I tried to take a walk every day with the wee one and Chuck because Leta had finally learned to love the outdoors, and Chuck loved to sniff vertical objects. It also broke up the monotony of our day. On our walks I usually played with Leta’s dangling feet because, well, her feet were dangling, and I was nervous by nature and always looking to fidget with something. Dangling baby feet were perfect for wandering, fidgety hands. And for eating. With ketchup.
On this particular walk, however, I was pretty focused on the conversation I was having with my friend, and I was talking with my hands. I find it physically impossible to utter a single word without waving my hands around in circles like a flight attendant or a castaway trying to flag down a rescue plane. So Leta’s feet dangled untouched for pretty much the whole walk while my eyebrows and fingers shouted sentences into the air. When we arrived at the coffee shop I stood outside the door with Chuck on the leash waiting for my friend to get her coffee. I would have bought a coffee as well, but I’d recently figured out that caffeine had no effect on me whatsoever given the whopping amount of a drug that I was on. The drug made me tired, and nothing would deter it. Not even a venti Mocha Valencia with cocaine sprinkled on top.
While I was standing there patiently with the dog on the leash, who by the way was going nuts because there was another dog there sitting reverently next to its owner and Chuck had not yet been given the opportunity to sniff its ass, a woman sitting at one of the outdoor tables turned to the man sitting next to her and whispered, “That baby has only one sock on.” I was the only one standing there with a baby attached to my body, and in slow motion I reached down to check Leta’s feet and here’s where the music from Psycho kicked in, when the woman is in the shower and the guy with the knife comes to kill her:
OH. MY. GOD. LETA HAS ONLY ONE SOCK ON. WE HAVE LOST A SOCK. MY BABY IS HALF-SOCKLESS.
There is only one thing in this world that is worse than a sockless baby, and that is a half-sockless baby. When a baby is sockless both of her feet match, so the hobo factor is only moderately high. A half-sockless baby DOES NOT HAVE MATCHING FEET, so the hobo factor is pegged in the red zone, the danger zone, the zone at which the hobo engine is going to overheat and explode.
My first thought was, my husband is going to kill me. My second thought was, Jesus Christ, dog, go sniff that other dog’s butt and calm down so that I can freak out. When my friend came out of the coffee shop she saw the look of horror on my face, and I explained, “WE’VE LOST A SOCK! And Leta is wearing CUT-OFF DENIM PANTS, THAT ARE FRAYED AT THE END! MY MARRIAGE IS IN DANGER!”
Quickly we set out a plan of action: we would retrace our steps and look for the lost girly sock. Our chances of finding it were pretty good since the walk wasn’t longer than a half mile. Chuck finally engaged in butt-sniffing and calmed down so that we could begin our walk home, and I kept shaking my head thinking, “Half-sockless, half-sockless, HALF-SOCKLESS!”
Not thirty seconds into our walk back home we spotted the missing girly sock lying in the middle of the sidewalk. My friend snatched it up from the ground and handed it to me, and I immediately put it in my back pocket and took off Leta’s other sock. I wasn’t going to risk losing a sock again, and so I continued the walk home with a totally sockless baby. Who was wearing frayed pants. We must have looked homeless and world-weary, me the crack-whore mother, Leta the crack baby.
My marriage had been saved.
A block before we got back to the house I got stung by a bee on my left hand. I was a little stunned, having just been through a half-sockless episode, and I swatted the bee away and pulled the stinger out of my thumb. THANK GOD I was the one who got stung because my friend was so allergic to bees that if she had been stung her lungs would have closed up and she might have died. If Leta had been stung, well, did Leta really need another reason to scream?
I wasn’t normally allergic to bees, but my left hand swelled to the size of a grapefruit. It was so swollen that I couldn’t even wear my wedding ring. So swollen that I looked like a crack-whore mother who got beat up real good in an alley behind the tattoo shop because I stole someone’s needle. All while my sockless baby dangled like a large tumor from my chest.
Dear Leta,
Today you turn eight months old. We have several things to talk about, but the first and most important thing that we need to discuss are the two teeth that have taken residence in your mouth and in our house. Why did you have to go and grow those two teeth? Were they really necessary?
