Overwhelming Sadness

Today my brother's son died.  
Just looking at that sentence makes me tear up again.

Dominick Cole Bormann was born on 8-28-10 about 6 weeks early - he was kept in the NICU until last Sunday when he was finally allowed to join his family at home.  This morning, a mere 6 days later, he passed away around 6am, most likely due to complications with his sleep apnea from having been born so early (although there is no official report yet).  

With Mommy in the NICU

With Daddy in the NICU

With Mommy - finally home!

I can't imagine how hard this is on them, especially with three other kids to think about... this tragedy runs deep and will follow them for the rest of their lives.  I'm stuck here in Santa Barbara today feeling totally useless, so here is my attempt to help make their lives easier:



Since I've had a few people ask how they can help, I've created a Paypal donation account for Dominick's Memorial.  The funeral costs will be about $600 and their little family was living on a shoestring budget as it is, so any donation, no matter how small, will be greatly appreciated.  Please click here if you wish to donate something to this fund (it's through PayPal so it's legit!):  

Edit:  An update is available Here 

The Battle of the Bulging Disc

Someday I'm going to feel better.  My neck is going to stop shooting pains down my arms when I type or drive or sneeze or lift something and I'm going to go punch some lowlifes in the face just because my body is so awesome and working so well.

Someday. 

Someday makes me feel better.


Which is necessary on a day like today. 

Staying positive when you haven't felt your right pinky finger in 2 days is tricky, let me tell you.  Almost as tricky as working at a library and not picking up any books so things don't get worse. 

I'm referring, of course, to the disc I have bulging and pinching the nerve between my C5 & C6 vertebrae.  Let my pain be a lesson to you women out there: don't try to throw your 18lb child in the air and catch them the way your significant other does unless you are way, way better shape than I am.  I made that mistake back in April and here were are in September and I'm still spending a significant portion of my day laying on the floor so that the spasms stop. 

So now what?
As always, all doctors want to treat it the way that they know how. 

• Urgent Care says, "Pain meds, ice, see your doctor."

• Primary Care doc says, "Pain meds, ice, phyiscal therapy, referral to neurology.  Maybe try a chiropractor."

• Physical Therapist says, "Huh.  Seems like you're in pain.  Lemme jam my fingers into it & give you exercises you're not allowed to do until you can go 24 hours without pain meds" (which never happens).

• Chiropractor #1 says, "Come back 3 times a week so I can make things worse with my bad adjustment technique."

• Chiropractor #2 says, "Come back 3 times a week & pay me $60/visit because your insurance sucks."

• (At this point my bank account says, "Nuh-uh.")

• Neurologist says, "After stabbing you and electrocuting you for half an hour we've determined that you are in pain.  Please go to a surgery center to get steroids injected into your spinal column & come back for my next available appointment in 3 1/2 months.  Also, muscle relaxants - take them."

• Pain Center doc says, "Oh, didn't I mention this usually takes 3 injections to work?  You need to take all kinds of time off work you can't afford so we can stab at your neck and render you unable to lift anything more than 5lbs -including your one-year-old - for far too long.  Also, if this doesn't work, we're probably going to use the S word."

So as of today I have one more neck injection scheduled just so no one throws that awful SURGERY word at me again.  I also have chiropractor #3 on the horizon since the second injection did me basically no good and I'm not too hopefully about this next one.   In fact, it's cheaper for me to get these injections than to go to the chiropractor since my insurance covers all $2300 of each procedure but won't cover 80% of the chiropractors in town.

My biggest struggle here is simply getting through the day without moping like crazy.  To be completely honest I am a non-stop pity-factory inside my skull right now.  I watch Wipeout and think to myself, "I can never compete in this because of my stupid neck."  I talk about Disneyland with a friend and think to myself, "I can never go on Space Mountain again because of this stupid neck."  I lay on the floor for 2 hours a night trying to get up the oomph to work out a little and I think, "I can't work out, I'm in pain."
 
You see the pattern here. 

