The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

Alice rarely asks to be held in public any more, but we recently attended a fundraiser a local friend held for the orphanage they adopted their daughter from in Haiti, and between the noise, the crowds, and the fact that we had been up since 4:30 am, Alice begged to be held. And just for a minute (before my back, hips and arms started to protest) she felt so small again.

(Compare with these, of week old Alice. It’s a good think I am already pregnant again, because that little foot poking out may have given me baby rabies otherwise.)

Since I travel in a community of mothers, postpartum depression comes up with enough regularity that it is not strange to talk about, but it is also not a subject that people are completely at ease discussing. PPD is scary, in part because it isn’t something we can anticipate. It’s like a car crash or a tornado – an act of God over which we have no control. It could happen to any of us, so talking about it feels like tempting the dragon, pushing our luck. So, when PPD comes up, we talk about it in vague terms, in generalizations and anecdotes. We know someone who went through it, we heard a report on NPR, we read a great article in Mothering. If we do venture to say we survived it, we do not go into details. We wouldn’t describe a car crash in good company, after all.

Since I rarely actually talk about that first year of Alice’s life and how I struggled, sometimes it feels like I made it all up. Like I am blowing what I went through out of proportion, and that claiming to have had PPD is disrespectful to those who really had it. I did not take medication, I did not hurt my children, I “got over it”. Time dulls pain, and fear that I could fall into that abyss again kicks my denial into high gear. I don’t speak up when someone asks how people overcame PPD, because what would I know about that? I was just a little sad, a little blue, right?

But then I come across an article like this one, and I feel like someone is holding my eyes open “Clockwork Orange” style, reminding me that I wasted an entire year of my life, of Tom’s life, of my children’s lives, fighting with that bear. Each item on the list brings back a rush of memories that make me want to shield my face, to turn away. It hurts too much. And yet, I keep reading. I keep remembering. I keep reminding myself that I lived through all of this, and that I do not have to do it again. I know too much now to ignore the signs, to think that it is okay to feel so numb and angry and scared all at the same time. There is a good chance that I won’t have to face it down again – I was fine after Ella’s birth, which was one of the reasons I was so unprepared to fight it after Alice’s – but if I do have to face PPD again, I refuse to waste my time wondering and waiting. I refuse to waste another year of our lives.

I have a plan of attack, a worst case scenario tool kit of diet, supplements, yoga, acupuncture. But mostly I just plan to talk about it, even when it is uncomfortable. I plan to ask for help, and take the help that is offered. I plan to let myself be supported. And the next time someone asks about PPD, I am going to be honest with them, and with myself.

We’ve been talking about having chickens in the backyard ever since we came up with the plan to move back to the little house, and now that we are here, Ella won’t let us live it down. Eventually we plan to convert both the front and back yard from lawn to garden, but since this summer we will still be renovating, and Polliwog will still be so little, we are trying not to put too much on our plates. Ella is willing to put off the garden and tree house this year, but chickens seems to be nonnegotiable. She asks nightly to read her egg book, she loves to watch the HenCam, and she looks skeptically at store bought eggs, because “You know mom, if we had our chickens, we wouldn’t have to buy these.” After talking it over, chickens do seem like a logical place to start, since once we start the garden we’ll need to learn canning and preserving right away as well, so if this isn’t the year for chickens, it won’t be for a while.

According to everything I’ve found, in Spokane we are limited to three chickens (no roosters), which sounds just about right for us anyway. Tom is excited to build a little coop, and this “Garden Coop” looks perfect. I’m doing some research on breeds , and the basics of how to keep them alive, but right now, it seems fairly simple. Hopefully by the time the back yard is green again, we’ll have a small coop back there behind the garage.

Resources we’ve found helpful:

Craig’s series on raising urban chickens, and building a coop of his own design

Urban Chickens

Backyard Chickens

My Pet Chicken

Mad City Chickens

And be careful doing research ya’ll – even searching for “Chickens” at your local library, you may fall into a “How to catch a predator” trap. Stay classy Spokane!

I finally found my camera cords (in the toaster! Logically!), so I will do a full house update soon, but thought these two pictures give a good perspective on how far we’ve come. It’s frustrating to know that we still have so far to go sometimes, but then I look back I realize that Tom has worked miracles in this house, on a very small budget, doing the majority of the work with his own hands, while working a high stress 50 hour a week job, and taking care of his pathetically pregnant wife.

His birthday is in a few weeks – maybe I’ll give him his first day off in a year.

Joyful thing #1, our family portrait scribbled on the edge of an electricity bill.

Joyful thing #2, a functional (though not yet inspirational) sewing/knitting/making a mess area.

Joyful thing #3 – That Alice runs around singing all day long. (“Oh Suzannah” is first, then “If you’re happy and you know it, clap clap” and then she tells you what she wants to name the baby.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(Feed readers, you have to click over for the audio player)

Joyful thing #4 – That this belly just keeps growing. 29 weeks, and I’ve only fallen over from being front heavy 29367236 times.

We’ve been in the little house less than a week, and there are still many, many things in boxes, but this is already home.* This is the house where, on our second date, Tom introduced me as his girlfriend. This is where I cooked him dinner for the first time (a disaster, since I was a vegetarian and very out of practice in cooking steak). This is the house where I spent so much time that my best friend thought I had moved out without telling her. This is the house where we found out I was pregnant with Ella, and where we went through the misery of thinking we had lost her. This is where we took out loans to ‘clean up’ the house, in hopes of making it less of a bachelor pad (it didn’t work). This is where I finally felt like I had a home, after 21 years of being a gypsy. We brought Ella home here, she learned to walk here. This is where Tom proposed.

