Hey world. Check it out. I am not sick, disabled, handicapped or broken.

I am pregnant.

I am not frail, fragile, needy or excessively dependent.

I am pregnant.

I am not incapable, incapacitated or inept.

I AM FUCKING PREGNANT.

I’m not a rare flower. I am not delicate.  I am not a princess. I am barely even special.

I am engaging in an act as old and reliable and strong as humanity itself. We have, in fact, evidence of that.

I am in a condition that’s natural and appropriate for my body, not totally unlike breathing or walking or living or dying or taking a crap.

But you treat me like I’m some sort of poor incapable vessel.

Also, I’ve had it with your rules.

No lunch meat – and we mean it – no turkey, salami or ham. Make sure that steak isn’t rare! Cook those eggs thoroughly, nothing runny. No cookie dough kids! Nothing unpasteurized. Watch out for fish. Nothing raw. No stinky cheese, that includes Brie, feta, Camembert or anything with blue in it! Listeria! E-coli!

No coffee.

No wine.

Not a drop! Better safe than sorry.

Okay, maybe you can have one cup of coffee, but not two. Two is crossing the line.

Why must we be so fucking crazy?

You know what? I’m not gonna die if I have 2 or 3 cups of coffee one day when I’m having a rough one. And neither is my baby.

I’m not even going to die if I have a glass of (gasp!) wine.

Okay, I may actually die if I have a glass of wine but I’m a recovering alcoholic, I don’t count.

Maybe rather than lay down some insane irrational nutjob bullshit law like “Thou shalt not eat a bite of lunch meat for 10 months” we just, say, don’t eat it every single day, or we don’t eat if it’s from a questionable source, or we steer away from food left out for a few hours.

Maybe we just, OH I DON’T KNOW, be reasonable.

Think.

Balance things.

I know. Crazy talk.

Oh, and please let’s talk about the don’t lift this, don’t lift that, don’t push this or pull that you DELICATE VIOLET you’re gonna get hurt! Damaged! Poor little broken thing!

How about this? Bite me.

Don’t lift over 25 pounds? Really? Oh, ok cool. So I’ll just leave my sleeping toddler in the hot car when we roll into the drive way because I can’t carry her in the house at 37 pounds. Clearly.

That’s a solid plan.

When she throws herself on the ground in a tantrum or just plain old toddler fun-having and there’s a car trying to pass I’ll just look at the driver and be like “Sorry, can’t help you. Can’t pick her up. Against the rules! I’m pregnant. I’m fragile!”
I’ll just leave grocery bags in the car so food rots and not do housework or move unruly laundry baskets. And I’ll quit my job as this or that because we can’t stand too long and we can’t sit too long and we can’t lift heavy stuff and we must avoid jerky movements!

Look, maybe Gwenyth Paltrow can “consciously uncouple” from her life responsibilities or whatever the hell, but those of us on actual earth pretty much must keep on with life.

How about I just not be stupid, maybe not over-exert myself on a regular basis, cut down redwood trees or paint roofs while perched on a ladder?

Has the world lost it’s damn mind?

I’m pregnant, motherfuckers. NOT BROKEN.

Women have been doing this since the beginning of human time. The beginning of human time. This is not exaggeration. This is fact. Obviously.

They have worked in fields, in homes, built things carried things towed things. What happened in the old days? “Sorry, honey, can’t keep the house up. I’m with child.” Churn your own butter, asshole.

Well if that were true they’d never do a damn thing ever because they were pretty much always “with child.”

And I know, we’ve learned a lot, blah blah blah, and better safe than sorry, but at some point we crossed the line of reasonable caution and thoughtful awareness into full-blown panic and hysteria and I tell you it’s pure bullshit.

Pregnant woman are some of the strongest humans on the planet.

Stop telling use we’re weak. That we need books and experts and “professionals” to manage us and keep us safe and govern our uteri and bellies and minds.

Yeah, I know it works REALLY WELL to sell your “expert opinions” and “helpful advice” and rules and guidelines and latest studies so we can be managed and controlled and “taken care of” — sold the latest nonsense must-have baby item. I mean if you can create an entire population of women WHO THINK THEY NEED YOU, my god think of the dollar signs!

