The Ick Factor

Like the proverbial tree in the forest, I feel that if I don't share some of this insanity, then it's not really happening. If you don't hear my screams all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, then did I really see an old man's scrotum peek out of his speedos at the pool?

While I have no objection to the male genitalia, I also like to enjoy my ice cream sans nuts.  Positioned quite comfortably on my beach towel,  I simply turned my head to find another view when I locked eyes with a woman breastfeeding in the shallow end.  Yup, two massive, veiny boobs and a baby sucking away right in the middle of an intense game of water tag. 



Shocking, I know

Now Switzerland, riddle me this: it's considered rude to mow our lawns on Sundays, but we're ok with boobs and balls joining our family swim?

What's that, readers? You heard another faint scream from that seashell on your dresser? Yup, that would be me at the market, trying to comprehend why this little boy is eating the crushed ice from the raw fish display.  He is literally grabbing handfuls of blood-tinged ice and sucking each morsel with glee while his mother looks on with indifference.

Perhaps I am just an over-observant American, but I can't help but want to make a scene.  Lady, your son is feasting on bacteria-ridden ice and fish guts. I hate to break it to your free spirit, but that ain't sushi!

Ok, deep breath. Rant over for the day.  It's simply impossible not to recognize cultural differences with every European step I take.  They love their food raw and their bodies rawer.

Mama, Interrupted

I think I may be in a bit of a slump.

Not the 'can't crawl out of bed', 'fifth of whiskey on the nightstand' type slump, but more like the stay-at-home-mama blues.  Perhaps the days seem extraordinarily long since my husband is away in Romania and I have no one to talk to but the neighbor's temperamental horse.  Or may because Amelia is sick with a cold and refusing to sleep, my patience is wearing extremely thin.  

Whether I be explaining in my adorable baby voice why she can't swim alone in the deep end or counting down the minutes until Amelia takes her comically short nap, I am feeling the guilt and pressure of not being the peppy, glittery glue stick soccer mom who fist pumps at the idea of spending another day at the petting zoo. 

I was a nanny, I tell myself.  I was destined to be a natural at motherhood.  Snot and bloody noses and disobedience and that explorer chick Dora are supposed to be second nature to me. But instead I find myself tired and mentally exhausted---all the while just wanting to curl up in a bed with a smutty novel and another McFlurry for my McShitty mood.

I feel you judging me right now.  Yeah, you.  I have the most wonderful baby girl with the most beautiful set of screaming lungs, and instead of feeling blessed and grateful and proud to have the most precious gift in the world for which I so desperately prayed, I am merely feeling overwhelmed.

Matt says I need an outlet for my boredom and exhaustion.  "Write your book today," he nonchalantly tosses out as he leaves the house for work.  "Ok, sure honey! Just as soon as Amelia finishes pooping in the bathtub, I will get right to it!"

I have no words for a book at the moment.  I can hardly come up with enough letters to send out a decent tweet.  Unless self-pity books or personal essays on McFlurry binges are the new Fifty Shades of Grey, I'd say I'm a few hundred pages short of a best seller.

It's not that I am without joy.  My love for Amelia is without a doubt the most incredible, enormous emotion I will ever experience. Hands down. I would give my life for that child, yet I simultaneously struggle to read her Curious George three times before bedtime.  He will still be curious in the morning, Amelia.  I promise. 

I wish a handbook came out with the placenta explaining exactly how these supermoms do it.  How do they muster the energy to navigate the entire children's museum on four hours of sleep? How on Earth do these superhuman baby-makers do it day after day and never seem to need a break?  Ten minutes into a puppet show and I could already use an intermission. Or a martini.

I constantly find myself wondering if I am truly doing the best I can do.  I stay up late at night worrying that Amelia considers me a bad mother; that I am scarring her for life if we don't finger paint and blow bubbles and pet filthy goats everyday.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things I am a fairly good parent.  My child is happy and clean. She has never gone without, and she will always be taught right from wrong. Yet I had such grandiose ideas when that pregnancy test read positive that I was going to be the mother who never questioned her abilities because she was so busy being wonderful at everything.

