A baby Savant manifesto

Being pregnant is one of the strangest things that has ever happened to me. And to be brutally honest, I fucking hate it. I'm uncomfortable; too hot too cold too tired awake at 3 am peeing every 20 minutes stuffing my face heartburn constipated diarrhea puking migraine rhinitis of pregnancy OMGWTFBBY!!!!1 Maybe it's because I am, at heart, a narcissist, and the fact that no one gives a flying fuck how I'm doing as long as the embryo/fetus/grandbaby is fine is pretty disturbing. Or maybe it's the sheer overwhelming tonnage of guilt, shame and fear that's suddenly shoveled upon pregnant women. What am I eating? When am I sleeping? How much am I exercising? Why am I/am I not doing/not doing or buying or behaving or feeling this, that or the other way?

For fuck's sake. I'm 4 and a half months along and I'm already so sick of it. Yes, I'm drinking my usual two cups of fully caffeinated Starbucks coffee every morning. Yes, today I'm going to Arby's for lunch instead of choking down some tofu salad wheat grass organic crap. Yes, I'm taking Sudafed and Tylenol and Claritin and I clung to the anti-nausea drug Zofran like a drowning woman to a splintered wood plank. And yes, sometimes I give myself a pass and smoke cigarettes. Yes, I'm going back to work as soon as I possibly can after Savant Spawn is born. No, I abso-fucking-lutely refuse to breastfeed, reject completely this "attachment parenting" bullshit and am already researching daycare options. You got a problem with that? I'm sure you do. And I don't care.

I've always been good at decision-making. Sometimes, I know, I am too hasty, but I don't have many regrets about the choices I've made so far. So, today, I'm adopting a new credo. Fuck Guilt. I'm going to do the best I can for my little Savant based on who I am. Not on who anyone else believes I should be as a mother. I say again: Fuck guilt.

Somewhere between 'happy' and 'total fucking wreck.'

So there was life and death, right in front of me. A baby robin, fallen from the nest, nestled in the branches of a juniper bush. The dog saw it before I did and froze. And the bird, slowly, hopefully but with this certain sense of inevitability, opened its tiny beak wide. And waited. Waiting in the pulsing moments, with the hot dogs' breath of full summer brushing past, for food or water or comfort from its mother. But to me it looked like a silent scream.

That was yesterday. This morning, on my way to sign powers-of-attorney with my husband at work, I picked up a stranded, flailing earthworm and placed it back in the dirt. Hopeful.

In between, buoyed as always by the voice of my best Friend, I managed to pop my head above the surface and have been treading water for the last 36 hours. Trying to keep busy and hold the loneliness, the ache, the disconnect at bay.

Today, a child asked to take a walk with me. Asked me if I wanted to play basketball. And the apartment freakshow tried to sell me a snowblower. This is my fucking life.

Connecticut Zombies

Connecticut is filled with zombies. They all have the same pasty complexion, round, dull eyes and light brownish hair. They shuffle blankly through Stop 'N Shop. They stand as though in line at the pharmacy, but I've found out too late they're just gathering their thoughts and mustering the ... what? Courage? Motivation? to move on. If you speak to them, they struggle to comprehend; you can see their brains blink back to life and chug-a-chug to full speed before they slur an answer.

Sometimes, they chew gum. Like the doctor I saw today. She shambled into the exam room, and in a Ben Stein voice she introduced herself. She was chewing gum as though it were peanut butter. Long, drawn out mastication, of course, loudly, smacking and cracking and occasionally making sucking sounds as she moved the wad back and forth between her cheeks.

What am I supposed to do amongst these strangers? It's like the whole state is populated by Stepford folk.

Connecticut Yankee

At the beginning of April, Mr. Savant began his search for a new job. One that didn't require him to write software for Evil Soul-Sucking Health Insurance Companies, preferably. He applied for a few positions here and there. And he got a phone call from a headhunter. Who worked for ESPN. Yeah, that ESPN.

Fast forward to three weeks ago. The house is up for sale. Everything I can't live without is smushed into my tiny Subaru. Mr. Savant and Dog Savant are already in Connecticut, in an extended-stay hotel that sounds way classier than it actually is.

And I'm sobbing in the arms of one of my best friends, on her front stoop as I'm getting ready to leave the neighborhood. For good.

Since then, its been rough. Really rough. I don't know anyone here. Mr. Savant goes to work and I stay here, in the hotel and try to work and write and find new work. All the while dodging the housekeeping staff and the landscaping crews and the maintenance folks ... and it's stupid hard.
And I'm so lonely.

It shouldn't be. I've moved, on average, every three years since I was 18. I went from Pennsylvania to New Jersey for college to Phoenix, Arizona, to New York City to Philadelphia. Where I thought we'd stay. I put down roots. We were in a neighborhood. We had neighborhood yard sales and helped each other shovel snow. We had summer block parties and baby showers and we all waved at each other and stopped to chat when we walked our dogs.