Perhaps the worst thing about your teeth is that they decided to sprout at the same time, which made your usual grouchy and cranky self a notch more grouchy and cranky, which in turn shook the foundation of the house and crumbled the brick exterior. I thought you were grouchy and cranky, but I had no idea what two teeth could do to a human being, and the world will never be the same. There is no wrath on earth as vengeful as the wrath of a teething baby, and I challenge anyone to stick their hand anywhere near your mouth without pulling it back missing a finger or two or five.
It’s not like you really need teeth. You could sustain your life on milk and applesauce for years, and you can chew cereal with those two teeth just fine. Why grow more teeth when all that does is create more things to clean? You already have armpits and earlobes and fingernails that have to be cleaned, why add anything else? Take my advice: keep it simple. You’ll thank me later.
Over the past month you have learned how to sit up by yourself. It happened overnight, like BOOM, there you were sitting there hanging out without tilting or leaning over. You have no idea how much this has contributed to our quality of life, as I don’t have to carry you around kicking and screaming all the time. You can just sit there and kick and scream. I now have two free hands to do with whatever I want, like putting clothes on your head or taking a toy just out of your reach. OOOH, you can get testy, and you usually reprimand me by saying, “NA NA NA NA NA!” Which means, “Woman, my love for you is conditional, now give me back that goddamn toy.”
You’re constantly reaching for things and grabbing the remote or telephone out of my hands. You inspect objects like a scientist, end over end, and then you try to put things into your mouth from every angle. First the top of the thing goes into your mouth, then the bottom, and then the sides. One new object can entertain you for almost a half hour, but if you’ve already seen something you cannot be bothered with it. You’ve already seen that bunny! You’ve already played with that rattle! And this Tupperware container? You saw it TWICE yesterday. You get this really frustrated look on your face that says, “GOD, PEOPLE! CAN’T YOU BE MORE ORIGINAL? How big is this world that you brought me into, and these are the toys that you bring me? OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!”
You’re now eating three meals a day in addition to the bottles we feed you, Oh Royal One. You love oatmeal and pears and sweet potatoes and apples and cereal, and last week we fed you pulled pork. You’ll eat just about anything we feed you, and when we put food into our mouths we had better be prepared to share that food with you as you accost us with an open mouth, like a hungry baby bird. Your system is handling the new food well as you poop about forty times a day. One of the great mysteries of the Universe has to be how the hell I gave birth to such a regular baby.
Weekly physical therapy is going really well, meaning that you squawk less and less each week we put you through your exercises. You still refuse to put any weight on your legs, but the therapist thinks this may just be a characteristic of your personality rather than something neurological. When we distract you while we put you into certain weight-bearing positions you are fine, and then you realize, WAIT, we have distracted you and put you into a weight-bearing position and WHO GAVE US PERMISSION TO DO THAT! SQUAWK! I’m working with you every day to get those chubby legs of yours to assume more responsibility, but this is a hard slog as you are so very stubborn. I can’t blame you though; Jon Armstrong is your father.
Recently you spent two days with Grandmommy while your father and I “reconnected.” I
promise you will understand what that means when you have your own kids. When we walked into her house to pick you up you were sitting in the middle of her floor surrounded by cousins and toys, and both your father and I felt a rush of electricity shake us in our bones. We were so excited to see you, our little Scooter sitting there smiling, waving your arms and wiggling your hands. We never knew we could miss something so much.
We picked you up and hugged you, and then I handed you to your father so that I could go to the bathroom really quickly, and Leta, for the first time you cried as I turned to walk away. My mother assured me that you hadn’t cried all weekend, but there you were, looking after me as I stepped closer to the bathroom, and gigantic tears fell from your eyes. I couldn’t help myself, so I turned back around and scooped you out of your father’s arms and took you to the bathroom with me. And there we were in Granny’s bathroom, me on the toilet, you on my lap, smiling and peeing and being very much in love.
