Catch-Up.

Random fact of the day: In my world where everything has horrible germs on it, and I can't touch anything, I like to delude myself that germs cannot live on paper or cloth. Sometimes it's all that gets me through in life. I try to force myself to not wash my hands after touching papers that people have handed me, or to die a thousand deaths at sorting through some clothes someone donated to me (OK OK I STILL HAVE TO WASH AFTER THAT SECOND PART). But knowing that germs are everywhere, I still like to pretend they're not on fabric or paper. It gets me by, thinking those are safer to touch than, say, doorknobs and toilet flushers and restaurant menus and EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS GODFORSAKEN WORLD. I like to think paper and cloth/fabric can't harbor germs. Even though I know I'm wrong. But let me enjoy my fantasy world.

This holds true except for USPS mail. After I open my mail I wash my hands with a quickness. Because, that's shit's been from New Jersey to Texas to Portland to Seattle and touched by millions of bum-bum germs and I can't have that.

But since you can't soak books in bleach before reading (yea though I've given this much thought and have attempted to perfect a scenario in which this is plausible), I have to take my chances and just bite the bullet and go for it and OMG TOUCH THINGS SOMETIMES.

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In other news, Maya is back in Pre-K, and she's taking swimming lessons the same day, so our Mondays and Thursdays are really super busy. Stresses me out, the getting up early and the wrangling two kids just to get Maya home from school (unbuckling the giant heavy baby from her mystery carseat contraption just to take her inside for 340 second to pick up my big girl, the load everyone up, sani some hands, then go home and have Maya take off her shoes, strip down to her nudey pants--

--and wash her hands and wash my hands and use hand-sani again, and clean the baby and clean the lunchbox and just generally disinfect. Coming home from anywhere it far more complicated and stressful than packing up to go OUT, even though going out means loading up the entire house and the proverbial kitchen sink. Because coming home means there has to be a system in place whereby the kids' shoes are off and clothes are off and hands and clothes are cleaned immed before they touch anything. It's touch to wrangle--it's hard with just two kids--how do OCDers with more kids handle it?

Plus, Maya is a major nail-biter and always has her fingers in her mouth. I've trained her well not to touch her eyes or nose, but she bites her nails on the constant. Her fingers are always in the mouth. This makes kitty angry.

 So surely cold and flu germs are having a party in there, all up in her mouth from her grody nails. Good times.

As for swim class, it's driving my nuts. Maya has a good time just bobbing about in the ass soup bum-bum chowder water, but there's got to be more than taking one turn every 6 kids just to take one around a very small swimming zone, with no real instruction (the instructors just carry the kids through the water basically). I look at it like, it's a chance to get poor stifled Maya out of the house and do something that she enjoys, but I can't help wish we were getting our money's worth. They also scam us on time--classes are half an hour but we're lucky to get 20 minutes of time out of it, split among a whole bunch of kids. You can only spend so much tie going over "What's a pool rule?" (where the kids have no idea what he's even asking) or being asked "How do we use a paddle board, to we sit on it? Do we ride it like a horse? Nooooo!" before the kids are finally asked to jump in. And he doesn't teach kids to jump far without help (he underestimates their bravery), or to bob underwater, or other important things. I want some technique taught, and I'm not finding it. Oh well. We'll give it a few more tries before deciding whether to continue.

Either way, having Pre-K and swim on the same day is stressful to the max. I am a person who does not like to have anything on my schedule, anything looming in the future, appointments, dates with friends, doctors, etc. I look at my schedule and see flu shot vax appointments, routine vax appointments, play dates, coffee with a good friend, school, swim, and an upcoming birthday to plan, and I get really overwhelmed. I know I should be able to take this day by day, moment by moment, but I get so caught up in the overwhelmitude.

I just feel like I'm not equipped to deal with daily life. I mean, daily life means getting up early, getting breakfast going, packing lunches, taking the kids to school or playdates, trying to squeeze in the baby's nap, running errands, picking up Maya from school, usually making a Starbucks run for her for a kids' hot chocolate (because she's spoiled like that), and oh yes, cleaning this endless pit of a house that I cannot stay on top of. For someone who panics easily, it's tough to want to do anything or go anywhere, but when I give into that, that's just perpetuates the evil cycle of isolation and loneliness and depression. Then I just stay at home more or want to cancel every appointment on the book or whatever.

