Days of Whine and Roses

Really, I’m fine.

Of course, it’s possible that I’ve said the word “fine”so many times over the last month or so that the word has ceased to have any meaning.

“How are you?”

Fine.

“No, I mean really. How are you?”

Still fine.

“But you have . . . you know . . . breast cancer (these words are almost always whispered). Are you sure?”

Oh, wait. Breast cancer. Let me double check. Yep. I’m fine.

I don’t have a death sentence. I’m not departing this mortal realm. I am simply going to be inconvenienced. And lopsided. Reconstruction will be great, but let’s face it. I won’t be a truly matched set ever again.

But yes, I’m fine.

I’m going about my days the same way I always do. I get up, yell at the kids to eat breakfast and get dressed and stop touching one another and put on their shoes and brush their teeth and get in the $%&^* car or we’re going to be late and stop touching one another. Then I go to work, pick up the kids at school and then yell at them to keep the Oreos in the kitchen and stop touching one another and do their homework and eat their dinner and stop touching one another and take a shower and brush your teeth and stop touching one another and go to ^%&%( sleep. I watch TV with my husband and go to bed.

During all of that, I am fine.

However, thanks to a bladder that has been tapdanced upon by my beloved minions, I have to get up in the middle of the night to pee and that’s when my mind starts to wander and maybe I’m not so fine.

Because, really, what if I’m not fine?

What if it really, really hurts for them to amputate my breast?

What if a reconstructed boob feels like a rock sitting on my chest for the rest of my life?

What if it comes back?

What if I need chemo and lose my hair?

What if someone comes to visit during my recovery and my house looks like a small atomic bomb went off in it and now I’m not the breast cancer survivor but I’m the woman who needs to go on “Hoarders?”

That’s when I have to circle back around to the “I’m fine” mantra. Not dying. Just lopsided. Which kind of matches my cockeyed sense of humor about the whole thing anyway.

Which is fine.

After being poked and prodded and biopsied and MRI’d this week, it looks like my best option is a single mastectomy with reconstruction. So, it looks like it’s bye-bye, boobie. 

I feel very badly for my breast. I feel like I haven’t done enough for it in this life. I mean, sure, it’s known it’s fair share of attention and my husband is quite fond of it and its mate. But I never have flashed it at Mardi Gras. Or taken it to see Paris. Or bared it at a nude beach. It’s spent most of it’s life encased in a bra, getting poked by underwire and cursed by the dreaded underboob sweat. (Although, in the interest of full disclosure, it was wiping off the dreaded underboob sweat that led me to finding the lump that put me on this path: Respect the underboob sweat!)

I have weird visions of what a reconstructed breast will look like. For some reason, I keep picturing a Madonna-cone bra shape sitting next to my middle-aged, saggy, underboob sweat-soaked friend on the left side. I have since learned that it is the law in most states that insurance companies cover surgery on the unaffected breast in order to achieve a symmetrical appearance. (Must have missed that day in law school.) That certainly elicited a sigh of relief, as I was afraid of being left after surgery with cross-eyed boobs – one pointing straight ahead and the other pointing at my feet.

So my left-side will also get what my husband has affectionately termed a “freshening up.” He may be looking forward to that a little bit more than I am.

I was very excited at the reconstruction option that included taking fat from my abdomen to reconstruct my breast. I’m picturing a C-cup sized melon baller taking out a big scoop. And God knows, I’ve got plenty of abdomen to go around – if anyone needs implants, I’m happy to donate! Perhaps an ad on Craigslist:

Implant quality belly fat! FREE! Pick-up only!

People keep asking me how I feel about all of this. Frankly, I don’t know how I feel about all of this. I feel like I’ve been thrust into a role:

Now appearing as Breast Cancer Patient #1 – Meredith Vartuli!