It's all-encompassing & I HATE IT.  I don't want to be that girl who's always complaining about physical ailments.  I don't want people to feel sorry for me (although if they help me lift something perhaps pity isn't the worst thing they could have for me...) or even really be aware that I'm in pain.  Dwelling on it won't make it feel better, after all, so why on earth do I have such a hard time getting it out of my brain?!?

God, I'm even sitting here blogging about it.  Can I even pretend that this post is anything other than self-indulgence?

Probably not.  Oh well.  I already edited graphics for it so I may as well post the damned thing.  >.<

On Becoming Blatantly Optimistic

Optimism is never something that's come easy to me.  Perhaps my penchant for reading Stephen King novels at the tender age of 12 has something to do with my tendency to mistrust people... or perhaps it was the merciless taunting that I received as a child at my religious private school that made me become guarded.  There is also the torrential downpour of reading that I ran through during my college years - Freud, Palahniuk, Welsh, Schopenhauer, Bukowski, etc. - which blends together into a potent combination of nihilism & angst and swirls through my blood whenever I go on a re-reading spree.  Whatever it was that made me this way, I struggle every day with feelings of awkwardness and self-pity and this taints my view of an otherwise rose-colored world.

However, it seems that recently my moods have taken a turn for the better.  I give full credit to my adorable offspring.  There really is no way to describe the feeling of utter happiness that comes when I get to show her the things that I find beautiful and wonderful in the world. With each wonderful book we read or park we go play in I find myself more and more able to lose the "In 10 years this won't exist anymore because global warming will suck us all up" voice in my head and just focus on the beauty and happiness that is in front of me.

This is her seeing Can-Can Dancers for the first time at our local French Festival.

 

 

 

 

The problem lies not only in all the times that she's not with me, but also in the realization that basing your happiness on any one person - no matter how important they may be to you - is not true happiness.  True happiness is a lifestyle choice.  It's being able to set aside the pessimism, the sarcasm, and the downright nihilism that plagues your mind day in and day out and focus on finding the good and the beautiful every single minute of every single day.

This will be a struggle, but it's a challenge I think I'm up for. 
No wait... I AM going to do it.

(There, see?!?  Right there!)

I know I have the ability to see the good in people to a fault.  When I hire people that seem unusually nervous because I think to myself Hey, they could work out.  They're just nervous... and then one month later I've had to fire 50% of them because their nervousness was actually a sign that they couldn't read too well.  When friends fight I think Hey, it's ok, if we talk about these things and try to be rational and understand where each person was coming from it'll all be good again... and then a few hours later I've got to pick a team of friends to keep and a team to get rid of because nobody worked anything out.  But I also know that those times when that little voice is right - when the other 50% of the nervous folks I hired turn out to be awesome employees who save us in a pinch or when my friends do manage to let bygones be bygones and get the hell over whatever squabble they may have been having - those times are AWESOME.  It is my new goal to listen to that kind, optimistic voice inside me more and more each day. 

Two days ago I was driving home from the store with Sadie and I saw a man on the side of the road in a motorized wheelchair.  As I got closer I noticed that he was starting to lean over to the side a lot and didn't seem to be moving much and as I drove past and saw him in my rearview mirror I realized that I needed to pull over and help him.  I flipped a U the minute the road had space for me to do so and by the time I got back to the guy there were two other men who had stopped their cars and were helping the man right himself and get back on his way. 

Even thinking about this encounter now, two days later, my heart still swells with happiness.  Not because the man didn't need my help, of course, but because there were good people out there who would stop what they were doing to help another person in need.  Others who would take the time to say, "How can I make the world a better place today?" 

This needs to be my mantra.  And it needs to be yours too.

So, I post a challenge to the 2 of you who will read this: Spend tomorrow saying only positive things.  Try to eliminate the word "No" from your vocabulary.  (Yes, I recognize the irony there.)  The day after tomorrow we can all go back to our happy sarcasm holes and glower at the world, but for one day - just one - become blatantly optimistic with me.  I'm pretty sure we won't regret it.  (Damnit,I mean we won't regret it!) 

