Showin' my ass

When I was still teaching, I worked with an awesome math teacher, S. Now she and I couldn't have been more different. She was a tall, solid, crazy funny Black woman who wouldn't take shit off anybody and had the ability to get her students wound up and still be able to calm them down with very little problem. I was....well....me. But I learned so much about interacting with students in an urban school setting from working with her.

I recall a conversation she relayed to me once in which she told a student that this student was, "Showin' her ass." That is, showing her worst possible side.

And just this morning, when a friend emailed me to ask whether I'm really as miserable as I seem, I realized that my blog is all about me showing my ass.

Because I am not totally miserable or always miserable. I spend probably 90% of my days not being miserable. But that 10% is what I write about, and that 10% has the ability to bring me way down. That 10% has the ability to unsettle whatever anxieties I've worked to ease over the course of the day.

My incision seems to be healing up alright, although I am going to withhold judgment until I see the nurse practitioner tomorrow. I have been getting out with the boys.....we even went to playgroup yesterday. I am getting fairly consistent 3-hour windows of sleep at night (so in bed at 11 pm, up and nursing at 2 am, back down to sleep at 3 am, and then up again around 6:30 am). I have been able to keep up with laundry and even changed the sheets on the kids' beds yesterday.

But inevitably there are the suck-ass times. Like when M wants to nurse and N and G are belly-aching for food and D is in a late meeting at work (that was last night). Or when my nips are especially sensitive, and my toes are curling from the discomfort of Mr. Barracuda clamping down. Or when M doesn't want to go back to sleep after his 2 am nursing.

And I write mostly about the suck-ass times. I don't need to vent about when things are running smoothly. Plus, I am nothing if not a fan of hyperbole, so my venting is usually ramped up purely for the sake of my own penchant for exaggeration.