Mom Blogging Articles

It was a long day with the doctor yesterday. Everything is okay, but it’s not good. Good being “remission”. My hands are swollen, my hips ache and I can’t walk well the first hour of the morning. Maybe that’s not actually okay?

I’m not a good patient. I am not good at taking pills… recreationally who isn’t but this whole thing of two pills on an empty stomach isn’t working very well. I never have an empty stomach and I don’t want to wait an hour for breakfast. But I try to wait that hour for breakfast because they tell me it will make me feel better. Then I have a pill that I take two of on even days and one on odds. I take that with food. The food part is easy. I am always eating. Of course there’s the monthly injection. Even though it doesn’t hurt much anymore it’s the most depressing part of it all. I hate that injection and I hate seeing the syringes in my refrigerator. I’ve considered buying a small refrigerator just so I don’t have to look at the medicine every time I eat (which as you might imagine is often).

My hands are still in bad shape. I’m going to see an acupuncturist tomorrow for some short term relief because I really need to avoid the prednisone and I’m tired of celebrex upsetting my stomach.

The doctor wants to add back methotrexate which I’ve taken before and not liked. With “not liked” being a massive understatement. Part of what worries me about methotrexate is the liver damage. I don’t want to live with RA but I can live with RA. You can’t live cirrhosis.

I’m not filling any prescriptions just yet. I’d really like to celebrate my birthday with a glass (bottle… jug???) of wine and travel without worrying about side effects.

Here’s hoping.

I threw out a half a steak yesterday and felt ill. I love meat, I love steak and lamb chops, I like chicken and fish but I don’t love wasting food, particularly meat. When we have leftover green things I can toss them in a compost bin and feel absolved. I’m not absolved, but I get the feeling that I am… which is only sort of okay.

Over the years I’ve been vegetarian and vegan too. Vegetarian while eating dairy wasn’t the best I’ve ever felt. I did feel incredibly good and strong as a vegan but to be fair I was in my early 20’s and would have felt good and strong in any event. I also spent an inordinate amount of time planning my meals. I’m not interested in living that way.

These days I languish… no I anguish at the meat counter of Whole Foods wondering if I’m inhumane because I buy my family $16 a pound beef that’s grass fed as opposed to the $24 a pound beef that’s also organic. What I’m really concentrating on these days is buying the proper amount. I serve meat in 5 ounce portions… except for when Mr. G gets a porterhouse, then it’s total Flintstone style where I fill his plate and delight in watching him enjoy his food. There are never leftovers with Porterhouse Steaks.

Lately though I’ve felt stuck. Like when I handle the meat raw I don’t want to eat it, and when my kids eat restaurant food I get panicked that they’re eating the sick and dying cow that got sent to slaughter just because no one gives a shit anyhow. I can’t smell bacon without thinking of the fake pigs that are live in metal pens shitting a river below them. It’s not that I don’t want to eat meat, it’s that I want to eat meat from real animals like chickens with normal sized breasts. Remember when turkeys had more dark meat than white?

I get a little obsessive about food and when I walk through the grocery store I’m pretty sure that the food processors are trying to poison us all. Most of my breakfasts and lunches are vegan but I don’t want my life to be vegan. I just want to be able to feed my family meat that isn’t full of corn, antibiotics or disease.

I’m looking for alternatives, where can I buy sustainably farmed meat in Los Angeles?

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned the Oprah trip. Like if you were standing in line with me at the grocery store I was probably like, “Hey, did you see that O Magazine… and did you know I’m traveling with Oprah to St. Louis, New York and Toronto?” And then you rolled your eyes and were like Shut the fuck up lady but only in your head because one of us is polite.

I have some tickets to share for the LifeClass with Tony Robbins. It’s April 2 in the evening. I can’t guarantee that it will be as exciting as this one…

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The travel plans are coming together for Oprah’s LifeClass and it’s not the way I’d have planned it. Yesterday I was grumpy about it, I didn’t understand why anyone would travel in this manner and I was ThisClose to just walking away from the project. I am not a low maintenance traveler and it’s not one of things I’m trying to change about myself.

Well, maybe it is.

This week has sort of conspired against me and I haven’t been able to exercise as much as I ought to. I’ve had a long walk but it was a slow walk because it was a cold morning. I had tennis but it was doubles and that’s not always very satisfying, yoga was a bit of a bust too. These aren’t the biggest problems that anyone could have but moving my body is such a link to sanity for me that having three of these days back to back was crushing. I’ve been cranky and ill tempered.