Yesterday was July 4th. Mr. Savant was invited to a BBQ thrown by some ESPN folks, so we went. I was beyond thrilled -- I imagined instant connections with other ESPN wives. I imagined we'd bond over the shell-shocked, pack-up-and-move-honey-corporate-America-is-calling job offer that we'd all agree was An Offer We Couldn't Refuse. I envisioned a cross between Desperate Housewives and Mad Men, where we'd chug dirty martinis and sneak cigarettes and lament the sacrifices we made for the sake of The Most Awesome Job in the United States!

Shockingly, that didn't happen. Sure, we swapped the "Where did you live before?" and "What do you do for work?" and "How is he liking ESPN?" and we discussed setting up a book club. But on the way home Mr. Savant said, "Did you have a good time? What did you think?"

And I managed to chirp, "It was nice! I had a good time, yes!" before the tears started streaming down my cheeks. I hate it here. I just want to go home. To my house and my friends and my neighborhood and the familiar and safe. This is not like me at all.

The Best Conversation I've Ever Had With My Husband

We're watching some commercial for paint or Home Depot or something in which the teen girl paints her room purple and asks her Mom if she can dye her hair purple, too. I guess I'm supposed to think this is funny. ???

Me: I honestly don't care if, when we have kids, they want to dye their hair. It's just not a big deal to me.
Mr. Savant: I want Blueberry Juice. Ocean Spray makes Blueberry Juice.

It was just epic.

It's been two weeks. A hell of a lot has happened in two weeks. But what hasn't happened is the crushing depression, the choking anxiety and the 20-hours-a-day sleeping. No binge drinking! No binge-eating!

Chantix + Zoloft is ... well, this just must be how a person with 'normal' brain chemistry experiences this drug. I feel mostly normal, but I have no physical desire to have a cigarette. My brain is still fighting back, but without the physical coercion, I can tough out the insistence of the little addict that lives inside my head.

Of course, there are new and exciting side effects. The insomnia is killing me. Even when I do sleep, I feel as though I'm not sleeping deeply enough. And I wake up at least once a night from this restless sleep, usually at 3:30. If I can go to sleep at all. It's 11:49, and I'm WIRED.

In other news, I would like to rant about the spelling on Craigslist. It's "wrought" iron, not "rot" or "Rott" or "Rod." It's "mirror," not "mirrow," "mirra," or "mirro." In the same vein (not vain), it's "drawer," not "draw."

Until later on.

Mind-altering

This is the part of Chantix where I'm still "sober" enough for the little addict in my brain to realize she is being drugged. She's being 'duped' into not wanting cigarettes anymore. And so, she fights all the harder. She says, "Oh, no. I WANT this cigarette. In fact, maybe I'll have two. No, really, this is awesome." Her voice gets a little louder, a bit more frantic when her little sponsor says this is really fucking stupid, and it's cold, and my lungs hurt, and blergh, this tastes like shit. She starts squealing, "It FEELS GOOD. It TASTES GOOD. NO, REALLY I SWEAR ISN'T THIS AWESOME YOU KNOW YOU DON'T WANT TO STOP!!"

So, yeah, that's awesome.

Rainy Saturday

Sure enough, last night, about an hour after I took the first Chantix dose, the nausea hit followed closely by The Weird Headache. This headache is nothing like my normal sinus headaches, which make me feel as though my eyeballs are going to pop out of my skull and make my upper jaw and my cheekbones ache like they're bruised. The Weird Headache is also nothing like the migraines I sometimes get, which start at the base of my neck and -- along with the complete failure of my vision -- bring pain so severe I feel that if I could just bore a hole in my head, the sledgehammer shattering my bones from the inside could escape.

No, The Weird Headache is this vague, floating thing. It's faint, and it drifts around inside the Chantix fog and every once in awhile it thuds dully against a nerve or a pressure point in odd places inside my skull. Behind my left ear. THUD. The top of my head where I part my hair. THUD. Even sometimes the side of my neck. THUD. It floats around for about two hours and then it fades. I hate it more than the nausea.

Mr. Savant got home from work at the tail end of The Weird Headache, when I was fully engulfed in the Chantix fog. He made dinner while I wandered around the house, unsure what I was looking for. For awhile, I stood in the middle of the kitchen and stared at nothing. That's pretty awesome, isn't it?

At 7:20, I realized it was Time to Take the Zoloft! An hour after I swallowed THAT pill (better living through pharmacology, an ex-girlfriend of mine used to say) I felt the fog lift. I knitted a little bit. I was able to follow along with the plots of the two TV shows we watched (and one of them was "Lost," so, take that, Chantix!).

Today, I feel a bit foggy, but that could just be the miserable weather outside. I drove to the grocery store and managed to get everything on the list without the benefit of the actual list, which I accidentally left in the car.

The strangest part is that I don't feel the cravings if I don't smoke for awhile. Already. I've only taken one pill so far. Is it a psychosomatic thing? Placebo effect? My body 'remembering' this chemical?

The thing that I am most afraid of: getting fat. Again. I'm not even going to use the politically correct "gaining weight." I'm five feet tall and I should weigh between 100 and 115 pounds. In my 20s I weighed between 95 and 105 pounds, but I lived in New York City, chain-smoked, barely ate and walked absolutely everywhere. Now, I eat better, I've gained a lot of muscle mass through yoga and my miles and miles of daily walking, and a brief period during which I was running 10 miles a week. Now, I fluctuate from about 106 to about 113 depending on the season, the variations of my cycle and my exercise and dietary habits. I'm totally fine with this.

