Capturing Nonsense

The walls at Craig's house make me very sad.  So do his pistachio green couches. Most bachelor pads, for that matter, need some life breathed into them.  Thanks to my sister, Craig's fiancé, his home is finally getting her feminine, overbearing touch. Kelli called the other night to request a file of photos from me.  In that file, she wants images of me, Amelia, and Matt so she can frame and hang them on Craig's empty walls.  While I'm quite honored to have a living memorial erected at the home of my future brother-in-law, I'm also a bit skeptical about coming through on my sister's request.

For reasons either physical, intentional, or psychological, my husband cannot take a decent photo.  Like the boy who dances to his own drum, it's as if he's smiling at a different camera lens...




example a (ridiculous, I know)


 example b

 

 

Please don't think me cruel.  My husband is very aware of his inability to produce frame-worthy photos.  For this reason (and also because I'm insanely vain), there are mostly only fabulous portraits of yours truly in the house. 

 

On occasion, I can successfully capture an image of Matt where his eyes are looking the correct direction, but then it seems his mouth malfunctions. 

 

 

See what I mean? 

 

 

 

For someone who practices selfies in the mirror (along with an awesome Jamaican accent), it's imperative to remedy this situation in order to uphold our family honor.  In case Matt was just trying to irritate me, I figured a professional photographer could be the antidote.  Surely, he would be on best behavior if we were coughing up cold, hard, cash. Folks, I had high, high hopes for this.

 

Then he subtly snuck out the tongue.

 

I've now accepted there's nothing to be done about my non-photogenic husband.  I continue to snap his picture for the rare occasion when I actually capture a keepsake photo.  Sadly, through all this snapping away, I have discovered a horrible, tragic truth.  My daughter, as well, has inherited his condition. 

 

 

 

 

I sent a whopping three photographs to my sister to frame.  It looks as though there will be no memorial erected in our honor; no real contribution to Craig's desolate walls.  Since it's not often someone asks for a picture of us to go on their wall, I asked Matt one last time to give me his best effort.  On the count of three....

 

 

 

 

 

Auschwitz

Amelia has dolls like these: plaid dresses and curly heads of hair.  She carries them around our house while I complain about the weather, or my bad hair day, or the lack of stations on our Swiss television set.  I assume my life could be easier inside my warm, heated walls. 

Amelia has shoes like these: buckles and shoelaces to fit her chubby, small feet .  She wears them while we dine at fancy restaurants and while she giggles at the park.  "Pwetty shoes," she calls them.

Our village has chimneys like these.  Brick chambers releasing the lingering smoke and laughter of a late evening of red wine by the fireplace, white fog ascending to the heavens while we sleep in our large, warm beds. 

Our country has railroads like these: endless tracks delivering us safely to the next village. Or the park or theatre, perhaps. "Choo, choo," shouts Amelia as the train leaves the station. I smile out the square window and comment on the weather. 

Such simple, mundane things.  A curly-headed doll.  A small pair of shoes.  A brick chimney and a solitary railroad track.  I close my eyes and wish to forget.

There is a haunting sort of calm I will never be able to put into words; a sense of quiet dread that makes the tiniest hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.  I felt it as I trudged through the rock and mud and ashes of Auschwitz. A tangible evil.

 I feel it now as I sit in my own home. 
 
Did humanity cease to exist inside those barbed wire fences?  Were the Nazis born without conscience, or did they exterminate their souls alongside the children in tiny shoes? 

Our nation starts riots and protests and the world mourns over the loss of a single tragic death, but where are the sobs and the outcries for the millions who left this world in ashen smoke?  Perhaps we can't comprehend the number.  Perhaps we are too far removed. 

Friends asked me why I wished to walk the grounds of Auschwitz. Morbid, they called me. What good would it do?

I am unsure the reason, myself.  Maybe I have sought asylum in my safe, opulent world for far too long.  Maybe I need the heaviest of reminders that even on my worst, and sickest, and saddest of days, I have been blessed too abundantly to utter a word of complaint.  Maybe I needed to see it to actually conceive it.  Maybe I just truly wanted to feel. 

I awoke New Year's Day to empty champagne glasses and the clearest of skies, yet I felt joyless and hollow as I glanced out the window at the quaint cottage across the way.  Its small brick chimney carried smoke into the perfect Swiss sunrise,  and I was overcome by nausea. 

I wish not to go back to my life before I walked the grounds of such horror.  I wish to remember the rubble of the destroyed crematoriums, and in all the anguish and destruction, I wish never to forget the voiceless generations whose lives were snuffed out by ignorance and hatred. The frightened children.  The emaciated mothers.  The starving, beaten men. 

