State of the moi

We took a mini-vacay this month, to Monterey, and it was amazing. It's only an hour or two away (we stayed in Santa Cruz and took day trips) and we were down there for less than two days, but just being away from my computer and to-do list, and getting to spend real time that was not chore- or errand-focused with my family was beyond wonderful, and so relaxing. Of course, I came home and did three loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, one grocery shopping run, and prepped meals for the week, but it's better to do that on the weekend than have to take care of it incrementally after work, so that was good too. Lesson learned: a mini-vacay, even to the next town over, is a wonderful thing. This was the last real "break" I expect to have before the baby comes, and who knows for how long after, so it was doubly precious. Speaking of which...

Update on the whole pre-term labor situation: I ended up back in the hospital Sunday night for four hours, after contracting more or less constantly - but painlessly - all afternoon. Thank god my partner is now home and could stay with the Squid. My cervix was closed, narrow, totally not showing signs of labor. They sent me home, and I took Monday and Tuesday off work to recover. The fetal fibronectin test results came back on Tuesday evening and there is a less than 1% chance that I will go into real, actual labor in the next two weeks. Awesome. No, really, it is awesome; it just also means that my partner will have to go on his business trip and I will have to go back to work and I am just really tired. And uncomfortable. And tired. But this too shall pass.

Pregnancy dreams, as I've noted before, are intense, as well as intensely fucked-up. Nor are they subtle. A few days after my dream in which the Squid had run off and I was having to look for him - up an endless steep hill, while towing a huge, heavy box of books - I had a horrible nightmare in which I worked for his preschool and was (rightly!) excoriated by the director for being a terrible, irresponsible employee and an awful, neglectful mother. O HAI MY INSECURITIES.

For those of you who have never been pregnant, I have a metaphor for the feeling. Imagine that your stomach contains one of those thick red rubber playground balls, like you had in grade school. A smallish one, fully inflated. Then imagine that it is chock-full of bouncy balls - the heavy, thuddy, really bouncy sort - in multiple different sizes. Fetal movement can feel like anything from those bouncy balls rolling around, to going off like popcorn (one or two at a time or all at once), or shifting, or being squished against the sides of the playground ball so you can see the bulge. Not usually painful, but thuddy and roily and distinctly awkward.

This is a very busy fetus, have I mentioned? The night after the second time I was sent to the hospital for monitoring, we had fetal activity of the full-on popcorn variety from midnight to four a.m. Since sudden increases in activity can be a sign of fetal distress, this freaked me right the fuck out, as you may imagine. Things seem more normal now, but it's like once one thing goes wrong, my worrying kicks into gear, and everything becomes a source of anxiety. I keep prodding my belly to wake her up and make her kick if she is quiet for long periods now.

Basically, I think all the pregnancy hormones have finally manifested in a way that they had refrained from doing previously. I am more anxious, more tired, and infinitely more spacey. My brain seriously has no ability to parse information of any complexity whatsoever, and even my good old autonomic functions are on the fritz. Over the last week, I have had some truly spectacular "pregnancy brain" moments, including calling to rearrange an appointment, getting it solved to my satisfaction, hanging up ... and then five minutes later looking at the phone and wondering, "What happened? Did I get disconnected on hold and I didn't notice?" and almost going through the whole process again before remembering that I had in fact already successfully completed the task. I also had about ten minutes of full-on "monkey bang thing with stick!" type frustration while attempting to open the latch on the garden's sprinkler controls (which pops out easily, it turns out, if monkey bang it the right way), lost or confused a myriad of basic household terms, and attempted to wash my hands with lotion instead of soap. I am a fucking genius these days.

I have also been nesting like a madwoman. In the last two weeks, I have:

• Organized and cleaned out all our junk drawers & pen holders
  
• Organized and cleaned out my closet & dresser drawers
  
• Organized & cleaned out dishtowel/washcloth/baby supply cabinet
  
• Organized & cleaned out freezer
  
• Organized & cleaned out medicine cabinet in kitchen
  
• Organized and cleaned out the Squid's toys
  
• Silkscreened onesies and t-shirts for both children
  
• Knit baby hoodie, baby hat, booties, scarf
  
• Replaced glides on kitchen chairs
  
• Packed hospital bags
  
• Bought last of necessary baby supplies
  
• Returned videos and library books and other borrowed items
  
• Set automated backups in motion for computer
  
• Scanned documents & some photos
  
• Sorted family photos and sent more off to be scanned by a service
  
• Weeded the garden
  
• Bought and planted vegetables & herbs
  
• Called potential childcare providers and mapped them and all their info on Google Maps
  
• Paid all back bills and dealt with census and other outstanding mail items
  
• Re-indexed my electronic address book and re-done my spice cabinet spreadsheets
  
• Five million loads of laundry, three million loads of dishes, roomba, cooking, cleaning, sorting, etc.

...I would estimate, conservatively, that since becoming pregnant I have spent at least $300 on organizing containers and equipment of various sorts. This is only a ridiculous outlay if it does not result in the house getting and staying organized, so I don't feel bad about it - not even about the amount of plastics I bought to do it, because I keep rubbermaid and other plastic tubs forever. I measured all the spaces, envisioned the perfect containers, sought them out, indexed the contents where mere sorting was insufficient (my spice cabinet spreadsheets, let me show you them!), and sent bags and bags and bags of Stuff to friends, goodwill, freecycle, the local library, the preschool, and other places that might be able to use them.

Of course, as I then said to my friend I__, I am now nearly out of things to do that do not require brain power (see above re: how much of that I am packing these days) and left twiddling my thumbs, feeling miserable, and wondering when the baby will come. I'm ready! I'm done with my chores! Where is this damn baby already? ... Pregnancy is not for people with control issues.

Long version (5 a.m. insomniac remix)

In retrospect, I wonder how much of the bad temper, poor sleep, and inability to cope of my past few days was brought on by the discomfort of un-noticed contractions. I didn't go into labor naturally last time, and I hadn't really had any Braxton-Hicks before, so I wasn't attuned to them and might have written them off as part of the general misery of being seven and a half months pregnant.

But I sure as fuck noticed Friday afternoon, when I crawled under my desk at two for a brief nap and was almost immediately hit with a series of painful (like, bad menstrual cramp painful), distinct contractions less than seven minutes apart. After about half an hour and a few position switches, they waned, but I dutifully googled up Braxton-Hicks, because I seemed to recall that they were supposed to be ... milder.

Sure enough, B-H are supposed to be "painless" for most women. And you're sure as fuck not supposed to have four or five in the space of half an hour. The internets said to call my doctor, so I did - even though I felt okay at that point and was sure I was just being overcautious.