I think if we were not moving here, leaving the big house would have been harder. Ella turned one (two, three, and four) there. Again, we painted and tried to make the house our own. We got married, graduated, and traveled while living there. I had such a badass craft room.We spent a lot of summer nights in the back yard, and I was completely spoiled by the hot tub. We’ve made wonderful friends, and Tom finally found a job worth keeping. We found out we were expecting Alice, and Polliwog there, and my sweet Alice was born in the living room. For all the big house’s faults, it is where we spent three of the best years of my life (and it is also the longest I have ever lived anywhere), and I can’t help but miss it a bit. I wonder how long it will be before I stop driving by it, thinking “My daughter was born there”?

*In case you are just tuning in at this point, Tom lived in the Little House for 10 years before I showed up, but after Ella was born, we decided we needed more space and bought the Big House. It turns out that the Big House was a Big Pain in the Butt, so we have taken the money from selling the big house and are renovating the little house so that it is not only larger, but also less scummy (it’s been a bachelor pad for 15 years – we may have been better off just burning the place down and starting over).

It’s been a great week for baby boys around here! Malachi William was born this morning, and Courtney is such a rockstar that she couldn’t even wait for the midwife to get there. Welcome Malachi, you are so blessed to be born into your little family.

But, now that both Courtney and Chelsea have had their boys, Polliwog and I are up next. T-minus 8 weeks until I am clear for homebirth (though knowing my girls, we likely have a few more weeks to prepare).  We officially moved to the little house this weekend, so at least I can start preparing my nest. Updates tomorrow, or as soon as I can find my camera cord. In the mean time, go over and check out all the chubby baby goodness.

It seems like just the other day I was welcoming Pan into the world, and now he is a big brother. Welcome Quinn, we are so, so glad you have come.

Today was going to be the first official moving day… and then Tom got called into work. At 5am. Which woke up everyone in the house (most notably the baby, who can not breath air yet, but can protest fairly effectively when she is woken up by loud noises). Hopefully Tom will be home by noon, but in the mean time, I am stealing adopting this little ritual of gratitude from Reese Dixon (which she was inspired to begin after reading A Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg). Each week of 2010, I want to shout from the rooftops “Thank you!” for some small pleasure that I would otherwise overlook or forget. I have a habit of using my paper journal as a kind of gratitude journal, writing down things that made me smile throughout the day, but for some reason bringing that ritual here feels smug, almost like bragging. I am inclined to use this space as a venting place, and keep my joy quiet and hidden, but that is a character flaw that I’m afraid makes me a bit of a Debbie Downer. (Waaa waaaaaa)

And since we are at the end of the second week of 2010, today we are playing catch-up.

#1

Reading at our make-shift counter at the little house, while Tom tiles the bathroom and the girls play hide-and-go-seek in empty rooms. I took this picture on a whim, but realized when it uploaded that it captures most of the important aspects of who I am today. Baby belly, book, coffee, toys, phone, journal, wedding ring, pretty pen. What else could you possibly need to know about me?

#2

I regularly find Ella curled up on the couch, reading or drawing. When she caught me taking this picture, she went into a 10 minute explination of the story she was writing about a dragon who had accidentally scared a princess and was banished to live alone in a cave. Since the cave was ugly and dark, he decided to paint it, but the only person who had blue paint was the princess. She hadn’t worked out how to finish the story, but dismissed all of my ideas. I’m beginning to think that my Creative Writing degree doesn’t hold much water with the preschool set.

I’ve been avoiding posting, since all I can think about is the fact that we are still not moved, and really, who wants to hear me complain about that more? Not me, and not Tom, and I’m guessing not you.

So, since I can not spend my time nesting over there, I have been virtually nesting. I recently walked into a friend’s new house and thought “Oh yes, this is their home”, because in every corner there was a thoughtfully chosen item which reflected who they are. I can’t say the same for our house, and it’s part of the reason I’m antsy to move. When we leave this house, we are leaving behind the rooms (and rooms) of very generously handed-down furniture that Tom’s parents have given us over the years, and condensing down what we own, keeping only what we actually like (imagine that). I’ve ranted plenty about how having 3000 sq ft to fill sent me into hoarding mode, but it’s never clearer than when you consider how much unnecessary and unused furniture we own. His parents are taking some of it back (for their lake house) and we are selling other pieces (yay craigslist) and unlike my collections of small things, I have no anxiety about waving good bye to mattresses, dressers, couches and dining room tables.

There is still a lot of work to be done at the little house before it is “finished” (aka, before the bedrooms and bathroom downstairs are usable, before the kitchen is fully remodeled, and before we can knock down the wall in the living room and open up the house) but I’m taking the long view here. These little idea boards are for the finished house, not the house we are moving into (hopefully this weekend). Imagining and visualizing what could be will be is giving me a bit more patience with this transition. We are moving  into our home, and while it will be in flux for a while, as long as I have a vision and work towards is, I hopefully won’t obsess about what isn’t going according to plan.

I had planned to write out my thoughts on each of these rooms, but it’s 1am, and if I don’t post this tonight Tiffany will call me again tomorrow and ask if I am alive. Hopefully tomorrow I will have a chance to add notes over on Flickr.

The dining room.

The girls’ room.

Our room.

Next time: Kitchen, living room, playroom and bathrooms.