Love, Mama
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
My Arms Spread Completely Wide
Chuck had been in our lives for a little over two and a half years, and he’d always been a playful dog. Whenever we were on a walk people stopped to ask how old the puppy was because he looked like a puppy and would cuddle with anyone. We feared we might have over-socialized him as a puppy because he would play with any dog and then go over and say hello to the dog’s owner as a courtesy and to see if there were treats to be had. PLEASE, SOMEONE, ANYONE, GIVE HIM TREATS.
Chuck and I had been reconnecting since I’d been home from the mental hospital, and he was living proof that dogs could read and respond to silent human emotion, although a lot of my emotion pre-hospital was of the non-silent, shrieking variety. As my postpartum depression got worse I would see less and less of Chuck throughout the day, and he never slept with us in bed, scared that I would throw him off of it one more time for making that annoying ball-licking noise. That has to be one of the world’s worst noises, the slap-lapping of an empty nutsack by a dry dog tongue. My drugs may have been working but I still would have thrown him off the bed for that transgression, it was just THAT BAD.
Now that I was better—and let me just take a moment here to address just how much better I felt, I felt THIS much better, THIS being my arms spread completely wide, wide enough that I could hug every woman in the world who was suffering postpartum depression and let them know that things could get better—Chuck was at my side all day long, following me once again into every room, hinting that he wanted to go on another walk. We took naps on the couch together when Leta napped, his head usually pressed up against my feet. At night he roamed the kitchen with us as we made dinner, unafraid that I might throw a utensil or piece of burning food in his or Jon’s direction.
I don’t know if my depression sped up his aging process, but Chuck had become a crusty old man at the dog park and had taken to barking at more than his usual two things: 1) the neighbor, a taxidermist who came home smelling like fresh death every night, and 2) moving trash cans, specifically the ones we dragged from the backyard to the curb every Tuesday morning. I understood why he barked at the neighbor; the man killed and stuffed dead animals, animals closely related to Chuck in the evolutionary chart. In fact, I was surprised Chuck hadn’t rounded up a group of neighborhood dogs to corner the man and take him out.
The moving trash-can thing was something I sort of trained him to do in a moment of complete stupidity. I thought it would be a fun game to play, having him chase me as I rolled the trash can to the curb. But he took it from chasing to nipping at my ankles to grabbing my pants leg to FULL ON BARKING AT ME. I couldn’t even get near those cans without a glimmer of mischief sparkling in his eye, which had become problematic considering that I usually brought the cans back in from the curb while I was carrying Leta. It must have looked insane, that Armstrong woman with the sockless baby in one arm, her other arm pulling the trash can up the driveway, and that crazy dog running around her, biting her ankles and barking at her, all while she screamed CUT IT OUT, DOG. I MEAN IT. STOP. NOW. REALLY. STOP. STOP. WHAT DID I JUST SAY? STOP.
While Chuck got along really well with Leta—she loved to eat his tail and pat him on the back while she drank her bottle—he became jealous when we took her places and left him at home. We used to take him with us everywhere we went because that’s what dumb, middle-class, childless people do when they have animals: they treat them like kids. How could we leave him at home, alone, for more than thirty minutes? He might get lonely! And need us! Why didn’t our friends understand that when we came over for dinner parties WE HAD TO BRING THE DOG WITH US! He was a part of the family! Why didn’t anyone shoot us in the head at close range?
Chuck was still very much a part of the family, but his role was now more that of a dog than that of a Prince who was heir to the family fortune. When I ran errands with Leta I no longer stuck him in the back of the truck because we didn’t have time to stop at the dog park, and that was just too much to handle: a cranky kid and a cranked-out dog. I’d usually pat him on the head and say, “You have to stay here and watch the house,” because then I was giving him a job and don’t dogs thrive on having a role in life? Isn’t that what the dog books say, that dogs need jobs, that jobs make dogs happy? Well, Chuck never read that book, and when I left the house without him he thought I was saying, “I don’t love you, and I have never loved you.” Once I walked out the door and turned the lock he proceeded to find a way to take revenge, usually in the form of taking things out of the bathroom trash can, chewing them to pieces, and spreading them out on the bathroom floor.
