Dirty Little Nasties

Welcome to Diet Zehlahlum! The Saturday feature that from the Zehlahlum Family that you love because it's not your life! Diet Zehlahlum is "lite" on stress, seriousness, and thought. Please note that the title Diet Zehlahlum makes no guarantee that you will lose weight while reading. In fact, we recommend that if you want to lose weight you step away from the computer AFTER reading this post and try some jumping jacks or something.

Today's Diet Zehlahlum is all about my nasty kids. 

Enjoy.

Dear Children,

You are very gross. All of you. I just scrubbed every bathroom in the house and I have absolute evidence of your combined nastiness. Did I mention that I scrubbed the floor on my hands and knees? Around the toilet! Revolting. I know you don't understand now, but as your loving grossed out mother, let me assure you that your day is coming. You will know/scrub the depth of your filth. Until that glorious day (for me) I need you to either learn to levitate so you're not dirtying up the floor or if you find that "impossible" because you are lazy not magical then at least learn to aim. 

Love,

Mommy

Falling

Since we brought Little Miss home just over ten months ago-- Wow, can we just stop and let that sink in for a minute? Ten months. -- Anyway, since we brought her home I've felt like I've been falling.

Falling. Falling. Falling. 


We were a "good" family. We loved each other, we loved God, we were happy, we loved our sons, we wanted to adopt, we never thought we'd get a daughter, then we found Little Miss, and we wanted her, desperately.

And then we got her. Boy, did we ever.

It started immediately. I was falling, hard, fast, without warning and without control. I was falling and I didn't know if I would ever land. People said there was an end to it, but people lie. No one could tell me when I would land or what was at the bottom of this fall.

Then suddenly it wasn't just a free-fall. It was a death-match free fall. I wasn't just falling endlessly into oblivion. I was crashing into rocks and bouncing off. Now I was falling scratched, broken, and bleeding. I wasn't just scared and helpless. I was scared, helpless, hurting, and wounded. It wasn't just wondering if I would ever find the bottom. It was wondering if I would survive hitting the bottom.

Nothing was getting better. Or at least it was so awful that even if something did get a little bit better it was still so awful that it didn't really count. Maybe that sounds shallow or selfish or glass-half-empty-ish, but it's true. People would tell me that I needed to see the progress or whatever bogus line they had for it. Here's the thing. Suppose that you suddenly find yourself falling from an airplane, but miraculously you can carry on a conversation from someone safe on the ground. Panic, right?

You: AHHHHHH! *****JDJAKD****JSAKHD***** (those are curse words)
Person on Ground: "Well, you've read all these books about flying so maybe you can fly. Try it."
You: "No!" Okay, resume panic.
PoG: "Calm down and think while falling to your death. What's the matter with you anyway? You knew that you were getting on an airplane and sometimes things like this happen. You should be prepared. What's wrong with you? If you weren't ready for this possibility you should have never gotten on the airplane."
You: AHHHHHHH!!!! 
PoG: "Do you have a parachute? I've never fallen from the sky, but a friend of mine did and she had a parachute and she was fine."
You: AHHHHHH!!! I don't have one!
PoG: Parachute.  A parachute won't stop you from falling, but maybe it will stop you from dying. A parachute would be good. Too bad you don't have one.
You: Falling. Falling. Falling.
PoG: Do you have a handkerchief?
You: Yes! OMG, yes! What do I do now?
PoG: Wipe your face, you're a mess.
You: Okay! Okay! I wiped my face! Now what?! How does this stop me from dying?
PoG: It's just a handkerchief. It won't stop you from dying, but look on the bright side, now you won't die with a dirty face.

So excuse me for not "celebrating the small victories" along the way, but yeah, that's my analogy.


