Mommyhell

I started this blog years ago and wrote like five posts. Ironically in the years since I've become a professional writer who still cannot spell or self-edit. Please for the love of Jesus and humanity can some kind soul show up to copy edit my life. Lord knows I need it and I am by no stretch of any imagination a religious girl.

In the years since I've started this blog I had a baby (indeed I have), moved cross country, ditched my beleaguering "career" as a social worker and become no closer to any sort of domestic success than I ever was. Frankly, I've given up. I've found a form of acceptance that is delightful and real - I've discovered I don't care if I am good at being at home. Martha no longer fills me with remorse for what I cannot do, but instead intrigues me in a listless way about how much I don't care about arranging flowers or successful dinner parties.

I will always be the girl with mismatched furniture and pots. I will always burn the canned soup after I turn the burner up too high and walk away to read a magazine. I will always forget to drop off the drycleaning, think I have dropped it off, show up to pick it up, freak out and think someone else stole it, only to find it under a hundred things in my trunk. And I would much rather watch Real Housewives of Hell than organize or clean anything. Oh and don't even get me started on the sheer horror that is crafts.

In truth I always wanted to be a writer and I never thought I could be. I still want to write a romance novel, which like many novels has been started and abandoned at least a hundred times. Someday I will knock Danielle Steele off her indomitable throne.

It seems funny to me that I ever considered creating a blog about homemaking and cooking, two things which I have never had an interest. I do have an interest in reading and investigating, eating, doing yoga, and buying clothes I can't afford, but really it's all inconsequential.

Recently I've started thinking about something else I am doing that I never really had an interest in: parenting. Yes, you've read that correctly. I never really thought about becoming a parent. It was a nebulous idea that some day in the future I may procreate, but I never seriously thought about it coming to fruition (much like that romance novel!) Making babies turned out to be a lot easier to accomplish than writing a book.

One night I decided I should get pregnant, I remember drunkenly confessing this to my husband who said "sure" and then three months later with zero planning, I was. Forty-one weeks, one firing, one cross-country move with three plants, four pets, and a trunk full of vintage couture, later we arrived at the hospital where I pushed out a baby and then I was a mother.

I gained 50 lbs when I was pregnant. I hated pretty much every moment of my pregnancy experience and labor was sweet blissful relief compared to the ten months I spent hating my rotundness and wishing more than anything for heels and a cocktail. I never had any glorious dreams of an amazing birth story where I labored drug free until my sweet angel of an infant was placed in my still lucid hands and we cuddled beneath the stars, while my hair still looked great and my cheeks were flushed with joy and successful effort. Fuck, I want four Advils for a splinter and I wail like a baby if I cut myself shaving. Good lord I wasn't going to go no drugs, doulas, massage oils and grunting around like a wild beast shrieking about how empowered I was.

Seriously labor is disgusting, but it's a helluva alot better than lugging around a baby in your uterus while you sob in the grocery store because you can't bend over. Did I mention I insisted on wearing heels to a wedding at 30 weeks - I had pregnancy denial in the hugest way (pun fully intended).

Another thing I was in denial over, was the massive quantities of weight I had gained and the belief that having a child wouldn't change my life all that much but it would fill me with this blissful peace and uwavering patience. Fuck no, that didn't happen.

Well, I didn't change all that much personality wise. I'm still a complete bitch when I haven' had coffee, I still snap at everything (even my child which fills me with shame and guilt too palpable to accurately describe) and lately I have taken to praying to any God willing to listen for sanity and strength to get through the day without yelling at my now sixteen-month old. I feel like a bad mother every moment of every day, because I'm not patient. I hate being a stay at home mom and I really, really, really wish I loved it.

I'm just gonna put it out there: Good lord parenthood is hard. Exhausting, hard, frustrating, and seriously disappointing. Disappointing from a personal perspective because you never realized how much you suck until you feel yourself sucking as a mother to a person who loves you as life itself.

I love my son more than anyone and as much as I love my husband, but in a completely different way. The thought of anything negative or painful befalling him infuriates me and all the myths about parenthood are true. You would kill a person in the blink of the eye if they so much as got near your child. You would rip their arm off and beat them with it. Motherhood makes you visceral and wily and scarily animalistic. In many ways.

The most disappointing thing about being a parent is that I am still essentially my chaotic, moodly, self-involved self who needs a lot of alone time and has had serious difficulty adjusting to the fact that I am relied upon 24/7 by a person I love so much it hurts, but who frustrates the hell out of me.