The advice nurse took all my info and said she'd have the doctor call me back; by 4 pm they had sent me to labor and delivery at the local hospital. I was still contracting, but mildly and less frequently, and feeling like an idiot who was probably just imagining it all. Nevertheless, I called my partner (who was on vacation in Kentucky) and left a message on his phone, saying not to panic, but to develop a "plan B" on how he might get home earlier than planned.

A new acquaintance (seriously, I like her and we've been on the way to making friends, but this woman has been to my house once, and we hung out at a kids' birthday party once, and she had emailed me earlier in the day to say "how about pizza and playdate after preschool?") called to see when I would want to meet to hang out, and I had to explain what was going on. Without my having to even ask (and I had been desperately wracking my brains as to how I could make this work) she offered to pick the Squid up from preschool (all my other authorized picker-uppers were out of town) and take him for as long as I needed. At that point, I was still thinking it wouldn't be a big deal, but I thanked her profusely, called the school to arrange it, and continued on to the appointment.

4:15. Intake, waiting room, ugly gown, urine sample, monitors, blah blah blah. They gave me a button to push when I felt the contractions, which by then were much fainter and not registering on the monitors. The fetus's galloping heartbeat over the doppler machine was soothing and I knit a little while listening to Iron and Wine to calm my nerves. By 5:15 it was clear that they were not going to let me out in time to pick up the Squid - they had found a potential snag in the urine sample and had to send it up to the labs for further testing - so I called my ... acquaintance? friend? savior? Let's call her K ... I called K to tell her I would, in fact, need her to take the Squid, but not to tell him I was in the hospital.

And this is where I started to lose it.

Because, okay, it was no longer Not A Big Deal. And with my partner in Kentucky and my parents in LA, I had no backup that was familiar enough to the Squid to take him overnight. He's four - he's never had a sleepover except with family. He would be upset and scared and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I was pretty sure I could have the baby on my own - that's what hospitals are for, and at 34.5 weeks, most of the major development has taken place; she'd be small and premature, and I could have wished for a little more time for the lungs to mature, but we would be fine. But even my village, the amazing network of friends and neighbors that keep me going when my family is out of town, would not be enough to take care of the Squid overnight. He's a very resilient little guy, social and adaptable (he had a great playdate, and never even blinked over the whole thing) but I think a night away from home and family would almost certainly have freaked him right out. I started to cry on the phone to K, and had to take deep breaths to hold my shit together.

My partner finally called; he hadn't even gotten my message, and was alarmed to hear I was in the hospital. There were, however, no flights that would get him back appreciably sooner than 3:30 the next afternoon, his current scheduled arrival time. Nurses continued to come and go. I continued to contract. They were stronger now, and more regular, and they were showing up on the monitor. I texted K, who reassured me that the Squid was having a great time and told me to take care of myself, and listened to music, and knitted (I had to rip out my knitting at least twice during this process, because I kept fucking up; knitting while contracting, lying on your side, and trying desperately not to freak out is not optimal.) Nurses came and went. At 7 p.m., the extended urinalysis still hadn't come back, and the shift changed.

7:30. The doctor showed up with the urinalysis results. I have never been so goddamn glad to have a urinary tract infection in my life. Apparently, they can contribute to pre-term labor. Fuck only knows how I got a UTI drinking gallons of water daily and peeing what feels like every five minutes, but the point is: treatable. They gave me an antibiotic and a prescription (which they apparently couldn't call in? Look, people, I have a four-year-old, I can't just wait around pharmacies in the middle of the night. I'll be taking the next dose an hour or two late, because there was no way in HELL I was going to drive to the next town (where the 24-hour pharmacy is), drop it off, wait to pick it up, and then go get my kid. I'll do it when he wakes up in the morning.) They also tried to tell me to take it easy and lie down. Fuck, no, I told them, I have a kid who needs me, and no backup. There is no way. So they offered me a shot of something that would make me shaky (thus delaying my discharge from the hospital another half hour) but would stop the contracting so that I could be more or less normally active without worrying. God, I love modern medicine.

At 8:20, they let me go.

I walked the quarter-mile to the parking garage, teeth chattering from the cold air, shaky from the shot and the whole ordeal, and drove straight to K's house, where I found the Squid cheerfully taking a bath with his friend, happy as a clam. K made me a cup of chamomile, fed me leftover pizza, and I endeavored not to have a nervous breakdown at her kitchen table. It took a long time for me to calm down enough to be sure that wasn't going to happen - by the time I headed home with an exhausted Squid, clad in borrowed pjs, it was 10:00, two full hours past his bedtime (and mine, for that matter). Thank goodness he was cooperative - I was so far beyond the end of my resources that I don't know how I could have dealt if he had been fussy - and I fell into bed soon after getting him down.

Everything is fine, now. The UTI is being treated, and the contractions are gone. I was reassured at the hospital that this does not markedly increase my chances of pre-term delivery once the underlying problem is dealt with. The Squid had a great time. I have a new friend. My partner will be home this afternoon, and in a few hours I will wake up (again) and drive to the next town to drop off the prescription and take the Squid out for breakfast.

But holy fuck, that was scary. I just wanted to cry on someone's shoulder the whole time, and there was nobody who could really be there for me in person, and I couldn't be there for the Squid, and it could have all gone so spectacularly downhill.

*deep, shaky breath*

Okay. It's 5:45, I've been up since 3:30, and I have to be functional tomorrow, so I guess I'd better try for a few more hours of sleep - though if the Squid gets up at 6 like he has been, I am once again spectacularly screwed on the sleep front. But I had to get it all down so I could stop rehashing it over and over in my head. And now I have.

...and literally two minutes later, Squid is up. Gah.

Dear Universe,

I take it back, okay? I am not tired of being pregnant. Nope, not me. In fact, I hope I stay pregnant for at least another month, that would be great. I am sorry I ever said anything!

Sincerely yours,
Me

(Short version: Preterm labor alarm this afternoon/evening from two to eight thirty, with full-on hospitalization and monitoring. Everything is fine now, but it was scary as shit. Thank God for K, the Squid's friend's mom who picked him up from preschool and kept him for the world's longest playdate - all my backup is out of town, and I don't know what I would have done without her.)

Tantrum

I have hit a wall. I am so fucking tired of being tired.

I am tired of using all my saved sick leave (which should have gone to pay for the first week of my maternity leave, which will now be entirely unpaid) on doctor's appointments and extra sleep and staying home with a sick kiddo.

I am tired of spending all my saved vacation (which other people get to use for, you know, vacation) curled up asleep under my desk at work and still being fatigued and useless all the time.

I am tired of being uncomfortable and huge and having trouble sleeping and bending over and breathing and eating and being kicked from the inside all the time.

I'm tired of being disappointed in my professional performance and disappointing others because I'm so fucking exhausted and I have to take so much time off and my higher-order thinking processes are halfway offline even when I am at my desk.

I'm tired of having to ask for help, and I'm tired of still not getting the help I need because I need more help than I feel I can ask for or than other people can provide.

