Mum's the Word

She hates me and I'm not too fond of her either

This was a hellish morning. And it started at 2:45 am.

I kind of need to start at the beginning, with a little background. Had I been blogging here all along we wouldn't need this but, well, here we are.

Last fall I sustained a ridiculously serious injury. Serious in that I broke a leg, required surgery and was basically on my back for over three months. Ridiculous in that it happened because I tripped. I know - so stupid. I wasn't wearing heels, I wasn't rushing down (or up) a flight of stairs, I was on level ground. In tennis shoes. Stone cold sober. It is still difficult for me to believe that I broke a bone, let alone broke it badly enough to require surgery. But I did. Now I have a three inch plate in my leg and seven screws to match. I am a TSA screener's nightmare.

My daughter was 4 months old when it happened. That is not the time to break a leg, in case you were wondering. I actually assume you're smart enough to figure that out, but the Internet is a strange place so you never know.

Anyway.

So I broke my leg. Seven months later I'm still having chronic pain in both the leg that I broke and my lower back on that side. Whether the back pain is the result of a secondary injury from when I fell, the six week interval from the time that physical therapy (PT) was requested and the time that my worker's comp insurance got around to approving it (more on those assholes in another post) or something else, we may never know. And nobody but the insurance gives a shit anyway. The fact is that I am often in crippling, gasping pain that prevents me from walking a single step until I take both muscle relaxers and Vicodin.

I'm a laugh riot these days.

The other thing you should know is that my mother-in-law has been visiting this week. In general I get along fine with her, though I find her... quirky. The AnonaDad does too, so I know I'm not just nuts. Her visits are always punctuated with some level of weirdness but we never acknowledge it. The AnonaDad sort of stays out of the way, though I don't think he's aware he's doing it, and I wind up playing hostess. An uncomfortable, stressed out, annoyed with her husband hostess.

The AnonaGirl's first birthday party is this weekend and the AnonaDad and I have been working for months on our house. It's been stuck in the 70's since... well, the 70's and we were able to refinance recently and pull out a chunk of money. We got the AnonaDad a new car and have been pouring the rest into the house. Now that we're just days away from the party we still have a long list of things that need to be done before The Party.

So there has been that additional stress.

Everything went to hell last night. Mother-in-law, who has her own issues walking, wanted very much to buy AnonaGirl her first birthday party dress. So off to the local mall we went - AnonaGirl (who had been kind of cranky and sleepy all day), my mom (who watches AnonaGirl while I'm at work), Mother-In-Law and me. Within the first 8 minutes, Mother-In-Law wanted to sit down. My own mom and I were on a hunt - when we go bargain shopping, it is nothing less than a well-executed attack - so we left Mother-In-Law and AnonaGirl on a bench (MIL requested that, so don't think we just abandoned her) and hit the stores as quickly as possible. Found some great bargain clothes, but not the party dress of our dreams. We all finally wound up at one of the anchor stores and picked up a cute, though by no means perfect dress. Had I been able to shop around more, I would definitely have picked something else, but MIL leaves this morning, so we were out of time. When you're trying to keep everyone else happy, often your own happiness takes a back seat.

With all the hurrying around the mall, my bad leg was taking a beating. I have a terrible habit of not taking care of myself physically until it is way too late, so I was sort of a wreck when we finished. But, dress found, AnonaGirl, MIL and I headed home. Once there, I got AnonaGirl fed, changed for bed, rocked, read and sung to and tucked in with a kiss.

I was ready to cry I was in so much pain.

AnonaDad, on the other hand, was busy pulling the first set of his famous ribs from the oven. He's making them for the party, and he needed to cut them up, make their sauce and put them in bags to wait for Saturday. Thus he asked me to drive his mother back to his brother's house.

Which I did. And picked up some dinner on the way. And I only slightly cursed AnonaDad's name. Because hey, no rest for the wicked, right?

When I got back, AnonaGirl was in her crib having a meltdown. AnonaDad informed me that he'd already gone up to try to settle her down, but no dice. His duty for the evening done, I guess, I went up to try to soothe the baby. It only sort of worked. Mostly she wanted to play and goof around, so after 15 minutes I put her back in her crib and returned to my now cold hamburger and fries.

