Times My Soul Broke, September 14th, 2017

2:19pm In the car getting coffee on the way to pick up L at school

R “Mama, you know you are a mean mama.  I going to kill you.  This ring is The Eye…he going to kill you!”

M “Well, I should hope not.  If the Eye kills me then there will be no one to drive the car, and it may crash and you may get hurt, and that would be very bad.”

R “No.  I will drive the car.  And the Eye will still kill you!”

3:21pm In the car on the way to gymnastics practice

L “Mama…when the baby grows up and goes to preschool, do you think you could, you know…get a job?”

M “Well, why are you asking that?”

L “I was just wondering what after care would be like, you know, to have you pick me up after your work, like some of the other kids.”

M ‘Well, when this baby is old enough to go to preschool, I would like to do something where I can write or work from home or a few hours of the day.  But because of your Papa’s schedule I don’t think I would work all day every day, unless we needed me to or an opportunity came up that I really wanted to pursue.  It would be hard to spend time with him if I had that kind of a schedule.”

L “Yeah, I can see that.”

M “But that is an interesting question Lu.  I would like to do something when the baby is in school, something more than…”

L “More than sitting around all day?!”

5:37pm In the family room, the kitchen, the living room

M “Girls, can you please put the pillows back on the couch?  I really don’t want them on the floor since Fiona is coming tomorrow and I don’t want to get go hair all over them.”

L “Sure mama.”

R “No! I wanna lie on the floor on the pillow!”

M “Riley, please put that pillow back on the couch.  I don’t want to get dog hair all over the pillows and then have them get dog hair onto Kellyn and Fiona when they sit there.”

Cue battle royale in which R starts crying hysterically, vowing to never let go of the pillow, that she needs that pillow on the floor, no other pillow will do.  Clearly she is working through some other emotions here, using this situation as a proxy.  I try to let her work through them while keeping the pillow off of the floor, for the afore mentioned reasons.  I am thus an evil and mean mama.  She walked through several rooms of the house carrying the pillow, before abandoning it on the living room couch and telling me I could put it away now.  After about 30 minutes.

First Day of Full Day Preschool

Today is R’s first day of preschool.  Full day preschool.  Seven full hours, Don at work, alone to do whatever I want or need.

I do not feel like breaking open the champagne and pouring a mimosa, or planning a three cocktail lunch with my girlfriends.  But I sure didn’t cry in the car as I drove away!  I do feel a sense, not of loss, but of contentment.  

When we would tell people that R was starting full day preschool this year, there was the inevitable question that followed, always to me “Ooohhh….what are you going to do with all your free time?”  Some people who were stay at home parents got it, and would answer “Oh, don’t worry.  You won’t be sitting around staring at walls.  You will be doing the same stuff you do every day — taking care of everyone and everything.  This time you just get to do it without someone begging you for a snack every five minutes!”  To other people I would joke and answer “Haha, probably wander around my house crying for twenty minutes and then get back to work!” That is code for “I don’t know, probably everything I usually do in a day but without the fun dress up games and dance parties every twenty minutes.”

In reality I just did not think about it too much.  Life is busy, it gets as busy as you let it get, and I was sure I wouldn’t be left with hour long stretches of daytime TV dramas and bonbons.  

So I walked R into her preschool today, got her lunch and backpack and nap mat and water bottle and supplies sorted, gave her a hug, and then walked back out to my car.  I didn’t sit in my car and tear up (well, I was blowing my nose every five seconds, but that is due to the summer cold from hell, not an excess of emotion).  I had spent all of my preschool drop off emotions on her last Spring when she went to half day preschool for the first time.  This time I was just so thankful there was no screaming, crying, begging, hitting, or kicking.  I got to give my preschooler a kiss and a hug goodbye instead of prying a honey badger off of my body, handing her to a teacher and fleeing the room like a criminal.  

You may think I am exaggerating.  I am not.  It was bad.  Really bad.  Don was in Haiti for ten days on a surgical trip, and had been working a lot in the last few weeks.  I had been stressed helping him get ready for the trip in the aftermath of our December fundraiser and Christmas.  Everyone had all of the emotions.  

