Going back to work this year, I knew it wasn't going to be easy. Not only do I have Jasper at home to take care of, but I was also assigned two sections of honors classes, plus two regular freshmen classes, plus an ELD class with several lunatic boys, plus being English Language Development Department Chair, plus advising the Future Educators Association. Yet, being me, the crazy woman who loves to stay busy, I thought I could handle it all. Boy, was I mistaken.
I feel like my head is going to explode. The essays to grade are piling up, the meetings are never-ending, sleep is oh-so-elusive, and I'm starting to have fantasies of throwing a suitcase in my car and running away to Antartica. If you know how I feel about being cold, that should tell you something.
I'm envious of people with normal jobs, jobs that they can leave at 5 on Friday and not come back to until 9 on Monday. Jobs that don't require loading up a cart with stacks and stacks of papers that need to be read and commented on in between feeding a baby and shoving loads of laundry into the washing machine. I love teaching, but the school's curriculum pacing guide is, as my students would say, "doing too much." I'm drained like the heartsick heroine in Twilight. Only a lot less emo.
Oh readers out there (if you're out there), I need your help. How do I balance all of this? Someone is bound to get neglected: Jasper or my students. Right now, my sanity is the one getting the shaft. What to do, what to do, what to do? The answer is decidedly blue...
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
I knew I was in trouble when...(recollections of my childbirth class and a Supersized Me)
Being completely in the dark and woefully unprepared for Jasper's arrival, I decided that I better take a childbirth class. I attempted to sign up during the beginning of my second trimester at the hospital where I was supposed to deliver, but, as my first sign that everyone else out there is more on top of things that I am and ever will be, the classes were stuffed, booked until March. Jasper was due in mid-February. I thought this was supposed to be a baby bust?
So after calling and calling every hospital in the local area, I finally got booked into a one-day, supposedly super-intensive childbirth workshop. It was only three weeks before my due date, but it was our last shot. Plus, I was so big and miserable there was not much else I could do on cold, rainy weekends in January anyway.
Big and miserable. Who am I kidding? I was a boat, a whale, an ocean. Since finding out I was pregnant, I had been packing on the pounds like a Sumo wrestler. Was I eating junk all day long? I wish I could say that my new portly proportions were due to a steady diet of McDonald's and Ben and Jerry's cravings, but no. The only craving I ever had was peaches.Ninety-five percent of what I ate was healthy, nutritious food. Not exactly a recipe to become the Goodyear blimp. The only problem was that I was insatiably hungry, all the time. I could eat an entire bunch of bananas and half a box of Mini Wheats for breakfast or a midnight snack. Or both. My pregnancy book said a good snack was an apple with peanut butter because the balance of carbs and protein made it filling. Ha! I could have 10 and still feel like there was a big, empty hole in my stomach.
Never in my life had I had such a hard time controlling my appetite and weight. I had always been slim and in good shape, running 5K and hiking on the weekends, eating small portions, and enjoying my pick of clothing styles to wear. Out of all the difficulties in my life, my size and shape had never been one of them. After I gained ten pounds over my first year of teaching, from eating too much Mexican food my students brought for me and drinking too much wine with my friends, I simply ordered Nutrisystem and got all the weight off in three weeks.
Now I couldn't stop eating if my life depended on it. As soon as I finished one meal, I would start fantasizing about the next. Every time I went to my OB and had my weigh-in, I would talk incessantly to the nurse, hoping she would be too distracted to announce my weight. Sadly, it never worked. (And on top of that, the bitch wouldn't even let me take off my shoes. Clogs, too!).
I became large and lumbering, so much so that walking the dog around the block was total misery. This coming from the girl who easily breezed through five mile workouts just a few months back! What was happening to me? I started thinking I must be having a literally giant baby, that in my sleep I must have been impregnated by Yao Ming or that really tall dude from Turkey. Surely, all of this weight couldn't be mine.
I didn't have any pregnant friends at the time (in fact the only pregant people I knew were a couple of my high school students), and I was too embarassed to mention it to anyone anyway. Also, I knew they would tell me just to eat less, which was definitely not going to happen. I started telling myself and anyone who dared to comment about my gargantuan proportions that it was probably just water weight that had given me a huge double chin and extended my belly out so far I couldn't fit in the desks at school. Desks that even the defensive linemen from the varsity football team could easily slide in and out of.