I realized I had never put in a tampon in front of someone in my whole life - until I had a baby. Now my beautiful son has witnessed that act multiple times and please lord do not let him be scarred and turn into a fetishist because of my improper modesty.

I worry constantly that I am screwing him up and really I probably am, because well I'm me. It's the lack of patience that really upsets me the most.

Here's a true story. Today, I was having a break down. I was exhausted (I am working full-time from home while staying home with my son). all I wanted to do was unwind with some crap TV while he played in the living room. Could he entertain himself? Not for one moment. In the longest day in recorded history he screamed and I screamed back. He intentionally sought negative attention, which I responded to much to my guilt and dismay and then he grabbed my coffee cup scalding me with coffee, after wacking me in the head with a wooden toy. I screamed what the fuck and flung the toy across the room and then sobbed, begging him to leave me alone for five minutes because I was losing my mind.

When I confessed this parental sin to my husband, he was shocked and frankly pretty appalled that I said "fuck" to our one-year old. Am I alone in this terrible lack of patience and insipid lack of desire to nurture all day? Please tell me I am not?

I'm pretty sure my son has already considered contacting the authorities. I have many sobbing meltdowns weekly. Truthfully, I'm just not cut out for any of it. Is anyone?

Do mommy goddesses exist? The beautiful, ethereal women who have five children and relish in the non-stop poop diapers and neediness of children? I've come to realize the only truly blissful mothers are those with nannies.

Every day I promise I will be different - this will be my epiphany. I will not lose my patience or my temper. I will not take out my inability to have time to myself on my son, whom I chose to bring into this world and desperately love. I do not want my son to hate me nor do I want him to resent me. I mean I know he will, but I want to lessen the extent.

And each week I have what I term a dirty reds day. You know the days. You just can't take it. Nothing makes you happy. You hate your life and it's no one's fault. It's the days when you question all your decisions, when you wonder why and what the heck, when you just want to lie down, be alone, and eat junk food while watching Tabatha's Salon Takeover Marathons. Inevitably on those days escapism alludes me, I am still me in my hovel of a house with a half-done kitchen and unfinished floors, with my son running around begging me for attention.

My son is very independent and so am I. Ironically we are very similar in demeanor. When I have a bad day, naturally he wants the most from me. On those dirty red days, like today, I am filled with guilt for my inability to keep my sanity in check while I fling the remote across the room and sob about not being left alone for more than five seconds to eat or use the bathroom. And then I cry for being a bad mother.

Here's the thing, we're taught that motherhood is the greatest thing on earth. It is. That is without a doubt. But it's also the biggest struggle you'll endure and every day is an emotional calamity. I will be so annoyed with my son for breaking the lamp, throwing food on the floor, and pulling my hair after I have asked him countless times not to while demonstrating "gentle pets" and then in the next moment I love him so much I can't take it. This is of course after I am wracked with guilt over yelling at him and begging him to please stop.

Motherhood is not the greatest experience until you get a little distance from it. Hence the importance of nannies. In the daily grind, motherhood is awful. It's all-consuming, exhausting, and devoid of self containment, but when you reflect on it after the fact when your child is asleep and you've had a glass of wine and 30 minutes alone it's the greatest thing on earth. Motherhood is only fun in snippets; most of it is a hot mess of wishful thinking of what you have given up for this savage love and envy at your childless friends, not only for their figures but their ability to go to Vegas untethered for the weekend to drink and shop.

Motherhood is an act of absolute manipulation. It truly is. And the fun and joy you are supposed to experience from parenting comes in retrospect. Motherhood changes you in subtle ways that make it difficult to discern if you've changed at all and it changes you in drastic ones that are readily apparent. The guilt is the biggest one. The worry and anxiety that are always niggling under the surface, threatening to undo things. I get this feeling when I walk alone at night - even in parking lots of malls. What if something happens to me and my child suffers as a result? What if I turn my back and something happens to my child? What if my child doesn't know I love him?

Motherhood affects your every moment of life and that's one of the things that makes it tragically unfun. I know that I must change my approach and learn patience. I know I must stop focusing on the immediate and start remembering my child cannot be a victim of my quest for sanity and a snack. Motherhood is fun when you look on the surface, but when you read between the lines it's a lot of mashed bananas and shit. But it's also glee, amazement, and sheer audacity that sex made this happen. Really, that's insane to think about.

It is my greatest hope that I will redeem myself as a mother and also to accept that like anything else I will have faults. I am not a natural homemaker, and frankly I don't think I'm the maternal type and it's a struggle.