I haven’t really cried, I haven’t really raged (Anthony may beg to differ) and I haven’t really asked Why Me? I guess it’s possible I won’t do any of those things, but it’s equally possible that five minutes after I post this blog, I’ll have an epic meltdown that will have the fine folks I work with calling the men in white coats. Of course, my kids are on winter break this week, so a breakdown engendered by all the family togetherness is also possible.

But since everyone keeps asking how I am, I will say that I am overwhelmed. Not by my diagnosis, but by the outpouring of love and support. I’m touched and amazed by the offers of prayers and supports from people from every stage of my life – from people I knew in elementary school to the parents of the kids my children know in elementary school. I’ve read lots of articles that talk about how isolating cancer is, but how can I feel alone when every time I pick up my phone or check my email or log on to Facebook there’s another message of support?

I can’t thank you all enough for being there for me. And I can’t imagine ever being able to repay you for your kindness.

Oh, and before I forget. Have you made your mammogram appointment yet????

Much love – MLV

**Mad props to Cara Stevens for the title of this post. As soon as she said it, I knew I would use it as a blog title. Thanks!

I hate the color pink.

To be clear, I am not referring to the “pinkification” of our daughters. My daughter, completely of her own accord and despite constant discouragement from me, adores the color pink. While listening to the oldies station when she was about 3, she heard Springsteen’s “Pink Cadillac” immediately followed by John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses” and thus her life’s goals were born – to live in a pink house and drive a pink car. God bless her. It’s not for me.

I’ve always looked askance (SAT word!) at the persistent use of pink in connection with the breast cancer fight. Not because I don’t support the cause, but because the color makes my eyelid twitch. Walking around any suburban mall during Breast Cancer Awareness month, you are assaulted by pink stand-up mixers, pink cupcakes and pink athletic supporters. Does it all have to be so Pepto-Bismol-y?

To reiterate, I hate pink.

I like to think that my humor is my greatest strength. Everything can be funny if you cock your head to the side and get a slightly different perspective. So I am choosing to find the funny now.

Cause it turns out I’ve got the breast cancer and the pink ribbons, stand-up mixers and athletic supporters are for me.

Sonofabitch.

I like my boobs. They may point due south and they may fall into my armpits when I lie down and there may be stray hairs I have to pluck every few days, but they’ve been with me a lot of years. And while I didn’t find them all that cooperative when trying to breastfeed twins or feeding an 11.5 pound baby who probably would have preferred a hunk of Italian sausage, I never considered that they wouldn’t always be here.

I’m still not sure what my treatment plan is going to be. I may keep both of the girls, I may lose one or even two. I don’t really know much of anything yet. But I do know that if I hadn’t decided that my New Year’s resolution was going to be to stop putting off a mammogram and get the girls squished, I wouldn’t know what I know and I wouldn’t be assembling my army and getting ready to fight.

So go get your boobies squished and say a little prayer for me that all will be well. My early prognosis is good and there is no reason to think that I won’t be nagging my granddaughters to get mammograms.

And maybe I’ll buy my husband a pink athletic supporter. Because you’ve got to find the funny.

In the grand scheme of things, I haven’t been a parent that long. Although there are days when it seems that these screaming howler monkeys have been tearing my house apart and eating my good stash of chocolate for an eternity, they’ve really only been torturing me for about six and a half years at the most.

I accept that I’m still kind of a rookie.

As such, I know that there are people out there who are much better at the parenting thing than I am. I count among these folks their teachers, their friends’ parents, the cashier at the grocery store who supports their quest for a candy bar and pretty much anyone on Pinterest who claims to have never yelled at their kids or dragged a screaming kid out of Target.

What I did not expect at this stage of the game was to be outparented by a freakin’ stuffed elf.

Our “Elf on the Shelf” is a little stuffed elf with a skinny red body, an impish grin, and blue eyes that freakily follow you around the room like those paintings in Scooby Doo cartoons. He has been lovingly named Ignatius Thistlewhite or Iggy for short.