Abby’s Handy Guide to Getting a Job: Or, How Not to Look Like a Douche When You’re Unemployed.

It’s hiring season at my job again which means I have a whole bunch of job applications to look through and a whole new group of people to interview and, subsequently, mock mercilessly on this blog.  

As a disclaimer:  I work as a supervisor at a UC Library and am in charge of 32-36 student employees all at once, so many of these tips will be no-brainers for adults who’ve held career-type positions.  Since I am one of the people who hires people on the lower rungs of the job hunt ladder, that's who this is aimed at: those young folks just looking for a job to pay them while they drink - er- study their way through college.  (Of course, this is also advice that you can take to the next level of a career job hunt... but if you need this guide at that point you may have bigger problems than I can help with.)  For those people, these tips may prove both helpful and, in some cases, even shocking.  But in a time when jobs are tight and our state has double-digit unemployment rates, the market is increasingly competitive so either bring your “A” game or get the hell out of my applicant pool.

The Job Application:

1- This is the first impression anyone on the other side of the hiring table gets of you, so for god’s sake make it as neat as possible.  Use your “adult” handwriting if it’s a handwritten application (after all, if people can't read your name they're probably not going to call you) and if you mess up and spell your last name wrong, don’t scribble it out and keep going – kill a tree and start a fresh application!  Or use white-out!  Scribble marks on an application only show that you were too lazy to fix something you knew was a mistake.

2- Follow directions.  If the form asks you to circle only one thing, do it, don't circle three things and write a sentence above it explaining why you didn't do what they asked.  Most jobs want you to be able to follow written instructions for something – prove to them that you can read by doing just that.

3- Don’t ask the person giving you the job application if the company administers drug tests.  I mean, come on people, do you really think people who aren’t using drugs ask that question when they apply?

(Also: Employers are required to disclose drug tests as a condition of employment either on the application or during the interview so they’re not going to blind-side you with it, you stoned mofo.)

YES, all of these things MATTER.

 

The Resume:

1- Unless you’re applying for a career position and all your job experience is relevant, there is no reason your resume should be more than one page long.  I don’t care how many pizza parlor jobs you’ve held down since you graduated high school, trim that stuff down so that you don’t end up with two sentences on the useless second page.  Format these things, people!

2- Spell check is not god.  Pay attention to what your computer replaces your misspellings with, as having a job in “costumer service” may not be pertinent to a job where you deal with customers and not giant spools of tulle.

3- Your photograph has no business being on your resume, especially if the photograph is taken by a webcam while you’re in your PJs in your dorm room.   I don’t care how many times you watch Legally Blonde, being a cute white girl without a bra on should play no part in the hiring process (and if it does you may have just landed yourself a position in Sexual Harassmentville). 

The Interview:

1- If you shake hands with your interviewer, I don’t care what gender either of you are, don’t be a limp fish!  Your handshake says a lot about how eager you are to meet the person who’s hand you’re shaking and you should ALWAYS be excited to shake the hand of a potential employer. 

2- Dress like you care.  I know this is cliché advice, but if I have to chose between one person who wore a polo shirt and jeans and another who wore dress slacks and a button-up dress shirt, I pick the snazzy-lookin’ one almost every time.  Unless you wear a tuxedo or formal ball gown to an interview there’s really no such thing as over-dressing for a job interview at any level, so why not make it obvious that you dressed to impress the person interviewing you? 

3- Ladies, if I can clearly see your nipples when I'm not even looking for them, that’s a deal-breaker.

4- Show up sober.  And no, stinking like booze from the night before but not actually “feeling drunk” does not count as sober.  Neither does taking “only 3 bong rips” before you leave your house.

