2 weeks out and BORED

This free time is killing me! No, not really. I don't make a very good SAHM. I am bored. I need some stimulation. Being a housewife does not suit me. As soon as I drop Sarah off at school and Eamon and I are home again, I am literally counting the hours to nap time. And Eamon is a good kid. Very easy going, doesn't throw tantrums, rarely cries. I'm just bored. I look forward to nap time and even the appeal of that is wearing off.
I'm doing vinyasa yoga again and that feels good. I feel strong and...erect? Ha! But true.
Studying, is a chore. My house is clean. The laundry is done.
I want to work. Can it be true?Do I miss prenatals? OH, shoot me!
All these months of moaning about having to be somewhere nearly every day. My time being not my own, yada yada. And now here I am complaining that I have nothing meaningful to do?

And that's not to say that being a mama isn't meaningful. It certainly is. But for me it's not enough. I think I run best when I have a few too many plates to balance.
I musn't thrive on bad energy though.
I'm re-learning how to just be, perhaps.

Yesterday was nice because not only did I get in an hour of yoga during Eamon's nap, but Greg came home during that time and I pounced on him. All before 1:30pm. Fabulous. I feel like I'm in my early 20s again. I'm thinking about sex a lot. Out of boredom, surely. My Sex and The City alter ego is trying to come out. "Lets get drinks, wear fabulous clothes and have reckless sex!" Reality: We're all too tired to go out past 9pm. We can't get a sitter anyway. If I drink too much I'll be a dehydrated crab-ass all the next day (and maybe even break another pair of glasses). And if we can manage to stay up 10 minutes past the kids going to sleep, maybe we can work in a half hour to have sex, quickly shower and pass out by 9:35.

Ah hell, I don't even know why I'm bothering to contemplate this current mood. This is supposed to be my down-time, right? My time off before jumping back into being on call, hanging my shingle, being a midwife, etc. Let me just honor this, alter ego and all.

I'm only writing because I am bored.
Back to my sudoku puzzles. Oy vey.

NARM woes

Can I just say the the thought of taking the NARM skills exam scares the crap out of me?
I hate "acting out" scenarios and what I would do next stuff. Ay yi yi.
Someone who just took it said to study the skills exam book forward and back and passed but said she knew someone who didn't study it at all, who just took it on the fly and did not pass.
The people I know who are CPMs have various things to say about it, from being grim and telling me to study a lot to these slappy gals who say: No big deal!!
Yep, I is not so smart and I needs to study a lot. Especially when I get very nervous.
So what the hell am I doing wasting time on this dry blog when my kiddo is sleeping?
I am off to get a cup of tea, a handful of chocolate chips and my study book.
Study, study, study. And then meditate on staying calm during studying b/c what ends up happening are small panic attacks of: What am I doing?! I don't this shit! Our practice doesn't do this! Why don't I know this? What kind of midwife am I going to be?! I'll never get my CPM!
followed by thoughts of picking up smoking again, drinking too much coffee and nervously cleaning my house.
Not gonna go there.
We're gonna stay calm. Grounded. Ugh, I hate that tests make me so neurotic. It's so embarassing too. Especially in a county that has 3 colleges and me knowing way too many over-educated people. Makes me want to strap my apron back on and say: "Hi, can I get you somethng to drink?Our soup today is..."

Blood talk

Have you ever had one of those periods where you feel like you're hemorrhaging? That's where I am today. Fortunately, no cramps and yesterday's headache went away. But man, every time I get up or move...blub blub blub. That may be TMI, but women's bodies never cease to amaze me.
What makes one period heavier than another? Why have I gone from my usual 31-32 day cycle down to 27 days? And why is it that even though it's a heavier period, it still lasts just as long? Doesn't seem fair.
At Target this moring I ran across a product called Instead. It's a 24 pack of disposables Keepers, essentially.
I was very tempted to buy it. (if you're not inthe know, the Keeper is a little rubber cup you place at your cervix to catch your menstrual blood. you dump it, wash it, put it back in. I've been very tempted to get one, but it's not something I remember but once a month.)
At the Washtenaw County Baby Fair last fall, a RN had on display various women's products from incontinence problems to travel bidets to period paraphenilia. She had the Instead product and explained that it was for "women who are on their periods, want to have sex, but their husbands don't like...you know, the bloody mess." WTF? I had to laugh my cynic's laugh. Because I'm sorry, if you want to stick your penis in me when I'm on my period (and if of course, I welcome said penis) then you're gonna have to deal with the mess. Sorry. Again, TMI. That was just craziness to me.
So I saw Instead at Target (and what a ridiculous name! Instead? Instead of what? Instead of bleeding all over the place? ) and saw that it is advertised as a catch for the blood, but is disposable. So why not just buy a Keeper? You're still being wasteful by using a disposable product, so why not pay $20 more and get something you never have to throw away? I was intrigued, and I as I said, really wanted to try it. Instead,
I bought a pack of Target-brand teeth-whitening strips for a few dollars more.
Besides, I still have around 347 Kotex left from the Sam's Club box of pads my mom bought for me as I prepared for Eamon's birth.