**Tangent** I’ll give $5 to anyone who knows who the original Ignatius Thistlewhite is. Just kidding. I don’t have $5 to give anyone. It’s less than a month before Christmas! But still, the first to post in the comments that they know who Ignatius Thistlewhite is will gain my undying respect. **Tangent Over**

For those of you unfamiliar with the legend of the Elf on the Shelf, the Cliff Notes version is thus – this little elf comes to your house around Thanksgiving, hangs out all day watching your kids, reports their behavior back to Santa and returns the next day.

And my kids pay attention to him infinitely more than they have ever paid attention to me.

“Iggy doesn’t want me to whine about doing homework? OK, I’ll do it with a smile on my face and ask him to tell Santa how much I love doing homework.”

“Iggy wants me to clean my room? Mom, come help me make my bed so Iggy can tell Santa what a good job I did.”

“Iggy wants me to eat corn, which until this point I’ve treated as the equivalent of a bowl full of hemlock? Bring on the Green Giant and his little Nibblets of goodness.”

Granted, Iggy doesn’t yell. Or threaten. Or have steam coming out of his ears because there is underwear on the floor of the living room every night. (Really? Really???)

There are perks that I get that the elf doesn’t. If one touches Iggy, he loses his magic. No magic means no nightly reports to the fat guy in the red suit who makes all the toys. Not so with me. I get touched all day long.

By my girl who isn’t happy unless she has physically attached herself to another person.

By my youngest who still hasn’t figured out that sticking a sharp elbow in my soft belly turns Mama into screaming howler monkey.

By my oldest who is turning so gawky and lanky that snuggling him is like holding a bag of legs.

So, Iggy’s a better parent than I am. But I get the snuggles. All in all, he may be better at getting them to behave, but I still get the best of them.

Now if he could only get them to pick their underwear up off my living room floor!

Am I Mom enough?

According to a recent article in Time magazine, not so much. In order to be “mom enough,” you have to breastfeed for 2+ years, co-sleep and “wear” your baby.

If that’s the criteria, then I am clearly not mom enough.

Much as I loved my multiple bouts of clogged ducts and mastitis, my kids were primarily formula fed. The fact that they are all healthy as horses means just about nothing. Of course, horsemilk produced by a nursing mare loses most of its nutrients once the mare has been lactating about four months, so who knows how healthy those horses really are. I’m certain they’d be much healthier if mares lactated for a couple of years or so.

I did co-sleep for about 5 months with my kids, but I did not welcome these kids into my bed. I used a great co-sleeper that attached to my bed. I share enough with these children – my bathroom breaks, my chocolate stash, my uterus. Can’t I have one thing that belongs to me (and my husband) alone?

Baby-wearing? I tried it with my youngest. Have I mentioned that he weighed 11.5 pounds at birth? I stuck him in a sling, promptly threw my back out and couldn’t get out of a hard-backed chair for three days. Another mark in the “not mom enough” column.

My twins will be six in less than a month, and my youngest will be four this summer. No one is more amazed than I am that these kids are still alive, but doesn’t that mean that I’ve done something right? Haven’t there been instances in the past six years where I have been “mom enough?”

Like the weekend all three kids had the norovirus, and I cleaned up explosive poop and vomit nonstop for 72 hours straight.

Or the morning sickness that lasted all damn day for seven months (twice), only to be replaced by symphysis pubis dysfunction for almost three months (twice – and for those lucky enough to not know what this is, don’t Google it. Just reading about it will make you cry.)

What about when I didn’t sleep for almost a week, because my twins each got the swine flu and their fevers were so high, I was afraid to close my eyes for fear that they would develop febrile seizures?

Oh, I know. How about the time we were flying from Florida to New York and thirty seconds after the plane took off, my son (who was eleven months old at the time) leaked pee and poop out of his diaper all over my lap and, while I had the foresight to pack a diaper bag full of supplies for him, I didn’t have a change of clothes for myself and spent two and a half hours smelling like a gas station bathroom?