***Just the facts, ma'am: This post is now a little old as you figured out in the first sentence if you're a loyal and good reader, we're now closing in on a year, we've passed ten and eleven months and next up is a year. So even though the tone of this is maybe not interpretive dance by frolicking unicorns  (were you expecting that?) it's old so don't feel like you need to start mailing me your Z.*** 

Suspense

I've been a bad blogger lately. I know it. You have my deepest apologies and regrets...at least you would if blogging was the only or even the most important thing I had going on in my life, but alas, it's not so get over yourself and especially get over me. I'm way better on blog than I am in person so don't be harboring any delusions about my Cool Level.

Remember how I mentioned  (I may or may not be able to find a link here) that my brain is so scattered that I'm barely getting anything done even by the broadest definitions? Well, here's a concrete example. These are all the posts that I started to write in March that I never actually finished....

1. A book review of "The Princess and the Pea" by Rachel Isadora.
2. Batten Down the Hatches
3. Unbreakable
4. Resources
5. Go Jamey Go!
6. Excellent Excerpts
7. Parenting Rant
8. F is for...
9. Lent
10. Falling (which I thought I published, but apparently not) 
11. Spreading Sunshine since 2009
12. Neediness

What do you think? Which one makes your antennae (that is a seriously weird word to spell) go up and you'd want to read first? Or maybe you're edging your mouse closer to the Unfollow button. It's okay. I understand. My blog is an acquired taste. It goes down easier with a shot of vodka spoonful of sugar. Hang in there and let me know what you want to read about.

Easy Street

That title was a joke. Ha. Ha. Ha. (insert angry frowny face) I recently admitted that I've been harboring love for my daughter for awhile now. Note, that I did NOT say that I've been harboring loving FEELINGS for my daughter. I'm guessing those feelings are on Easy Street....and I have no stinkin' idea where the heck Easy Street is. If anyone has a suggested location, or even better GPS coordinates, please let me know. I will go and chain and myself to a fire hydrant there.

I guess I was hoping that after admitting that I probably do love the little firecracker that I'd be swamped with "lovin' feelings" and be washed away to Easy Street. (Anyone else humming the song while visualizing that bar scene from Top Gun?) Well, that hasn't happened. In fact, after my admission my brain took a dramatic dip into Neanderthal Mom whereby I act like a hulking, emotionless, thoughtless, but upright jerk. Seriously. I loathe the way that I act sometimes. What is wrong with me? (Don't answer that, it was rhetorical.)

Something that I am slowly learning and then forgetting and making all those around me suffer and then painfully relearning and then repeating the cycle a week or two later is that this "transition period" itself is a Tower of Terror cycle. Our cycle seems to go between "We're okay! This is hard! We can do it! Gumption! Strength! Booze! Long-suffering! Victory!" and then I cycle back down into "Panic! Fear! Anger! Get me out of here! Booze! I'm the victim! Mental breakdown! Run away!" And then I lie back in misery and desperation and whinningness and wait for that phase to go away and then I creep back into the first phase and then find myself sliding back unaware into the bad phase again.

I don't like these cycles. (Anyone have some mood stabilizer that they want to toss my way?) But maybe, maybe, maybe, now that I know that these cycles are coming I'll start to be less surprised by them? It doesn't help that I am an emotional person. I just am. Wherever my brain is, that is where I think it's going to stay FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I call this "Foreverizing" and I'm not sure it's healthy... I'm also an external processor (you're not surprised by that are you?) and so that means that every time I'm cycling through a bad phase that I make all my poor poor friends ride through it with me and I blast their inboxes with my assurances of impending Zehlahlum Doom. All this together? Make me sound crazy. Hardcore. I promise I'm less crazy than I sound. Pretty sure I am anyway...but let's not use this blog post as evidence.

So yeah, we've been in a bad phase lately. I'm not proud of it and I've got to figure out some better coping skills, but I think I'm on my way out of it again. I think I need a catch phrase that I can put on a t-shirt and not take off during a bad phase.

"Persevere! Shut up! Drink! Smile! Work through it anyway!"

I don't know. What do you think?