Aging and vanity

Lately I have noticed the lines around my mouth. I was going to write "the lines around my mouth getting deeper", but seriously, I swear they just moved in last spring. It's crazy. I have heard many midwives talk about the extra gray hairs they get~ how this work ages you, wears on your body and just makes your plain tired. I have felt this way this past year. It's like when my Eamon-pregnancy weight came away, the lines around my mouth appeared, and well, here I am.
If I didn't color my hair I might notice a gray hair now and then. But no, lines around my mouth. My eyes look small and tired. Not bright and alert. It makes me sad. And while I have always vowed to myself to do my best to grow old graciously, I didn't think I'd have to start adjusting at 32. In a culture so fixated on image and youth, I have fallen victim to their bullshit cultural voodoo.
Whiter teeth and wrinkle cream? A boob job for these none-so-perky breasts that have nourished two beautiful children? A tummy tuck for my belly that is fairly flat but with saggy skin due to growing and housing a 9#girl and a 10# boy (respectively)?
Ugh. So I thought I would be "proactive" and make myself feel good by scheduling a hair appointment for myself next Tuesday. (And I so don't have the extra to spend on this, but I was feeling selfish.) I got out the hair magazines and poured through, trying to find a short to medium length cut that I liked without looking like a fucking soap opera star *POOF!* Blech. But then I found a nearly shaved head and said to myself AHA!
I always feel like a million bucks when my hair is super-duper short. And you know why? Because when a woman's head is shaved or very nearly so, she doesn't fit into American bullshit cultural voodoo. Especially when said woman is wearing normal clothes (not so punk rock these days), driving a 15 year old Volvo station wagon and carting children around town with birth bags in the back.
I don't know. Perhaps that is drastic. I know I am this huge transitional state right now. Things are changing, or at least, things are no longer as they were. And maybe I look old because I have the haircut of a 5 year old and the face of a 40 year old. Maybe 5 years of heavy smoking sucked lots of collagen from my skin and left me with these two etched lines when I smile and that remain when I have been smiling a lot.
Hmmm. At least they are smile lines, right? I swore as a kid that I would not be one of those old, bitter women who had mouths like puckered assholes. All down-turned and pruney as if they just smelled bad sour cream.

So this is what happens to aging punk rock girls. They get normal, fret about their fading physical assets and then get pissed that they have fallen into a vain, cultural shit trap. Back and forth. I want to whiten my teeth and go on the Isaac Mizrahi show, then do a 180 and want to shave my head. How silly. Made all the worse by my oh-so-blunt husband who said, "Yeah, I've noticed you look older....like it just happened this year...." when I said, "I think I've aged a lot this year." and after he commented I just said, "Wow, thanks a lot."
And he asked, "Was that like a dumb, 'Do I look fat in this?' question?"
"No, not at all. You could've just been a bit gentler."
Whatever. Because I may be looking a bit older, but his belly is a bit fatter. I don't care. I love him just the same. Even if he lacks a bit of tact at times.

I think I will cancel my hair appointment. Unless I really do decide for a super short hair cut (in which case I won't need color). I just might. I don't know where I'm heading with this Dutch Boy hair cut I currently have. My hair grows about as fast as grass in a Michigan February.
And in the mean time I'll try to find some balance on the mainstream/punk rock image spectrum. I'm too tired to be dolled-up and made-up, I'm also too content, busy and lazy to be pissed off feminist chick.

A new era

In the wee hours of this morning, I attended the last birth of my on-call status for the time being. I am now a free agent. No longer an apprentice midwife. With the rosy tinted glasses on, this means that I am 1. no longer on call for any midwife, 2. I can rest easier at night knowing that if my phone rings it will likely be a wrong number and not an urgent call to drive to X to help laboring Y who is birthing Z, 3. that my time is truly my own for a while. (Well, time being "my own" = having two young children, a husband a small, urban menagerie of animals, two cleaning jobs and lots of studying to do.)
On a bad day, I see this end as being kicked out of the nest (I surely initiated it), left out in the cold, wondering what to do, how to bring in money, how to be that "real midwife". On a bad day I am fearful, anxious, lacking confidence, bitchy and of course fretting about money.

The next step: just be for the time being. Be a mama, be a wife. Clean the offices, clean the house. Drive Sarah to and from school. Be that perky mom who has the time and energy to just hang out with the kids. Oh, and study, a lot. Figure out a way to come up with $700 for the first installment of sending in my NARM portfolio (National Association of Registered Midwives). Then study for, take and pray to God I pass the skills exam. Then come up with the other $700 to take the 8 hour written exam and studying and praying like mad that I pass that.

And then?

I wish I knew. I'm trying to be all down to earth and surrendering and listening for some lead, some suggestion of just where to put my foot down, of where to hang my shingle and when. The same sound advice I have given to countless friends and clients. Just be. Let things unfold naturally. Don't blast that baby out but give it time to stretch everything slowly. Then your arms will be full of sweet new life.
But instead of heeding this lovely bit of fluff, I am trying to control everything. Make decisions in a timely manner but then worrying about making hasty decisions.
Hanging out in the void and trying to honor it at the same time is proving very difficult. Very much like labor. Letting things that you cannot control unfold.