Loss

On Wednesday, I watched as an 8 year old girl and her 3 year old brother buried their mom. Marisa Christina Gallegos was 27 years old. Her mom is one of my mom’s oldest friends. She and I were friends as children, I hadn’t seen her since we were about 13. She was one of the sweetest girls I’d ever met.

As of last I heard, they think she died of alcohol poisoning. Her mom (whom both she and her children were living with) was not notified until the police came to her door three hours later. Her friends did not call her mom. Her friends identified her body, so her mom didn’t have the opportunity to see her until days later. Her friends didn’t think, for one second, that her mother and her children had a right to know. It makes my heart break.

During the funeral, Eric looked over at me and said, “We’re chaining Ben to us.” I said something along the lines of, “And he’s not allowed to have friends.”

My dad said, “The streets will take your life. It’s always been that way and always will be.” My mom thanked God that Eric and I had found eachother and that I had “settled down”. There but by the grace of God…

I listened as the priest said things that were meant to give comfort. Things like how she was now in a place to help everyone fulfill their life goals. How no one should be sad because she is in a better place. It sounded patronizing. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe it, it’s just that, were I in her mother’s shoes, I’d smack anyone who told me my daughter was in a better place. She has two children that need her here, now. There is no better place.

I found pictures of her at my 5th birthday party. I made copies and will take them to her mom when we go to visit her next week. It struck me how her daughter looks exactly like her at that age. Same skinny body, rail arms and chicken legs. Everytime I saw her, I couldn’t help but cry. While I may have barely recognized the woman in the casket, the sobbing face of the little girl was very familiar.

I have so much to say about this but I’m not entirely sure how to put it together, so I apologize for this being scattered. I can’t imagine burying a mom so young and I can’t imagine burying your child. When her mom stood to speak, she reminded us all to hold our children a little tighter. I did and I will.

Goodbye, Marisa.

It Just Smells Bad…

Until my recent tooth removal, I hadn’t built up any sort of stored breastmilk supply. Not only because my supply was already a drizzle and it was just depressing watching the drips end at 1 ounce on each side, making me want to cry and scream to the Gods, “WHY ME, GODS?! Is it because of my blasphemous use of Gods over God because it’s just for effect! JUST FOR EFFECT!”, but because I wasn’t ever planning on being away from my son for longer than, you know, 10 seconds.

Thanks to the 8 whole hours I was out of it with the removal, I pumped 2 whole bags and one whole bottle of breastmilk for the freezer. We recently popped one out for Eric to use when I was at my 5 hour staff meeting early last month. When I called (which I managed to avoid for nearly 3 whole hours despite the continual let-downs because I couldn’t stop talking or thinking about him), Eric said he wouldn’t take it but he did finish nearly an entire avocado. He was hungry but didn’t want the milk. I did not freak. I did let-down…again.

When I got home, I inspected the milk and, AHA, it smelled soapy! I remembered the many stories of over-enthusiastic lipase making good, frozen milk smell like a bottle of liquid Dawn. “I know what this is! It’s too much lipase! It just smells bad, it’s okay to drink.”

Here is where I take a sip. Now, some people may think it’s gross or strange to taste one’s own breastmilk. I ask you people this, what’s stranger, drinking a bodily fluid from a source with which you are quite familiar, or drinking a bodily fluid from some random animal that could be out whoring around with HIV BIV positive bulls or doing intravenous bovine herione on her off days? Yeah, whatchu gotta say ’bout that?! Besides, it doesn’t taste bad.

Anyway, I sipped.

And I gagged. My Lord, did I gag. I also may have vomited a little in my mouth. Anyone who says soapy-smelling breastmilk is “just stronger” is insane. Not only did it smell like a bottle of Dawn but it tasted like a bottle of Dawn mixed with the essence of chicken bottom. It was that bad.

Needless to say, we’ll be stocking up on avocados come my all day meeting at the end of the month because there is no way Ben’s ever going to get chicken ass and dish soap in a bottle again. Until, of course, he hits that toddler “Mama, I won’t eat anything but chicken butt and Dawn…or tomato and pea salad” phase. And no child of mine is going to eat tomato and pea salad. No, sir. Not in this house.

Who Knew?

Me: Wow. Charmed sure is a crap show.
Eric: Yeah.
Me: Still better than Angel, though.
Eric: *steely stare*

Apparently, them’s fightin’ words.

Stewie Kicks the Boob

Violent Thoughts About An 8 Year Old = Bad?

I ask because I’m having trouble deciding if it is a bad thing to pick an 8 year old up by his shirt and threaten his very life for throwing rocks at your baby or if it can be deemed completely justifiable. On the one hand, the attacking and subsequent whopping-of-a-lifetime of a child is probably a never a good idea but he threw rocks…at my 10 month old. I’m so very torn.