Hasn’t all the wiping I’ve done – bums and tears – qualified me as “mom enough?”

The love and the worry and the hugs and the time-outs and the sleepless nights and the morning snuggles and the tears on the first day of school and the feeling that my heart is going to burst out of my chest when I see my kids do the right thing – aren’t these the things that make me “mom enough?”

If you want to breastfeed for longer than the WHO recommended two years, then by all means, nurse away. If you believe that extended breastfeeding is what is best for you and your child, then I will defend your right to do so at the top of my lungs.

If you want to share your bed with your child and wear him around your body because you both love it, then screw the naysayers and do what you want to do.

As long as you’re doing what feels right for you and your child is thriving, then you are most assuredly “mom enough.”

And shame on anyone who thinks that if you don’t parent the way they do, you are somehow less of a mother.

To all the mothers out there, the nursing and formula-feeding, the co-sleeping and the CIO proponents, the yellers and the baby-whisperers – Happy Mother’s Day!

In case you’ve been living in a cave, you probably know that Mother’s Day is this weekend. (And if you didn’t know, then get your virtual butt over to any one of the thousands of online flower/gift/chocolate sites and send something to your mother, you rotten kid!).

Hallmark and jewelry store commercials dominate the airwaves this time of year, with soft focus visions of cherubic elementary schoolers bringing their beloved mom burnt toast and undercooked eggs in bed, while the Dad in the perfectly-ironed PJ’s hides a box from Kay Jewelers behind his back. The Hallmark mom (who, by the way, has perfect hair and make-up and clearly hasn’t been roused from her blissful sleep by either the smoke alarm or children arguing over who gets to over-butter the toast) basks in her early morning wake-up call, and gives nary a thought to the disaster that her children have made of the kitchen or how big a dent the father has put in this month’s budget with his undoubtedly last minute trip to the jewelry store.

You just know how the rest of the day goes for the Hallmark mom, don’t you? She spends the day surrounded by her family, basking in their love and affection and savoring every single moment with them on her special day. Because, the commercials will have you believe, the best way – indeed, the only way – to spend Mother’s Day is with the people who made you a mother to begin with. Mother’s Day just isn’t Mother’s Day without your children.

Let me be clear here that I adore my children. Each year, I wear the macaroni necklaces they make me with pride and I look forward to the Mother’s Day presentations at school, even when my kids get up in front of all the other moms and tell them that I take lots of naps and drink all day long (to clarify – I haven’t had a nap in six years and I don’t drink all day long. I drink all night long. There is a difference.). Handmade cards and paper flowers are infinitely more special than anything you could buy in a store.

But you know what I really want for Mother’s Day? What would make the day perfect for me?

I want to be alone (if you don’t mind, please re-read the preceding sentence while imitating Greta Garbo – it makes it much more entertaining).

Yes, I love my children. Yes, I love my husband. Yes, I want to be spend time with them.

But, let’s be honest. I spend time with these kids every. freakin’. day. I’m feeding them, bathing them, taking them to and from school, running Daisy Scout meetings, hanging out on the playground, being their class parent, wiping their bums and getting them water at three in the morning.

Is it too much to ask for a day off?

Imagine, just for a moment, a whole day celebrating what we moms do every single day that doesn’t require us to do what we do every single day? A day of no cooking, no cleaning, no bum-wiping, no fight-mediation, no being responsible for another person.

A day where, for the first time since giving birth to our first child, we can do whatever we want? We could take a nap. Or get a pedicure. Or watch the 4 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy that we have DVR’d. Or simply not have to clean the kitchen after our little cherubs have made us breakfast and managed to smear jelly all over every flat surface in the room. Just for a moment, imagine the bliss. Are you imagining it? Because in my mind, the bliss is pretty freakin’ awesome.

I love these kids. There was a time I never thought I’d have them. But sometimes, I need to remember that I continue to exist without them.

What better way to do that than to kick them all out of the house on my big, special day? What better way to remember how lucky I am to be a mother than to have a day off from all the mothering?