And you know what, I appreciate you when I actually need you. If my body or mind can’t hang, messes up, gets sick, or there is some other problem, I’m really, really glad you’re there. Your expertness and science and stuff.

But until further notice, I don’t need you. I’m doing just fine. Me and my uterus and logic (wait, do women have that?) are holding together just fine, as we’ve been doing since forever, dude. Forever.

Stop telling me I can’t, I need, I suck, because you know what? I birthed a 10-pound baby in a horse trough in my living room.

We birth babies, by vagina or knife. And then we get up, nurse them, hold them, carry on.

WE CARRY ON.

Through morning sickness and weakness and fatigue that knocks you to the bone we work, care for, build and carry the fuck on.

With huge bellies and crushed bladders and restless nights and aching hearts thinking of our lives and families and other children. We go.

With pain and discomfort and backs that cry for relief we go. We get up. We move. We live and birth and hold on.

Oh but you tell me I’m weak, I’m vulnerable, I’m broken and unaware and lost.
But never fear! Luckily you are here to tell me how to be pregnant, birth my child, feed, nurture and raise my child. Educate, hold and support my child. Discipline, feed and dress my child. Thank goodness you’re here to help the poor pregnant woman mother!

You’ve tried to break me. But I am not broken.

I am pregnant. (I thought we’ve been over this.)

And in five weeks I will have a baby, the perfect one for me, the one I know, the one who knows me.

I already know how to birth, hold, nurse and nurture that baby. My body is formed perfectly to the folds of his body. My heart pumps circles around her soul. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing, but by God I know better than you do. She is, after all, of me. Of us.

And yet you’ll still be there, chattering on like a mindless fucking monkey, telling me what and how and who and why.

I’ll laugh and turn my eyes to my newborn, who knows it too.

Hey mother, glad you’re here, and you’ve got everything you need.

Ya sure don’t look broken to me.

You know what I realized recently? My kids aren’t suffering enough.

Oh, come on. I don’t mean like that. Not suffering abuse or neglect or whatever. Get your head out of the gutter.

I’m talking about healthy suffering. Toil. Good ol’ fashioned WORK. I’m talking about discomfort, doing things repeatedly that are physically, mentally and emotionally unpleasant because you have to. Because it needs to get done. Because there’s nobody else to do it.

the man in question.

So, I have this husband who grew up on a ranch. Actually I only have one husband, but he did in fact grow up on a ranch. Eighty acres of farmland and a small, family run slaughterhouse (sorry, vegans). And from the time he was old enough to work (so like, 7? 8?) he was expected to, um, work. He had to get up and feed animals – when it was pouring rain, hailing, or Christmas. The animals don’t care. When it was 45 degrees or 106 degrees and a cow got out, he had to go handle it with his dad, whether or not he felt like it. I used to watch him catch chickens and my God he hated it. I’ve never seen a person more irritated. I could tell he was miserable, through and through.

There’s value in misery, I tell you.

And he worked in the slaughterhouse (still does, actually. In fact he’s there as I write this, at 7am on a Saturday). I’ll save you details but I’ll tell you this: It IS NOT pleasant. I don’t care how gently SouleMama makes it seem to slaughter turkeys or whatever the hell she does, it’s messy and disgusting and freezing cold (or stiflingly hot). It’s foul (fowl? hahaha. TELL ME I’M NOT FUNNY.) beyond recall. It’s physically exhausting, and it’s relentless.

But as a result of this relentlessness, his life reflects some principles that make him a damn fine human being (if I may say so myself), and something of a lost art.

He understands:

• The world is not here to cater to him.
• Hard work is a natural part of life.
• Physical discomfort is not that big of a deal.
• If something needs to get done, YOU FUCKING DO IT.

Sometimes it seems like we all work so hard to provide our kids “comfort” and “a nice childhood” that we forget that a good portion of life is just WORK: dirty, grimy, unpleasant. I mean, isn’t it? Isn’t a good part of your life doing things you don’t feel like doing?