I complained to Chelsea about the flights and thought maybe they’d allow me to travel on my own. To her credit Chelsea did not say, “Listen lady we’ve got 200 people to fly around you’re not that important.” She did patiently explain that hundreds of people would be flying in, which was something I didn’t understand. Then she explained that there were no airline choices, Ms. Winfrey has a longstanding relationship with United. It started making sense to me but I was still irritated and wondering if taking connecting flights was simply a sign that this isn’t the right trip for me. I told her I’d sleep on it.

Shortly after the LifeClass call one of the Pocahontas’ called and asked how things were and she immediately got an earful from me. I was bitching and complaining and what’s in it for me’ing when she interrupted me with he sage mommyness. She began with, “Oprah changed my life.” And then interrupted my eye roll with a story about how she tried writing down 5 things she was grateful for each day and how it reframed how she looked at her life. I was tired, I was cranky (yes I sound like a toddler) and I listened but wasn’t ready to absorb it all.

This morning I went to the kids’ chapel because Jane thought she’d made honor roll. She worked hard for those grades but part of me was a little disappointed that she didn’t make Dean’s List. Negative much? During Chapel (I know… we’re not supposed to) I was whispering with another mom and she asked about the LifeClass. I complained about the travel.

I complained about being called by the Oprah Winfrey Network. I complained about being taken to three cities and two countries and I complained about the timeline. I heard myself talking like an angry and selfish woman but somehow didn’t have the presence of mind to stop.

I went to tennis, singles this time. As I ran across the court I smelled orange blossoms from the tree that stands near the baseline and a wave of goodness crashed over me. I’ll never know if the endorphins or the scent memory triggered it and I’m not sure it matters.

I am grateful. I stood on the court in that very moment and was grateful for the kind of life that has me playing tennis in a friend’s back yard on a Thursday morning while the smell of orange blossoms tickles my nose. I am grateful for a daughter who is both smart and hardworking. I am grateful that I’m able to move.

In that moment I was able to reframe my position and look forward to trips that are going to feed me with wisdom and knowledge. Just like Pocahontas said, the gratitude didn’t change my life, it changed me.

There’s a startup in town that I think is going to be a winner. I love the concept so much that I told my friends about it before I even met with the founder. Which is awesome… for them.

Today I snuck out for lunch at the London presumably to talk to start up guy about his start up and instead we swapped engagement stories. I told him about Mr G proposing in London and he told me about proposing to his partner in Amsterdam. And I cried because as he was telling me about it I was imagining being his fiancée and having someone love me that much.

And then I remembered I did have someone that loved me that much so I cried a little more. Then I remembered two important things in this exact order:

I am wearing mascara.

This is supposed to be business.

I thought about dabbing at my eyes and trying to pass it off as an allergy. I think it’s a well established fact that I’m no actress so I wiped my tears away and smiled and complimented him on being so romantic.

I’m puttering around the house, enjoying the kids and the sunshine. I’m feeling grateful that this will be my 15th year with a man who moved mountains to marry me and grateful that I have the sort of job where you can sentimentally weep at lunch.

I’m about to jump into a G+ hangout with some incredible women. The folks from ONE want to talk about women in Africa. I have some questions but mostly I’m looking forward to listening and learning.

Last night someone pointed me to a post titled The Inevitable Ugliness of Women. It includes the sentence:

There will come a day when my daughter will feel ugly for the rest of her life.

Really? It struck a chord with many of my peers. I was left scratching my head. I certainly had days where I didn’t feel perfect but I never felt ugly. I’m a very average woman I was a pretty average kid. Feeling ugly is not inevitable.

Actually, not that average. I grew up by the beach. I was the slightly ethnic looking girl with the kinky dark hair surrounded by girls with straight blonde hair. I probably did stick out. My cousin looked at my fifth grade soccer picture and wrote, “You’re surrounded by asea of blondes…”.

And I was. Maybe I should have felt ugly?

We knew who the pretty girls were in school and I know who the pretty moms are in town. I’m not saying that I don’t notice how people look but I am confused when I hear people who think that all women feel ugly.

I don’t think that’s true.

I also don’t believe that the mean girls phenomenon is a given.

I don’t think that little of women.

My husband never tells our daughter she is pretty. He tells her that she looks pretty and then tells her why. For example, “Your hair looks pretty like that.” I’m less mindful of every word, but that’s sort of the nature of our marriage. He watches his words and I apologize a lot.

I know that I’ve never told our children that their looks would bring them anything. I’ve never told them that life is better or easier when you’re attractive because I don’t think it is. I think the world is actually much more complicated for people who make a living based on their appearances. I’ve told my son and my daughter that life is easy for people who work hard and who give more than they take.

I guess what I’m asking on International Women’s Day is that you treat your daughters like you treat your sons.