Suburban Goddess

My daughter has a new word.

“Eeeeewwwwww!”

At first, it was cute. She’d mimic us whenever we uttered the word. Eventually, she began to associate it with things that are icky. When I pull off her diaper now, she will say it for me. But as her brain develops, she has begun to associate it with things that are truly disgusting. The first time she said it in earnest was after her father farted.

“Ewwwww, Daddy!” I cracked up. But Daddy went home to his apartment, leaving Mommy to deal with the more creative “Ewwwww”s. Boogers. Sticky fingers. Mysterious gooey stuff on her clothing. But tonight, tonight was the mother of all “Ewwwwww”s.

I put her in the tub for her evening bath and proceeded to fold clothes as she frolicked in the water. She likes to talk to her toys, and I listened as she sang Happy Birthday to her dolphins. But a moment later, she became quiet, and then it came.

“Eeeeeewwwwwwww, Mommy! Ewwwwwwwwww, yucky!”

I rushed into bathroom to find her standing in the tub. She looked up at me and pointed with a seriousness that would not assume a almost-two-year-old would possess. “Ewwwww, Mommy!” Floating among the dolphins, colored rings, and rubber duckies were several new brown additions. The smell knocked me back a foot.

“Poopy!”

You want a horror movie? Become a mom.

On this day, Superbowl Sunday, I think may be the wrong time to ask this question, but I will anyway because it seems to be a re-occuring theme in my life.

Can’t anyone have fun without alcohol anymore?

I grew up with alcoholics, although my parents did a tremendous job of shielding me from it for a very long time. My parents weren’t the alcoholics, but the extended family was. Every Sunday after church, we would walk back to my grandmother’s house & they would proceed to get schnockered. (The epitome of good Catholic behavior!)

As I grew older, my mom started to attend a support group for family of alcoholics. At thirteen, I started attending Alateen. It was here that I honed my acting skills. After listening to dozens of other kids recount their episodes of abuse & neglect, they would look at me and wait for my heart-wrenching story. So I would make them up (sorry, Mom). I mean, I didn’t have anything going on in my life like these kids; my relatives would get drunk and start cursing a lot, and about that time my parents would load up and go home. Nothing traumatic here, just a bunch of foul-mouthed rednecks. Years later, I heard the abuse they were capable of when they drank, and I was thankful that my parents never exposed me to that.

As I got older, I experimented with alcohol. I learned in my late teens that I indeed had the family gene; I did not know how to moderate. It was drink to floor for me. So I learned how to stop; I just didn’t drink at all.

The other problem with my drinking is that I very rarely get happy; I’m the sad drunk. Drinking amplifies my emotions. So when my neighbor wants to go out & get smashed, she doesn’t understand why I’m not interested. It just doesn’t appeal to me. If it works for you, great. But personally, I know myself, & I know that I don’t know how to stop. Annd the best way to stop is not to start.

Which brings me back to now. It seems that everyone around me is not capable of having an activity where alcohol is not involved. Or if they do, it’s not fun. I understand that alcohol lowers your inhibitions, but if you have to have a drink for a situation to be considered fun, you may have a problem. And given my personal situation, even one drink sends me into a further state of depression, which I really don’t need right now. But it is now, in my thirties, that I finally feel the peer pressure to “do it because everyone else is.” Seriously, if you don’t drink around these people, they start to get mad at you, like you’re no fun.

I swear to God, if one more person tells me I’m not fun, I’m going to hit them all. Just because I don’t want to get messed up every day does not mean I am not FUN. It means I am RESPONSIBLE. I have a child. I am a mother. I want to set a good example for her. Because I certainly don’t want to see MY daughter coming home at 3am stumbling through the doorway before landing in front of the toilet to barf the entire night’s revelry in the porcelain throne.

Yeah, that sounds like a BLAST.

Recent changes in my life that I’m not allowed to talk about (dooced) have suddenly given me a much-needed morale boost. Things are looking up again, and I have to carefully hope that Karma is looking down upon me and saying, “Okay, she’s had enough. Let’s give her a break.” And so, the great cosmic forces of the universe have re-aligned the stars to shine down on me for a brief moment.

It is true, the old saying…

Good things come to those who wait. I waited.