Honey badger at drop off because she didn't want to go to preschool.  Cue feelings of parental guilt — maybe I am sending her too early, maybe I should keep her home with me, does she really need to socialize this early, shouldn’t I just be better at planning things and teaching her myself?!  Honey badger at preschool pick up because she didn't want to leave and come home with me.  Cue second round of parental guilt, along with some deep seated personal insecurities thrown in for good measure — I should have worked with her more on better ways to express her emotions, she is having a tantrum because I should keep her home so she can nap during the day, everyone is watching my adorable little daughter hit me in the face with her fist, its ok other parents with emotionally stable children, everything is cool, nothing to see here!

I cried on the way home or running errands after I would drop her off.  I cried on the way to pick up L from her school after picking R up fro preschool.  I cried midway through the day just thinking about going back to preschool to drop her off or pick her up the next day.  I cried all the tears all the time.  I was emotionally eviscerated for a good two to three months.  

To be very clear, no teacher or parent ever said ANYTHING that made me feel bad.  Everyone else was very supportive.  The head of the preschool would take R from my arms when she would start to scream at drop off and say “Just go Mom, don’t you worry.  This happens all the time.  I will call you in ten minutes and let you know that she is calmed down and doing fine.”  And she would.  Sometimes other parents would offer to carry R’s backpack to the car as I carried her, kicking and screaming and trying to hit me in the face.  Everyone else was awesome.  It’s always the demons in your head that are the loudest.  

So today’s drop off was not big and emotional because I had seven full hours in the day to myself.  It was calm and unemotional.  Which was glorious.  I don't feel like celebrating.  I don't feel like crying.  I just want to get started on my giant to do list, watch 85% of a solar eclipse without burning my retinas, and pick up my girls at 3pm.

Now you can peruse all of the first day of school pictures.  Cry.  Or don't.  Whatever.

L, first day of preschool, 2013

L, first day of preschool, 2014

L and R, L's first day of Kindergarten, 2015

L and R, L's first day of 1st Grade, 2016

L and R, R's first day of half-day preschool, January 2017

L and R, L's first day of 2nd Grade, 2017

L and R, R's first day of full-day preschool, 2017

R, line leader for the day, huge mosquito bite by her eye, 2017

The Situation of Socks

We have been watching a lot of Parks and Recreation, so much so that I often find myself coming up with Perdism’s throughout the day.  I can’t write this story without recalling the moment I was inspired to put pen to paper…  

It begins...

I was walking through the living room and saw a pair of tiny socks on the floor.  I frowned, stooped to grab them, and was greeted with the site of another, larger sock underneath the coffee table.  I grabbed that too.  I walked through into the kitchen: a pair of folded socks on the kitchen counter.  Having captured this errant hosiery as well, I bore my increasing burden through the pantry, damn it, another pair of tiny socks discarded, one on top of the dog food container and one perilously close to the dog’s water bowl.  I retrieved them, one slightly damp, and, increasingly suspicious that I was following the trail of some monstrous leprechaun or mischievous sock faerie, I continued my way upstairs.  

There, underneath the banister.  A veritable cache of tiny person stockings.  All told, I had about ten pairs of socks in my arms to deliver to the washer after a two minute walk through the house, and the Perdism came to me.

I have a situation, which means a problem, and that problem is with the situation, which means a location, of socks, which are mittens that you put on your feet.

Why?  Why are there socks everywhere?  Why do I put socks on my children only to have them shed within minutes?  Don’t they understand that even though it is spring it is still like 60 degrees in our house?!

Another pocket of castaways.

Perhaps it is because socks are, historically, the most loathed of all garments to a child.  Coming in a close second are underwear and anything with a tag on it.  I know this because I have two siblings, and between the three of us we were constantly tortured by socks, underwear and tags in our youth.  I have very specific memories of trying to get out of wearing socks, of putting them on while my parents were watching and then hiding them in spots when I thought they weren't looking and trying to run outside before they noticed.  Of course, this never worked, and what ensued was a battle royal in the laundry room just off the garage.  

