle scars, I tell myself.

I wonder what my dad will have to say about that?