I was going to be the mother who hosted play dates all week since the other moms would be too tired to entertain.  I was going to make blanket forts and costumes and spend hours in an over sized toy box filled with educational games and anatomically correct baby dolls so Amelia could get a head start on her medical degree. 

I wasn't supposed to be this blasé.  I wasn't supposed to be this mediocre.

Jet Lag Ramblings

"Would you like to make that a medium?" the Swiss McDonald's employee asked me of my Big Mac meal.  "Actually, just make it a large," I sighed, knowing that an extra handful of fries would go a long way tonight after seeing my favorite Swiss family off to the airport. 

"Mademoiselle, we no do large. Medium is biggest size," she responded in broken English. 

Seriously, Switzerland?!?

You don't do large?!?

 You actually thought I wanted to downsize my meal?!?

Can this country get any weirder?!?

Just eight short hours before this preposterous incident, I bid farewell to  my dearest friends Jake, Kate, and Fynn Beaverson as they moved back to the United States after nearly five years of living in Switzerland. Just like that ridiculous medium fry I consumed in three bites---they were gone.  And I was feeling pretty salty.

The hardest part of this whole ex-pat life is the difficulty of starting over in a foreign culture that just doesn't seem to get you.  Kate got me.  For fourteen months, she was my confidant and tour guide, and without her here to ease the transition into Swiss life, I think I may have floundered. 




Until we meet again...
 

I heard the heartbreaking news of their departure while I was back in Illinois for the summer.  Agreeing I could no longer go without my family, hometown friends, or air conditioning, Matt sent me home for a glorious 36 days. Nostalgia hit me as soon at that 747 landed on Midwest soil. 

I wanted to do the things I had always done, so I drank cheap wine out of the bottle, played Scattegories with my hot headed friends, and took my mom's vintage bicycle for a long ride on the Fairview bike trails.  About four miles in, I gave myself a figurative pat on the back for being in such great shape after a full weekend of nachos and ice cream cake.  Ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit and I had hardly broken a sweat.  Actually, I was not perspiring at all...I paused to ponder this. Before I had time to come to a reasonable conclusion, I fell to the blacktop as nausea and dry heaves overtook me. I tried to call out for help, but the trail was eerily empty.  I could tell I was beginning to lose consciousness as I mapped out a plan in my head as how to call an ambulance, meanwhile cursing myself for leaving home without a telephone or blow horn.  I then realized that my entire body was now saturated in sweat as the sweltering black top burned against my skin.  "Roll to the grass," I told my gargantuan frame.  "Just roll to the shade." 

Spoiler alert: I survived.

It took me around ten minutes to fully catch my breath and gain the strength to stand back up.  I was shaking and terrified, certain I had just stared down death.  Once home and after a very dramatic reenactment for my family, I googled heat exhaustion and realized that certain medications can contribute greatly to this condition.  There it was: Prozac and heat intolerance. 

And this crazy biatch is on the maximum dose.

After stopping and giving my life a long hard look, I've decided I can no longer take unwarranted risks like vintage bicycle rides.  Since my medicated body obviously cannot tolerate rigorous exercise, it may be best to stick to my usual cardio routine of climbing mall escalators and lifting fudge pops.  We only get so many second chances.

Now back to the present: I am currently in Switzerland and am counting down the days until this heat wave is finished; that, or until the day the Swiss realize it is 2013 and air conditioning has already been discovered (along with the size LARGE).

I apologize that this blog post has no real focus.  I am going on day five of little sleep and a jet lagged toddler.  Throw some melancholy into the mix over the absence of Kate, and there you have it: a lonely, heat intolerant, unable-to-get-a-damn-supersize, Mademoiselle.

And There You Are

Sometimes I feel as if that car kept driving through the midnight hour and took you both with it; a seamless transition to the other side. 

Over 4,000 miles and a boundless ocean separate me from the loss that devoured our lives four years ago, yet I now find your memory in the newest of places. Although you've never climbed the Swiss Alps or admired its sunrise, I can't help but think that you can now feel its warmth; that you are familiar with all its beauty. I've often thought that this land must be unquestionably close to the Heavens.