5- When you open your mouth to talk, have a plan.  Don’t ramble on and on without thinking about the question they actually asked you and for god’s sake, don’t go into painful detail about your previous jobs.  Using phrases like “filing, answering phones, and organizing” go a lot further than “I filed reports that people wrote up for the city and then submitted for review with our company, I answered the phones and transferred calls and took messages if the people they were calling for weren’t there, I organized their drawers of pens and pencils and put all the pens in one tray and all the pencils in another…”  Chances are that if you got bored just reading that last sentence your interviewer will get bored listening to it too.

6- Try to think like your interviewer and answer things appropriately.  For instance, if you’re interviewing for a position at a library, you might not want to stress how friendly you are and how much you love talking to people. 

7- If you were fired from your previous job, don’t start trash-talking your previous supervisor, unless you had a lawsuit against your prior boss and can prove that they were a total jerkwad.  No matter how wronged you may feel you've been at your previous job, the person interviewing you will always be thinking about how well you take supervision and admitting that you've argued with previous managers is like waving a flag around saying, "I like conflict!"  The phrase “A personal/scheduling conflict forced us to part ways” is your friend (and if they want more detail they will ask for it).  The phrase, “My manager had anger issues and wouldn’t give me the time off that I asked for” is not.

8 - Turn off your damned cell phone.  Texting during the interview = dealbreaker.

 9-  Do not scratch your nuts immediately before shaking the hand of the person you're about to be interviewed by.  Really, you shouldn't be scratching your nuts at all during an interview, but if you do have to do it, for god's sake wait until you're sitting down and can be more discreet.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, I have encountered each and every one of these things in my 4 years as a hiring supervisor.

Thus concludes my instructional guide to getting a Joe Job.  There may be more "don't"s than "do"s but it's important to take the time to learn from other people's failures.  You're welcome, world!  

The Supermarket Obstacle Course Only Moms Know About

When you have a baby, going to a grocery store can be like wandering through an obstacle course where any number of people can turn your "quick trip to the store" into an hour-long ordeal. There you are, wandering up and down aisles with a list in your hand (assuming that A) you're that organized and B) your child hasn't demanded to play with said list merely because you don't want them to), trying to bribe your child into staying in the cart by giving them toys and/or food, when suddenly you're faced with someone who seems determined to bog you down until your child starts screaming. If you want to make it in and out of the store in a timely manner, these are the archetypes you absolutely MUST avoid.


The Lonely Old Person

You know who I'm talking about. The little old lady who likes to sit on park benches and strike up conversations with anyone and everyone possible, looking for someone who will hold a better conversation than her 4 cats do. The old man who insists on making exact change for every purchase at any store and tells the story of his "first Buffalo nickle" every time he dig for 42 cents. You never want to start out being mean or rude to these folks because, although no one likes to admit it, but we're all terrified that we're going to end up like them, prattling on about "the good old days when folks used to hold actual books in their hands."  But these folks are insanely hard to get away from if your child is at all friendly. With one adorable wave of your baby's hand in their general direction you've got a geriatric audience who, if you're lucky, will end up following you for the next two aisles. Most often you end up rooted to the spot, though, begging your child to stay in their seat as they attempt a swan dive out of the cart while you're distracted trying to politely listen to the end of the old gal's list of grandchildren who live out of state.

Your best defense: Don't make eye contact and do NOT stop your cart! If you must acknowledge that they have just had a "moment" with your child do so with a cheerful-yet-guardedly-busy smile and keep on walking. Even if it means going back down the pasta aisle later, just keep walking.

The Baby-Talker

Now, I'm not talking about the folks who adopt high-pitched voices and say, "Hi, baby!" over and over while waving at said baby like a clown-bobble-head doll, I'm talking about the people who have a conversation with you by talking to your baby. They'll come charging up to you (for some reason there are a high number of these people employed in warehouse stores like Costco), fingers wriggling in the air, cooing at your child and then it begins.

