I am Spineless. Or Rather, I Wish I Was

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Dear Tanis,

You never listen to me. You didn't listen to me when you were 17 years old and you decided you wanted to become the long jump champion of the world. I tried telling you all those years ago, that I simply wasn't cut out to be a springboard for your delusional athletic aspirations. I had to do something to make you hear me. So I took matters into my proverbial hands. Not that I have hands. Bygones. When you took off in a sprint and flung yourself into the air and landed in a bed of sand and then couldn't stand up straight for a week, well I warned you.

Just like I warned you when you decided you wanted to populate the world with your offspring. I am simply not cut out for this high-pressure job. While your babies are very lovely and all, they about crippled me as you kept stuffing your face with food as you gestated your critters with nary a thought to how I was doing all the hard work. You keep expecting me to perform no matter the pressure you put on me, and let me tell you something. You do my job for a day. I support you, endlessly and yet, you remain thankless.

Still, I suffered in silence for the most part. Oh, don't look at me like that. Sure I may have ached and protested an odd time or two, but for the most part, I kept my end of the deal. I kept you upright. Even as you hoisted small children and carted them around like they were royalty, I did my job.

It was you that didn't keep your end of this deal. There were no massages, no hydrotherapy, no anything. Heck, you wouldn't even pop a muscle relaxant or two just to give me a hand. No. You just soldiered on, whining about how bad I made you feel yet you did nothing to work with me at healing this rift between the two of us.

Then you tried to kill me last year. And you haven't stopped bitching about me since. I can hear you, you know. I'm your damn spine. Conveniently located not far from that mouth of yours that never seems to stop flapping. You carried your fat little dog out onto an icy alley way so that his precious wee paws wouldn't get cold. Very thoughtful. I love how you treat your dog better than you treat me. And to make matters worse, you didn't even put on shoes. You were wearing slippers. Slippers, Tanis. On ice. Don't even get me started on what your Brain was saying behind your back about that one.

And when your feet were flying up past your ears and you were going down like graceless sack of bricks, you didn't once think about me. No. You thought, "Protect the dog!" as you held him lovingly to your chest as you were falling. NOT once did you think PROTECT YOUR SPINE! Nooooo. It was all about that pathetic farting little dog who perpetually vomits on your pillow. Seriously Tanis? What is it about that dog you love so much?

I used to be bendy. When my Spine wasn't such a b!tch.


I thought then, after you were laid up for almost three months in excruciating pain that you finally heard my pleas and would start to pamper me in the manner I want to become accustomed to. I was sure that you would never take me for granted again. You were tender with me, protective even. I thought we finally had something.

But no.

You went back to your fickle ways, ignoring me and putting the needs of your children and that dog before me. Lifting them. Holding them. Carting them around like they don't have legs. Sure that new son of yours can't walk. But your eyes, well they talk. They tell me he slithers where he wants to go. They tell me about all the times you carry your son around even though you have other people around to do it for you. Sure you're the kid's mother. But I'm your SPINE. Why won't you love me the way you love him?

So I asked for help. I enlisted that lovely little neurologist to tell you about all the risks of not loving me enough. He was a smart man Tanis. He warned you. I was there. I heard. And when he so kindly took matters into his hands and lovingly repaired me, I thought you finally had my back.

And you were so good to me. You took it easy. You let other people help you lift that boy of yours. You let the dog stay on the darn ground where a dog belongs. We were finally on the same page, you and me. It was as it should be, you respecting me, me not killing you.

What changed Tanis? Why did you become so fickle? You knew I was weak. The doctor told you in September to be careful for me, to pamper and protect me. He told you to bend with your knees! You knew all of this! I thought we were tight!

And then on Saturday, you threw it all away. To change a damn diaper. You may as well have ripped me out of your back and beat me against a rock. You once again forgot all about me as you bent down to lift your kid up. Where was the bending of the knees Tanis? Where was the 'let other people do your heavy lifting for you' Tanis? Once again you forgot all about me as you played your mom card and hung me out to dry.