Your death awakened in all of us the fear we so desperately keep at bay---that one day our doubts, questions, and hopes of the afterlife will be fully recognized. Since that cruel November night, I've retold story after story and cried over your pictures.  Once in a while I will even happen upon a certain smell in the air and I am instantly taken back to your college apartment in DeKalb, where the thought of an abbreviated future never crossed our blissful minds. How often we look behind us for what used to be.

For so many years you have been frozen in time at twenty-four.  I couldn't quite seem to look past the date on your headstone.  It was Switzerland that brought me back to the present. 

Something about beauty in its most natural form brings out the spirituality in even the dimmest of us.  I have never felt so absolutely sure that Heaven exists as I do when I'm gazing toward the Swiss skies.  There is a peacefulness here I could not obtain elsewhere; a sense of endlessness that most certainly reminds me of you. 

I will be walking along a quiet brook when I notice the way the sunlight polishes the peaks of the mountains, and there you are in that moment.  My mind can be going in a billion different tangled directions, yet the chaos seems to halt and I can only think of you.  I thank God for those instants.  I thank Him for giving me such hope.

It may be true that grief never ceases in this lifetime; but it is also true that it changes.  The sadness once felt over your death is and will always be a dense fog in our lives, but it slowly lifts when I'm reminded of how infinitely happy you now are---not the type of happy from a successful round of golf and certainly not the type of happy from a late night college party, but true and genuine joy that this life can never give us. 

I think of you now in the present tense, though I will still hang on to these memories for awhile. I don't catch myself looking at your pictures quite as often, nor do I replay stories over and over in my mind.  There is no longer really the need. All I have to do is look around me. It is there that you are.

 

Star

My sister tried to rock over my tiny baby head when I was only five weeks old.  Fortunately for myself and the rest of mankind,  my mom grabbed her right before the wooden rocker crushed my adorable mug.  If you ask my mom for her side of the story, she will lace it with words like "accidental" and "unpremeditated," but I always knew exactly what was going through little Kelli Jo's advanced mind.

Unbeknownst to the family, I was imposing on Kelli's destiny of remaining an only child. From the moment they placed a Fisher Price microphone in her grabby hands, she became the star. For the next decade, she would write, direct, and perform as lead in all of her own theatrical works. Some sisters pull hair.  Others slap and claw.  Mine always made me play a dude in her bossy garage productions.  

Kelli and I probably never would have picked each other as friends had we not been born sisters first.  We've had over twenty years of difference and dysfunction to realize that we aren't really all that alike.  She was always the graceful, rhythmic one; I once knocked myself out by running into a parking meter.  She had the lovely, soprano voice for the high school musicals; I had the loud, obnoxious cackle that landed me the part of the Wicked Witch.

While Kelli always strove for perfection and order, I loved a life of disarray and improv. We never really saw eye to eye (perhaps because I was blessed with an extra six inches) on just about anything.  My friends soon became like sisters to me, and Kelli and I went our separate ways. Though we both thrived in the spotlight, there can only be one star to every show.

Eventually, Kelli and I missed out on knowing each other.  I never knew her favorite book or her first heartbreak; she never knew where I went on the weekends or my most beloved Britney album (it's Blackout, obvi).  We allowed ourselves to become strangers, and assumed we would always be so. 

It's 9:30 pm in Switzerland as I write this, and I am trying to finish this blog post while waiting for the guest bedroom sheets to dry.  I have a friend arriving on Sunday.  She also happens to be my sister.

If you told the childhood Steffo that people do change and that Kelli and I would one day get over all our stupid drama, I would have told you, "Right. And I'll end up living next to goats in Switzerland."

Kelli still rolls her eyes when I have one too many drinks and embarrass her; I still hit ignore on her sixteen phone calls when I don't want to hear about her drastic new hair trim.  I have yet to ask her favorite book (although I would guess it has yet to be written since I am sure it will be her autobiography), and she still doesn't know that I eat whip cream directly out of the can when I'm feeling a tad blue.

