Coping...

or not?  If you were to draw my outline these days, I'd look like a sawtooth blade.  I don't have a lot of patience to smooth over the rough edges brought on by the following: lack of sleep, too many kids, too many chores, a boob that's been sucked raw (literally!), and a sore throat.  

Last week was a blur.  This one is much the same.  I know that somewhere in there, we celebrated Chinese New Year with my family (I'm Chinese, so I get to call it Chinese New Year, okay?) and it was wonderful spending the day with my sister and her family, even if it did result in my CHILDLESS brother, Bruce Wayne, piping up in the most patronizing way when we were discussing how I don't let the Big Yam watch the rebooted My Little Pony cartoon, "See, my concern is that he's going to grow up without knowing these cultural references and be outcast because of it."  REALLY, CHILDLESS YOUNGER BROTHER?  THAT'S your concern?!?  For serious?!  Granted, he's an idiot.  But it's galling, the way it's always galling when people who don't have kids and lack the imagination/creativity to even empathize with people who are in a different situation from themselves, weigh in.  The Big Yam is a scared little butt!  He's just like that!  I didn't make him that way because I didn't let him watch Saw 1-10!!!  Geez.  

The Dotytron had the pleasure of taking the Big Yam to his dance class on Saturday and brought home video.  Guys, it is AMAZING.  Nothing will prepare you for how awesome it is to watch your little kid in a class full of tuu-tuu'd and tricked out girls, all of whom are at least 8 months to a year old than he is, trying to learn a hip hop routine and getting lost in a shoulder-shrug reverie and missing the next count.  NOTHING.  Apparently the Dotytron overheard some boys who had younger sisters in the class make a comment from outside - something along the lines of: "There's a BOY in that class!" and if the kids' dad hadn't piped in, I think the Dotytron would have gone postal.  I'm not usually the kind of parent who defends their kid.  I'm the kind who is way harder on my own kid than anyone else.  But picking on the Big Yam for dancing?  I WILL CUT YOU.  We had SMckay over for a sleepover and hang on Saturday night and we decided that we're going to make the Big Yam a "Dance like there's nobody watching" t-shirt to wear to dance class.  SO GOOD!  LOL!

I think one of the things contributing to my funk is that I don't have a lot of non-parenting/domestic input going into my head right now.  I'm reading a meh book (Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings), don't have a good show I can marathon currently, and no time to catch up on movies.  I'm out of the loop in terms of the news cycle generally, and no time to do the things I love - like knit and sew and create things with my hands.  

But I don't want to do to whingy posts in a row.  I promise you I will write wonderful book and movie reviews shortly.  Yesterday Momma D came and helped me out and guys, it was HEAVENLY.  She took care of dinner!  She brought lunch!  She helped wrangle the babies while I went to a doctor's appointment!  She hung out and helped fold laundry!  She did dishes!  Thanks to her I was able to mop the kitchen floor!  

It made all the difference in the world.  I was able to hang out with my babies and enjoy them.  There is much to enjoy.  Lindsay Lou-Lou is all about giving you the biggest, widest, scrunchy-faced, open-mouthed grin lately, one that shows off his bottom gums.  It's so cute.  The Quincess is all about sticking his fingers in my mouth and making his weird noises.  I know the Big Yam hasn't been getting much love photo-wise lately, maybe be cause he is such a ball of activity that it's hard to catch him standing still, but I can't say enough how wonderful he is.  He is a treat.  A sweet, fun, funny, little guy who wants to do everything by himself, and yet is still young enough to insist on morning cuddles with me.  He is all about framing his requests in the negative: "Mama?  It's a school night tonight.  I can't have iPad."  and I think the idea is that he frames what he can't have, to manage his expectations, on the off-chance that we bend the rules.  It's so funny and endearing.  So is calling "yellow" "lallo."  I never want "lallo" to go away.

Look at that sweet little expression!  What a sweet elf with devil eyebrows!