We have an adorable park nearby with a beautiful pool. It only has one baby swing so we don’t get down there too often. Ben’s an all day sort of swinger. If you pull him out too early, you’d better have something bigger and better to do or you’re going to have a blood-curdling scream followed pouty face for the rest of the day. We don’t want to be “those people” always hogging the swing. Not to mention, the times (Okay, really it was only one time, but I don’t want everyone to think I’m a quitter so we’ll pretend like we went more than once) we went down there, we were, mid-swing, accosted by loud, cackling teenage girls proclaiming how “weird” they must look swinging on children’s swings. “We must look SO weird! OMG!” Of course, picture it being said in Spanish.

This afternoon I wanted to, again, drive to the park that I like best. It’s about 10 minutes away and through downtown, which many of you may find ridiculous since we have a park less than a 10 minute walk away but we were accosted by squeeling teenage girls. Since it was 5pm and since he’s lame, Eric wasn’t so hot on the idea of driving through downtown during rush hour just to go to a park we’d always had great experiences at instead of, you know, the one in which we were (say it with me) accosted. So, I offered up a second park, a 5 minute drive, that’s supposedly just as nice. “Why don’t we walk down to our park? I’m really hurting for exercise,” he says. Fine. I only bring all this up so there’s a record of me trying to avoid the situation all together. I didn’t wake up this morning and decide I was going to start planning out how to vivisect a child. I tried to avoid it. Blame it all on Eric.

We get Ben all packed into his stroller and walk down to the park. There are two kids, a girl about 10 and a boy about 8, in the I’m-so-freaking-bored belly down position on the swings. They notice us pulling up and they get their show off shoes on. You know how kids get when there are new people around. “Look what I can do!” So we pop Ben in the infant swing and he starts his usual hysterical laughing…until the little boy starts throwing rocks at his friend.

Now, let me say, had it not been my baby, the following would not have occured. I would have had a clear head. I would’ve said something along the lines of, “Please don’t throw rocks. You could hurt the baby.” Of course, “the baby” in this instance was my son, so clear head and “possibility of injury or pain” were not coexisting.

The first handful went towards Eric’s legs. I said nothing because the kid immediately corrected himself, turned sideways and threw the rocks at his friends feet away from Eric and, more importantly, Ben. However, the more his friend would swing and the louder she’d yell for him to stop, the harder he’d throw the rocks at her feet. They were pinging off the side of the swingset and popping me in my ankles. Not a big deal, they were no where near Ben, I wasn’t going to freak out.

And then the kid decided to throw a handful in the air.
Over my head, over my husband’s head but most importantly, over my 10 month old’s head.

“WOAH! Could you not do that again?!?” This is a response I’m torn on. I could’ve said, “Could you please not do that? You don’t want to hurt the baby.” Which probably would’ve been a much more grown up, kind thing to say. However, I could’ve also said, “Do that again and I’ll chop off your hand!” Which I’m pretty proud of avoiding. As I said, I’m torn.

Ben was swinging for a few moments more, the kid was throwing more rocks at his friend and decided, “Hey, let’s throw them directly toward the baby and the white guy this time.” They thwacked off the bottom of Ben’s swing, off my ankles and Eric’s knees, to give you an idea of how high and hard they were thrown.

I lost it.

“You little brat! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” I broke a switch off of the nearest bush and started thwacking him. “You don’t throw rocks at a baby! What the hell is wrong with you?! Where’s your mother?! GET BACK HERE! DO NOT MAKE ME CHASE YOU!”

Okay, so, not really but I wanted to. Badly. Instead I said, “That’s it. Let’s go,” grabbed Ben and grumbled at Eric about, “Oh, driving to the good park is too faaaaaaaaar, going to a new park isn’t enough ex-er-ciiiiiiise.” Then let Ben play in the grass for a while, all the time contemplating going all “Hand That Rocks the Cradle” on his butt and shooting dirty looks back at an 8 year old child.

Seriously, I, a grown woman, was shooting evil, dirty looks at a child. Not my most shining moment but, hey, don’t nobody mess with my baby.

Busy Bee

It’s been a busy week thus far. I have loads to say but it’s time for Ben and I to head to bed. I had to post thism though. So cute.

Let The Repairs Begin

Yesterday, Eric and his best friend spent the entire day ripping out my beautiful sidewalk along the south side of the house. I grumbed and growled, despite the fact that I knew it was necessary. See, we have a bit of a foundation issue. We live in a nieghborhod that once housed one of the country’s greatest polluters and, therefore, had the most poisonous ground in all of Denver.

Asarco, a smelting plant, was the reason this neighborhood was built. It was a great job for so many Russian, Polish and (to a much lesser degree) Mexican immigrants that were moving here in the early 1900’s. The land was fairly cheap and, at that time, building your own house wasn’t unheard of. They’d immigrate here, buy a piece of land and live in a shanty until they had the money and necessities to begin building and painting the house with the latest and greatest lead-containing paint on the market. That paint ended up being the least of their worries.