I'm tired of being a shitty mother because I'm too overtaxed and overwhelmed to be patient and engaged.

I'm tired of being resentful that this process and all of the bullshit it entails necessarily falls on me. I am sick of having my biology determine pretty much all the major parameters of my life.

I'm tired of being constantly aware that I should be grateful to have such first-world, upper-class problems. I'm tired of knowing I'm essentially being a whiny little bitch about everything.

I'm just tired.

Here there be dragons

So, no Squidbits. That's pretty much all this "blog" has been for years, and I'm a little at a loss for how to continue. Everything I can think of is probably the sort of stuff I should stop posting about. But I do have a whole sector of my life (work) that is not Squid-focused, and a whole series of biological events going on that are discrete from him as well.

Which are also not interacting with one another optimally at the moment, sadly.

I don't remember being this tired last time around. I have to nap in the afternoon more days than not, regardless of how much sleep I get at night. And even though I go to bed by ten at the latest (sometimes more like 8:30) and Himself and our wonderful Squid-wrangler T take most of the Squidmornings, I still manage 9-10 hours a night at best, which is sort of minimum maintenance level for me even when I'm not pregnant. I use a bite guard to keep from grinding my teeth and giving myself headaches. I use white noise and earplugs to keep various house noises from waking me. I read dull non-fiction before bed (currently working my way through 800-page recounting of the history of the American tobacco industry) or listen to a yoga meditation audiofile. I take hot showers, stretch, and do self-massage. But between the fetus merrily squirming on my bladder, the near-constant heartburn of third trimester pregnancy, and the various waves of anxiety brought on by god-knows-what, I am still not getting enough sleep to get me through the days.

So I nap at work, using the camping mat and blanket I keep under my desk. Which my work knows about and sanctions, but I still don't charge that time to any of my projects, naturally. Which means that I'm running out of vacation and sick leave at a rapid rate.

And even when I am awake, my attention span, focus, and general higher thought processes are not all I'd like them to be. It's not all me; I'm running into some issues at work that I don't want to talk about in detail, but which are exacerbating my feelings of being lost and confused, and a lot of that is beyond my control. But it's true that the sort of bizarrely bovine fog I find myself in these days isn't doing me any favors in a work environment that values me for my ability to think analytically, synthesize information and data, and keep multiple components of complex projects moving forward smoothly.

All of which has me kind of down about the eight hours a day I spend in the office. I love my job in general, my co-workers and the department and company administration are fantastic and supportive, and the work is interesting. But I'm frustrated with my own performance, and I'm the critic who gets the most air time in my head. And I'm frustrated with some of my team dynamics, and I'm pretty sure that the hormonal fluctuations of pregnancy aren't helping me handle those situations with the sort of graceful Zen aplomb I'd like. Er, not that graceful Zen aplomb has ever been a hallmark of my interactions with the world, but I feel like I'm on a shorter string than usual.

Lately, I'm also feeling scared that the sadness that's crept up on me in the past week is somehow a sign that my meds, which have made this pregnancy so much more bearable than the last, are no longer sufficing to keep the blues at bay. I made it through seven months without inexplicable misery and crying, and I even flatter myself that I handled February and March with some sort of panache, but the last five days have been very on-again-off-again iffy, exacerbating everything else.

But that's here and now. There have been so many other wonderful things in the past month that I am not talking about, because I am at a dip in the roller coaster and it's hard to see the big picture from here. But we did pretty well for the three weeks Himself was in Chicago and overseas, managing a trip to LA, outings almost every weekend morning (to toy train exhibits, parks with friends, events, museums, and the like) and relaxed afternoons in the sunshine, orderly get-to-preschool mornings (by dint of help from T and my careful night-before prep of lunches, etc.) and pleasant evenings of errands, swim lessons, cooking, and playtime. Neighbors and friends and T took good care of us, and we leaned on our village hard.

Himself came home three days early to surprise us - best surprise ever - just as I was starting to fray at the edges. It has been great to have him home, though the Squid's behavioral regressions that coincided with Himself's absence did not, as I had hoped, immediately revert to normal. And last weekend we went to brunch and the California Academy of Sciences with one of my dearest friends, in from out of town, and had the playgroup over for Easter egg hunting and bagel breakfast. I feel very blessed to have my life and the people around me.

So, good things too. The fetus continues to have a strong heartbeat and is measuring just about at the 50th percentile, 4.3 pounds and approximately 16" of person-to-be, hanging out upside-down in my uterus. We got to "visit" via ultrasound this week and see cheeks, and wee face, and paw-in-mouth, and yawning, and healthy kidneys and heart and amniotic fluid all normal and everything.

I can't believe I have two months to go, though. I'm as big as I was when I had the Squid, because of the low amniotic fluid problem we had with him, and I'm only going to get bigger. And apparently the placement of the placenta this time is different, too, as well as the resilience of my abdominal walls, which means I can feel every squirm and bonk and flail distinctly, and this is a very busy little proto-person indeed. The whole thing is so uncomfortable! Yuck! And this is an easy pregnancy, all systems more or less normal, and I have wide margins on my life to get the sleep and help I need. I seriously don't know how most people do this. Intelligent design, my ass.

Then again, it's probably good that we have two months to go. Not that we're not "ready" in a material sense - we have all the equipment and stuff we need to get started, thanks to loans from friends, leftovers from Squid, hand-me-downs, gifts, and things we lent out that have been returned. But I'm so totally unready in the larger sense. Not like last time, so much, where D-Day felt like the end of Life As I Knew It and I was terrified of everything that came after, but more like my whole calendar after June 3 is just a giant sepia ocean marked "HERE THERE BE DRAGONS," an unknown territory that I can't even begin to think about or plan for from here. I'm sure we'll be fine, and I'm sure it will be different from last time, and I'm sure things will change, but I have no idea what or how; the surety of unsurety is all I've got.

In the meantime, this weekend we're going to Monterey to see the aquarium and have some awesome family downtime. I'm really looking forward to it; with how much I sleep and how much Himself works and how busy we all are in general, we don't get a lot of time to just enjoy each others' company, and getting away from home and the computers and the loads of laundry and the endless beckoning lists of shit to do will be wonderful.

I can't wait.

Squidbits from FOUR

Squid is four. And he is a very, very big boy. He can dress himself with minimal help, brush his own teeth and get most of them clean, sleeps in a big boy bed that Daddy made just for him, and helps me when I cook dinner (he can stir and sift like anything!)

He even helped make his own birthday cakes, though the more elaborate parts of that project were taken care of by Yours Truly. He wanted a “shark cake” – but last year, when I made him a shaped cake to his request, he cried when we cut it. So this year I made a small shark cake … and also some shark-fin cupcakes, to be et on the day of. The shark cake itself lasted 24 hours before meeting its demise at the ravenous jaws of a school of hungry preschoolers. Squid got the fins, as he had already licked them (ew!) and I’m sure, as they were made of pure marzipan, he floated through the remainder of his birthday on a sugar high unprecedented around these parts.



