When In Rome

I sympathize with those who need to taste everything.  I, too, have this natural inclination. It would seem, unfortunately, that along with my good looks and modesty, Amelia also inherited my keen sense of taste. Be it her newest toy or my triple scoop ice cream cone, she must have a thorough lick. While most would applaud her desire to explore through utilization of the senses, I cannot think of a worse scenario for my OCD:  my child is a walking tongue. 

She licks our couches; she licks our clothes; once, I caught her licking my hair. Months ago, this would have sent me into a mental downward spiral---the mere thought of the enormous bacterial load entering her vulnerable immune system was enough to make me opt for Google instead of dinner. Yet lately, I have prided myself in behavior modification---I am working with my anxiety and allowing Amelia a little more room to explore.  This "cool as a cucumber" approach literally failed me on one occasion: she licked an unwashed cucumber in our grocery cart. There was nothing cool about that.

Much to my relief, my mom flew out over the holidays and accompanied us on a trip to Rome.  Since childhood, she has been dealing with my OCD and knows how to calm my intense fears and irrational thoughts.  She also lets Millie do the fun things my mind could never allow her to do, like touching the buttons of a store elevator or the leaves of an unknown tree. Since I want Amelia to experience all this world has to offer, I simply ask my mom not to tell me what Amelia touches or licks---it's best I never know. 

After an amazing three days in Italy and a very mild week of OCD symptoms, we took an evening stroll from our guest house to St. Peter's Basilica on New Year's Eve. With thousands in line to enter and see the Pope celebrate mass, we were asked to leave Millie's stroller in a side area to allow more room for the crowds.  Translation: Amelia and her tongue could no longer be contained inside a stroller.

I am not sure on the exact figures, but I have a feeling based on observation alone that St. Peter's Basilica has some of the highest foot traffic numbers in the world.  No less than twenty-thousand shoes dirtied the beautiful marble floors that day, and without my stroller, I was forced to let Amelia's feet add to that number.

Panic slowly overtook me as I watched her hands and bare feet (the child won't leave on socks and shoes) slide over the contaminated marble.  Reminding myself that I was in the presence of the Pope and that he would want me to be at peace, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.  Sometime while I was exhaling, I assume something like this went down:

Whatever it was she saw or imagined, she just had to have a taste. In the audience of the holiest man alive, Amelia licked the floor of St. Peter's Basilica. 

Trying to maintain my cool cucumber composure but frozen in place, I screamed internally as my mom quickly removed her from the scene of the crime.  "Calm down, Stefanie, she won't catch anything," my mom said to me.  "It was holy ground she licked."

It has been 168 hours since Amelia tasted sacred marble, and so far she is showing no signs of illness or bacterial infection. In fact, she is healthier and happier than ever.  It would appear my mother was right---all she caught was a blessing. 

Swillinois

No one here wears Tweety Bird slippers to the grocery store.  I noticed this as Amelia and I passed the produce on our way to the chocolate aisle.  My head did a full rotation, but still the same result: no Looney Tune slippers during work hours. Flabbergasting.

Switzerland, in all fairness, does have its perks.  Although I am struggling with way too much time on my over washed hands, I feel safely tucked away in this peaceful, daydream of a world.

Just another afternoon in Switzerland

My surroundings constantly remind me that I am living a modern-day fairytale, yet I still wish I could somehow blend both of my "homes" and make my own village, full of the people I love and miss the most, but absent of the D-town dialect and Daffy Duck slippers.  It would be my very own Swillinois---snowy mountaintops and Steak'n Shakes at every corner.

Since moving here in early June, I began compiling a list of the most essential items I feel are missing from Switzerland.  These are in no particular order of importance:

1. Hot pockets
2. Dollar Menu
3. Air conditioning
4. English language
5. Ranch dressing
6. A sense of humor
7. Kraft Singles

Being torn between these two worlds is much like trying to decide between two entrees on a menu---do I prefer the richer one even though its flavor is much blander?  In all fairness to the land of cow bells, they do make a pretty mean fondue---and they have clean public bathrooms---and they know their chocolate, but this never will be home without my "people"; it never will be familiar without their laughter.