I would be told that we were not going to school/the store/a party/hiking/etc until I put on my socks.  Then I would writhe on the laundry room floor in agony until one or both of my parents forcibly placed them on my feet.  Then I would writhe in greater agony because the offensive garments were killing me.  They.  Were.  Killing.  ME!

Anyone out there feeling me?  Anything else out there know what it is about socks that is absolutely unbearable to sensitive young toes?

Is the seam the issue?

Yes, that’s right.  The seam.

The fucking seam.  The root of all evil.  It chafes your toes, it digs into them, and God forbid your socks should ever get turned around and the seam should become off center.  That was the worst.  Stop everything.  Literally.  I have to take my shoe off and adjust my sock or I will go insane and start throwing things.  Underwear and t-shirt tags were the same.  They were always touching you, itching you, or tickling you.  If your parents cut them off then that inevitable 1 cm leftover was even worse.  If they ripped out the tags then your clothing disintegrated in the next wash.  It was a lose lose lose.

All I can say about recent advancements in the textile industries is thank God that we have learned how to mass produce socks without toe seams, and print ink labels on the backs of t-shirts and underwear.  This is a life saver for parents of tortured children and parents who were formerly tortured children everywhere.  Well, everywhere our first world problem having, entitled,  ridiculously tortured by good clothing asses can afford to buy seam and tag free clothing, that is.

Maybe it is not the seam that is the culprit here.  Perhaps it is just the nature of our two girls that they want to be barefoot, free to feel the carpet and wood under their feet at home, the grass and mud between their toes outside, and the hot, sticky chafe of the inside of their shoes in direct contact with their skin.  Perhaps they don’t understand that the foot can produce a quarter of a pint of sweat in one day (GROSS) or that heat is lost through their feet at a higher rate because of the greater surface area of their toes!

Or maybe temperature regulation is the issue.  Now that I am old and beginning to waste away I wear socks almost year round, especially to bed.  Double thick wool in the winter and light running socks in the summer, but the socks are always on.  If I get into bed without socks, I feel like my toes immediately turn into ice cubes, and the rest of my body heat is sucked down through my ice cube toes and lost to the ether (don’t question me on the science of this, I don’t care).  However, my eldest must run a few degrees warmer than I do, because even when our house is 60 degrees she sheds her socks as soon as she comes in the door because they make her feet sweat and they are too hot.  MOM THEY ARE TOO HOT!

The final cache, mere feet away from the washing machine.

Well, regardless of wether their feet are being attacked by demon seams, they just want to run around like naked little fairies,or the socks are melting their feet off of their bodies, the crux of the matter is not the why, but the where.  Or, rather, the why of the where.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but why do they have to leave their socks all over the God damn house?!?  They have sock drawers.  They have laundry baskets.  They can both reach the washing machine, and, point of fact, regularly indulge in the pleasure of throwing clean clothing and random non-clothing items into the washing machine just because they can.  But can they, when directed, put a dirty sock into any one of these many acceptable receptacles?

Of course not.

My daughters, and, I believe, most children, are still more like faeries than human.  As J. M. Barrie pointed out faeries can only be bad or good at one time, “because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.”  Children are like that when they are young.  Their bodies are so small and their feelings and thoughts are so big, that much of the time they only have room enough for one at a time.  The socks are scratchy, chaffing, hot, restricting their sense of freedom — they come off.  The next moment they are borne away on the back of another whim, sensation, or fit of imagination and the socks are left behind on a stairway or behind a couch cushion.

Knowing this, however, doesn’t keep me from getting frustrated at the growing number of missing socks in sock drawers or the frequency with which I stumble upon strays.  But it does keep me from threatening to throw away the errant hosiery that I do find.  Afterall, if I am wrong about their one track minds, then such a feint on my part would be playing right into their hands.  If they are sneakier than I think, then that might be what they had in mind all along…

Whimsical faeries or nefarious villains?  The jury is out...