I believe it's a consequence of my generation. A generation of women who went to college, had freedom, independence and careers, who suddenly found themselves at home with a baby that didn't care if you could debate the merits of Faucault vs. Baudrillard. Our generation comes from a place of such independence and free spirit. We are women raised to know we are capable, smart, and interested in that capability and motherhood is not about the conscience action it's about the instinctual and the natural. Perhaps that's the problem - we expect there to be a place to raise up to. In careers you can improve, make more money, climb the latter, or move to a different line of work. There is no mobility or tactile reward (or even affirmation) as a mother.

That's perhaps what I must accept - that motherhood has no affirmatives. There is nothing but the nebulous and trying to over-think it, over-feel it, and expect too much is leaving me bland and unfulfilled. And worse it is doing my child a disservice to heap the responsibility of my happiness and contentment on his adorable little shoulders.

My son loves me because I exist. To him I am the world. I am his mother and for now one half of his everything. What more should I want? Intelligent conversation? The time and space to leisurely browse the web with no one to bother me for hours? The freedom to have an off day where I feel like poop and sit around? The opportunity to go shopping for as long as I want with no deadline and no place to go? to not be needed or relied upon for simply a moment? Well it's not possible. And I need to accept that change.

Parents give up everything and it's the little things that you don't think will be forsaken. And it's interesting because it's very worth it and also nearly impossible to let go of.

Tomorrow is a new day. My son loves me as much tomorrow as he did yesterday, despite my meltdowns, selfishness, and bad attitude (oh and my lack of make-up). But if you continue to take motherhood for granted soon your children will notice and that is a feeling I cannot bear. So tomorrow I resume with my vigilance to be more patient and accepting. And hopefully I will achieve. And soon enough my son will call me out on my shit, tell me to grow up, and let me know that I'm annoying him too. Oh teenagers. :-)

Return to Sanity

Hello,

This is a little updatey-date to let all of you - my loyal readers (my mom and myself obsessively re-reading my own posts in attempts to find errors) - that I will be returning. I can blog again - and I will.

So - I have NOT been cooking often, but I have sometimes been cooking well. I did make a few amazing cupcakes - key lime ones for Krissyfer, some strawberry ones, a delush pear cake. I have not yet examined my sewing machine (perhaps, perhaps, perhaps... ). I will learn though, do not fear, dollies, I will learn to sew the minor things.

Anyways, check back soon - I be bloggin shortly.

Delightfully as always,

Marykins

In With A Bang!

So, it has been eons (well months, actually) since I've posted, but I have returned. I got married, moved, went on an extended honeymoon, started graduate school again, and I have been busting my butt with documentary stuff. BUSEEE!

(My delightful stove with animal inspiration; including Basset Hound statue)

A lot of cooking / baking has happened since my temporary hiatus. There are things I have discovered:

1. How to make porkchops - seriously - finally pork chops that are not dry! The secret: butter. Loads of it and sage.
   
2. Julia Child and the delight that is, guess what: BUTTER!!! Oh sweet heaven I love butter.
   
3. Wine
4. Italian cooking. Seriously - where have you been all my life divine roasted chicken?
   
5. I really really like to bake.
6. I can now make delightful steak
7. Temperature control is your friend.

I have also learned to really enjoy cooking which is something I sort of could not figure out before. Cooking is fun - it is your friend. It is not a competition against yourself and your abilities, it is relaxing. It should fill you with a sense of accomplishment. It should NOT stress you out to the point where you accidentally drop the recipe on the lit burner and start a fire because you are so spastic about browning butter. It should also not fill you with fury if the recipe does not turn out. These are very important lessons. Cupcakes are delightful - creating them should be likewise.

My husband really cannot cook. As I learn more and more about kitchen how to, I learn more and more about kitchen how not from my beloved. The self-proclaimed king of the "One-Pot Wonder Meal" Essentially a stovetop stew of veggies, noodles (boxed mac n cheese, spaghetti, beans and rice, once even ramen noodles) and bacon. Seriously this is his heaven. This is the nightmare to me . Also, he makes the biggest mess imaginable when he cooks with the idiological one pot. It actually takes SEVERAL pots. One pan to boil noodles, one pan to saute veggies, one pan for bacon, a strainer - you get the gist. He calls it one pot, but really he is in denial.


Mary

Nigella's Yummy & Decadent Pizza Rustica All'Inglese!

We're getting fancy over here and if you want fancy Nigella is the way to go! Nigella is my favorite. I think she is beyond. I love her hair and I want her eyebrows - and her abililty to just throw together a perfect cupcake with fondant topping - you know... whatever just simple as that! I am dying to try fondant but fear outweighs desire.