Of course, the next weekend he out-did himself at Grammy Vi’s 98th birthday party in LA. My Aunt K, who is not big on discipline, had put the gummi bears out in a large dish at child height. I tried to move them once (“If you keep eating those, you will feel sick,”), but he found them again. If you ask him what happened after that he will tell you, “I ate too many gummi bears. And then I got sick.” Score one for my psychic mommy powers of prediction! Poor little bug. But everyone has to learn that one through experience. Heck, I had hurt myself in an all-too-similar fashion with some Thin Mints just the week before, so who am I to judge?

He’s a little over three and a half feet tall, all energy and opinion and curiosity about his world. The mantra this month has been “Be careful of other people’s bodies!” because he is so excitable and distractible that he is prone to crashing into people or whacking them by accident out of sheer enthusiasm. Or pique, but you know, that’s a different issue. In any case, there’s some growing going on somewhere, though we’re not seeing noticeable height or weight increases recently, because his food intake has spiked (even as his pickiness as increased) and he is hungry all the time.

The battle of wills around eating and other things continues apace, and we are talking a lot about how we need to help each other make good decisions, because my patience doesn’t always hold up well to his testing. We get sequences that look, all too often, like [Bad Squid behavior] –> [correct and patient Mommy reaction] –> [Bad Squid behavior repeated as necessary until] –> [bad Mommy reaction] –> [upset Squid]. “I’m angry that you’re mad at me!” he will say. “Can you say sorry that you were angry?” It’s so hard to take responsibility for my own poor behavior while still pointing out that his actions have consequences as well. But personal responsibility is a central value in our family, and we’ll get it through by hook or by crook.



He’s been staying up later – he still has a nap at preschool daily, as well as on the weekends, and so while his bedtime has remained the same, he’s upped the delays (particularly as he is no longer in a crib so he can get up and come out if he needs something) and regularly stays up for an hour or so reading to himself (well, looking at pictures) or playing in bed. Both Himself and I frequently read in bed, so we’re not discouraging it, but I do wish the Squid would make up for it by sleeping a little later (even Daylight Savings has not helped in this regard). Like his mommy, he gets cranky when he’s short on sleep.

We’ve been solo parenting this month, and the Fan Club is out gallivanting around Southeast Asia, so we’ve been without our usual backup. I am glad to report that with careful planning and a lot of outside help (some paid, some from dear friends) we have been doing okay so far. I’m very tired, but instead of pushing through, I’ve made getting the sleep I need a priority – over my job, over my scruples about having a nanny in (someone has come to help twice a week in the mornings, which is a godsend), and over anything else I need to do that is not directly related to Squidcare. And it’s made me a better and more patient mommy, I hope and believe. Still, we will both be very glad when Daddy comes home. As will Himself, no doubt.

When the Squid sits on the potty he has started to say, “I want privacy! Shut the door!” And we do, because he asks. And similarly, Himself and I have talked, and we will now be drawing a curtain over this period of the Squid’s life. It is time that he should get the privacy that all persons, big and small, are entitled to, and I will no longer be writing detailed public updates about him every month. I am grateful on a regular basis that the Internets were not ubiquitously around prior to the more robust development of my own prefrontal cortex, and I will extend that blessing to young Squid as well as I can.

Of course, this is still my blog and I am still his mother; I won’t pretend I don’t have a wonderful son who delights and thwarts me on a regular basis. But the updates, when they come, will be primarily about me and the new small person (due June 3 or thereabouts), rather than about the Squid.



Speaking of which, pregnancy continues apace, now entering the third trimester. I am disappointed that we have made it to the 21st century without the ability to grow babies in vats, but “it is what it is” – my most recent life motto – and so we carry on. I’ve knocked all the major prenatal items off my to-do list, passed the glucose tests, passed the amnio, fetus is kicking and squirming like anything, we have all the baby clothes we need, I’m knitting up a storm (after 4 years of nothing on the needles), and I’m tired and uncomfortable as hell – in other words, all systems normal. The dreams are totally vivid and fucked-up, though, wow. You would not want to share my subconscious these days; it’s like all the abstract thought processes that escape me in my waking hours appear in surreal Technicolor during REM sleep.

I have no idea what my life – our life – will be like once this baby arrives. I have given up on catastrophizing or speculating or hoping about it, at least for the nonce. I have no idea how we will manage or if we will manage or what we will need or anything. And I’m feeling remarkably Zen about it; after all, it’s out of my control now. It is what it is, que será será, etc.

Squidbits

In the Squid's own city, he has a different Mommy and Daddy. At first, there were no parents in the city at all - just kids - but in the last week or so he has added them in. They are not us, and not necessarily a great deal like us; the Mommy is nice and the Daddy is mean, and that's kind of all we know. They are just part of his mirror world. In his own city, he has a car and a truck and a train and a house and a bunch of other wish-fulfillment stuff. He also tells us, when we wonder about the veracity of this statement or story or that, that he saw it in his own city, or it happened in his own city. He saw a crocodile with no teeth that lived on plankton in his own city. Jet planes fly with their windows down. And snakes can have legs and not be lizards.

It's a permanent part of his imaginary life and he incorporates it into all his narratives - the narratives that aren't blatantly ripped off from books and movies he has read or seen, that is. I can usually tell which are which based on the consistency and coherence of the narrative, but not always. There's one about Peter and Mr. McGregor that seems to have nothing to do with anything Beatrix Potter ever wrote, and one about a "baby seal puff" (Me: "a baby seal pup?" Him: "No, a baby seal PUFF.") that gets rescued by its mommy. He weaves a decent yarn, these days.

But he has a crappy attitude. Not always, but sometimes - too much of the time - it's like he turned thirteen on us when we weren't looking. He rolls his eyes (a behavioral tic both Himself and I are also guilty of), sighs loudly, mutters "crazy old Mommy" under his breath, whines, stamps his feet, refuses to do what is asked of him, negotiates everything, and told me the other day, when I said he had to wipe down the toilet where there was pee on the rim, "That's not my responsibility." I would like to know whose responsibility you think it is to clean up your pee, then, bucko. I told him to eat his broccoli the other day and he actually got up off his chair, walked over to me, and kicked me in the shins!



Part of it is just that we have gotten tired of being permissive and are starting to crack down. He is almost four, and clearly capable of many of the things we would like him to do. He is now more consistently expected to clean up after himself, put away his toys, put his dishes in the sink when he is done, and eat the food he is served before getting any of the things he considers "good" in life (books, movies, playtime, dates with friends, dried fruit, etc.) Increased responsibilities mean increased policing and nagging. Spitting noises, lack of cooperation, throwing things, and other such behavior gets time outs or the loss of privileges.