A Simple Soup

I know I am a little crazy.  But it is days like yesterday that bring that fact home even more.  I had an awesome morning with an old friend and her little boy, who were in town for an overnight playdate.  Right after lunch they got in their car to drive home, R went down for a nap, and D walked out to go into the hospital for a few hours to do patient follow up.  Right as he walked out we talked a little bit about plans for the rest of the day.  It was Ash Wednesday, so we were planning on going to mass in the evening, and then having a vegetarian dinner.  Since I didn't have anything planned, Don suggested we just have some soup and bread.  And then he walked out.

(Note: this is not really true.  Actually, before he left he asked me to please do something nice for myself like read or write something, instead of picking up legos.  Because I was on my hands and knees picking up legos.  And sometime in that conversation we talked about a simple dinner of soup, because it was Ash Wednesday and that was an easy thing to do when you are not eating meat.  But mostly we talked about me not cleaning or doing laundry the whole time R was taking her nap.  Because my husband loves me and wants me to take care of myself.)

And this is where the crazy comes in.

I sat down.  I read for a while.  But I couldn't get settled.  Something was nagging at me.  Something was making me feel shitty and nervous and a teensy bit bitter for some reason.  And then it dawned upon me.

Soup.  A simple dinner of soup.  A simple dinner of all vegetable, no meat, soup.  Are you fucking kidding me?  Because what is the one kind of stock I do not have in my house.  Vegetable stock.  I have chicken stock.  I have ham stock.  I have beef stock.  I even have dashi, from last year when I went crazy for several weeks, ordered a bunch of stuff online from Japan and cancelled life for three days to make David Chang's ramen broth.  But I don't have vegetable stock.  

So what?  I have a pantry.  The pantry has cans.  Some of those cans contain soup.  One or more of those cans of soup are likely to be tomato or another variety of all vegetable soup.  Right?

Wrong.  Not wrong as in I don't have any cans of vegetable soup.  Wrong as in, no, we are not going to eat canned soup.  Wrong as in now I am going to put my book down, get my ass up out of this chair, and make some damn vegetable stock.

Note: this is obviously not what D meant when he suggested a simple dinner of soup.

So, here you have it.  A recipe for some not so simple vegetable stock (yes, one of the ingredients is dried mushrooms, which I happened to have because of the afore mentioned ramen broth adventure in the Spring of 2015) followed by a recipe for not so simple vegetable soup.  Pair with a thawed loaf of bread from an Italian restaurant that you forgot was living in your freezer.

Vegetable Stock

1 Huge Stock Pot

32 cups of water (or however much that was that I poured in there)

2 carrots, peeled and broken into pieces

2/3 bunch of celery, root cut off so I could pretend I rinsed the dirt off of it

1 large onion cut in quarters, peel left on

1 head of garlic cut in half 

4 dried mushrooms from a bag in your pantry from when you went crazy and made ramen broth, or whole mushrooms of you have them, or mushroom stems if you are insane and keep mushroom stems in baggies in your freezer for use in making stock.  Along with shrimp shells.

4 sprigs of thyme 

A handful of parsley

Salt and whole Pepper corns to taste

1. Literally throw everything into the pot and bring it to a boil.  

2.  Turn the heat down to medium-low, or whatever keeps things at a low simmer on your stove top, and simmer that mother for as long as you have.  Seriously, if you don't need the stock until tomorrow or you are working ahead, simmer that all day.  All. Day.

3.  Except half an hour in decide that the mushrooms are really potent and take the two biggest ones out.  Reserve for the soup.

4.  When you are done simmering that mother, turn the heat off and let it cool a little.  Or put on some protective clothing, get your strainer and another large pot or Tupperware out, and strain that mother while it is simmering hot.  It will splash.  It will burn you.  An onion skin will pour out into your strainer, act as a luge, and cause about 4 cups of scalding hot stock to shoot up at you, soaking your apron that thank God you remembered to wear and sweater and jeans.  You were warned.