TBT: HELLOOOOO, little one! What's your name?
Mom: This is Baby.
TBT: HIIIII Baby! How old are you?
Mom: (S)he's 11 months old.
TBT: 11 months! Well you're almost one year old! Is your mommy planning a cool birthday party for you?
Mom: Yes.
TBT: Oooh, I bet you'll like cake! Is your mommy giving you cake?
Mom: Yes.
TBT: Goody! You'll be sure to put that cake everywhere, right?
Mom: *shifts uncomfortably, trying to move on* Baby, say bye-bye to the nice lady!
TBT: Oh, you don't want to go yet, do you? Don't you want to show me your teeth, little baby? 

You get the point. This can go on and on and on.

Your best defense: Don't answer for your baby. If your baby can't talk yet there's no reason you need to get rooted to the ground trying to talk for them - let them keep talking to your child until they start to feel the foolishness dripping off of themselves like olive oil on an overdressed salad. Stare at the person long enough with a bored look on your face and they'll get the hint a lot faster.


Other Moms

There are two types of "other moms" in grocery stores - the harmless kind that smile at you and your child and keep on moving, and the kind that have been stuck indoors, talking to no one but their babies and significant others for the past few weeks and are dying for some validation about their mothering practices. These are the dangerous ones - if you allow a short conversation to start up and discover that your baby is older than theirs you're done for. Suddenly it's, "Has your baby sat up/used a pacifier/ slept through the night/ had all of their shots/ eaten berries/ etc., yet?" and there's no end in sight unless one or both of your children start screaming.

Your best defense: At the first pause between sentences, fake a dirty diaper.  Sniff at your baby and say loudly, "Did you POOP?!?  AGAIN?!?"  Any mom, no matter how adult-deprived she is, knows that you do not want to have to change a poopy diaper in a grocery store.  Smile apologetically and make your way to the front of the store immediately.  (If you're nice you could also suggest a local mommy group she could join.)

The Crazies

Crazy people are always something I'm wary of regardless of whether or not my baby is in tow, but these days it seems like the crazies are harder to spot. Half the time you see someone angrily yelling at no one in particular the person will turn their head to reveal a bluetooth headset, thus revealing that the voices they're hearing their heads are the voices of actual people. However, unless you can smell the urine on their clothing before they sidle up to you and your grocery cart, the crazies are the hardest to shake. You can smile uncomfortably, you can say things like, "I really have to go," you can get in line even, and they'll follow you, talking to you about how to find out who your baby was in their past life, how the Illuminati is trying to cripple our economy by putting Wal Marts in China or how the government wants to kill everyone under the age of 5 with chem-trails. Babies open you up to a huge range of conversations with people and, if you're not careful, you could get yourself sucked into the ramblings of a nut-job.
Your best defense: Again, walk quickly, don't make eye contact, and try to find a store employee to ask a question. Often the crazy folks are wary of some authority figure and will wander off if you start asking someone who works there where to find things and ask them to escort you.
Of course, you could always try to out-crazy the person... but you never know if your claim to actually be Cthulu in disguise will make them more or less likely to continue talking to you.

Hopefully this guide will help some people out there somewhere, be it moms who need to get through the supermarket gauntlet or one of the childless folks out there who don't realize exactly how annoying it is when you talk to us through our babies.

Animals, Working, and Balls

Song of the week:
Miike Snow's "Animal" (the Mark Ronson remix, specifically):  


