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.