I fully expected life to get a little more assbutt difficult after Maya started Pre-K, and I'm trying to take it in stride, but the very moment that Maya comes home with the stomach flu or rotavirus H1N1, my first instinct will be to withdraw her from school again. Which I can't. It's not an option this time. Kid's gotta go to school. Mama has to suck it up.

So I guess we're in for it. A year or two of sick ALL the time,

Gotta put in my big-girl panties and buck up. But it's just so hard. I live with constant stress that eats away at my at night and makes me wake up at 4 am thinking 23749023709432 thoughts, none of which I can really control, but all of which upset me anyway. I'm a work in progress, but I sure as shit hope to see some progress soon.

Mom of the Year.

Can I just tell you all what a terrible mother I am?

Here's why.

When my older kid gets sick, I don't immediately feel the urge to rush to her and smother her with hugs and kisses and soup and honey; I feel like backing away slowly and making the sign of the cross and saying a prayer to the Patron Saint of Boogers that I don't get what she has. I don't want to cuddle her on the couch; I want her--or rather, what she has--to stay far far away. When she's sick, I feel almost like she's poison. That's why I am a terrible, terrible mother. When she's sick, I feel like my oldest child is poison.

I get so terribly afraid that she will make me sick, but only because if she makes me sick, I will make the baby sick. It's not really about me, it's about the baby. I don't really care if I get sick, even though ever since I broke my nose* in 2004 the slightest stuffy nose hits me HARD. But it's all about the baby Naomi. I'm so worried that she will get sick and, worst case scenario, stop breathing or that she will get sick and, best case scenario, have a terribly difficult week, that when Maya gets sick, I panic. I worry that she will infect the entire family, one by one, zombie like.

* A long, sordid tale, too complicated for this blog.

Just writing these words makes me know how awful I am, makes me believe it. I don't need anyone else to confirm it, I already know it. I mean, what kind of person thinks their poor sick firstborn is poisonous? Who doesn't feel that motherly urge to cuddle her sweet sick baby? I know I used to feel it, I know it for sure. I used to feel that motherly urge, and now I don't. Now I'm afraid of my own kid when she gets sick.

I'll tell you a tale, a tale of pre-all-OCD*-Jo.

* It just so happens that your friend here used to be only mostly OCD. There's a big difference between mostly OCD and all OCD.

I remember specifically, when Maya was just over a year old, she got very sick with Roseola. She had a high fever and was just about to break out in spots, and she was miserable. Now, Maya was not a cuddly child, not by any stretch of the imagination. She would not give in to hugs or kisses, would not cuddle us at all. AT ALL. So when she was horribly sick with a 105-degree fever and wanted nothing else but to lounge in my arms for hours, poor sickly thing, I lapped it up. I was sad for her and scared for her, but loved the cuddle time. Perhaps because I didn't have a younger baby in the house to worry about. Or else my disorder just hadn't peaked yet. All I know is I cuddled that cuddlebug like there was no tomorrow. 

Behold, poor sweet sick Maya:

Poor baby. Oh how I cuddled her. I didn't give a thought to catching what she had even before I knew it was Roseola and I would not catch it. I cuddled her.

But something has changed over the years. I've gotten much worse, and I've also had another baby, and now, I don't know, my aim is to protect the littlest one. At the expense of my biggest one, I guess. Because that's how I roll.

So I am a terrible mother. I am terrible because my child is sick. She is sick with a bad chest-cold, and when I hear her cough horribly and gag with phlegm to the point of almost vomiting, I don't immediately run to comfort her, I cringe and flinch. I CRINGE AND FLINCH. Who does that? Me, I guess. OCD Me. Mother of the Fucking Year over here.

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Literally, as I was writing this last night, Maya woke up from her nap, and I tried to give her love. My kind of love. OCD love. I hugged her, parked her in front of Wow Wow Wubbzy with her 5-hour-old refrigerated peppermint vanilla-bean frappuccino (because nothing says I Love You like leftover refrigerated frappuccino) and hope she'll keep coughing into her elbow and won't infect the baby.