I rented "How To Be A Domestic Goddess" from the library and have been waiting - WAITING - to bake something from it forever - I put it off because many of the recipes are involved. This particular one is a double-crust pizza thingy.Here is the recipe. BTW: I used a different filling than this recipe because I improvised.

I decided to try something I knew Kris would eat because sometimes he seems a little perplexed and frightened by my kitchen experiments, especially when I watch Top Chef and get inspired. (Can I PLEASE tell you how much I love that show. I recently watched Hell's Kitchen and no. Tacky, Tacky, Trashy, and Classless - and yes the Caps are ALL necessary.) He likes pizza so much he haggled with me to have it served at our wedding in lieu of any real catering. He could literally eat a frozen pizza or Pizza Hut everyday, so I decided I would make a fancy-pants gourmet version. Anyways, this 'pizza' was...ummmm... involved. BUT very yummy.

OK - before starting this you should know it takes like 2 hours, so don't do as I did and begin at 7:30 pm on a Friday night and expect to be out on the town an hour later. You are hanging out en casa with your oven if you undertake this so don't make plans.

Anyways, First I made the dough - I followed the recipe exactly and then added a little more water, because AZ is hot and dehydration happens. Even for foods. When you separate the dough into two balls make sure one is much larger than the other, not just a little bit bigger but double the size. Trust me - it is imperative unless you are an absolute expert at spreading dough out - I am NOT. While freezing the dough, do the innards (the pizza filling).

It is already about 95 degrees outside so when I took the dough out of the freezer to roll out it got hot and melty and super, super mushy almost immediately. Which was scary and caused me to panic. Also, I could not get an accurate measurement on the depth and width of the springform pan which is also scary and overwhelming - just like its misbehaving friend the dough. Several miscalculations ensued until finally I realized I did not have to make the dough TALLER than the pan, but I should take into account that the pizza will rise and I should just have enough to fold over the stuff inside (see the photo above from the cookbook for illustration of this).

The dough, was, needless to say, a problem...

Anyways I finally got it sorted out and then put in all the stuff I concocted in advance. One thing I did not do is time frying the pork and bacon - by the time the pie was completely cooked in the oven the pork was way overdone. I should have followed the recipe instructions about the frying time or even done a little less to make sure it was perfect. I also added a high quality chedder, but did not slice it thin enough so when the pizza was finished I had big giant tacky cocktail party cheese non-melted cubes distracting my otherwise quite tasty pizza. I also added peppers which were good - I should have also mixed in brocoli and spinach which I will do next time.

After putting the filling in I had further dough-issues when I tried to fold the edges over. For some reason things were NOT cooperating. After many futile attempts I did a 'good enough' job and put it in. This takes a loooong time to cook, but if you follow the cooking time give or take a couple minutes it will be just right. Also definitely follow the cooling advice. Do not serve until this is cooled. Nigella is right - it is MUCH better on day 2 and taste quiche-y. Which probably is because of the 5 million eggs in the recipe (which is akin to 5 million grams of fat).

WARNING: This is definitely NOT diet food so consider yourself aware that you cannot blame me if you make this and eat all 8 slices yourself in 2 days.

This was very yummy - Kris loved it and so, of course, did I because when I am attempting to lose weight and reach a goal eating things that are completely filled with cheesey lard or made entirely of butter and crisco are the only things I can possibly think of consuming.

Buckwheat Bonanza!

Let me just say, I LOVE buckwheat! Love it!! It adds a slightly more crumbly texture to things but I think the flavor is sublime. This week I made two desserts with buckwheat flour and I am about to make some pancakes today. mmmmm... I also want to try mixing buckwheat something with a strong cheese ala French style (they love buckwheat apparently). Any suggestions?

Dessert 1: Martha's Oatmeal Dried Apricot Cookies with White Chocolate Chips:

My mom got me a Kitchen Aid Mixer for an early wedding present in yellow (my favorite color!) and it is divine. I ADORE IT!! (overly effusive eclaimation points necessary to describe my love) I was so excited to use it and then I found this amazing cookie recipe on Food Gawker (go there now!)