Part of it is, I am sure, that like all of us, he does not want the responsibility part of being an adult. I hate that part too. It sucks. It also comes with the territory he does want to claim, and I think there's ambivalence about that. Or it could be that while he still naps every afternoon for an hour or two, he is staying up later and later past his bedtime. Our friends next door say he is ready to drop his nap, but we are not, particularly not with #2 on the way. We have always said he doesn't have to sleep as long as he does quiet time, but right now, he sleeps every day. And then stays up an hour or two after bedtime, punctuated by requests for water, better lighting, trips to the potty, and other delaying tactics.

Or maybe it's just almost-fourness; it doesn't seem developmentally out of line with what his peers are doing, not really. But whatever it is, we have gotten several bad reports from preschool lately about not listening to teachers, negative talk-back, and calling other kids names, so we are addressing it directly at home on a regular basis.

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We're also seeing more separation anxiety, possibly exacerbated by the imminence of the proto-sibling. "I might miss you," he says when we drop him at preschool, or even when we leave the room at his bedtime. "What if I miss you?" He's also asked a few times if the baby will take his toys away like the next-door neighbor's little sister does (though my observation says that that goes the other way 'round far more often.) I assured him that it would take a year at least before the baby had the coordination and speed to even try, and he seemed relieved.

We've had to crack down on the food front in part because he started requesting ice cream and cookies for dinner and refusing any and all protein- or nutrient-rich foods. If it were up to him, he'd eat nothing but snack food or cereal day in and day out. And after I had to take him to the doctor one day for his GI issues and the doctor said he wasn't getting enough fiber, well.

At first we told him that his body needed food to give it energy. But then that backfired, because he started telling me that his body needed cookies to give it energy, and it might be sad if I gave it broccoli instead. Um. So one night, he was telling me his body wanted ice cream, that it is good for his bones. And I told him yes, it is, but there is a lot of sugar in it. And then he tried to tell me sugar was good for his body.

How do you explain "empty calorie" to a three-year-old? I was super proud of what I came up with, so I brag here. It is so rare that I feel I actually get it right as a parent in any kind of substantive way, so I feel okay about rejoicing in those few golden moments.

I told him there are two kinds of things in food:
There is the caloric value, which is what makes you bigger and gives you energy.
And there is the nutritional value, which makes you strong and healthy.

Most foods, I explained, have a little of both. But it is easy to eat too much of the kind that just make you big and give you energy, and forget about how important it is to get enough of the kind that make you healthy and strong. Because different foods have different parts of what your body needs, you need to eat a lot of different kinds of food every day to stay healthy and strong and get the energy you need to grow.

Ice cream, I said, has some things that make you healthy and strong, but it has way more of the other things, so we eat it only sometimes, after we have more healthy food, as a treat. And he got it! He still doesn't like it, no, but he understood the concept, and I kept it pro-food and moderation-focused. Whew.

Himself did not like the explanation either - he is afraid I feed the Squid too many facts and too much science and impede his own, organic interpretation of the world. But my Dad was, like, the king of facts and info, and there was no shortage of imagination or wonder going on in my childhood, let me tell you.



And I swear he's just sort of that way inclined. We've been to four or five museums in the last month, and he inevitably gravitates toward the lab simulations, the pulleys, and the gears. Oh, he likes the otters, and the pin walls, and the snakes, and the cave crawls. But gears! And pulleys! And faux dinosaur digs! And lab experiments with sand! He is enthralled. I love watching him play at these places, and discover new things, and engage...though, to be honest, part of what I value is that it lets me disengage for a little while. I am becoming less interactive than ever these days, and I don't always have the patience or brain to keep up with all his needs for attention and information.



I am sunk deep in being an animal, people. Biology consumes me. All I do is eat, and sleep, and try new things to improve the quality of the eating and sleeping. Well, and work, and spend time with family and friends, but I don't even have words to talk about that, I just do it. It's not like the second trimester of pregnancy is particularly physically taxing, unlike the first or third (or fourth oh my god la la la la ostrich). I've just disappeared into myself.

Which is not to say that everything has been bovine contentment around here. On the contrary, I am experiencing increased restlessness and anxiety, familiar from my last pregnancy and now recognizable as such. I obsess over to-do lists. I occupy myself with busywork. Larger, more complex or creative projects are unappealing, but let me tell you, I am knocking the little shit off my list like nobody's business.I'm about to run out of busywork, once the taxes are done.

Any suggestions? Those of you who have two kids, what do you wish you'd gotten out of the way before the chaos of the second one arrived? I'm not talking like, quality time with the Squid or self-pampering, I'm talking about tasks, chores, concrete shit around the house. What do you now look back on and say, "Crap, I wish I'd taken care of that before, when I had more time"?



Look at that little guy. I love him so much.

No, no, the OTHER left

I think, often, of that scene in Pi where the guy takes a drill to his temple. Seriously, if that worked to take away the muscle tension and the jaw clenching and the pernicious headaches, I'd give it a go. But I don't think you can lance anxiety and muscle tension the way you can infections. More's the pity.

In the absence of alcohol, my muscle relaxant of choice, and reliable painkillers (acetaminophen, when you are used to ibuprofen, is little more than a placebo), I am left with an almost total absence of solutions to this type of tension. I do self-massage, using the methods I have been shown. I take my showers extra hot, right before bed. I get a massage as often as I can afford to, which is quarterly at most. I swim once a week, which is all I can fit in with work and childcare. I don't drink coffee after noon, I nap when I need it, I go to bed early and sleep as late as I can, and I try not to take on additional stressors outside my current minimal commitments. There has to be something else, but I feel that the usual suspects (self-pampering, meditation) are unsuited to me at some fundamental level.

I have been spending my free time over the past month or so streamlining my life. It's not hard, and it takes away a lot of the little stressors that I suspect contribute to the anxiety, though the clear truth is that the anxiety doesn't have a source I can eliminate; it's physical/chemical, the pregnancy makes it worse, and there's not a lot that cognitive-behavioral approaches can do. But there's not a lot anything can do, so working on chaos reduction is as good an approach as any. At least I reap spillover benefits. Thus far I have:

• Completely re-done the storage area in the garage, including major purge
  
• Completely re-done the spice cabinet and oil/vinegar cabinet organization, including purge
  
• Completely re-done the bathroom cabinet and drawer organization, including purge
  
• Completely re-done the under-sink kitchen organization, including purge
  
• Sent another huge load of things to goodwill and various new homes
  
• Created a binder of local area kid activities, organized by indoor/outdoor and when they are open

I'm going to run out of stuff soon, though. I've got the pantry, the taxes, and the Life.doc binder to go, and then ... well, there's always my ongoing "teach self to cook" project.

Most people don't start nesting frenzies until the month before birth. I'm just proactive that way, I guess.