I find myself rereading this over and over, but nothing I have written bears semblance to what I have seen; nothing to what I have felt.  It seems I cannot find the words.  

Perhaps there are too many.

Perhaps there are none.     

Meany Pants

I'm having one of those days where I'm losing all faith in mankind.  Walter White has gone Heisenberg, the waitress at the restaurant was as friendly as a scorpion, and the nightly news makes me want to hide in a padlocked closet with a box of extra crispy chicken wings.  Where's the love, people?  Where. Is. The. Damn. Love?

Even the kids at our local playground have been acting like assholes lately.  I had to physically remove Amelia from the jungle gym because a little girl tried to intentionally smash her head into a metal pole.  And I'll be damned if I have a craving again for Skittles---while leaving the American Store yesterday, I accidentally opened the door into an elderly man's face.  I had to cover Amelia's ears from the horrendous French curse words he spewed at me.  I didn't even have a chance to apologize for his bloody nose or offer him a taste of the rainbow before he stormed off in the other direction.

No one holds open doors.  No one offers their seat on the train to exhausted mothers who are carrying a baby and sixteen shopping bags filled with croissants and organic foreign crap because no one in this country appreciates processed foods like I do. I think I could change the entire attitude of the people with the simple introduction of Velveeta Cheese---if it can change my life, it can surely change theirs. 

I'm not suggesting we go all Mayberry on each other, but for a country who swaps three kisses on the cheek for each and every greeting, they sure lack in the hospitality department.  If you're gonna kiss me excessively, you could at least take me to dinner, right?

I'm even having issues with the neighbor's cat, George Clooney (yes, that's real life).  He climbs through our windows uninvited and makes himself at home.  I never thought I'd live to see the day when I kicked George Clooney out of my bedroom, but lo and behold, it's happened.  If we can't even get celebrity cats to mind their manners, then is there really any hope for the rest of us? 

I'm not asking for much, folks.  Just a little more, perhaps. More kindness.  More Velveeta.  A smile here and a smile there.  A few words of good cheer in this sad, sad world.  

Like the famous philosopher Britney Spears once said, just "gimme, gimme more".

Euro-PEE-an

I've been called many things in my 27 years of life, but gym rat isn't one of them.  Though I usually align my workout schedule with that of the solar eclipse, I've learned I can tone these thunder thighs free of charge without ever stepping foot in a YMCA.   I present you the European Squat Toilet:



It also promotes weight loss from the vomiting it induces at the sheer thought of using it..

 

There are two things I am quite particular about: coffee and self-tanning lotion.  I like my coffee strong and in abundance---the same goes for my self-tanner.  On a recent road trip to Italy, my love for the two left me looking like a jaundiced zebra.

After downing two coffees between Switzerland and France, I was on the lookout for the nearest bathroom (or as they call it here, the Water Closet).  Matt pulled into a rest stop and out I hopped in my new patent leather pumps.

By now, most of my readers realize I suffer from extreme anxiety.  This anxiety is particularly heightened by raw poultry and public bathrooms.  Let me paint you all a quick scene: a chemically-imbalanced brain, a near-sterile pair of fantastic new heels, and a toilet IN which you literally stand. Now let's ponder this...

Yup, you've come to the right conclusion, folks: full on mental meltdown.  I'm in tears at this point as I've just encountered one of my biggest OCD triggers. Quite the conundrum we have here: I badly must pee and we still have three hours of driving time.  Also, if you know much about European interstates, you'll know there aren't rows and rows of fast food restaurants with available toilets at every exit.  When ya find a place to go, then ya better start your flow. 

I consider my options. I could always pee in a bush---this  worked out just fine in college.  However, I am now more fearful of  legal ramifications, and the thought of an indecent exposure ticket and an arrest record trump my fear of MRSA-laced squat toilets.  For a quick, irrational second, I consider strapping on one of Amelia's Elmo diapers, but I then remember that I am a civilized member of society and civilized members pee in toilets.

I elbow the stall door shut and peer down at the gaping hole in the ground.  My teary eyes convince me that it's winking at me; taunting the last of my frayed nerves. 

The whole process is quick and ugly.  Fortunately I am donning a skirt so at least I've got that going for me.  I close my eyes and scream through the whole ordeal, and by the time my vocal cords start aching, I realize I've peed down both of my legs and onto my fancy new shoes.

I bow my head in shame and waddle back to the car. There are vertical stripes streaking my legs from what was once my self-tanner and vertical stripes streaking my face from what was once my mascara.  I lay a towel across the passenger seat and place my heels in a plastic grocery bag.  Because my husband thinks he's clever and  because every scenario needs a little pun, he smiles and asks, "Why the pissy mood?" 

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.