5.  Show your two year old the stock and ask her what color it is.  This is fun because everything is blue.  Everything.  Well, not really.  Your stock should be dark brown because of the mushrooms and onion skin.

6.  Use immediately, or cool in the fridge and then portion into freezer bags and freeze for later use.

Simple Vegetable Soup

1/2 sweet onion or yellow onion, diced super, super small so your kids don't freak out at the texture

4 cloves of garlic (or less or more) chopped finely

2 carrots, peeled and diced

2 celery stalks, diced

4 potatoes, diced

4 mushrooms from your stock, chopped however you want them

2 cups of cherry tomatoes that were getting a little wrinkly, cut into quarters

8 cups of vegetable stock

1/2 cup of farro, barley, kamut, rice, or whatever locally sourced, non GMO, ancient grain you have on hand

1. Melt a pad of butter and a blop of olive oil into your soup pot on medium low.  Add the onions and garlic at the same time and sweat them for at least 10 minutes, low and slow.  You don't want them to brown, just get soft.  Add salt and pepper.

2.  Add the carrots, celery, potatoes, mushrooms and tomatoes.  Saute these with the onions and garlic on medium for a few minutes, until the tomatoes start getting mushy.  Add more salt and pepper.  If you want to add any other spices, this is the time.

3.  Add your vegetable stock, preferably warm from the stock pot or the microwave.  Turn up the heat to bring the soup to a boil.

4.  Once it is boiling add the grain of your choice, and stir.

5.  Turn the heat down to medium-low and let the soup simmer for 20 minutes or so, until the grain is cooked through.  If you notice the soup getting too thick for your taste, because the grain is absorbing it, then add more stock.

Enjoy your "simple" vegetable soup with crackers, bread, or some shavings of Parmesan!

An Apology to the Woman Who Cut in Front of Me at Meijer

This morning while in the checkout line at Meijer I experienced a lack of basic human courtesy that shocked me.  There was a crowd there this morning and only a few checkout lines were open.  I was waiting in a long line at one lane, and about ten lanes down there was an older woman waiting in another long line.  I was struggling to control my girls at this point  — we had been at the store longer than any of us were comfortable with, even though I had provided snacks and diversions in the pet department and promises of a chance to stretch their legs very soon.  Still, at this point my five year old was under two throw pillows in the cart and my two year old was trying to throw herself out of my arms onto the ground screaming “Down!  Out!  Down!!”  I was already considering just abandoning the cart and making a run for it, when a sign of hope appeared.

Hi, my name is Riley.  I like sitting on the backs of chairs,
couches, and grocery carts.  I love the feeling of falling!

A store employee came out from a lane two lanes from mine, and, turning directly toward me, asked me if I wanted to step over to his lane because he was going to open up.  I said thank you, and yes I would.  Actually, I said “Oh my God thank you so much, YES!”  Behind the store clerk I saw the woman watching us.  She frowned at me, and as I struggled to pull my cart out of the lane and turn it toward the newly opened lane, she whipped her cart around and strode quickly past the eight closed lanes toward us.  She looked right at me and her frown deepened as she pushed her fully loaded cart into the free lane and started unloading.

Well, I wish I could say I was gracious.  But in reality I barely stopped myself from throwing a full on adult tantrum.  I barely stopped myself from yelling “Mother Fucker!” and storming with screaming kids right past her and out of the store.  I didn’t behave much better than that, but I didn’t make a public scene.  Well, I didn’t.  Riley probably qualifies as a public scene wherever we go.

In any case, I didn’t think about her, or her life.  I didn’t consider what circumstances would lead her to ignore the struggle I was having and put herself first.  I didn’t think about whether she had an ailing spouse or child at home and needed to get back, or whether she had an appointment to keep or person to meet.  I didn’t think about her at all except with the term “bitch” attached.  

And so, Woman Who Cut in Front of Me at Meijer, I want to apologize.

