With the concept of an earned experience (not a toy or a thing) as the reward, the kids keep track of how many points they’ve each earned. Once they earn ten, they get to choose a special experience (a dino dig, afternoon tea, a family picnic, a day of fishing). The key factor: they’re not allowed to ask for a point. If they ask, they don’t get it. Also, particularly uncharacteristic behavior (like peeing on a wall) will snatch that point right back with a loss. It’s remarkable how they can recall exactly how many points they have at any given moment. Ask them how much 5 + 8 is, and I’m affronted with blank stares. But how many points they have? That, they always know. Lucas is at 9 points. Abigail earned a point this morning when she, completely unprompted, swept up the whole house AND whipped out the dustpan, filled the dustpan and successfully emptied it in the trash. Then, she decided to surprise me by quickly dressing, socks and sneakers, hair AND teeth brushed, without my ever having to ask. Love that girl.

I’m wondering if this reward system would work in marriage. I guess marriage itself is supposed to be the reward. Perhaps my reward should be a tour through a crock pot factory or a crack house. Because “marriage as its own sweet reward,” is not quite right. More like, “Oh, wow, that’s a crock and crack all rolled into one.” Side of bitter greens, please.

Truth: I don’t even know what I’d want as an experiential reward for good behavior. You know, aside from: peace. And…

A couples cooking class.
A food photography workshop.
Back to watercolor class.
A trip to Lego Land with the kids.
I’ve got it. What I want—aside from a vacation in Burma with a professional photography guide—is a family vacation in the Florida Keys. At Club Med. Oh, this has got to happen. And one of those days WILL involve deep sea fishing (without the kids) and a sushi dinner. I can’t wait. I love fishing! I also love my parents, love that they, my mother really, made it a point of including fishing in our lives early on. I am such a lucky girl. I really am so blessed. Plus, I’m having all the toppings I want today, ’cause I rage like that. Period.

I went to the gynecologist yesterday for an annual exam. I’m 36 years old. I know my period has been fucked up for over a year now, coming infrequently. I assumed it was because of the weight loss and stress of moving. The nurse asked me what I used for birth control, and I answered honestly. “Marriage.” I thought it sounded better than, “abstinence.”

Yesterday they took blood and also did an ultrasound of my ovaries. The doctor believed I had poly-cystic ovaries (my whole life, I’ve never heard this) which results in fewer periods, but a technician looked at my ovaries with a giant wand up the crotch and saw two cysts on one ovary and one cyst on the other, all smaller than 1-inch. With poly-cystic, he said, people have like six to eight cysts. He said he thought I was ovulating right now, consistent with my silky thin discharge (normal), and TMI, I know. He said I should take Provera for 10 days to bring on a period, and then he wants to start me on birth control, to regulate my period, so it comes more often than THREE times a year (which is how often I had it last year).

This morning, 8:27am, I get a message from him.

“Hi, Stephanie, this is Dr. Silfen. I got the results of your blood work. You’re not pregnant, as we expected. Your thyroid is normal, your prolactin level is normal. You’re estrogen level is high. And your FSH is in the menopausal range, which does not make sense. Your LH is very high, consistent to what I spoke about yesterday, PCO, poly-cystic ovaries, so what I’m going to recommend is that you take the Provera for ten days. I think you’re going to get a period, but if you don’t get a period, give me a call and we’ll decide what to do. But first let’s just take the medication and go we’ll go from there. Bye.”

So, now, I’m my father’s daughter. A wreck. I walk around the grocery store looking at people. Fat, thin, old. People buying ingredients, fondling fruit, living their lives. I feel removed from it, from the everyday, seeing daily events as motions. Medical news can shift things in your life, especially your perspective. Literally.

Lord love a duck! Here’s hoping that I soon, very soon, see spot run. Period.