Sometime in the early 90’s, a group of residents banded together and filed suit against Asarco. They took samples of the soil and found exceptionally high levels of arsenic, cadmium and a whole load of stuff you definitely did not want in your vegetables. They won. The first suit of it’s kind ever won by the residents of a neighborhood that had been royally screwed by a big company. They got very little in return, a small bit of money and the replacement of their poisoned dirt. It sent Asarco into bankruptcy - although, not out of business because they’re setting up yet another plant in Houston, so we’ve heard.

So, when they came to replace the soil, they did no grading. They piled the soil in the middle of the yard and there it sat, as a small mountain, leading all the water from rains into the foundation. By the time we moved here, the basement was definitely the worse for wear. The paint is buckled and popping on all four walls but the worst to the south of the house. Eric’s been talking about ripping the sidewalk out to re-grade since we moved in and yesterday the project began.

After ripping out the sidewalk, they realized that A)there was not quite enough available dirt and B)the giant ash tree had decided to grow it’s long and super tough roots on top of the soil instead of underneath. They were going to need a Bobcat. By this time, it was late in the afternoon. They decided to put up the back porch light instead.

Since Eric made it clear that I’m not allowed to mope about it because it will be done, I’m not allowed to whine and complain that I loved that sidewalk and that now my house looks like more of a ghettofied mess than it already did. So, in an effort to be positive about the whole situation, now I have the great beginnings of a moat on the south side and partially along the backside of my house! Woohoo! New housing trend!

Gentle! GENTLE!

Yesterday was another day of training for the peer counseling job - which I am still ridiculously excited about - and the second time I took Ben along. It’s so wonderful that I’m allowed to bring the Benjaroo for trainings. It makes things a lot less stressful. Yesterday was the first day my co-peer counselor brought her adorable 9 month old baby girl with her, armed with a ton of really cool toys and a Pack’n'Play, too.

To be honest, I was a little nervous introducing them to play with one another. It’s been no real secret that Ben’s remained pretty unsocialized since birth, other than with children quite a bit older than him. The best friends he’s had so far have been 3 and 5 and, while he really enjoyed it, the extent of their playtime was him handing them giant legos so they could “build Ben a building.” He’d never really had direct contact playing with anyone that wasn’t a member of our family. I imagined him grabbing a hold of the little girl’s hair and trying to pull off her face while I ran in circles screaming, “BE GENTLE! BE GENTLE!”

So we put them both in the Pack’N'Play and commenced to attempting to trick our eyes into a feat most would be incapable of attaining. We kept one eye on the presentation (my co-PF managed to do this with the presentation behind her - Im-freakin’-pressive) and one on the babies. At first, Ben sat in the corner of the PNP, positively terrified. I had to fight with every ounce of my mommy protectiveness to not yank him out of there and tell him, “It’s okay, baby. Mama doesn’t like socializing either. You only ever have to hang out with me. Ever. I’ll even be your prom date.”

Instead, I let him stew and he got acclimated. He climbed out from the corner and he grabbed a book. After a short pull back and forth, they mutually turned the pages, pressed the buttons and nearly made me cry. The rest of the day they spent predominantly together in the PNP, or with her crawling off while he chased her. She got out to be changed? He started at her from the side of the PNP nearest to her, pointed and hollered, “AH! AH!” She reciprocated.

It was disgustingly cute and my immediate reaction was to tear up and get all sorts of fuzzy about my sweet baby growing up. I have a feeling I might be that mom who cries on the first day of school, cries during the first bike ride, first date and prom. The anticipated therapy bill has just grown expotentially.

Our House is a Very, Very, Very Fine House

All Boobs All the Time

I’ve spent quite a bit of my time in the past couple of weeks reading about breastfeeding, taking my basic courses so I can start taking Lactation Education courses and doing training for the Peer Counselor job. All I seem to do is read about, write about, and talk about boobs. While it doesn’t bother me, I have a feeling my family’s getting a little tired of hearing about breastfeeding all the time.

I haven’t yet figured out how to properly interact with my mom in regards to the breastfeeding thing. I don’t want her to feel as if I’m denigrating her choice to formula feed me. I 100% believe she made the best choice for our family at that moment in time. At the same time, I want to tell her everything I’m learning. Call me a raging boob-dork but it’s exciting to learn so much and I like to share. It’s just really hard to tell my mom things like, “Hey! You know that a new study shows breastfed babies have a higher IQ, less illness and four trillion other positives? Hey, you didn’t breastfeed me, right?” How the heck does one walk that line?

Just for giggles, the Landover Baptist Church has found that breastfeeding is a gateway sin. Damn those demonic impulses triggered by sucking!

ETA: LOB is a great religious satire site.