Bad Day Yesterday

Yesterday was an awful day for me. While I had lunch with a friend (Chick-fil-A salad and sandwich 10 points total), which was nice, Chickadee #2 took my question, "Do you have to go to the bathroom?" a little too literally and peed all over the floor of the mall food court. She's "almost" potty trained, so it was not a huge deal -- except that I, having left the house unprepared AGAIN, didn't have anything to put on her. Luckily for us, the secondary purpose of going to the mall, after meeting my friend, was to go to the Hanna Anderssen store to buy another 3-pack of their training pants. They're lovely, soft, organic cotton and cost only 10 dollars each, LOL! So, we high-tailed it to the bathroom to take off her wet things, Chickadee #1 bringing up the rear. When we got there, I did some quick thinking and told Chickadee #1 to take off the shorts she was wearing (under a dress that is a tad too short) and hand them over. I slapped them (way too big) onto Chickadee #2 and went in search of Hanna Anderssen.

As we walked through the mall, it became more and more apparent to me that I am actually falling apart. Not figuratively -- literally. Every step I took made me feel as if the ground glass in my left hip was shifting around a little bit more and the hot poker running down my leg was heating up to the melting point. By the time we got to the store, I was almost in tears. We quickly bought the training pants and I put them on Chickadee #2, tucking the waistband of the too-big shorts into the waistband of the training pants. We'd planned to also buy school shoes for Chickadee #1, and we did stop by Stride Rite, but the way I was feeling, coupled with the $55 price tag for a pair of Mary Janes, cut our trip short.

On the way home, I became more and more depressed. I'm at the point now where the small things that I need to do are becoming ever more difficult. I can't seem to get a handle on pain -- first from my foot which, after a year and a half, has become a constant companion, to the sciatica, arthritis, whatever the heck it is, in my left hip and leg, which has been with me now for months, to the arthritis in my fingers. The most frightening and most depressing thing for me is to think that I am now only in midlife. If I survive to old age, I will be crippled. Whenever I begin to envision things being better for me physically, my body, this body which I've never really liked, shows me that it's my enemy. "You think you're going to start walking for exercise again -- do a 5K race (which I did actually hobble through)? Ha effin' ha. I'll make it so you can't walk for locomotion."

I don't want to be a mother so wrapped up in her own physical limitations that she can't do things with her children but that's the mother I've become and it makes me so sad. An example -- after getting home from the mall, I took the chickadees to the pool. During "safety break", when the big pools are closed to children, we decamp to the baby pool. At its deepest this pool is 6". From the pool deck to the bottom of the pool can't be more than a foot. But I, instead of just stepping down into the pool, found myself walking around the the shallow (depth 0") end of the pool and walking to the 6" deep side before sitting down on the edge to watch my children play. I did it without really thinking about it. I did it because that's just what I do now; those are just the "accommodations" I make to manage the pain.

After I made that little accommodation so unthinkingly, I looked back down to the current issue of Weight Watchers Magazine, which I was reading. The cover article is an interview with Jenny McCarthy (one of my heroes, actually). The question was, "Why do you think it's healthy to invest in yourself?" Her response, "On an airplane, they say to put the oxygen mask on yourself first before putting it on your child. I've constantly been training myself to think that way. I say I can only be the greatest mom alive if I'm the healthiest, happiest mom alive," (WWMagazine, Sept/Oct 2009, pg. 114). In the bright, sunny mid afternoon heat, I started to cry. I'm not that mom. I'm just not. Not the healthiest, not the happiest, not the greatest.

I'll get there, I pray, but it's such slow going and is so frustrating. I'm going back to a Weight Watchers meeting today, after being away due to vacation, and I'm hoping that I haven't done too much damage, and I am starting some resistance training today (I have the resistance bands and tubes, and think I should actually USE them), and I have finally made an appointment with my doctor for a physical. I've got to write all this down so that I don't forget to mention anything on my catalogue of woes. I hope I can gain some momentum going forward. Please pray for me.