Another gorgeous day in Switzerland is slowing passing by, and I keep checking my Edward Cullen pocket calendar for the next time I can hop a plane home.  In the meantime, I'm enjoying my few but dear friends here, and until I am elected governor of Swillinois, I am going to soak up Europe and appreciate all of its nuances, cheeses, and absence of public slippers.  It may not be home, but at least they've got an airport. 

Stalking Around the Christmas Tree

I've never been a real holly jolly kind of gal.  I enjoy being showered with sparkly, expensive loot just as much as the next woman, but I've always found the whole ornament, tree, and mistletoe deal a bit excessive.  Since I unknowingly married Kris Kringle and therefore have no choice but to deck my halls, I have resorted to begging and pleading this holiday season. 

Unfortunately, my husband will not allow me to take a yuletide snow check, so on a dreary Sunday afternoon, he drug me to the only place the Swiss enjoy more than the bank: a ginormous Christmas warehouse filled with robotic polar bears, angels, pink poinsettias, and tree after tree after tree. 

 

 



In my defense, my objection to a Christmas tree is only partially because I hate foliage---I was even so kind as to suggest a pleasant, synthetic tree that he could decorate to his enormous heart's desire.  You see, the problem with an authentic, bona fide pine is that it triggers my OCD much in the same way as raw poultry, elevator buttons, and porta potties: it's likely contaminated.

I think most of my reasonable, level-headed readers would agree that trees belong in their natural habitat, just as cheetahs belong in the wild and Britney Spears belongs in the music industry.  Yet somehow, my husband rejected this notion, and lo and behold, we bought a damn shrub.

A quick phone call to my brutally honest mother confirmed my worst fears: she once knew a lady who knew a lady who unknowingly bought a Christmas tree infested with spider eggs.  Once those eggs did the whole incubation bit and hatched right in time for good old December 25th, that house was crawling with more legs than a Victoria's Secret runway. 

I have inspected, reinspected, and sawed off enough branches to ensure that no spiders survived the journey to our upstairs living room, and just for good measure, I checked the trunk for coiled reptiles that could slither or climb their way into Amelia's tiny airway. 

Isn't she a beaut!

Fortunately, Kris Kingle has yet to get around to decorating, and the fact that the tree remains ornament-less is actually to my benefit---I have no chance of knocking down a ceramic candy cane when I stalk around the tree each night, threatening to wake my husband from dreams of sleigh bells and figgy pudding.

Let's Play Catch Up

Welp, I'm back.  After two hectic round trips between America and Switzerland, three incredible weddings, and way too many buckets of KFC, I finally have returned to the land of the cows...and to my neglected blog. You can all stop teetering on the edge of your seats now...

Let's do a quick recap of our time away from each other:

Wedding one- Jenny, one of my oldest and dearest friends from grade school, had a spectacular outdoor/barn/country wedding where cowboy boots were the preferred footwear.

As pictured above, I also brought the Britney Spears' dance out of pre-pregnancy retirement. I feel I did her proud, although the extensive cardio workout did not bode well with champagne and four slices of cake. I don't know how Brit Brit does it.

 

Next up: Malloy/Peck wedding. This much fun in one night would be a misdemeanor in Switzerland.

 

© Across the Miles Photography

 

And the concluding nuptials---the Kerwin/Vogt wedding. Alas, the old gang was finally back together, and we partied like it was 2004.

 

 

 



As all great things must eventually end, we once again said tearful goodbyes and hopped back on a plane to our village.  Besides a goat or two giving birth, it appeared nothing had changed during our extended time away. 

 

Something else that hasn't changed: Amelia's sleep issues.  Frustrations mounting and ice cream cartons piling up, I have scoured mommy blogs and websites at all hours of the night trying to reach some conclusion as to why my child requires less sleep than a fruit fly.  I have decided that it could be one of two things:  (a) she's a vampire, or (b) like Thomas Edison and many other geniuses, she simply cannot sleep because her mind is so stimulated.