 I can never resist a good finger gun picture.

Simple meals lately:

Bratwurst, a cheddar-broccoli brown rice casserole with garlic panko topping, and roasted Brussels sprouts

Freezer Greek spinach-lemon soup, a tartine of garlic butter, fresh mozzarella, and roasted grape tomatoes, and a salad of romaine, caramelized pear, and toasted pecans.

I was supposed to have my friends R & M come over today, but the snow curtailed cross-city travel, so I had my street ladies who are also on maternity leave over instead.  I made a bacon, fig, and brie quiche, and these blueberry muffins.  I can't resist a warm blueberry muffin soaked in salted butter.  I will post the muffin recipe tomorrow.

Fin.

Shock

For the past couple of weeks, I've had a feeling that the initial shock of Poppa D's passing has started to wear off. The strange, insulating numbness that allowed life to continue on with only the vague notion of loss appearing intermittently at the periphery of my life is starting to give way to sudden disruptions of my usual routine with the crushing weight of my loss, the Dotytron's loss, and the Big Yam's loss. I feel like at any moment, the ground shifts beneath me and an event, a thought, will leave me crying at my desk the way I did today. For a while, life continued on with relative ease, as if we just hadn't seen him for the usual amount of time that we'd sometimes go between visits. I took for granted the safety net of the comfortable knowledge of his existence, fuzzy and indistinct like the out-of-focus crowd in a photograph, but still a presence in that mass that could be called into sharp relief if only I wanted it so.

Lately, lately I know that wanting it so won't make it be so. And it makes me so very, very, very sad. I'm sad for the Dotytron, for Momma D, for Ehmdo. I'm sad for the Big Yam and finally, I make room to be sad for myself - for the sadness I feel because of the sadness of these other people. The Dotytron and I will sometimes just start crying together or he'll come down with red eyes or have to stop a task because something reminded him of his da'.

I think this is contributing to my general sourness about the holiday season and the emptiness of the gift buying. I just don't have the mustard for it. I feel like I can't face going out and shopping and trying to come up with something thoughtful and personal to give people. I just don't care. I care for the kids (because as hard-hearted as I am, I'm not so hardened as to want to deprive children of wonder and joy), but I'm also not into kids with their epic, toy catalogue wish lists and short attention spans and disposable mentality. The glut of plastic, branded crap makes me feel physically ill.

I want Santa to give us a do-over on this past year. A chance to take all the good stuff and enjoy that without the too-numerous funerals we attended this year. When it comes down to brass tacks - would I want to erase this year? Ultimately, I guess not - we've come out the other side and the conventional wisdom seems to be that the bad stuff is part of life too. I guess I just want a bit more of my innocence back. Not all of it - but more time thinking that Poppa D was going to be around for a long, long time. More time thinking that he would be able to pick up the Big Yam from daycare and take him to do white-person-grandpa stuff. Just...more.

Fin.

The weekend that was

fairly uneventful, by all standards. I made us a pre-class breakfast of baked eggs florentine in ham cups - it was okay - I think it would be better topped with hollandaise or a cheese sauce next time. The ham gave off quite a bit of liquid - maybe I'll try with proscuitto next time, or maybe bake the eggs in bread cups and serve the ham/proscuitto/other breakfast pork product on the side:

Saturday night after class we had the Dotytron's childhood friend S over for dinner - I made us carnitas - which are the BEST entertaining meal, ever. It's so easy! The pork does all the cooking all by its very own self and all you have to do is warm corn tortillas, open up some bottled salsa, maybe dice up some avocado if you're feeling extra ambitious, and quick-pickle some onions. Otherwise, pork shoulder slowly braised with garlic and cumin in citrus juice and then fried-crisp in its own rendered fat truly doesn't need any other adornment. My favorite mode is the pork, some pickled onions, and diced avocado squirted with lime. I ate an ungodly number of these, accompanied by a red cabbage slaw that was also extraneous - it was nice to feel like we were consuming some vegetables to combat all that lard.