Lately I've been struggling with motherhood and work.  Every morning I drag myself in to my job, waving goodbye to my daughter (who starts howling when I close the door) and thinking to myself, "Damnit, why do I have to do this?"  It's not the concept of working that bothers me - I've had a full-time job since I was 17 - it's the thought that if I'm going to be missing out on her most exciting and formative years, I'd really rather be missing it because I'm doing something I love.  I've been working the same job since May of 2007 (and I've worked in the same building doing different jobs since October 2005) and, although it is a job in a library and I like the working environment, it is nowhere near the career path I have tried and failed to get myself onto twice now.  (I'm in charge of staffing the Circulation Desk with student workers, but I desperately want to be working as a Children's Librarian either at a grade school or a public library.)
The month I discovered my impending motherhood was exactly one month before I was due to move to Boston with Andrew and start a dual master's program at Simmons University - I was going to start in January of 2009 and at this point in my life I would have been nearing the completion of both a MLIS and an MA in Children's Literature.  Staying in Santa Barbara was the obvious choice because Andrew's family was able to help us out housing-wise (and we will be forever grateful for his Mother's willingness to move out of the place that she's called home for 17 years so that we could stay here), but now I find myself living in a beautiful place, stymied on my career path and having a directional crisis.  I applied for an online program through one of the two schools in my state that offer any library science degree and was all set to jump headfirst into that this Fall, but I was "automatically rejected due to the program quota being filled" and have basically had to sit here, twiddling my thumbs, staring into cyber-space and figuring out the best way to get out of having to go back to working 40 hours a week in September (I do 30/week right now).  

Every day I sit at work and daydream about being home with my daughter.  I think about what new and exciting thing she might be doing, what she might be growling at, what Andrew is feeding her, how far she might have walked, what words she might have uttered or colors she may have learned to identify.  When I reach the point where I feel like crying I'll send a frantic text message home to Andrew asking for a photo update... he's almost always able to oblige, but it's certainly nowhere near adequate baby-time to make me feel ok about slaving away at a job I am bored to death of while baby is at home growing up without me.  

Animals have instincts - to watch over their young, to protect them from predators and to bring them the best food they can find.  I have all of those instincts bottled up whenever I leave the house for my job - I have to force myself to let someone else take care of the care and feeding of my offspring (even if I'm lucky enough to have that someone else be Andrew right now.)

 Which brings me back to my song of the week (which you are hopefully listening to while reading this drivel.) There's a line in the song, "In your eyes I see the eyes of somebody that could be strong" - and it sends shivers down my spine each time I hear it.  I know that if I were given the opportunity to switch gears - get back into school while taking time off of working so that I can start on an actual career path - I would be the strongest, best student mom out there.  I'd buckle down and do my online assignments on time while the baby slept at night and I'd cook things like lentil soups and make sausages from scratch while she napped.  I'd cloth diaper full-time, expand my garden and learn how to optimize its produce and give my daughter raspberries all over her tummy any time she wandered over after having happily taken her own shirt off.  

But instead you'll find me, hunkering down in the bowels of an orange-and-purple university library, asking the student monkeys politely to stop flinging poo at the patrons while endlessly making schedules for people who will inevitably show up hungover to their Saturday morning shift.  

This is balls, I tell you.  Sweaty, zit-infested, old-man-wearing onion-skins-while-running balls.
This has to change. 

This will change.
But in the meantime, "I change shapes just to hide in this place but I'm still, I'm still an animal."
 

$1 x What?

Someone gives me $1 for no apparent reason.  I would spend it on:

1- A taco al carbon from El Pollo Loco.

 

Someone gives me $10 for no apparent reason.  I would spend it on:

1-A bottle of wine.  Probably a Cabernet. 

Someone gives me $100 for no apparent reason.  I would spend it on:

1- A haircut.

2- Shoes.

Someone gives me $1,000 for no apparent reason.  I would spend it on:

1- A haircut.

2- An awesome toy for Sadie.

3- A dress I actually like.

4 - Paying off debt.

Someone gives me $10,000 for no apparent reason.  I would spend it on:

1- Pay off remaining medical and credit card as well as a chunk of student loans.

2- A dress I actually like.

3- One of those sweet playground set-ups for our back yard.

Someone gives me $100,000 for no apparent reason.  I would spend it on:

1- Pay off all debts.

2- Go through grad school while not having to work.  (My version of HEAVEN!)

3 - Move our family somewhere we can better afford to live in.

Someone gives me $1,000,000 for no apparent reason.  I would spend it on:

1-  See 1-3 of previous question.

2-  Buy my brother and his family a new car.

3- Sending Sadie through a private school.

4- Tacos al carbon for everybody!!!