So getting back to the day of the childbirth class. We were running late, as usual, with John, my husband, being on "filipino time" yet again. By the time we got to the Women's Center, there were no parking spaces nearby, and John refused to drop me off in the front, and had the audacity to tell me that I needed to walk. Grrrr. We had to park at the top of a parking garage, but John was kind enough to let me take the elevator down to the street. On the ride down, another pregnant couple joined us. They were both tall and granola-looking, and sure enough, they told us they were from Berkeley. The woman was slim and unbloated, with just a volley-ball sized baby bump to my three or four watermelons. After they got out of the elevator, they quickly strided ahead of us. From the back, the woman didn't look pregnant at all. Not even the slightest waddle.
"She must not be due for a while," I said to John, envious of how easily granola Berkeley woman had gotten three blocks ahead of us.
Despite the chill in the air, I panted and waddled slowly, but we finally got to the building, where I made a pee stop, and then collapsed in a chair to wait for the class to start. I looked around at the huge group of women there, most of them standing up, walking around, or stretching like they were about to go running, tiny volleyball sized bumps in tow.
"Wow," I commented to John, who was half asleep already in his chair, "I wonder why so many people are taking the class when they're still in their 2nd trimester?"
The instructor came in and had everyone introduce themselves and tell when they were due. I was one of the first, and I looked around to see impressed looks on everyone's faces when they saw that I was less than a month from my due date and still out and about. But nothing, not even a raised eyebrow.
To make matters worse, granola Berkeley woman was due only 10 days after me. She must look small because she's so tall, I tried to console myself. You're at least six inches shorter than she is, so there' s just less space for the baby to go.
But as we went around the room and everyone introduced themself and their cute little volleyballs, my worst fear was confirmed. I was the biggest one there, and most of the women were due within two weeks of me. One of the volleyball bumps was due that weekend, and she was significantly shorter than me, blowing my ill-supported height theory out of the water. I felt like total caca. Big, fat, bloated caca. With corn. And butter. Lots of it.
At the very end of the introductions, however, there was a woman who was just as big as me. Finally! She introduced herself and said that she was due in March. Aha! I was feeling so much better about myself when she dropped the bomb.
She was having twins.
I could hardly pay attention for the rest of the class, being too busy feeling like a heifer on steroids to listen while they were giving us tips on writing our birth plans and the various options for pain relievers. To make matters even worse, I overheard one of the women in the bathroom (due two weeks after me and sporting only a bocce ball size bump) telling a classmate that she was still running four miles a day and had even run that morning. Oh. my. frickin'. god. I could kill her.
I went home (after eating a gigantic vegetarian falafel and hummus wrap at the Greek place) and promptly Googled "weight loss after pregnancy."
The results were depressing. Basically, site after site said that if you gain too much weight during pregnancy you are doomed to hold onto it forever, and should simply accept your new body shape as a badge of motherhood.
It was too late. I got fat and I would always be fat.
I had never been an emotional eater, but I figured, what the hell, might as well go out with a bang.
I told John to take me to McDonald's, where I ordered a Supersized meal. For the new Supersized me.
So after calling and calling every hospital in the local area, I finally got booked into a one-day, supposedly super-intensive childbirth workshop. It was only three weeks before my due date, but it was our last shot. Plus, I was so big and miserable there was not much else I could do on cold, rainy weekends in January anyway.
Big and miserable. Who am I kidding? I was a boat, a whale, an ocean. Since finding out I was pregnant, I had been packing on the pounds like a Sumo wrestler. Was I eating junk all day long? I wish I could say that my new portly proportions were due to a steady diet of McDonald's and Ben and Jerry's cravings, but no. The only craving I ever had was peaches.Ninety-five percent of what I ate was healthy, nutritious food. Not exactly a recipe to become the Goodyear blimp. The only problem was that I was insatiably hungry, all the time. I could eat an entire bunch of bananas and half a box of Mini Wheats for breakfast or a midnight snack. Or both. My pregnancy book said a good snack was an apple with peanut butter because the balance of carbs and protein made it filling. Ha! I could have 10 and still feel like there was a big, empty hole in my stomach.
Never in my life had I had such a hard time controlling my appetite and weight. I had always been slim and in good shape, running 5K and hiking on the weekends, eating small portions, and enjoying my pick of clothing styles to wear. Out of all the difficulties in my life, my size and shape had never been one of them. After I gained ten pounds over my first year of teaching, from eating too much Mexican food my students brought for me and drinking too much wine with my friends, I simply ordered Nutrisystem and got all the weight off in three weeks.
Now I couldn't stop eating if my life depended on it. As soon as I finished one meal, I would start fantasizing about the next. Every time I went to my OB and had my weigh-in, I would talk incessantly to the nurse, hoping she would be too distracted to announce my weight. Sadly, it never worked. (And on top of that, the bitch wouldn't even let me take off my shoes. Clogs, too!).
