Good morning. Hello. How are you? Think Eth is gonna get any lower? Should I buy some more while it’s cheap? Every day I think “this is the day” but then decide to wait and I am glad I waited. Down! Down! Down! She’s going down.
I am sick every day. I eat less and less but it’s still not enough. Lunch is especially bad for some reason. Actually, yesterday, I almost completely gave up on lunch and I ate, like, a half a baked chicken breast and nothing else and it still felt like too much food. Dinner’s a little better. I can eat a small dinner—i.e. a normal dinner—and not get too sick. It really is a crazy ride! I’ve now lost 9 pounds in four days. I am always cold. Relentlessly cold. I’ve installed my space heater under my desk. I busted out my cardigan. I’ve upped the temperature in my office. I spent a substantial post-lunch portion of yesterday working from the couch so that I could work under three blankets. I am obsessed with comfy chairs. I want to curl up constantly. My desk chair is a comfy desk chair, but not a comfy chair. The counch in my studio is hard and black and leather and not comfy at all. Wenesday I spent a mid-day couple of hours in my bed under three layers of blankets. Yesterday I said it’s nice when I’m losing weight, because I feel good, better about myself, and I did, for a bit there, but yesterday, I did not feel good. It wasn’t terrible or anything, it was all kind of low-level, and I could keep at it, but it was constant. It didn’t help that (I assume unrelated to the Wegovy) I had a fairly intense headache all day.
Nor did it help that Jane had another tantrum yesterday. It was shorter than the day before, but not by much, maybe a half hour. It was during dinner prep, so by dinner time we could actually enjoy our dinner, which was nice. Later, when I was getting her ready to go to Grammy’s house for a sleepover, she talked about how she needs to remember, during tantrums to stop, think and breathe. She has a little mantra. It is so cute and dear god I wish she could actually remember to stop, think and breathe when she’s having the fits, but… she is trying. It must be very frustrating for her.
I think a lot about how I was almost certainly the same way. I mean, fuck if I know, I don’t remember a lot of fits at four, but I sure remember a lot of fits at five, six, seven, eight and nine, especially anti-establishment freakouts at any authority figure trying to dominate me. And everyone tells me I was a holy terror as a kid, so I will just assume they’re right. (As an aside, I wonder if it was self-fulfilling to some extent. Somewhere around fourth grade I got a letter-of-commendation from our school’s principal because I survived a day with a substitute without losing my shit on them. It seems quite plausible I just established it as part of my identity for, like, on, thirty years). I am fairly confident no one took the time Emma, Grammy and I are all taking to get Jane to learn to intervene in her temper attacks. I’m fairly confident she is doing work I didn’t do till my twenties, and didn’t succeed at until my early thirties. When I frame it this way, it all seems much more… hopeful. Optimistic. What could I have achieved, what could I have sustained, if I had learned to control my temper earlier in life? Jane will have that chance. Hopefully. If we all succeed.
I also know that there are plenty of kids freaking out in elementary school still (ahem, yours truly), so she is by no means “behind,” which, you know, neurotic parents like me worry about constantly.
I also think about my teenage years and early college and how much me and my girlfriends just loved to fucking dramatically argue and yell and freak out, and how much Jane’s tantrums remind me of this, and I wonder if many of us don’t just take that primal urge to break down, and to lash out, and carry it right into our adult relationships.
I remember how much I used to just lay in bed and cry and how hopeless all of life seemed, really until, god, my late 20’s? Maybe even early 30’s? And how I have done that maybe once in the last decade, okay, twice. I’m not talking, like, when RBG or my Dad or Andy died, I’m talking just… Ha I don’t know. There’s a difference between the two even if I can’t explain it. But anyway, man, I am glad I mastered that, or got more hard, or grew or learned, or lost my artistic sensitivity, whatever you call it I sure am glad I don’t just weep at existence anymore. It’s obviously a lot more healthy to write detailed emails to all your friends about existence’s faults.
Hrm that was a tangent, my point is, I am seeing a lot of through lines these days. Between a child’s tantrums and different behaviors as adults. And it’s all so fascinating. When she was a baby she had no means of communicating except the cry. It’s the first thing we learn. It is a vocal exercise that simultaneously expresses pain yet often brings forth comfort. Of course we latch onto that on a deep, primal level. Of course it runs through our whole life.
Anyway, this is how we’ve been thinking about Jane’s tantrums. I mean, yes, sometimes it’s just “oh god I have a headache stop whining” but more often it’s like “here is a toolset that we are trying to give you that will have use for your entire life.” I try to remember that. It makes the work feel more worth doing.
But yeah, sick stomach, kid yelling at me, that was all kind of rough.
BUT Jane is at Grammy’s this morning. I am going to eat EVEN LESS. My small frying pan will be here today and tomorrow Jane and I will halve our breakfast amount. I am thinking I’m going to make a single half-sized stir fry at lunch, and then eat half of it, saving the rest for tomorrow. So.. a quarter-size portion of my old one.
Ha I sat down today and said “oh god I have nothing to write about what am I going to do” and then all of that came out stream-of-consciousness. Whoops. Well, thank you. I guess I needed that.
Today we have an entry in everyone’s favorite mix series, the most depressing songs. Volume 4. I swear I’m not depressed today, it was just the only mix that was close to being done. I really do need to spend some time getting a backlog going. I used to cover that Tear Garden song in a country style on the acoustic guitar. I wish I had recorded it, ever. Alas. I did not. And sorry about putting the ten-minute “All Too Well” in the middle of the mix but you can’t be always relegating the ten-minute songs to the end of a mix that just isn’t kind. Think of the songs.
Have a lovely weekend, a lovely Friday. A lovely Omicron wave. Lucky New York. They’re probably, like, peaking now. Just getting worse here every day right now it is crazy.
feeling nauseous and cold all the time sounds MISERABLE. maybe to combat the cold you could get some long underwear? like the lightweight silk kind? or a puffer vest to keep your core warm? might be easier than burying yourself in blankets….
i was also described as a total terror as a kid. tantrums all the time. i kicked a hole in the wall because i was served ice cream in a bowl instead of a mug once. oof. i chilled out though. i think journaling helped. jane’s not ready for journaling in the conventional way but maybe there’s an alternate outlet?
miss you ❤️