Here is the recipe link from The Bitten Word and adapted from Martha Stewart. I thought this was a great cookie - very light sweet flavor. Kris and I ate them like there was no tomorrow - which is scary considering I am SUPPOSED to be on a pre-wedding diet to lose 10lbs (no success there!). I changed the recipe slightly: instead of 1 1/2 c. white flour, I did 1 c white flour and 1/2 c. buckwheat flour which toned down the syrupy sweetness of the cookies. Also, I baked these on 325 and left them in for 15 minutes which was perfect. They were chewy and the bottoms were not crispy. I LOATHE a crispy cookie!! These are really good cold, so leave 'em in the fridge. Enjoy! Also try them with ice cream or frozen yogurt for an extremely decadent desert.

Dessert 2: Buckwheat Scones from Lovely Morning:

I found this recipe on one of my favorite blogs: Lovely Morning. These are SO good! I made them once before and used sweetened dried cherries and they were less tart, but this time I used organic non-sweetened cherries and the scones were less cookie-like. I baked them on 400 because my oven is super persnickity and low-heat seems to be better for the it. It is always a toss up.

I had sliiiight difficulty cutting them into attractive looking wedges (ok lots - they did not resemble triangles so much as blobby squares) - certainly not winning and culinary arts awards around here! - so they came out a little wonky and mishapen like the reject cookie pile at bakeries. Whatever - they tasted great! Also, I could take or leave the almonds since I kinda hate nuts.

Tip: Make sure not to pat the dough too thin when you roll it out - the scones should be thick and crumbly. Enjoy with warm butter and good jam.

Healthy Baking (a conundrum if there ever was one!)

Keeping with the spirit of healthier (and hopefully thinner) and more earth aware living, I decided to make cookies at Delayne's. First of all - she has NO baking ingredients and NO baking equipment. We decided to do Sugar & Dairy Free Oatmeal Banana Peanutbutter Cookies. So, I brought over many of my baking accesories but no mixer. Thinking Delayne had at least some measuring cups I figured I would be ok. THIS LADY HAS NOTHING! No measuring cups, no measuring spoons and NO MIXER. Only a Magic Bullet, which is scary, weird and from early 90's infomercials. I still remember the one where they advertised using it to make mayonaise (which scared me for life after learning mayo is only eggs and oil mixed together - BARF!) No bueno.
I was not deterred. I forged ahead - sans a suitable mixer and without the aid of measuring devices - and I managed to make some fairly decent AND SUPER HEALTHY cookies! Seriously, almost no bad stuff in these if you follow the original recipe!

Sugar-free Oatmeal Peanutbutter Cookies:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350.
   
2. mix together the following wet ingredients: 1/4 c. honey or grade b maple syrup, 2 or 3 super ripe mashed bananas - they should be broooown - 1/4 c. butter (or if you are allergic to dairy Earth Balance Butter Substitute), 1/3 c. peanut or almond butter.
   
3. I tried to use the magic bullet to combine these - what a disaster!! The wet stuff was clinging horribly to the ridiculous mixer blades and would not come out. Then it made this scary grinding noise. I had to shake it like 400 times to get all the peanut-buttery goo off the blades. I ended up mixing by hand. Do not try a magic bullet for baking, REPEAT: No magic bullet for baking!
4. Mix together the following dry ingredients: 2 1/2 c. oatmeal (not quick oats),1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamin, 2 -3 tsp stevia powder (natural sugar substitute) or agave (natural sugar substutute) These are waaay sweeter than normal fructose sugar so 2-3 tsp is enough. You can also use 1/2 c. of regular sugar instead if you want to.
   
5. Combine the wet and dry items.
   
6. Place on a cookie sheet with a spoon and press down to flatten. (see photo). bake 12-15 minutes. THESE WILL NOT EXPAND BECAUSE THEY ARE FLOUR FREE. You will know they are done when the bottoms look brownish.

** A word about Stevia: stevia is good for you - no calories or sugar! They make it in liquid and powder forms and it can be found at all health food stores. The one draw back is that it has a slightly bitter aftertaste. We used Stevia powder for these cookies, but next time I am going to try Agave. See wikipedia for more info on both!**

OPTIONAL INGREDIENTS:
Delayne and I made these sugar & dairy free because she is allergic and I am on a pre-wedding diet. For a less scary healthy version you can try adding sugar and using real butter. You could also add about a cup of flour to make more traditional tasting cookies.
Mix in some dried fruits, some chopped nuts, or some chocolate chips to the batter and lessen the oatmeal to 2 cups.

Amazing Resource!

My friend Delayne told me about this website that encourages everyone to eat organic and local. Eating locally, also known as being a locavore, is so much better for YOU and the environment. In honor of Earth Day. Check this out: www.vibranceorganics.com

Kris and I are ordering a medium sized food box!