Not that we’ll all be toiling on ranches under the beating sun, but rather, life requires the ethic that underlies that work, the willingness to do the damn job until it’s done because it needs to get done.  And even though you don’t want to, even though it’s terrible and unpleasant and exhausting, YOU DO IT ANYWAY.

Let me back up. Here’s what happened. One of my kids was purposely doing only half of an assigned daily chore because s/he found it distasteful to his/her delicate sensibilities. Vague enough for ya? Yeah, well the details don’t matter, and I don’t really want to call my kid out on the internet (well, not directly, at least). The point is the child was purposely deceiving us for a month because doing the unpleasant portion of the job was JUST TOO MUCH or whatever the hell. Couldn’t be bothered. Couldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable. I discovered this and was furious. I’m like wait. WHAT? On what planet does this make sense to you? Everybody in your world works, homie, and hard.

Georgie is ready to work.

Your dad is an ironworker who commutes 4 hours a day to provide for his family. Your mom is 8-months pregnant teaching 3 classes, trying to develop a freelance career and raising 3 other kids. We aren’t martyrs. We’re working people. Not because it’s glamorous, but because we want to eat.

Your grandparents work. Your great-grandparents STILL WORK. We aren’t some silver-spooned, Town & Country-reading douchecanoes who sit around basking in trust funds and lamenting the plight of the world. Come the hell on, kid!

But then I realized in a moment of painful self-honesty that my kids have never really been made to suffer much, to get their hands dirty, so why am I surprised? If life teaches you that comfort is the expected baseline, why would you ever accept the opposite? If daily existence confirms your right to unadulterated pleasantness, clearly unpleasantness is an anomaly to be avoided. Right?

I’m realizing that sometimes, kids need to work hard, really hard, against every shred of their desire. They need to be made uncomfortable. They need to get super freaking pissed off and do the work anyway.

At least, I think they do.

Yeah, my kids do chores (SORT OF), but rigorous work? Not so much.

Hours of work? Probably not.

Work that really, really pisses them off? Doubt it.

And this is supposed to be a good thing, right? These kids that have such a “nice life,” such a relaxed, supported life?

Right. Until they grow up to be the The Entitled Asshole in my English class. Oops. Was that my outside voice?

OF COURSE IT WAS and I MEANT IT.

I’ve seen the product of “Oh honey, the world is here to serve you” and people, it ain’t pretty. I’ve seen the product of “Dear, we’re all here to make you more comfortable” and “You shouldn’t have to suffer, sweetheart” and it manifests in an expectation that the world should love them for showing up, for breathing. It develops into an attitude of “well I’m here and I’m wonderful and I really feel like I should be able to do the bare minimum of work and you will compensate for my laziness because duh! I’m me!”

I’ve seen the results of the every-kid-deserves-a-trophy mentality* and I am here to tell you IT ISN’T WORKING.

Every kid does not deserve a motherfucking trophy.

You know who deserves a trophy? The kid who works the hardest. The kid who puts in the most time. The kid who shows up and BRINGS IT.

Alright fine. In tee-ball they all deserve a damn trophy, because they’re four.

But after that, kids deserve what they put in, nothing more and nothing less. And I’m not getting all “American bootstraps mentality for the win!” on ya. Come on. I know there’s more to the story than that, and hard work alone doesn’t guarantee “success” in the world, but I also know 100% that I cannot teach my kids the world is here to serve them, or even, really, as harsh as this sounds, that the world gives a shit about them. The world does not care about my kids. The world cares about itself.

My job is teach my kids to ask themselves “What can I contribute to the world?” Rather than “What can I take from it?” So many takers. I want to raise givers. Imagine if we all raised kids who grew up asking what they could contribute to the situation, to each other, to the world?

Okay, John Lennon, settle down.

But seriously, that wouldn’t suck.

And since right now my husband and I and this house are their “world,” we’re going to start with some gardening in the hot sun, some washing of floors and some Saturdays spent cleaning and organizing and sweating, a lot, all day. And there will be no trophies given.

The trophy is knowing you did it, and you did it well, even when nobody was looking, even when you didn’t feel like, because it had to be done, and you, thank goodness, were there to do it. There’s an unparalleled sense of satisfaction there, when you give, when you work your hardest, for yourself and others, because you were needed.