I became large and lumbering, so much so that walking the dog around the block was total misery. This coming from the girl who easily breezed through five mile workouts just a few months back! What was happening to me? I started thinking I must be having a literally giant baby, that in my sleep I must have been impregnated by Yao Ming or that really tall dude from Turkey. Surely, all of this weight couldn't be mine.
I didn't have any pregnant friends at the time (in fact the only pregant people I knew were a couple of my high school students), and I was too embarassed to mention it to anyone anyway. Also, I knew they would tell me just to eat less, which was definitely not going to happen. I started telling myself and anyone who dared to comment about my gargantuan proportions that it was probably just water weight that had given me a huge double chin and extended my belly out so far I couldn't fit in the desks at school. Desks that even the defensive linemen from the varsity football team could easily slide in and out of.
So getting back to the day of the childbirth class. We were running late, as usual, with John, my husband, being on "filipino time" yet again. By the time we got to the Women's Center, there were no parking spaces nearby, and John refused to drop me off in the front, and had the audacity to tell me that I needed to walk. Grrrr. We had to park at the top of a parking garage, but John was kind enough to let me take the elevator down to the street. On the ride down, another pregnant couple joined us. They were both tall and granola-looking, and sure enough, they told us they were from Berkeley. The woman was slim and unbloated, with just a volley-ball sized baby bump to my three or four watermelons. After they got out of the elevator, they quickly strided ahead of us. From the back, the woman didn't look pregnant at all. Not even the slightest waddle.
"She must not be due for a while," I said to John, envious of how easily granola Berkeley woman had gotten three blocks ahead of us.
Despite the chill in the air, I panted and waddled slowly, but we finally got to the building, where I made a pee stop, and then collapsed in a chair to wait for the class to start. I looked around at the huge group of women there, most of them standing up, walking around, or stretching like they were about to go running, tiny volleyball sized bumps in tow.
"Wow," I commented to John, who was half asleep already in his chair, "I wonder why so many people are taking the class when they're still in their 2nd trimester?"
The instructor came in and had everyone introduce themselves and tell when they were due. I was one of the first, and I looked around to see impressed looks on everyone's faces when they saw that I was less than a month from my due date and still out and about. But nothing, not even a raised eyebrow.
To make matters worse, granola Berkeley woman was due only 10 days after me. She must look small because she's so tall, I tried to console myself. You're at least six inches shorter than she is, so there' s just less space for the baby to go.
But as we went around the room and everyone introduced themself and their cute little volleyballs, my worst fear was confirmed. I was the biggest one there, and most of the women were due within two weeks of me. One of the volleyball bumps was due that weekend, and she was significantly shorter than me, blowing my ill-supported height theory out of the water. I felt like total caca. Big, fat, bloated caca. With corn. And butter. Lots of it.
At the very end of the introductions, however, there was a woman who was just as big as me. Finally! She introduced herself and said that she was due in March. Aha! I was feeling so much better about myself when she dropped the bomb.
She was having twins.
I could hardly pay attention for the rest of the class, being too busy feeling like a heifer on steroids to listen while they were giving us tips on writing our birth plans and the various options for pain relievers. To make matters even worse, I overheard one of the women in the bathroom (due two weeks after me and sporting only a bocce ball size bump) telling a classmate that she was still running four miles a day and had even run that morning. Oh. my. frickin'. god. I could kill her.
I went home (after eating a gigantic vegetarian falafel and hummus wrap at the Greek place) and promptly Googled "weight loss after pregnancy."
The results were depressing. Basically, site after site said that if you gain too much weight during pregnancy you are doomed to hold onto it forever, and should simply accept your new body shape as a badge of motherhood.
It was too late. I got fat and I would always be fat.
I had never been an emotional eater, but I figured, what the hell, might as well go out with a bang.
I told John to take me to McDonald's, where I ordered a Supersized meal. For the new Supersized me.
A little post for my little page
Okay, this will be short because the baby needs some attention before he devours a plastic block and gets melamine poisoning or something, but I just wanted to open my blog by saying that I'm writing in response to the plethora of "perfect mom" sites out there. I'm so tired of hearing about all of these Superwomen! Okay, I get it. You rock and I suck. Happy now?
But seriously, do you ever just want to tell some of these supermoms to take their homemade baby food and shove it? Or have you had fantasies of strangling one of these moms with a rope made of their organic cotton, hand-washed cloth diapers?
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating just a tad. But if you can relate at all, welcome and read on!
But seriously, do you ever just want to tell some of these supermoms to take their homemade baby food and shove it? Or have you had fantasies of strangling one of these moms with a rope made of their organic cotton, hand-washed cloth diapers?
Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating just a tad. But if you can relate at all, welcome and read on!
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