 

 

 

"Sorry, mom, can't sleep! Too busy with these quantum physics!"


 

 I convinced myself one night that we had the next Alberta Einstein on our hands, but then Amelia farted, laughed, and hit her head, so I went back to the vampire hypothesis.

 

Well it was great catching up after my bridal sabbatical. I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was as wonderful as ours (powdered mash potatoes, rotisserie chicken, and stove top stuffing---this mama appreciates fine cookin'). 

 

I promise not to go AWOL again as long as you all promise to stop getting married!   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All Joking Aside

You know how when you’re brushing your teeth in front of your bathroom mirror, and for a split second you notice how lovely you look and lean closer for a better look? Then BAM---toothbrush slams against the mirror and jams down the back of your throat.

OCD can be a lot like this common occurrence.  My day will be going along smoothly, beautifully even, and then out of nowhere, I’m sucker punched.

Perhaps one of the most challenging elements of this disorder is its inability to appear rational to those not suffering from it. Typical conversation with one of my OCD sponsors (Callie, Liz, Andrea, mom, Google, Matt, Jess, Walgreen’s pharmacist), “I forgot I had already taken my Flintstone Vitamin this morning so I took another by mistake. Am I looking at any possible overdose complications?”

You think I’m joking.

I was quite proud of the progress I’d been making these past couple weeks (hence the lack of blogging) until I went and did something astronomically stupid:

I got a haircut.

The issue with my hair is not its new style---I quite like it, actually. The problem is that in order to put it in a tidy ponytail, I must use bobby pins to secure the shorter pieces. In my cluttered, claustrophobic brain that I often times despise, bobby pins equal one thing: choking hazard.

In order for my obsessions to complete the OCD cycle, I must answer them with a compulsion (obsessive compulsive disorder).  In this case, I decided to act as a surgeon who counts all of his tools after surgery to ensure none remain in the abdominal cavity.

 

Every evening, I remove the bobby pins and place them back on their designated sheet of paper. By doing this, I convince my ridiculous mind that none have fallen on the ground or in Amelia's crib.

I know you are wondering why I am sharing this craziness with you---why I can't just keep these nonsensical notions to myself. Some with OCD require privacy; they carry around a sense of shame and guilt. I, being much too vain to carry these with me, would rather make my enemy known. 

I have loved so deeply in my life that hate should be quite unfamiliar to me. Between my friends, husband, Amelia, and Britney Spears, I should only understand adoration, yet my OCD has educated me in contempt. I hate all that it has taken from me and all it has yet to take.

Instead of enjoying a healthy pregnancy and reveling in a new life growing inside of me, I spent every day of those nine months in my own internal hell. Instead of delighting in this new phase of Amelia's life where she's crawling and taking her first steps, I live in terror that she will fracture her skull and end up with a subdural hematoma. I have spent hours googling brain bleeds and even more hours creating a bubble around my daughter to safeguard her from every bump and fall she may encounter. The sane part of me knows I should be letting her explore her newfound world, but my OCD has taken that away from her, too.    

Before finishing this blog post, an internet pop-up ad appeared on my screen. "What would you like to be today?" it asked.

               At peace...I would like to be at peace. 

 

Buzz Kill

My favorite poet Emily Dickinson once famously wrote “I heard a fly buzz when I died.”

I’m guessing she perished in Switzerland.

Irritating Swiss behavior number 419: they don’t do window screens.  Now for all you Westerners out there who are thinking, “boo-freakin- hoo, just turn on the AC,” let me also inform you that the Swiss don’t yet realize it’s 2012. Translation: we should have packed more deodorant. 

The irony of my situation is that I consider camping my own personal form of hell (with exercise coming in at a close second).  I don’t do nature, public showers, bug spray, or lanterns, and I certainly don’t share my living space with winged species. 