And if there isn’t satisfaction, get over it. Not all endeavors in life are infinitely fulfilling. You did the work necessary because you understand that sometimes work is necessary. And that alone sets you above Entitled Douchebag status, which, I’m sure we can all agree, is a win.

HA! OMG. There. There’s your trophy, kid: You aren’t an entitled douchebag. 

You can thank me later.

*Note: I did not invent the trophy thing. Somebody told it to me and I stole it but for the life of my I cannot remember who said it. So, if you’re reading this and you’re the one who said it: 1.) you’re a genius; 2.) sorry for stealing your shit; and 3.) tell me and I’ll cite you, MLA style.

You may remember we were burglarized last September, twice. In one week. They stole my laptop and essentially every piece of jewelry Mac had ever given me during our 13 years together. They stole my grandmother’s ring, the single item I inherited from her.

It took months to “get over it,” but recently, the wound was reopened. Basically, through a rather coincidental chain of events I’d rather not elaborate on, we found out for sure who burglarized our home, and it was the person I suspected: Our former nanny’s son, a young man addicted to methamphetamines.

I knew it was him the moment I saw my jewelry box laid open, empty. I drove immediately to his home. He was in the street. I walked right up to him looked him dead in the eyes and said “Hey. I get it. I was a drug addict once too. Just give me back my things. Have them show up on my doorstep and I’ll give you $1000. No questions asked.”

Looking back, I realize he had probably already traded everything for a 20 sack, maybe two.

He went around and around about how it wasn’t him. But I knew it was. The sight of his face in my mind’s eye makes me feel sick. Lying motherfucker. I had no proof, but I knew. 100%.

And the worst part is I knew it was going to happen before it happened. I saw it in my mind. I literally saw in my mind that this person was going to burglarize our home.

I knew it the day my nanny sat in our living room and told me her son (who lived with her) was addicted to meth. A thought crossed my mind: One of these days, he’s going to find out through his mom that you’re gone for the weekend and he’s going to burglarize your home.

Three months later, that is precisely, EXACTLY what happened.

After my nanny left that day, I called my mom. I told her “I need to find a new nanny. I need to disconnect. Something bad is going to happen.”

But I did nothing.

I talked to Mac about it, told him my concerns. I am no stranger to drug addiction and what it causes. I am no stranger to the monsters people become.

But still I did nothing.

I did nothing against my better judgment.

I did nothing against every cell of my being screaming at me “Stop this. Get out. Bad things are going to happen.”

I did nothing because I ignored my intuition.

I did nothing until it was too late.

And that is the part I can’t get over.

That is the part that haunts me, late at night when I think about the family photos and videos that were lost in the stolen laptop and the pearl necklace gone, the one Mac gave me a couple months into our relationship, and the diamond ring I remember so clearly on my beloved grandmother’s thin, wrinkled gorgeous finger.

I did nothing because I was stuck. I was stuck in a motherfucking rut and I could not see out. I refused to see out. I would not see out.

Life gave me the signs. It gave me the chance to redirect, to move along, to do something new. The universe hinted, nudged, and at times downright pushed and shoved, but still, I did nothing.

Why? Because it was too hard. Because I preferred the comfort of my rut to the difficulty of a new course.

Our home was dark. The neighborhood was terrible. I hated it. We all hated it.  It was a dead, depressing place. We lived two houses down from a known drug house. They’d do deals in the street. They’d park in front of our house waiting for the delivery. Sometimes I’d walk up to them and knock on the car window, ask if I could help. Probably not the safest move, but it gets to the point when you don’t fucking care anymore. The neighbor on our left occasionally got drunk and poisoned animals in the neighborhood. We lived in near-constant fear of our animals getting out. One day our cat did. We found her on our driveway, poisoned the same way our two kitties died when we first moved in, two years prior, before we knew. Our street was a thoroughfare to the worst street in town, so a constant stream of addicts and drunks poured down our road like a sad parade. They left their trash on our lawn and their baggies on the sidewalk.