Pregnant at least 13 weeks. The doctor tells me she doesn’t think… “Well, I suspect your sac is light.” I ask that my husband come in to see. We just want to see all these moments, every chance we can. “No,” she says, not a good idea. But I feel it. There’s something here. I point to a knot in my stomach, like a hard ball. There are too many nurses around me. I never get to see the ultrasound screen.

One nurse with dark hair sees my razor burn crotch, coming in late, and says, WHAT’S THAT?! as if that’s the reason I’m there. As if that is what we’re dealing with. I get angry, tell her to shut the fuck up. She yells back at me. Then the doctor interrupts. I still can’t believe they won’t let Phil in.

The doctor stops looking, sits back, leaning on the radiator as she says something. I say, stillbirth? No, not that. Then she says she wasn’t going to tell me the sex, a boy, but I won’t be able to have him. “I’m that far along?!” I say.

“Oh, yes, yes,” she says. “But, he won’t survive the seasons.”

I get very frustrated with her, yell that I don’t need metaphors. I need ENGLISH. She has red hair, short, straight, with ugly clear, wide glasses. The white coat. She says, “He’s gotten good at mimicking this stage of pregnancy but won’t survive the rest of it.” She keeps saying “I’ll need to patch,” which to me sounds like D&R. I still don’t understand, tell her I once had a blighted ovum. Is that this? No, there is a heartbeat. There is a sex. She finally says she thinks it’s neo-natal SOMETHING. And I feel like it’s a type of cancer. She says they’ll biopsy the fetus once he’s out. I wake up. Dream over.

I try to figure out if I’m pregnant at all. I’m not. I remember the life I’m living, with my children running around downstairs, I hear them. My lower back hurts, like I’ll have my period soon. I don’t remember what day it is, what the schedule is. I just know that today will feel different, somehow.

I feel angry, boxed out, like someone’s not doing a good job explaining things to me, no matter how many times I ask. I want a second opinion on something, but I can’t figure out what it is. Why do we have dreams like this? What’s it telling me?

The dream just before this one? I was working in some office, on a computer. Movies kept cropping up on my screen, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t figure out a way to mute them without pressing three different buttons. I worried I’d get fired, that they’d think I was goofing off.

Before that, I was in an office that burned down, the whole thing, all the computers. Then I’m at the headhunter being placed for a job I don’t even want. It’s as if I were stuck with a bunch of things I didn’t want, but the one thing I wanted I couldn’t have.

I can’t remember ever yelling at someone the way I did at that nurse who was commenting on my crotch. Asshole never had red ingrown hairs of her own, clearly not a redhead.

QUESTION FROM A GREEK TRAGEDY READER [Let's call her Apple]: This isn’t as serious as your usual questions, but I really want an unbiased opinion, so here goes…

At my best friend’s daughter’s 1st birthday party I announced to her that I had created the PERFECT baby girl name (for my yet-to-be-conceived child). Merilee, a quirky spelling of Mary Lee. She agrees it’s a fabulous name and then mentions that Mary Lee is her grandmother’s name, and we all joke about how I’m naming my 1st born daughter after her grandmother (who isn’t a favorite in her family and circle of friends). Fast forward 8 months and my friend is pregnant. Me? Still no kids. She informs me via text that she and her hubby have decided to name the baby after her Grandmother and they’re going to spell it…. Wait for it… Merilee.

Seriously?! So, does this fall under some sort of ‘girl code’? Are there etiquette rules for this kind of thing? Do I have to go with the flow because it’s a family name? Or can I call "shotgun" because I thought of it first?

I know this certainly falls in the "silly/petty" category but I just wanted your opinion. 

Before I take a smack + crack at answering this (and I will), I’ll let others weigh in with their own words of wisdom. Floor’s all yours…

…As promised, let’s go there. The fact that your friend texted you this news isn’t a random act of rudeitude. It’s Pulling a Warner. That’s right, she basically invited you to a fancy restaurant, so you couldn’t make a scene after she dumped your pink stink for a Jackie O’ type. She intentionally sent you a text to avoid the confrontation. She knows you’re not going to like it. She also knows that she’s rationalizing her actions. That is, deep down she knows that what she’s doing is flying-monkey-wrong. It’s why she chose to communicate the way she did, and if you ever called her out on it, she could simply turn things on you, making you out to be the crazy obsessive petty one in your friendshit.