Well now I'm all busted up and you are flat on your back and neither one of us are happy. You are walking around like an ugly old hunch back with hairy legs and long boobs swinging in the wind and I'm all twisted up and my half my discs are bulging out like a 60 year old man's beer belly who is wearing Speedos two sizes too small.

Neither of us can stand up straight and thanks to your SuperMom complex we are both hopped up high as kites on codeine.

Where was my love Tanis?

What is it going to take to get you to pay some attention to me? You seem hell bent on destroying me and replacing me with a bionic spine. I'll tell you something lady. Nobody will bend over backwards for you the way I have.

Remember that.

And grab me some damn ice.

Signed,

Your Spine.

Post Edit: Big thanks to Babble for once again naming me as one of their top 50 Mom bloggers. I'm honored to be included in such fine company and thrilled they named me as one of the most confessional bloggers out there. If you are looking for some new reads on the Internet you should take a look at the list. It is jam packed with goodness. Also be sure to go to their nomination page and nominate your favourite bloggers. It's a great way to discover new reads and to support your favourite bloggers.

Television and Tampons: A Bad Mix

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**Warning: Post likely not suitable for anyone. My apologies.**

There I was, sitting on my enormous, too-big-for-the-space, oversized, overstuffed, brand new, baby sh!t brown, monstrosity of a sectional couch (can you tell I just absolutely loathe, er love it) (and no, I'm not showing you pictures of it. Yet.) minding my own business, knitting, while the kids were all sprawled out beside me zoning out on inappropriate television programming.

A commercial started and that is when things got a little hairy.

It was one of those flowery, women-power, 'I am menstruating, hear me roar' type of commercials. You know the ones. All the chicks are wearing white and twirling about gushing (heh) about how wonderful it is to be a woman. Commercials clearly made by men who have never had human contact with any female during her special time of the month.

Generally I'm pretty quick with the remote to mute any commercial madness. I'll happily sit through the annoying sounds of kids programs and cartoon soundtracks but for those three-minute commercial breaks I am a volume control ninja. Silence is golden. My children are trained to automatically mute the television whenever a commercial pops up. However, this particular night the remote was hidden in one of the cracks of our monstrously obese couch and none of us could locate the darn thing quick enough to silence the sounds of capitalistic commercialism oozing out the television speakers.

My son stared transfixed at the screen while my daughter Fric ripped through the cushions to muffle the shame of feminine hygiene being crammed down our throats. Just as the commercial ended she found the remote and pressed the mute button.

It was too late. My 13-year-old son saw it all.

And for the first time in his young life, he had questions. A culmination of school bus enlightenment combined with a few sex education classes caused the little gears in his man-child brain to turn and he needed help fitting the jigsaw pieces together.

"Mom. Does menstruation mean what I think it means?"

I looked at him, then at my daughter who was suddenly very busy studying the remote control and I sighed. It had come to this. The moment I had for so long tried to avoid with him. I've had the female reproduction talk at great length but only ever with my daughter because apparently discussing female gender issues in front of her younger brother would have caused her to die of mortification and fall into a black hole of doom.

Frac has thus remained largely uneducated in the ways of flower power so to speak.

"Well kid, it depends on what you think it means. If you think menstruation is the shedding of the lining of  blood and tissues that have built up through out the month inside a woman's uterus as she prepares for fertilization and which exits via a woman's vagina, then you'd be correct." Because the best way to talk about embarrassingly female personal body functions with a teenaged boy is to always use scientific terms and hope that his vocabulary isn't equipped to understand what in hell's name you are talking about.

Parenting for the win!

Right about here my daughter groaned and then fled for sanctuary in her bedroom. She must have caught sight of that giant black hole of doom. Via the vagina.

My son, to his credit, didn't even flinch.

"So you bleed. Down there." He said as he pointed to his crotch.