We needed to move a long time before, but we didn’t. We didn’t because we were stuck.  We didn’t because sometimes the misery you know is easier than the unknown, because it’s safer, or you think it is, simply because it is known.

It all starts to feel so heavy: The change. The fear surrounding it all: What will happen? What if it doesn’t work? Where will we go and do and how will it all work?

One day turns into the next and the next and the next and it’s just you and the aching intuition, the burning feeling that something needs to change. But nothing changes, because nothing changes. And fear.

The burglary ended it.

Shaken to our core, we were faced with the reality of what our life had become and how distant we had grown from that reality. Within 45 days our house was on the market and we had moved into my mom’s house. Within 90 days our house was sold and we were in escrow on another. Around 4 months from that burglary we moved into the house we live in now, a place I love so much I never want to leave (which is its own problem but one I love to have!). I had forgotten how much a miserable house can bring you down. I had forgotten what it feels like to love where you’re living, to feel “home” each day, in your home.

Action. Finally. Happened.

In a way, that burglary was the best thing to ever happen to us, but still I’m full of hatred sometimes, toward him, but mostly toward myself. Why didn’t I act? Why didn’t I do something? Why didn’t I trust my gut and heart?

I know. I already know: I was doing the best I could at the time. And really, it was just stuff gone. It’s just stuff. Means nothing.

But shit. It’s hard. You know?

Hard to face the elements of responsibility in our own lives, hard to square off with the truth about ourselves. It is not my fault that he burglarized our home. It is, however, my fault that I denied my intuition and chose comfort over change, even though that comfort was making me fucking miserable and I KNEW IT.

It is my fault that I didn’t leave a house and town and situation that was sucking the life out of me.

It is my fault I DID NOT ACT.

Life is strange, isn’t it? The way we stay in things that are killing us because at least we feel safe – hang out in the muck and dirt and mire because at least it’s the muck and dirt and mire we’re accustomed to. The way we justify the shit in our lives as if it’s other people’s faults when really it’s us – we’re the ones too chicken shit to move, paralyzed by our own indecision, cut off at the knees with terror. Of what, who knows. How could it be worse than this?

Until life slaughters us one day, to be reborn.

I’m beginning to think life is just a series of little deaths, of becoming unstuck, of seeing how fear pulses through my mind and spine and legs, moving my body for me, on nothing more than a glorified rat wheel. Around and around we call it “living.” I know the truth but I’m too scared to face it. That bullshit job, relationship, habit, whatever. The truth rests deep inside of me. I work every day to ignore it, until I cannot any longer.

I was stuck. I’m not stuck now.

I want to forgive myself, but some mental construction won’t work. “I forgive you Janelle.”

Ah, fuck off.

That shit never works. I need action. I will forgive myself by staying unstuck, by laughing at the voice that says “You can’t. It’s too hard. Stay here.”

I tried that, asshole. I went down that road and it didn’t work. I couldn’t get off  the track on my own so life did it for me, and it hurt. I was shattered into a new direction.

I’m responsible for that, too, I guess. New digs and freedom. My own failure to move – literally and figuratively – killed me. But to begin again. Unstuck, one more time.

Maybe I’ll trust better, sooner.

Myself, and life.

The real kind.

sometimes I feel like this.

You know people keep talking about these damn “babymoons,” and once again I find myself shaking my head. Setting aside my disdain for the term itself (on account of its excessive cuteness), I just don’t understand how a trip to Turks and Fucking Caicos is really a “last hurrah” at all.

Yeah okay I get it: Quality time with your partner before the baby arrives and your life is ruined. Wait. Not what I meant.

It’s a time to “renew” and “reconnect,” blah blah blah, fine. It’s a time to really take advantage of your childless status. But why the hell are we telling new moms to take a vacation as the way to celebrate and cherish the way their lives are now (as opposed to the way it will be when baby enters the picture)? I mean that’s not the shit we miss. Right? Is it? Big vacations? Nah…I mean some of us could never afford those anyway, and Mac and I still take mini-vacations occasionally. At least I think we do.

Anyway for me it’s the little stuff, or was, back when I remembered life without kids.

If we really want to help women appreciate life before baby, I really think a trip to Florida isn’t the way to do it.