Finally, after another 20 minutes or so, AnonaGirl quieted down and I figured we were done. She's a good sleeper, generally, and once she goes down, she stays down.

Generally.

We watched a little TV and I retired by about 9:45. AnonaDad sleeps downstairs because he snores really loudly and I can't handle sleeping on the couch at the moment (it throws my already fragile back out). Things were quiet about an hour later and I got to sleep at around 11.

Cue the screams at 2:45 am.

AnonaDad later claimed that he was awake every time the baby started crying last night, but that is patently untrue because I heard him snoring through most of it. I'm not saying he's lying. I'm sure he thinks he was awake every time she started winding up. He just... missed a few times. By sleeping through them.

AnonaGirl stayed awake from 2:45 on. I tried everything I could think of. Rocking, walking, patting, singing, feeding her a bottle, Tylenol for teething pain, "sleeping" with me in the big bed, TV on, TV off ... and on and on. None of it worked. When she wasn't screaming in frustration and exhaustion, she was crawling around the bed looking for something interesting to do.

After 3 hours I was ready to kill someone. Oddly enough, it wasn't the baby. Unfortunately, it was my husband. When he finally came upstairs at 5 am I was in tears, the baby was in tears and the cats were in hiding.

First thing he said was, "What's wrong with her?"

"If I knew," I replied with gritted teeth, "I would have done something to fix it."

"Huh?" I think he still had an earplug in.

"What?" I snapped, with a baby screaming in my ear and trying desperately to escape my evil clutches.

"WHAT?" he yelled.

"I've been up since 2:45 so don't you dare yell at me!"

It only got better from there.

This is the sort of situation my husband and I are bad at. We fall into a very crummy pattern of trying to outdo each other in the Martyr game. It goes something like this:

- I've been awake since 2:45 = +2 points
- Well I was awake every time she screamed so I'm not rested either = +1 point
- I got up with her and carried her all over hell and creation to try to calm her while you never once came upstairs and offered to help = +3 points
- I have a job due today that I didn't get done yesterday because I was so tired from cleaning the floors = +4 points
- I have to go to work and stay awake for 8th graders who have summer fever. There is no possibility of a nap for me today because I don't work from home. You've taken a nap three times this week. I... cannot. Ever. +Infinity points because it's my blog and you have to admit, that's a shit situation.

It's childish and petty and I wish we would stop it but I've tried to broach the subject with him and he doesn't think we do that at all. What do you do with that?

AnonaDad took the baby and got her dressed while I hobbled around getting dressed. The damn shopping trip had killed my back, so I was a mess. By the time I got downstairs AnonaDad was making coffee and the baby had already pooped in her new diaper. I could not possibly carry her back upstairs, so I had to ask AnonaDad to do it.

I hope never to hear another repetition of The Great Diaper Changing Horror of 2008. AnonaGirl screamed and tried valiantly to roll off the changing table. AnonaDad, never too patient when the baby freaks about diaper changes anyway, absolutely Lost. His. Shit. He yelled at her, swore at her and his tone was ridiculous. It only wound up the baby more. Finally I dragged my sorry ass upstairs and took over.

"Oh right! Oh that's great! Come save the fucking day!" he snapped as he stormed out.

So that was nice.

Once I had the baby changed, dressed and calmed down, I got to try to explain to a wound up AnonaDad that he needs to be the adult when she goes ballistic like that. Yelling at her only makes it worse. You'd think that would make some sense, but what I got instead was a laundry list of all the things the baby was doing that made him mad. So... it was AnonaGirl's fault that he couldn't stay even somewhat calm? I dunno.

Somehow I got her into the car and we drove to my Mom's. For her parting shot, as I was giving her a goodbye kiss, AnonaGirl swept my sunglasses off my face and threw them on the tile floor. Where they promptly broke.

And I really liked those sunglasses, too. Which is more than I can say for my husband and my daughter at the moment.

Labels: Bitch and moan

posted by AnonaMum @ 7:46 AM