I never thought that as an adult, my biggest challenges would be things as basic as sleep and getting my brain to turn off. When I was a kid, I was such a space case that my parents used to refer to me as "the Poet from Mars." I spent all my time off in some dream world of my own in my head, and always had trouble catching up with reality. Give me another thirty-odd years and I'll be ... oh, I dunno, what's the most unlikely outcome from here? A touchy-feely New-Age Earth mother type?

You ever feel like you took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a different life than the one you meant to live?

Hot and Sour Soup

I've wanted a good recipe for this for ages, and tonight I cobbled together one that is just how I like it. Disclaimer: This may or may not be how YOU like it. But everything in it (except white pepper powder) can be got from Safeway and it was relatively easy. I took out the mushrooms, not being a mushroom fan, and stuck in some cabbage and water chestnuts because I thought they were tasty.

Hot and Sour Soup

3 cups chicken stock
1.5 cups water

Heat to a boil. Add:

1/2 can bamboo shoots, rinsed and thinly julienned
1/2 can water chestnuts, finely diced
1 C green cabbage, thinly sliced and chopped
1/2 package tofu - all my local Safeway had was firm, but I'd recommend something a little softer.

Boil 3 min. Add:

3 T white vinegar
1 t salt
1/2 t sugar
1 t white pepper powder

In little bowls, mix together:

1 egg and I T water. Set aside.

2 T cornstarch and 2 T water.

Add the cornstarch mixture to the soup and stir to thicken. Once the soup is the desired consistency (you may wish to add more, depending on how thick you like your Chinese soups) and has come to a rolling boil, beat the egg and water mixture well and pour in the thinnest possible stream into the hot soup.

Add:

1/2 t sesame oil
1 T white vinegar.

Stir and serve. This quantity would do dinner (with rice) for several people or starters for 6-8.

If you like the darker (Southern Chinese) hot and sour soups, add a tablespoon of Sichuan hot bean sauce and reduce the white pepper powder by half. If you like mushrooms, you can get yours from a restaurant.

Squidbits. And news.

A lady at the store where we got hot chocolate in Chicago was enamored of the Squid. "He's so busy!" she kept saying. And if I had to pick one word to describe him these days, "busy" would probably be it. He leaps out of bed in the morning (having figured out how to get out of his crib on his own) and comes in already bouncing. "It's time to wake up!" he says. "Mommy, come on! The sun is up!" He is into everything - by the time I have put away the last thing he had out, he has his paws on something new and inappropriate. As soon as he is distracted, the current object is dropped to the floor and he moves on to the next, despite our recent efforts to talk to him about how big boys clean up after themselves. It's a whirlwind I can't keep up with.



Nor can anyone else. On Thanksgiving we had two older girls watching him – not babysitter-older, just old-enough-to-know-what's-what older. And despite their warnings (and they did tell him not to!), the young man managed to find a sharp knife, play with it, and cut himself. Thank God he didn't put out an eye or lose a finger, just sliced up the base of one fingernail, but it was terrifying to run downstairs at his howl and find him gushing blood, sobbing, saying, "Why is red stuff coming out of my hand?" We handled it calmly, with much admonishment about Not Playing With Sharp Things and Listening When People Tell You Not To Do Things, and all's well that ends well, but it was scary.

It was a huge relief to have all four grandparents present for the Thanksgiving vacation, because it provided both of us with a much-needed rest. My parents and Himself's parents fielded almost half of the Squid's early mornings and some of his nap wakeups. They also did playtime activities, question answering, and general Squidwatch, all of which was particularly crucial for me as I spent the two-week vacation transitioning out of the exhaustion and nausea of the first trimester of pregnancy.

Yup, we have another one on the way. Due in early June, and thus far shaping up just fine. Six months feels like forever, but I am just glad to be over the first, worst part and feeling vaguely human again. Amniocentesis preliminary results are back and looking clear, and I am looking visibly pregnant, so we are finally telling everyone.



The Squid took the news about the baby surprisingly well. We'd done a lot of talking about how babies grow, because he was skeptical that I had really grown him in my tummy, and he had asked if I could grow him a baby. I told him maybe, if he asked nicely (knowing it was already in progress)… so after we told the grandparents, I was in the shower with him, belly poking out, and I said, "I want to tell you a secret!"

"Whisper it in my ear," he commanded.

Obediently, I bent down and whispered, "I'm growing a baby in my tummy."

"No, in THIS ear," he said, pointing to his other ear.

I whispered it again.

There was a long pause.

"See what I can do with my squeegee?" he said.

…and that's the sum total of the angst we've seen thus far. It will probably look a little different once the baby gets here and starts taking more of our time and attention, but right now, he's cool with it. See what he can do with his squeegee?



Today, after poking my boobs and informing me that he was "just checking to see how they're fatter because of the baby," (his observation! I didn't tell him that!) he volunteered, "I'm going to take good care of the baby." He has also stated his unequivocal preference for a sister. Well, actually, he wanted two big sisters, but he will take one little sister if that is all that is on offer. We told him we couldn't guarantee, but that we would do our best. And, apparently, our best has sufficed - the ultrasound technician assured me this week that the fetus was very clearly female.

In rottener news, Uncle E, whom we have not seen for several years and whose visit we were really looking forward to, will not be able to make it for the holidays after all. This also means Grammy and Grandpa will be flying out of town and unable to celebrate with us. Woe all around. Still, our tree looks wonderful, we're having the neighborhood over for potluck on Christmas Eve like we usually do, and the Squid and I are even hoping to make it down to LA for New Years to see Grammy Vi. Still, we will miss Uncle E! I'd looked forward to having him get to know the Squid - I remember E at this age, and I think he and the Squid would get along.

The Squid continues to be a very talkative young man. "Why" is in full effect. He's not just using it the way he was, to ask questions, though he still does that too. He uses it to ask the same question we've already answered several times. And sometimes he uses it to ask a question that contains its own answer, like, "Why do I have to wear my coat because it's cold?" It seems less of an information gathering tool and more of a communication strategy, much like the way "how are you?" and "what are you up to?" work for adults. If we don't respond, he repeats the query over and over and over. If we ask him why, he says, "That's enough why!" He also has some funny new expressions, like "Stop it this!" for asking us to knock it off.

My mother says that he is forthright in a way unusual for this age. At 3.75 years, he still confesses misdeeds if asked directly. Or even volunteer the information, sometimes, if it is relevant to the situation. He'll tell me if he has a potty accident (a rarer and rarer occurrence - we're down to once a week or so) almost as soon as it happens, and he's frank about his misbehaviors at preschool as well. For those of you who have had kids this age, is this unusual?