Things that go into the bathroom trash can are by nature awful things containing awful fluids and awful waxes, so having them regurgitated and strewn about the floor was by nature unpleasant and punishable by death. But we loved Chuck, and the most harm we ever did to him was to bring him into the bathroom to the scene of the crime and shout NO! NO! NO! several times while hitting the toilet paper and tissue and half-chewed tampons. It was something our trainer in Los Angeles taught us to do, claiming that when we hit whatever the dog had chewed or destroyed we were creating a team with the dog against the object. The trainer assured us that it was much more painful for us than it was for the dog.
I once took an afternoon jaunt to the grocery store without Chuck in tow because hey! Dog owners! Dogs don’t need to go to the grocery store! It’s REVOLUTIONARY THINKING! I hadn’t yet taken him on a walk that day for reasons I don’t remember, so he was particularly pissed at me when I turned around to leave and said, “I’ve never loved you.” Later that night, while Jon and I were eating dinner, Chuck brought us his victim clutched in his salivating jaws, Leta’s green stuffed giraffe now missing both pink horns and a significant amount of stuffing. It was as if he felt so guilty about the crime that he brought it to us, his head hung low, his tail between his back legs.
Things were getting personal.
I knew that this was a bad case of separation anxiety and that we could improve the situation if we exercised Chuck more. But if given the choice between fetching an object or death from prolonged exposure to nuclear radiation, Chuck would have preferred the latter each and every time. He just wasn’t born a fetcher, and that made exercising his bony ass somewhat tricky.
I tried to take him on at least one long walk a day, but when Leta insisted on being a big fat crybaby we stayed inside so that the neighbors didn’t shoot me as I walked by. When Chuck didn’t go on walks he got a raging case of cabin fever and then started to pace, and the endless clicking of his paws on the hardwood floors made me want to cut off his Frito-smelling feet and give Leta a few new toys to play with.
So we devised a game to exercise Chuck where Jon and I would stand at opposite ends of a field and shake bottles of pills. He’d hear the rattling of the pills and run between us to receive a treat. It was bribery, yes, and it worked.
One night the clicking of the paws was unbearable, and at about 9 PM we put on our coats, grabbed a couple of
bottles of pills, and headed out into the front yard. Jon walked up the street and I rounded the house into the backyard, and we bribed Chuck to run between us about four times. The moon was out and shone bright through the haze of the valley’s frost, and I looked down and noticed I was shaking a bottle of laxatives.
When we got back inside I checked Jon’s bottle and smiled wickedly when I realized he’d been shaking a bottle of antipsychotics. Funny, he grabbed that one when he’d had the choice of four antidepressants, three antianxieties, two antiseizures, seven bottles of sleep aids, and one big container of stool softener.
One Saturday night we met my family for dinner at Chili’s in Sandy, Utah, one of the more conservative patches of the Salt Lake Valley. I think it’s pretty funny that I just wrote that, “more conservative patches of the Salt Lake Valley,” as if people in one part of this place would give a better blow job to the Republican party than people who live a few blocks over. We had dressed Leta in her T-shirt that read, MOMMY WANTS A NEW PRESIDENT, risking a drive-by shooting if not a public hanging, and my mother said she had already seen that shirt, so she wasn’t too shocked by it. That of course took away all the fun I had planned for the evening as nothing was more fun than shocking my mother. Yes, I was still that juvenile. Trust me, if your mom were the Avon World Sales Leader you would love to shock her, too.
I’m not usually a fan of chain restaurants, but I should probably come clean and confess the small place I have in my heart for Chili’s: there is just something about their chips and salsa and willingness to bring two Diet Cokes at one time that make me forgive the aching heartburn that follows their meals. We were going to be arriving a little bit early to the dinner and Jon suggested we stop by a nearby bookstore to pass some time. I asked him why, and he said that he didn’t want to get there too early so that we would have to sit there waiting for everybody while eating chips and salsa. AND WHAT WOULD BE WRONG WITH THAT? I couldn’t follow his flawed logic and ordered him to drive straight there.
It Sucked and Then I Cried Page 20