We will never be the Kardashians or Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, but we've finally made room for each other; we respect each other.  Dare I say we even admire the other. 

In a few short days, Kelli will arrive (in style, no doubt) with her Godsend of a boyfriend, Craig, and we will spend an entire week learning to share the spotlight.  Oh, and she says she's bringing a gift for Amelia. 

Here's hoping it's not a Fisher Price mic.

Blank Page

The blog ain't-a-growin when the words ain't-a-flowin.  To make this simple: I've got writer's block, folks. 

While any writer can give you numerous reasons and excuses for their brief absence of creativity, I need only relay three letters to my faithful followers. Care to buy a vowel?

In between bursts of sunshine, visitors from the United States, and my new found love for sushi, I somehow let the OCD back into the driver's seat.

Whelp, it was a sane run while it lasted. 

The thing I hate most about OCD is the darkness it brings along with it. My looming anxiety could shade any cloudless, summer day---it's its own SPF. 

Here's a quick rundown of this week's obsession rotation:

1. I will receive a Swiss speeding ticket which will cause the revocation of my driving privileges, therefore forcing me to use germy public transportation where I will surely catch this deadly new coronavirus that they're talking about all over the news

2. My husband will forget to shut the windows when he comes to bed and the neighbor's creepy cats will sneak into Amelia's room and sniff out her milk mustache

3. Someone will accidentally drop a pill at the village playground and Amelia will sneak it in her mouth while I momentarily step away to grab the hand sanitizer

4. That I will never have reprieve from this horrendous disorder that takes so many hours and days from my life; you stupid OCD robber piece of $h*t.

Alright, enough with the sob story. 

Sorry for the scatterbrained, writer-blocked blog dripping with self-pity, and sorry for those who know all too well of what I write.

When the OCD comes, it sure don't come easy.

Why Yes

I was always an advocate for adult-only planes until I was no longer an adult only. If you've ever doubted the existence of hell, I promise I could convert you by means of an international flight with my daughter.

Our first stop through the scorching flames: security. Why yes, TSA worker, that prescription diaper rash cream does happen to be for the baby on my hip. Why no, security lady, I wouldn't mind drinking from each of Amelia's seven pre-made bottles in front of an already annoyed line to disprove any possibility of explosive chemicals.  Why am I dramatically gagging after each taste of hypoallergenic soy formula?  Well, I've always been more of a chocolate milk kind of girl.

Next stop: bacteria infested gate wait.  Why yes, Amelia, please try and eat that newspaper off the airport floor while I search for my lost boarding pass. I'm sure a little extra fiber will do the body good.

And now damnation itself: nine hours of turbulent screaming, snotting, flailing, and bargaining with God for an hour of peace in exchange for a charitable donation.

As it would turn out, God's not much of a negotiator.

Why yes, male flight attendant, I would love to wait in my cramped seat with my daughter and her poop explosion diaper until the seat belt sign un-illuminates. It's truly my pleasure (insert smiley face here).

Inhale. Exhale.  Deep breath. Repeat.

Amelia's draining the last of  her bottle as her eyes finally begin to flutter. Sleep is on the horizon---I can feel it, taste it, almost grasp it. And then I hear it: the damn drink cart clanking down our aisle. "Ma'am, is there anything I can do for you? Perhaps a coffee or an alcoholic beverage?" Why yes, stewardess, do you also offer complimentary horse tranquilizers? (for me, of course...)

So we're five hours into the flight and I have to pee like a racehorse. Since airplane bathrooms are on my OCD top ten list of places most likely to contract flesh-easting bacteria, I've been holding it in for the last three hours.  Another thing I'm holding? Amelia. I carry her into the coffin sized lavatory and try to hold her in the air Simba style while I hover over the filthy toilet seat.

Amelia's amused; I'm horrified. She's also grabbing for anything she can touch which happens to be everything so I'm cringing in disgust when the tears just start flowing. Taking a one year old across the world all by myself?

Why yes, Stefanie, you are certifiably batshit crazy.