And I promise, I’ll wear my macaroni necklace all day long.

I was a big Nancy Drew fan when I was a kid. I spent hour after hour envying her titian-hair, her sporty convertible, and, of course, all the interesting mysteries that took place right in her little home town. My little home town was nowhere near as interesting as Nancy’s. The greatest mystery I encountered as a Nancy Drew reader was trying to crack the code on getting my dad to buy me a Big Wheel (a task at which I was not successful).

Little did I know that as a mother, my life would be filled with more mystery, intrigue and mind-bending conundrums (conundra? conundrii? Discuss below.) than even Nancy could handle.

There are the little brainteasers that crop up most every day:

• Who spilled the milk?
• Who colored on the wall with permanent marker that will never come off no matter how much money I spend on Mr. Clean Magic Erasers and did I mention that we’re living in a rental house while we’re renovating our house and now we’ll never get our security deposit back?
• Where are your sneakers? Shoes? Backpacks? Lunchboxes?
• Who ate the last piece of Godiva chocolate that was hidden in an empty Uncle Ben’s box of rice on the top shelf of the pantry behind the corn starch and underneath three cans of evaporated milk that may or may not have been in my grandmother’s kitchen 25 years ago?

Then there are the more complex head-scratchers that need to be addressed with a certain sense of urgency in order to prevent unplanned trips to the emergency room, such as:

• Why is he crying?
• Why is she bleeding?
• Who hit you?
• Who hit me??
• Who moved my wine glass???

But the greatest riddle of all unfortunately centers in the bathroom. Alas, I’m not talking about the simple “who threw the wet towel on the floor?” and “why is there an entire tube of toothpaste in the sink?” inquiries. No, no. I almost welcome those little gems when faced with the biggest mystery of my day.

The question that both my husband and I are forced to ask, every single day of our lives, and sometimes more than once is this . . .

Who pooped and . . . dun, dun, dun . . . didn’t wipe?

(My apologies to the squeamish among you, although if you’re reading this blog, or a “mommy” blog in general, you have to figure that eventually you’re going to see the word “poop,” right?)

I have probably spent a cumulative year of my life potty-training these three kids. I have doled out M&M’s like little gold coins, done the potty dance until my hamstrings screamed in protest, made grandiose promises of big kid beds and fancy-schmancy Lightning McQueen and Hello Kitty underwear, cajoled, threatened and begged to get these kids to pee and poop on the potty. I have experienced some pretty big accomplishments in my life (passing two bar exams, learning to ride a two-wheeler, mastering a stick shift), but nothing compared to the joy I felt the first time I went to Target and realized I never had to walk through the diaper/Pull-Up aisle again.

It appears, however, that my potty-trainer accomplishments did not accomplish all that I wanted them to. I refer, specifically, to the wiping and flushing aspects of toileting.

Nothing turns even the most battle-hardened mother’s stomach quite like seeing an unflushed toilet with solid waste and no toilet paper. I’m not a stickler for flushing when the kids go #1. With five people living in this house, if they flushed every time they peed, our water bill would probably be hundreds of dollars a month. I can explain away their flushing inadequacies by believing that my children are just trying to be “green.”

I just can’t ignore an unflushed toilet after #2. And the lack of toilet paper in such a toilet may just be the thing that sends this mama straight to that nice, padded room wearing one of those stylish white jackets with all the straps and buckles.

My children claim to have the answer to the question of who pooped and didn’t wipe. The most common offenders are that little brat Not Me and his obnoxious sister I Don’t Know. Occasionally, their cousins, Beats Me and silent shrug, apparently come over just to soil our bathroom as well.

But I’m the mom. I know everything. Nothing gets by me. I solve every mystery and know the answer to every question before it is asked. I may not know in the moment who pooped and didn’t wipe. But I will find out. I always find out.

Today, all will be revealed. The mystery will be solved and questions will have answers. For today?

Today is laundry day.