I want to apologize for the open mouthed bitch face I gave you.  I know you were frowning at me before, but I straight up gaped at you.  People talk about Resting Bitch Face (RBF) as a joke, but I gave some straight up Active Bitch Face.  

I apologize for loudly exclaiming “You have GOT to be kidding me!”  I don’t usually comment in awkward social situations like that.  I was raised Episcopalian, and even though I have converted to Catholicism, a religion steeped in pointed commentary, it is in my nature to suffer such a lack of courtesy in silence.  I am more of a silent believer in Karma, more apt to glare, breathe deeply while counting to ten, and pray that your evil ways do not catch up with you before you mend them.  I embrace my British ancestry while secretly thinking of the things my Apache ancestors would have done.  But you extend my stay at a grocery store by 20 minutes while I was already hanging on to my sanity and my toddler by the tips of my fingers.  That was my breaking point.  Who knew?!

I apologize for aggressively trying to initiate eye contact with you the entire time we stood in the check out line together.  I couldn’t understand why you were suddenly so hesitant to look at me.  You seemed to be fine glaring at my daughters every time they moved, breathed, or made a sound.  But you would not meet my eyes anymore.

Hi, my name is Lucy.  I know there are two throw
pillows, but I will fight you for both of them.

I apologize for all of the times my toddler touched or played with an item of yours on the conveyor belt as we waited for you to finish directing the clerk which items to place into which bags.  To be fair, your bananas would never have been molested had you not stolen our place in line.  And, when you think about it, its really miracle she didn’t bite right into them.  Furthermore, if I am being totally honest, I could have tried harder to prevent her from touching your things.  But I was really tired of holding her while she tried to kick me, and her interest in your groceries was keeping her from riding on the edge of the cart like a horse.  I was selfish, and I am sorry.  

Further along those lines, I apologize for the fact that I had absolutely no control over my toddler whatsoever.  Grocery carts cannot contain her.  She laughs at restraining belts.  She leaps from moving carts.  She pitches herself forward or backward out of my arms in total disregard for anyone’s mental or physical wellbeing, including her own.  She is 22 months.  She is a force of nature.  She is a compilation of curiosity, desires, and emotions in a harness of blood and bone and completely devoid of any rationale or temperance.  She is glorious and she might actually kill me one day and I love her.

Finally, I am sorry that I bitched about you all day to anyone who would listen, and that I am still thinking about you now.  You did something unkind.  You had your reasons.  I hope they were good, but it is really not my position to judge them.  I did not answer you with kindness, I answered you with anger and sarcasm.  That was not a good model for my children, and it was not healthy for my heart.

I forgive you for your simple transgression.  Such a gesture is meaningless to you, you might not feel you did anything warranting forgiveness.  The gesture is for me, to purge the black flower of rage that blossomed in me when you steered your cart into lane 13, an emotion disproportionate to your actions.  I forgive myself for my day of wallowing in that rage from time to time without stopping to consider your humanity.

I only hope, were we ever to meet again face to face in the checkout lanes of Meijer, that I would be strong enough to act differently.

Lost in Translation

Note: This post was begun two weeks ago, and finished this morning.

We have been in Mirebalais over a full week now, and I am finally feeling settled in and comfortable.  This is largely due to our downstairs neighbors, the Philbrooks, who have taken us under their wing.  They have patiently and graciously fielded requests for help with everything from "Where do we get water?" to "Can I borrow your broom...again?" to "Can we catch a ride with you to the market/party/hospital?"  Lucy has become fast friends with their son, who is almost seven, and they can often be found together pouring over the ponds of tadpoles or building rock houses.

I have been trying to practice some Kreyol, although it goes against every instinct I have.  I am an introvert naturally, and can happily go the whole day without talking to anyone.  The fact that I have two little extroverts with me all day every day ensures that this never happens.  I can be mentally exhausted at the end of the day just from talking to my girls all day, let alone talking to all of the people that we meet with whom they strike up conversations.  Add on to that the embarrassment of having to communicate with most people in my own extremely poor Kreyol which usually comes out as my high school French (to be fair I was really good at French...when I studied it 15 years ago), and that makes talking to people quite daunting.