What I'm not going to be fine with is being 137 pounds, which was the heaviest I'd ever weighed. Thanks, Chantix. I looked like shit. I felt like shit. Nothing fit me. I jiggled when I walked. My thighs chafed together. It was really demoralizing and uncomfortable and I felt horrible about myself. Yes, I am a raging feminist who is supposed to love her body and be completely accepting of its changes and its curves. But that doesn't mean I'm immune to the societal and patriarchal pressures to be thin, toned, lean, SKINNY.

And, of course, when I quit smoking and Mr. Savant and I have a baby, that's a completely different thing. It's okay to "gain weight" if I'm pregnant. Sure, no problem. Yes, I know, it's weird. But that's just how I see it from here.

A journey of a thousand miles and all that happy horseshit

Today is Chantix, day 1. Again.

I've put off taking the stupid pill all day.

"I should wait until I eat something."

"Well, I should walk the dog first." (I used this excuse three times.)

"Oh, I have to go to the bank and deposit these checks."

"It's nap time."

"I should eat something first."

Finally, about 10 minutes ago, I ate some multigrain crackers and cheese, poured myself a Coke and opened the box. God, I forgot how stupid the packaging is for this drug. It's all long, flat boxes with pull-tabs and trendy colors -- lime green and aqua with splashes of purple.

Getting into the box filled with other boxes was hard enough. Then I couldn't get the box containing the actual pills open. Perhaps this is a sign, I thought. I shouldn't do this now. Maybe later ...

For once, I pressed on. Actually it was more like tore and shredded my way on. I stared at the little white pills in their clear blisters for a couple seconds. The first three days you're supposed to take one 0.5 milligram tablet once a day.

You're supposed to take it in the morning. And apparently on a day when you wake up to see the sun shining. I know this because next to Pills One, Two and Three is the word "Morning" and a stylized representation of the sun rendered in purple.

I almost managed to convince myself that it certainly wasn't morning and that the sun wasn't expected to reappear until after the weekend -- but that was stupid.

So, at 5:12 pm on March 12 I swallowed the pill. I'm waiting for the nausea I know is coming, followed closely by the headache. I've done this before. I hated every second of it. And now, I have to do it again.

... And home is nowhere

My mom is selling my childhood home. I don't blame her -- it's getting difficult for her, at 60, to manage and maintain a sprawling house, and she's never liked living a fifteen to twenty minute drive outside of town.

But fuck! She's selling the house! No! NO! NONONONONONOOOOO!

I learned to play guitar in that house. I had my own bedroom for the first time. We moved into that house in 1987; I was ten. I GREW UP in that house. Got my first period. Shaved my legs for the first time after Nick Q. made fun of my hairy legs during seventh-grade swimming class. I had birthday parties there. Innumerable family holidays, made all the more wacky by the fact that my mom couldn't cook to save her life.

Homecomings and learning to drive and walking down to the creek to smoke Viceroy cigarettes with my neighbor Tom. Once, a boy skiied miles to that house so he could see me during the blizzard of 1994. Breaking up with that same boy in the driveway and finding my class ring on the seat of my car the next morning. First kisses in the garage in February 1995 that made my knees buckle. Sitting on the stairs and smoking until he had to leave. Sneaking out, sneaking back in.

A secret keg party one summer when my parents were out of town for the weekend. Hair-dye parties in the kitchen and trying to make Baklava for an Art History class project. Watching my first horror movie (Witchboard) at a fifth-grade slumber party.

Whispered late-night phone calls in my bedroom, in the kitchen. And then coming home from college and feeling ... simultaneously safe and relieved and trapped and anxious. I loved and hated that house, that family that we were, the geography, the anticipation that there was so much room, so much space that we had all grown apart. We could all be home and never see each other, never have to run into one another. We had a fucking intercom system, for Christ's sake, so you could push a button and ask where your family was. We were each all alone and something was going to happen.

And when it did, it exploded in that house. We weren't ever the same after that. Fifteen years later and I still sleep poorly there. I won't be upset to let that go. But the rest ... the beautiful innocent breathtaking certainty that the world would always be okay, that the house would fill with joy and laughter instead of aching longing for the rest of it will hurt like hell.

I'm not ready for that. But I have to be. Because I have to help my mother clean out that house on Saturday.

Memory

I got an e-mail today that's got me brooding again. About the past. About a lot of things.

"Please tell me you remember this," the note said. Oh, I remember. I remember more than I should, if I were to be honest. It's as though I preserved every single moment and I just keep replaying and replaying ... like a tape that keeps flipping over. And over. And over.

I don't want to forget. I don't want to be the only one who remembers, either. I don't want time to keep passing, taking me further away and piling so many weighty days on my shoulders. It tamps down the ache. But I find myself fighting the nostalgia -- I don't want my memory to be soft and blurry around the edges. I want it sharp, raw, immediate.