I have turned into a woman obsessed.  I spend the better part of my day with a fly swatter in my left hand and a citronella candle in the right.  I scour the house before going to bed to ensure a rogue fly has not attached itself to a wall, which is nearly an impossible task considering the amount of insects we encounter...

After reading and combing through numerous medical journals, I have discovered that a baby's susceptibility to choking is due to the esophagus having a similar circumference to that of a drinking straw.  Now for those of you who suffer from the same rational fears as myself and have also uncovered similar information, I trust you have repeatedly tested this theory.  Unfortunately, my experiments have proven what I feared the most: a fly is a precise fit.

The ingredients for a perfect storm are brewing inside of our non air conditioned home: open screen- less windows, a horse barn directly behind our property, and a mouth-breathing baby.  I have taken this discovery to Kate (who also happens to be suffering from a fly epidemic in her Swiss abode), and she dismissed this concern as OCD. "Tell me one person who has ever choked on a fly," she chided. Apparently Kate doesn't read medical case studies...

Since no one else will take my situation seriously, I asked myself, "What would Laura Ingalls do?" I decided she would purchase $500 worth of night vision camera equipment so she could assess her baby at all times.  My new, amazing baby monitor allows me to zoom and pan around her entire nursery in search of these esophageal-sized flies and react in record time when one is located.

My crisis is, for the moment, averted---I am now the biggest fly on her wall.

                                                                         

Oui Oui Oui All the Way Home

At least everyone cries in the same language---I decided I had this going for me as I sat alone in a deserted gas station parking lot, unsure if the crazy French machine accepted my credit card or wondering if I had just stolen 50 Swiss Francs worth of their overpriced gasoline. With scenes of Brokedown Palace playing through my head and no idea how to navigate home, I went ahead and gave in to an overdue meltdown.  My backseat, eerily absent of baby babble as Amelia slept soundly at her first co-ed sleepover so I could take my sick, lethargic husband to the emergency room, looked like a better place than ever to lay down and the let the Swiss know, in no particular language, how an American girl cries.

The only thing worse than having OCD while your husband sleeps in a germ infested hospital room is having OCD while your husband is quarantined in isolation in a germ infested hospital room.  Since progressively worsening upon his recent return from Egypt, Matt was admitted at four in the morning symptomatic of everything from E Coli to the Plague.

Poor Hubs

Between the half nude gypsy clan in the waiting room and the staff’s inability to understand broken French and sign language for “my husband’s about to hurl,” it finally happened. Since first arriving in this new, confusing, breathtaking world, I felt profoundly and devastatingly homesick.

Taking a seat next to gypsy chick and trying not to stare at her exposed gargantuan nipple, I closed my eyes and thought of all of you, my friends back home, and what you were doing on your side of the pond.  I recalled old inside jokes and wondered about all the new ones of which I’d never be a part.  I thought about all the bachelorette parties and the stories told over margaritas and I could almost hear all your laughter. I recalled our game nights and trips to the casinos and tried for the life of me to figure out where the time had gone. I thought of all the babies being born and the vows being made and the newest Britney Spears' songs I would miss on my ridiculous French radio…and there, right next to a vagabond’s nipple, I silently wept. 

Life eventually returned to its new definition of normal as Matt is back to his usual self. After being hospitalized for two days, he was diagnosed with a severe case of food poisoning and dehydration.  He never quite learned to walk like an Egyptian, though he sure learned to puke like one. 

As for me, I pass the time reading and taking in all the sights with Amelia---the castles, the wine vineyards, the unparalleled Lake Geneva and its Swiss Alps’ backdrop (though secretly, I would trade it all for a day on Lake Decatur with a Salty Dog Cooler of Bud Light and my favorite people in the universe). 

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My new, amazing friend Kate eventually made it to the deserted gas station with my rested baby and the assurance my petro was paid in full.  I dried my tears, followed her home, popped Britney’s first album into my European car’s CD player, and sang at the top of my lungs in my infamous Brit Brit voice. I wanted to show them how an American girl laughs.