Hey, first-time moms. You want a babymoon? Try taking a shit and enjoying the way nobody bangs on the door.

Come to think of it, I have some other ideas:

Why would you EVER want a break from these faces? Ha. Ha. Ha.

1. Go to a restaurant and have a conversation, like as in the whole time. Just do that. Just talk and eat. Do nothing else. Notice the way you don’t have to bounce a baby on your knee while eating or nurse anything or leave the restaurant entirely because Lungs of Steel refuses to enjoy the ambiance.
2. Come home from work, sit on the couch and do nothing. Trust me.
3. Get on the phone when you feel like it. Have a conversation. Talk as long as you want. Soon, the second you get on the phone, no matter how sure you are the baby is asleep, no matter how long she’s been happily playing by herself, no matter how short the call, the SECOND that call connects is the SECOND your baby will demand your undivided attention. (Note: the importance of the call is in direct proportion to the likelihood that your baby will not let you make that call. Just FYI.)
4. Have sex with the light on. What? Dude. When there’s a chance a small human could enter your room at pretty much any moment, that light ain’t going on.
5. Actually just have sex anywhere you want.
6. Get in the car and put on Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” When he says “motherfucker,” enjoy the way you don’t feel guilty for playing music with swear words.
7. Then, drive around in silence for a long, long, long time.
8. A long time.
9. Put your groceries in the car. Get in the car. Drive away. Appreciate how fast that was.
10. Go to a bar on Friday night with friends, get totally shitfaced, stay up til 2am, THEN SLEEP IN ON SATURDAY like the rest of your friends. Wait. Nevermind. You’re pregnant – BAD IDEA. Just sleep in Saturday. That’s revolutionary enough. Babies don’t care how late you stayed up. They also don’t care that you’re hung-over, puking, feverish or depressed. Neither do toddlers or kids. So yeah. Just sleep in on Saturday over and over and over again.
11. Cook a meal, sit at the dinner table and eat it with you partner, relishing the way you aren’t trying to quiet, ignore, or discuss deep philosophical shit with offspring, or teach them manners or tell them to eat their whatever or sit still damnit or stay in your seat or clear your place or stop bickering or OMG I hate dinner.
12. Crawl into your bed and observe the profound lack of infant in it.
13. Pack up your stuff for an overnight stay somewhere. You don’t actually have to leave, just pack. Just pack because it’s SO FUCKING EASY TO PACK when you aren’t packing for a baby.
14. Go to bed when you feel like it. As in, when you feel tired, go to bed. Yes, that’s it. That’s the whole exercise.
15. Watch whatever the hell you want on Netflix.
16. Spend some quality time with your dog.
17. Do laundry. Revel in how there aren’t 1,436 loads.
18. Don’t handle poop.
19. Walk barefoot in your house. No toys? Exactly.
20. Stare at the floor of your car. Soon you’ll forget what it looks like.
21. Clean a room in the morning. Clean another room in the afternoon. In the evening, delight in the way BOTH ROOMS ARE STILL CLEAN as opposed to re-destroyed in a sickening cycle of cat-and-mouse games. (By the time you clean one area of the house the other area is destroyed so you just keep going around and around and around cleaning rooms while others get destroyed, feeling the cat on your tail, wondering why you do it at all but also unable to function in the borderline-subhuman condition known as “kids in home.”)
22. Get yourself ready. Right. Yes. That. Get YOURSELF ready and then leave.
23. And then go on a trip, I guess, but not because you won’t ever get to again, rather because this is the last time you’ll go on a trip by yourselves when you won’t be oddly, frighteningly, inexplicably missing the insanity of numbers 1-22, just a little, as you walk around that gorgeous beach without your kids, thinking simultaneously “God it’s nice they’re gone” and “Damn I miss those little bastards so much. WHEN DO WE GO HOME?”

Now THAT is a fucking babymoon.

We’ll just call our trip to Monterey our 4th baby “babymoon.” Wait. Does that exist? Is that a thing? Since HE DIDN’T LICK MY FACE IN THIS ONE (I yelled at him), we’ll use this to prove we’re a romantic couple that takes babymoons and shit.