He's learned a lot of songs from preschool and is fairly tuneful about them. I've even heard him vary the tune a bit now and then intentionally, and he's gone past remembering the words to the songs to changing them to be about himself and whatever he's interested in singing about at the moment. I am totally floored by how well he usually makes his substitute words scan with the usual rhythm and tune of the originals. At the preschool Christmas program he sang his little heart out, and it's not unusual to hear him singing himself to sleep at night, either.

We went to a couple of museums on vacation – a Mississippi river museum, where they had a great lizard exhibit (he likes the way chameleons can see in two directions at once) and the Shedd aquarium in Chicago, where he said his favorites were the frogfish but also enjoyed rays, jellyfish, sharks, lionfish, and many other critters, and correctly identified leafy sea dragons without any prompting from us, just from repeated viewing of his Blue Planet movies. He was quite disappointed in the dearth of anglerfish, gulper eels, and bioluminescent deep sea critters, as his current fascination is the deep ocean, but there were enough otters and dolphins and corals and frogs to keep him running for almost three hours, so it was a great experience.



I get him one ornament every year that will be his to take when he starts having his own tree, and this year we got it from the Shedd, which had the best collection of blown-glass jellyfish, octopi, starfish, sand dollar, and seahorse ornaments I have ever seen. Christmas is my favorite holiday (followed closely by Thanksgiving, now that I have married into this wonderful warm family of cooks and eaters and togetherness) and I am very excited for it this year, though I have done no baking or shopping, thanks to, you know, growing a person and stuff. Indeed, I forgave myself in advance for late cards, incomplete shopping, not hanging the lights, and a myriad of other guilt-inducing holiday sins, and it's really helping with peace of mind.

May you all have wonderful holidays, and know that we are thinking of you. Who knows, you might even get a card from us for New Year's ... or Chinese New Year's ... or next year. I could have my act together by then, right? Right?

Hi, anxiety

Things my brain decided it needed to discuss with itself right now between 1 and 2 a.m. last night:

• How I used to wrap gifts and never do anymore
  
• The lyrics to Lady Gaga's "Poker Face"
  
• Whether or not I knew where everything was for the office White Elephant exchange next Monday
  
• How Calvino uses semiotic squares in If on a winter's night a traveler

The longer I deal with anxiety the more I am convinced that it is a brute physiological force, not anything contextually explicable. Seriously, I was giving myself chest pains over ... what? I used to think it was stress, but sometimes I wake with a racing pulse, sweating, reciting Dr. Seuss to myself frantically.

Of course, in better news, the dentist agreed to replace my bite guard (which they said would last five years, and I cracked within two weeks) at cost. "I've only met three people in twenty years who have ever cracked one of those," the dentist said admiringly. "You must be serious!"

Gratitude

Today I am grateful for family - by birth, by marriage, and by choice - that I not only love, but also like. I am grateful for my health and the health of my loved ones. I am grateful for my privilege - not as a social construct but as my personal, lived reality - and for my medication, which allows me to truly enjoy what I have. I am grateful for my partner, who challenges and supports me in a million ways. I am grateful for my son, who amazes me daily with his huge heart, iron will, and enormous vocabulary. And for our neighbors, who have created a community of parents and friends and welcomed my family in with open arms.

I am grateful for friends who love me enough to forgive me when I need it, call me out when I need to be called out, and who make the extra effort to be part of my life. I am grateful for my job, where I am treated like a valuable co-worker and a worthwhile human being, and for my online community, which gives me so much joy and inspires me to do so many things.

I am grateful, particularly in these trying times, for enough food to eat and clean water to drink. I am grateful for the Obama administration, who are daily inching this country closer to what it can and should become. I am grateful for all the people who give their time and energy and money to improve the world. I am grateful for my civil liberties, my reproductive freedom, and my health and dental insurance.

I am grateful for no-knead bread, domestic appliances, and central heating. I am grateful for the internet, and for the various technological gadgetry that enriches my life. I'm grateful for books, for music, for fanfiction, and for big-budget movies in which lots of stuff blows up. I'm grateful for sleep, and caffeinated beverages, and butter, and salt.

There is a gathering of friends and family in the barn. More friends are on the road, on their way to see us. The air is clear and crisp, and the house is full of the smell of baking bread and the warmth of a cozy fire. May you all be so blessed.

Squidbits

Sort of a rough month. I was under the weather for most of it, and the Squid, well. He's in one of those phases. I have to repeat anything multiple times to get him to tune in, flat contradiction is a favorite conversational gambit, and his inside voice seems to have gone away, to be replaced by piercing shrieks and excited announcements.

Which is not to say there is no awesome to be had. Halloween was awesome. He went from house to house saying, "Here comes Robin Hood!" and often saying "trick or treat" before the door even opened and instead chirping, "Hi, I'm Robin Hood! Can I have some candy?" at indulgent neighbors. It worked pretty well; for a four-block area he hauled home half a bag of loot. I only let him eat it after he finishes meals, though, so he hasn't made much in the way of inroads. Daddy and I, on the other hand, have helped a bit. What?! We are just taking the sugar hit for him. It is defensive parenting; don't judge.

The circus was sort of awesome; it would have been more awesome if we had had comfortable seats, which was my fault for buying right before the final performances. Next year we go earlier, and bring snacks and juice. I love small family circuses, though, and he had never been to one, so it was all very new and exciting.

We did a lot of visiting with friends and family, too, which the Squid (being a social beast) always enjoys. He was the only kid at my office Halloween party and at a friend's housewarming, and mingled and played totally undaunted by the lack of same-age peers. We visited Grammy at her house, in an experiment to see how well he would nap away from home (verdict: eh) and had a great time at the park near her house with replica fire trucks and trains and teapots that you can crawl inside. Grandpa got back from Malaysia, where he was counting fish for reef conservation programs, and Grandpa is, as always, the most awesome thing ever to awesome.

Potty training is what it is. He knows how, but we have the same struggles with it that we do with anything else we want him to do at the moment that is our priority and not his. He seems to have the liquid stuff down, knock on wood, except for nighttime, and we're working on the rest of it. On the whole, I think he's doing really well. Such a big guy!

Himself and I have been a little under the weather for a while - seems like one or the other (sometimes both) of us is exhausted or achy or sick. The Squid has picked up on this and now complains at random moments that his back hurts, or that his tummy doesn't feel good. I remember being young and spry, kiddo. Your back does not hurt. Just you wait.

We are also seeing the fallout of our own behavioral modeling (mostly mine) in his pacing. This morning was classic. "Come on, time to go to preschool!" I said, standing at the door. "I'm just making sure this dinosaur is in top condition!" he yelled back, not moving. In the six yards between there and the car, he also stopped to rifle through the coats on the rack, kick a pumpkin then sit on it for a bit, stand still and complain, and swing the gate back and forth over and over and over. Everything takes forever.