The next morning I scrambled up leftover carnitas with some eggs and we had it for breakfast, with me again eating an ungodly number. I think we're going on a healthy eating binge for the next little bit - too many meals out this past week.

Sunday was a day of errands and such. We had a bit of a sad moment when I had it in my head to finish up the photo albums I've been working on by tagging them with post-it notes when the year changes - otherwise, it's kind of hard to know when things happened - when you have 10 years together, they kind of start to blur into one another. I found a photo marking a definitive year and then worked forward...coming to the end of 2010 was really, really hard. The photos for the year always end with the Christmas festivities with my family and with the Dotytron's family. Seeing my Kung Kung and the photos of Poppa D broke my heart a bit and made the sadness come. I can't quite believe what we've been through in 2011. It feels like the funeral for my grandpa was so long ago, and yet, he only passed away in February or something. I still can't quite believe that Poppa D is gone - I don't know when I'll start believing it - he was so well, until he wasn't, and it happened so quickly. The past two months feel like a living dream and look - we're midway through November already. I don't know how to express how I'm feeling - how mixed this past year has been - watching the Big Yam grow into the little joy-filled being that he is - a year of laughter and happiness punctuated with so much sadness and so many tears. I'm still in shock. I sat at our dining room table and cried for a good long time, until I looked up and beheld this:

I don't know how we're supposed to reconcile that face with losing Poppa D - the two emotions don't seem like they could possibly exist in the same world. Somehow they do - and I guess that's what makes this living.

We've lost a lot of things this year - my Kung Kung, Poppa D, the Dotytron's license (it's temporarily suspended - that's a story for another day), and, for an all-too-extended period this weekend, the Dotytron's cell phone. The little Boobla hid the Dotytron's cell phone for the better part of Saturday and Sunday, but he hid it in an obvious place and when we slowed down to actually look carefully, we found it again. I'm hoping we can do that with the other stuff, too.

Fin.

The right way

I keep feeling like there's things that I should be doing during this time. Like I should be crying more or I should be still more or I should not be laughing or making time for friends. It feels wrong that life has resumed a fairly regular rhythm and I feel like I'm being judged for not wearing a mantle of grief all the time.

I know that I'm in shock. It really doesn't feel real. I know that as different significant dates pass (holidays and the like), there will be more grieving to come. Grieving is really a process that's different for everyone...but I can't help feeling guilty. I think that in Western, capitalist-driven culture, we're not really given a lot of time or space to be quite and reflect and be present and still in our emotions. I know that I'm particularly guilty of that in my day-to-day life, whirling from one item on my task list to another. I know that this tendency has been exacerbated by the presence of the Big Yam in my life and his insatiable demands and boundless energy. You kind of have to be an organizational wunderkind when you have a kid if you prize any semblance of order or predictability (and I do, Lord knows I do).

I feel like I'm trying to hold it down so that the Dotytron isn't destabilized too much and by extension so that we can both support Momma D and Ehmdo. I'm feeling numbed by the demands of being normal - with school, the Big Yam, going back to work, keeping a household running.

As Dr. Rei reminded me though - there's multiple ways of grieving and there's no right way. I'm definitely finding it comforting leaning on friends and family. I'm hoping that the Dotytron will be able to take Friday to be quiet and alone and reflective - I'm taking the Big Yam out shopping with Momma D and the Dotytron is taking the day off of work. It will be a good chance for him to be alone - he's rarely alone, with me and Master T and being surrounded by kids all day at work and all. He can think about what he wants to say at the service and just be meditative and live in the moment in his emotions. I'm hoping that I will get the opportunity at a later date to do the same, although I do get to steal an hour here or there - writing this miserable blog is really when I get to do that and I'm grateful to have this as an outlet and grateful that all my readers (yes, all 2 of you) indulge me.

Fin.