Today, however, necessity was the mother of boldness, if not invention.  We ran out of drinking water, propane, and the other night I broke the handle on our front door.  Don is working today at 8am, and helped me talk to Vladimir one of the security guards, this morning before he went to work.  However, that left the remainder of the negotiations up to me.

We also had a lovely lady, Maranatha, come over today to help me with our laundry.  I have been keeping by by washing things in the sink or in our trash can every other day or so, and it has come to my attention that my hand washing skills are woefully inadequate.  As in, the other day I washed a pair of Don's scrubs with some other things.  When I brought them in from the balcony where they were hanging to dry I noticed that the hems of the pants were still crusted with dirt.  Total fail.

So, with the help of our little Kreyol Made Easy book, Google Translate, and my four years of High School French, I did some language dégagé.

"Who is able to help us exchange our water bottles?  Are you able to exchange them?  Today?"
"Who is able to exchange the propane?  Is he able to do that today?"
"I am so sorry, but I broke the handle on our front door."
"Yes, I have cleaning things, they are here.  Yes I have detergent.  No, I don't have any bleach, Mistolene (a floor cleaner), or more detergent.  This Ajax bottle says 'bleach', is this it?"
"You cannot install the propane but the manager can, and he is coming?  Today?  OK."
"You can fix the door handle by switching them?  OK.  Do I have a screw driver?  Noooo, I don't have a screwdriver....but you will come back with one later to fix the door?  OK."
"What is it?  What is it for?  For laundry?  I don't have it?  You can go buy it?  OK.  How much is it?  OK I have that.  One minute.  This is all the money I have. It is enough?"

By the end of the day I was literally sweating every time I saw another human being.  Not because of the 95 degree heat or the 90% humidity.  It was fear sweat.

I can understand about 70% of what people say, if they are speaking slowly.  If I am not sure what they are talking about, I ask them to spell a word so I can translate it, or tell me what a thing is used for if they are asking for something.  It is the responding that is really hard for me.  My natural inclination is to respond in formal French.  And not even real French, like people here who are from Francophone countries.  High School classroom French.  Which I am sure sounds like nails on a chalkboard to people who speak French, let alone people who speak Kreyol.  So I really have to stop and think every time I say something.  Which makes for some reallllllly loooooooong conversation pauses.  Which are awkward.  Very uncomfortable.

Because, and forgive me if you have already noticed this, people are looking at you while you pause and try to compose a sentence.  They just stand there and look at you.  Waiting.  And when people stand and look at me, I tend to forget what I was supposed to be doing.  My brain switches off and the brain stem takes over and I start thinking about how I can get out of this situation instead of what sentence I was supposed to be translating.

This is why I am an introvert.  I like being around people, I like talking to people, I like being social.  Most of the time.  It is just that doing so takes up so much energy.  I need to be by myself in a quiet room after most social interactions in English, let alone in another language.

So by the end of the day, I was pretty exhausted.  Don came home around 4pm, and I am not sure exactly what he found.  I had accomplished all of the necessary tasks.  We had water and propane and clean clothes and a clean apartment and both girls were alive and Lucy and I had done school work together and I think there was probably some semblance of dinner occurring or about to occur (Full Disclosure: I am posting this more than two weeks later, and our door handle is still broken, but as long as we don't close our front door when we leave the apartment everything is fine).  But it is possible that I resembled Goldie Hawn in the scene in Overboard where the boys are throwing grapes at her face while she mutters incoherently.

But I did it.  And I am still trying.  I am still trying to talk to Vladimir and Micheler and Maranatha and go a few questions deeper than the usual "Good morning and how are you?" exchanges.  I am still saying hello to people on our walks.  I am trying to be better about buying my own things and not having Don and Julia ask everyone how much things cost for me (OK, could still be a lot better at that.  Every time I try to buy something by myself I basically pull out a wad of small bills like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and look hopefully at the woman with the tomatoes/Maggi cubes/rice).  I am trying to puzzle out translations to questions that I have and not feel embarrassed to say things when 9/10 times I get a blank state in response to my Kreyol/French mix.