This is probably me reaping the rewards of my own, "Just a second, I'm making dinner/need to finish this/have to clean up first" style of meandering toward doing things that are requested of me. Which does not make it any less frustrating. "Hop out!" I said to him the other day, opening the car door and unbuckling his carseat. And then, a full minute later, as the heavy bags I carried started to bite into my arms and he continued to noodle, "I said hop, not ooze!"

He's increasingly articulate - which for a kid who was already incredibly articulate is saying a lot. He's figured out basic narrative structures and is getting better and better at telling stories and explaining things. He's also figuring out how to use words to get out of things - preschool reports that he sometimes makes bad choices with his hands and then says "sorry," and expects to get away with it because he apologized. I have definitely seen some weaselly bargaining and some outright untruth at home, too, but it's age-appropriate, and we are discouraging.

Age-appropriate rough play is here, too, so we have a lot of talks about not hitting, not pushing, not kicking, not talking about shooting and killing, not fighting. "How was your day at preschool?" we ask. "Good," he says, then solemn and a little confidential, "I had a little kicking problem." It's hard to be a kid; the other kids have the same level of social skills he does, so you can't rely on natural social de-escalation. We talk about things he can do instead (say "no thank you," walk away, negotiate turns) but they are hard to remember in the heat of the moment.

I didn't take pictures this month. I had enough energy to keep the family fed (thank God for takeout) and fulfil my responsibilities at work (though there are odd lacunae in my time cards marked as "sick" that really translate to "curled up under desk for a desperate nap") and take care of the odd load of laundry or dishes. Pictures are way further up in Maslow's hierarchy of motherhood than where I have been operating lately. Maybe next time.

Contentment and happiness

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between contentment and happiness, lately. I think about it on and off, probably more than your average bear, as part of monitoring my own mental well-being and the way I react to the world around me, and I have a long-standing interest in what is now, cheesily enough, becoming known as "positivity studies" - essentially, the study of happiness.

The latest bout was brought on by my realization that I still feel, on a more or less daily basis, that having Obama rather than Bush in the White House is improving my quality of life and personal happiness. I'd read a report on a study, published months before the election, that argued that this was one of those human fallacies where we think something will make us happier/unhappier, but the "hedonic effect" (the impact on our happiness) is far more ephemeral than predicted.

To which I say, bullshit.

Dan Gilbert, who is a very funny author and happiness scholar, and whose work and observations I am a great fan of, in the main, perpetrates something similar when he writes about how parents are generally happier watching TV or doing housework than interacting with their children. Much as I love well-done pop psychology, I have to say that it's things like this - where the catchy "kids don't make us happy!" or "you don't care as much as you think you do about this election!" press line triumphs over close examination of the methodology - that gives the genre such a bad name.

I found (and I can't remember where) a piece that talked about the methodology of one of these studies. And it was very revealing. They'd gone to a group of women (only women, and I'm sure you can see the problem with this sample right away) and basically popped in on them at random points in their day and asked them to rate, presumably on a simple scale of some sort, how happy they felt right then. Changing the nappies (how happy are you?), reading a book (how happy are you?), on hold with the phone company (how happy are you?), doing the laundry (how happy are you?) - and then they looked at how happiness corresponded to various activities. And found that interacting with children (small children and teenagers particularly) received the lowest happiness ratings.

So kids make you miserable, right? "Happiness Plummets With Kids' Arrival," was the headline one online newspaper attached to Gilbert's work. Quick, to the IUD and the diaphragm, lest we become sad shadows of our former jolly selves!

But seriously, is it not clear what is wrong with this approach?

There is a huge (HUGE) difference between asking someone, "How happy are you right now?" and asking them "How happy are you with your life?" or "How happy are you with the direction your life choices are taking you?" or "How happy are you generally?"

Like, I love my job. It's exactly what I want to be doing, it's close to home, it has the potential to help people, I get to learn and grow and do new things, they pay me, and I'm fairly good at it. If you ask me, "do you like your job?" the answer will invariably be "yes, I love it." But if you ask me "How was your day at work?" the answer is unlikely to be as positive. And if you pop your head into my office while I'm on yet another interminable conference call with a client and ask me how happy I am at that moment, the answer (after I hit the mute button on the speaker) is likely to be unprintable.

Happiness is a tricky word with a lot of meanings. I, personally, prefer to think of it in terms of two factors - contentment and happiness. Contentment, in my schema, is how happy you are with your life. Are you going where you want to go? Are you with the people you want to be with? Do you have a sense of purpose? Do you feel safe? Are you acting sufficiently in accordance with your beliefs? Happiness is the ephemeral "hit," the hedonic high. Are you at a great party? Did your child or partner just say something sweet and loving to you? Do you have a perfect cuppa and a well-loved book, and time to read it? Are you out for a bracing hike on a perfect day in a place you love?

If you break it down like this, the results of these happiness studies (if not the way the researchers chose to conduct them)* start to make more sense. They're asking about major contentment factors in the context of happiness. It's like trying to measure thirst by asking people how hungry they are; it's just not the same. Oh, I still get a moment of happiness here and there when I hear of something awesome Obama has done. And there are more happy moments in parenting than I ever knew, though they are outnumbered (not outweighed, just outnumbered) by the moments of frustration or routine. But I didn't have a kid because I thought it was going to be all joy all day - I don't think anyone does. And I didn't vote for Obama because I thought, "Hey, that dude will make me happy if I elect him."

I made those choices because they spoke to the things in me - my values, my deeper needs, my sense of the way the world should be - that directly affect my contentment. It's how I try to make most of my choices. And I am, on the whole, a deeply contented person. Not a happy one - I am rarely really happy in a how happy are you right now? sense - but a content one, which I think I much prefer. (Though, can you be happy and not content? I think you can - I think I spent a lot of my twenties that way, and it involved large quantities of alcohol - but it's an interesting question to ponder).

Gilbert posits a lot of potential reasons for his outcomes - social conditioning, memory errors, attributing happiness value to things in order to justify investment in them, etc. But he never seems to wonder if he's asking the right question.

How about you? How happy are you right now? How happy are you with your life in general? Are they the same?



* Yes, I get that you can only get this information through self-report, and that self-report is necessarily less reliable the further back (or, I suppose, more general) the information that the subject is trying to report. I still maintain that different question wording might have elicited some very different answers.

Sadie Mae
1994ish - October 12, 2009
I don't know how to write about this.

It is humbling, and not a little heartbreaking, to be loved the way Sadie loved me. I rarely lived up to it; I'm not sure that it's possible for a person, greedy and scattered with a brainpan full of human stuff, to ever live up to that kind of devotion. But I don't think she noticed much, or cared, about all the ways in which I failed.

I don't think I will ever know if I did the right thing, in the end.

The Name of The Air

It could be like that then the beloved
old dog finding it harder and harder
to breathe and understanding but coming
to ask whether there is something that can
be done about it coming again to
ask and then standing there without asking

— W.S. Merwin