"Well I do, as do most women between puberty and menopause but if you start bleeding from down there," I pointed to his groin area, "you have bigger problems."

Frac rolled his eyes, which he often does to demonstrate just how uncool he thinks I am, and shook his head. "I know that Mom." Like, duh.

"So then, what's a tampon?"

Well son, right now a tampon is the bane of my f@cking existence. Thank you very much.

"It's a product designed to absorb the blood flow."  Where the hell is this kid's father?? Oh right. He's working. Earning money to keep me in a lifetime supply of boxed cotton. Dammit.

"But how does it work?" he persisted.

Are you kidding me? Seriously? I look up from my knitting to see if he's dicking with me but no, my kid was earnest. Dammit.

"Well, um, it's inserted up a woman's um, you know." I motion to my groin area. VAGINA VAGINA VAGINA the little voice screamed inside my head. Sometimes I could smack that little voice.

My underarms were getting decidedly moist right then.

"Does it hurt?" Aw, my sweet boy. Shut UP!!

"No, not really. I mean, it's not like you are getting tickled or anything but it shouldn't hurt."

"How does it stay in there?" FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHAT IS WITH ALL THE QUESTIONS?

"Um, gravity?" My knitting is suddenly very interesting and I'm having a hard time taking my eyes off the yarn. I admit, I'm scared to make eye contact with the boy because my daughter's black hole of doom is threatening to devour me if I look at my son.

"But don't babies come out of the, you know, your vagina," he whispered the word. "You had, like, three babies. Big babies. How does something so small stay where it is supposed to?"

By George, I do believe my son just asked me if my vagina suffered from hotdog tossed into a hallway syndrome.

SHOOT ME.

This time, I looked up at Frac so fast I almost got whiplash.

"Um kid, the vagina is ELASTIC. It stretches for childbirth but it doesn't stay stretched out. It's not some gaping maw threatening to swallow everything whole that comes into its orbit. And for the record, nine pound babies aren't THAT big."

Translated: My wind tunnel is just fine thank you very much.

Frac looked at me for a second, trying to decide just how crazy I was and if  my information was at all accurate and then he nodded, apparently satisfied I'm no crazier than normal and all was well.

"Any more questions kid? Now's the time. Speak now or forever hold your piece. Or you know, wait till your father gets home." (That's called passing the buck and it's a useful tool all parents should have in their arsenals.)

"Um, well, how does it come out? Does it ever get stuck up there?"

Since the poor child already thinks I have a cooter of epic proportions I decided not to make any jokes and tell him tampons just magically fall out. Nor did I explain that every once in a while you hear of a girl whose tampon has crawled up to her freaking eyeballs and she had to do unseemly things to dig it out. Not that it's ever happened to me. Scouts honor.

"Nope. Never gets stuck. And there is a string attached so you just yank on it and then dispose of it. Very simple. Very clean. Not GROSS AT ALL." (Bold face lying. Another useful tool in a parent's arsenal.)

"Cool," he replied, satisfied the mystery had been solved and turned back to focus on the over-produced Hollywood crap he was previously immersed in. Thank goodness.

I sat in silence for a moment, temporarily frozen by what had just transpired and ran the conversation over in my head. Satisfied I hadn't completely mucked up his knowledge of basic female biology I looked at Jumby and said a silent prayer of thanks for all children who can't speak, everywhere.

Just when I was feeling really grateful he didn't ask me how my Diva Cup worked, another set of commercials started.

Cue the flowery music and women wearing white. Good times. This time it was a Monistat commercial. It's like the Gods of Television were out to get me.

"Hey Mom, what's that for?" my son once again asked.

I looked at him, looked at the television and I made a choice. I shrugged.

"I don't know kid. Never heard of it in my life. You should ask your father. I'm sure he'll know."

I don't even feel guilty about lying. There are lines every parent will not cross. Mine happens to be drawn right at beaver fever.

Heck, it's a slippery slope from crotch rot to vajazzling and I'm just not willing to tumble down that hill just yet.