I am only defeated if I stop trying.

Unless we run out of diapers.

Baggage

We are deep into the packing process right now.  

Empty boxes of things.

I have lists.  I have lists of lists.  No, seriously.  I literally have a list detailing all of the lists that I need to make.  Lucy, Riley, Don, Toiletries, Kitchen, Medicine, Entertainment, School, Packing here, Grocery store in Port-au-Prince, to order online, to buy at the store, to do before we go, etc, etc.  Lists and lists and lists.

I have boxes and boxes of things.  I bought all of the things.  All of them.  Then I took them out of their boxes, and put them into gallon ziplock bags.  A lot of ziplock bags.

I sat on the guest bed last night surrounded by empty cardboard boxes and full ziplock baggies.  And then I had a panic attack.

Full ziplock baggies of cashew and clorox and dried fruit, oh my.

Oh my God.  I bought all of this stuff?  Do we need all of this stuff?  Do we really need to bring granola bars and apple sauce pouches and swim floats and 3 canisters of bug spray and 42 bottles of children’s tylenol and peanut butter new bottles of toiletries?  Why do we need all of this stuff?  We are going to a populated country!  There are people who live there, people who eat and love and get sick and take showers.  We can live for a month without Nutella for Christ’s sake!

I bought CVS.

I looked around again and my panic attack did not abate.  It intensified.  Because I tallied the cost and the weight of everything around in, in dollars and pounds and expectations, and I felt even less prepared than before I began.  I would forget something.  I had forgotten something.  I knew it.  I had made lists and lists of lists.  I had purchased ALL of the things.  And we would go to Haiti and pay extra baggage fees for our six pounds of peanut butter and we would get to our apartment (our own apartment!  amazing!) and we would unpack and someone would ask “Mom, where did you put the X, Y and Z?” and then my head would explode.

The best part about this panic attack was that it occurred while I was on the phone with American Airlines trying to get Riley added as a lap infant to our reservation.  I was on hold for 23 minutes, using that time to put more things from boxes into ziplock bags.  Riley, for her part, was communicating to us from her crib that she would not be taking a nap this afternoon, thank you very much, and the fact that we were trying to force her to do so was killing her.  Don walked into the room with a train of suitcases in which to pack the ziplock bags full of things from cardboard boxes.  A live human being finally came on and asked me how she could help.  And then the phone cut out.  

I put the phone down on the bed, gentler than I have ever handled anything in my life.  I took a deep breath.  I looked around at the sea of boxes and bags on the bed again.  A rising sound filled my ears.  My chest got tight.  I breathed in slowly again, but couldn’t seem to get any air.  I felt like a tea kettle left on the stove too long.  I wasn’t just going to boil, I was going to crack.

And then I looked up at Don.  He got it.  He knew exactly what was going on.  Because he had that look on his face.  He was Robert Redford in the Horse Whisperer.  He was in full de-escalation mode.  And I don’t even get mad at this anymore.  I love it.  I need it.  I was about to get totally crazy.  I was going to burrow into a cave of Cliff Bars and Crystal Light powder and diapers and sob.  I was about to cancel the trip.

But he knows.  After being together over ten years he knows.  I am on board for the adventure.  I am all in — but there is a caveat.  Every so often, I am going to totally lose my shit.  I am going to cancel the holiday/trip/dinner, pick the worst fight for no reason, get emotional and cry and make everything about me.  The best part about Don is that he knows this, and he knows exactly how to deal with it.  He wraps me in a mantle of patience and logic and a calm voice and he waits out my crazy.  

The best part about Don is that he knows my crazy, and he loves me.  Not in spite of it.  Not even because of it.  He just loves me.

Unpacked bags :(

Packed bags!

More bags...

Just too cute not to add in.