"Jesus, I didn’t think twice about it because it’s not your name. Why else would I casually text it to you? If it were a big deal, don’t you think I would’ve talked to you about it in person? What kind of person do you think I am?" Your answer: the baby plagiarist kind.

Piss poor behavior aside, let’s deal with the rest of it. You’re not going to like what I have to say next. First, and this is really an aside, as the name you chose doesn’t change the behaviors and actions at play, yet I feel compelled to rain on the Merilee parade. Don’t go naming your kids with unusual spellings. Because they have to go around, for the rest of their lives correcting paperwork, using the military alphabet to communicate the proper spelling to customer service operators, and correcting mispronunciations when idiots butcher the name to "Mer-eye-lee." And no one is going to read that name and think it says "Mary Lee." For her whole life, she’ll be called "Merrily" which, admittedly, isn’t as bad as "Merry," which immediately brings to mind a bouncy fraggle muppet, that or a rotund elderly man in a red velvet track suit–pick your poison. I’d butcher my parents if they’d squeezed an f into my name. Stefanie can’t tell someone her own name without adding, "with an f." No good can come of it.

Sidebar: a friend recently told me that a child in her daughter’s class was named "L-A." How would you go about pronouncing this name? Go on, try. "El-aye?" "Ella?" No. Correct pronunciation: El-dash-ah. "The dash ain’t silent" her mother barked at the teacher.

Off the sudsbox, let’s return to the facts. You need to ask yourself what upsets you more: the principle of it or the fact that your name has been nabbed up, leaving it less unique? Because the truth is, you don’t know for certain if you’ll even have children, or a girl for that matter. And if you do, there’s still nothing stopping you from using Merilee, you know, aside from common sense. That was a joke.

Bottom line, I’d talk to her. I wouldn’t accuse her of anything. I’d ask her why she decided to text you that? I’d ask her if she remembered that it was the baby name you’d created. I’d try to give her the benefit of the doubt (even though, personally I wouldn’t buy it–I’d pretend to be fair). Then I’d tell her how you feel. That you feel angry, swindled, duped. Whether it’s true or not, it’s how you feel. And you’re hurt that she could be so casual about telling you, or not even realizing what a big deal it is to you. After I got that out, I’d tell her that you realize you might not even have a girl, so she can do what she’d like, but it certainly won’t stop you from using the name one day if you do have a wee girl. Then I’d hand her a copy of the best baby name book I know: the Pottery Barn Catalog.

GOT QUESTIONS? NEED ADVICE? If you have questions or need advice on anything from where to eat to how to get over the bastard, just email your question to my advice email address. Nope, I’m not a shrink, but since people keep asking for my opinion, I might as well share it and air it, so everyone else can weigh in too.

I realize, of course, the implication of my title. So, I’ll set things right at the onset. This is not my attempt at creating a euphemism for erectile dysfunction, nor is it a comment on the vest-pocket penis. For starters, I can most certainly trump "little engine" in the euphemism department:

"Gabe was a roll of quarters, and I’d spent too many nights wishing I could feel it in my stomach. In the same way you can’t imagine the taste of butter on your dry baked potato, you can’t fantasize the feeling of weight in your hands. Unfortunately, it’s not like the pimple on your face; it doesn’t feel bigger than it actually is. Been there, done a past life of that. Lesson learned." 

"This is one you just can’t compromise away. The careless leaving-the-seat-up thing is a non-issue.  There’s therapy for a bad temper. Get a maid to deal with the socks. But a lifetime with a penis made of kibbles n bits is a deal-breaker." —Straight Up And Dirty

I wasn’t being spiteful; I was being generous. But enough of the Wasband’s wee-wares. This is a post about trains… Or, is it? The truth is, it was going to write about trains, all about Thomas and his bits. About how I spent another sleepless night with wood glue, constructing a three-story fantasy train world for Kind Sir, and how obsessed I’ve become, wanting SureTrack Clips (so he can play on the carpet without the tracks coming undone), needing Wacky Tracking (so he can create a corkscrew road if he’d like), desperate for adapters and elevation supports. Damn exciting stuff, to one and all, clearly. Then I was going to segue to internal scripts—those things about myself I’ve always assumed, without question. I’ve spent so many years proclaiming who I am and who I’m not. "I am a Jackie Chan of a chef." "I am not someone who can install window screens." "I am someone who spends time looking back, but would never go back."

"Who would have thought," I thought—my foot supporting an ascending railway track as I reached for glue—"that I’d ever be the type to spend her Saturday night building a train station? Who would’ve thought I was the handy one in the relationship?" It’s just as The Little Engine That Could demonstrates; it’s all about internal scripts. Sometimes—all the time, actually—we convince ourselves of who we are and what we’re capable of. Mind over matter. The man who succeeds is the man who thinks he can, and all that. And here, all this time, I’d convinced (quite passively) myself that I wasn’t good at assembling anything more than a salad. It’s where I was going with the post, that is, until I was derailed with photos of the Wasband’s recent wedding…to another redhead.

That’s when I strayed from the main line and shifted directions: part of who we are is where we’ve been, what we choose, how we respond. A more intimate, quiet part of who we are is what we remember. It’s what we know.

I couldn’t un-know that I knew most of the groomsmen in the photos, that I knew which smiles of his were orchestrated, where the photographer asked him to kiss her head; I couldn’t un-know wedding dance lessons. I couldn’t un-know all the intimate things you learn when you’re with someone, as we were, for five years. Funerals. Grandparents. Weddings. Traffic. Clogged drains. Jokes about clogged arteries. Him always falling asleep first. Anywhere. In a bowl of spaghetti. Jokes about the way his mother always told that story. Doctor visits. Going with me to the OBGYN to see the heartbeat. I couldn’t un-know the way he liked to dip me at the end of songs. And as much as I tried, I certainly couldn’t un-know his mother, "Rome," but really, no one can.

I couldn’t unlearn the faces of his cousins, or his uncle—the one who was always so nice to me, but whom the Wasband privately called "A nothing; he’s a nobody." I couldn’t un-know it as I passed the photo, his uncle ready to prop him up for the Horah. You can’t unlearn everything you remember, no matter what your internal script. You can’t "I think I can" out of it. And many (even I) might argue differently on this: you can’t talk yourself out of the ugly. The kind of ugly that stays with you when you’ve loved someone. The ugly wishes, hoping someone along the way treats him the way he treated you, wanting nothing more for him than karma.

More than any of these detailed threads, the one that’s most telling, is that they’re with me still. The most telling detail in all these details is that I remember them. And none of us can choose what we remember or find a way to un-know all that we do. It sticks with you, whether you want it to or not. Sometimes he snakes into your dreams. Admitting this doesn’t mean you’re not over it. Not at all.

If I’d shrugged, if I was so far beyond it, without feeling or care, I don’t think I could’ve ever called what we had love. You can’t ignore that up until now it’s all felt like details and facts, descriptions of a breakup & breakthrough, but now it feels like something else: an acknowledgment that what we had was real. And you can’t unlearn that.

You can only ask yourself to please, if you’d be so kind, get the fuck out. So you close the browser window, write it all down, and you reach for the glue and get back on track.

For those who may have stumbled onto my site after seeing the Rachael Ray Show, welcome!

I’m a mother to toddler twins (who arrived 10 weeks early!), an author, a photographer, a fat camp champ, a former thin person, and a wife (not always in that order, lest I wind up with another husband turned Wasband). If you really want to know me, you can start with the facts.

I blog about everything from duct taping my daughter into her diaper to achieving "balance" and which components actually make the best damn burger.

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