New Year's Revolution

A long time ago, long before I had kids, I had a client from Idaho who in addition to trying to convince me that Idaho wasn't cold and I would love it if I moved there (yeah, anyplace that requires heaters for your car engine to keep it from freezing overnight I classify as cold, thankyouverymuch), talked at great length about his New Year's Revolutions that he was making. I don't think he had any clue that he wasn't using the right word, and I never did figure out why he was so gung ho to get me to move to Idaho (bonus from Lockheed for new employee? He was miserable and wanted that misery to have company in the form of my family? Thought I was cute and wanted me to participate in the rumored swinging that goes on there?), but this year, his words are the right words.

There needs to be a revolution in the Fish Pond.

Having four kids is hard. Not as hard as going from none to one, but it is its own unique kind of hard. And I'm having trouble finding my groove as a mom to that many. I am cranky and irritable and lashing out at the kids in a way that horrifies me and scares the hell out of me that I am getting too close to being a hairline fracture away from abuse. I am tired. I'm neither eating right nor sleeping much. I'm not exercising, unless you count lugging around Nemo, who is quite the chunky baby. BigDaddyFish is feeling the stress, too, and it's making his already grumpy antisocial personality all the more pronounced, and it's putting a huge strain on our marriage. And 2007 is going to be a difficult year for me.

My mother died when I was 15 years old; she was 37. She had undiagnosed heart disease and she just went upstairs to take a nap one afternoon and never woke up. The autopsy showed that one of her coronary arteries was 90% blocked, and the blood clot that gathered there caused the heart attack that killed her. Her death launched a horrible decade of avoidance and then trying to find my way without any guidance, as my father climbed into the bottle and the depression that being bipolar brings, never helping my sister and I deal with our grief and figure out how to live (he even denied our grief, saying “You don't know how I feel – you only lost your mother, I lost my wife” – he never understood that because of our ages and the fact that we were girls, we had suffered one of the worst losses a person can experience, and that we should never have been left up to our own devices to work through it).

I will turn 37 this summer. I have high cholesterol. I am overweight. And I have an unrelated heart issue that causes its own problems.

My uncle recently told me that he was a basket case in his 37th year, and that he woke up on his 38th birthday and took a deep breath and began to live again. The closer that I have become to age 37 the more the pressure has built, the greater the anxiety has grown.

Something's gotta give. I need to get control of my life, of myself and how I react to things. I don't ever want my kids to be scared of me or BDF. I want them to look back and remember a happy childhood, not one where their parents were fighting all the time and too busy/tired to raise them properly. I don't want to make my kids think that having children only brings strife and not to have kids themselves (if they choose that path on their own, fine, but I don't want our family's failure to deal with stress productively to cause it). I want to be around to help them grow. I want to see my grandchildren.

I am announcing a Fish Pond Revolution, and I do hereby decree:

• I will research the diet I was on when I had gestational diabetes, and I will eat that way again.

• I will do whatever it takes to work back up to a 4 days a week exercise program.

• I will get my relationship with my kids in perspective, using professional help if necessary. Because my mom died and my dad was a dysfunctional mess at best, I really feel like I'm flying blind as a mother here – I have no idea what the hell I'm doing and have no guidance in how to do it, and the fear that comes from that makes me lash out and overreact and try to avoid an intimate relationship with my kids. I want a healthy relationship with them; I want to enjoy them and them to enjoy me.

• I vow to change my reactions to things such that if I wouldn't treat a co-worker in a certain way I will not treat my family members that way, either. I will find constructive ways to say what I need to say.

• I vow to learn how to have fun. I will dance more, play more, color more, say “Yes” more, instead of “Not now, I'm busy.”

• I will learn how to take care of myself so that I can take care of them. I will remember to nourish my soul and spirit as well as my body.

• I will get my propensity for clutter under control – not just for myself, but as an example to my kids so they won't have “clean house issues” (whole 'nother post there, my friends)

This is such a big deal for me, and I'm going to stumble and fall along the way. I'll need to take a page from Flylady and take baby steps. In the end if I am only half successful it will mean a better life for my kids, and husband and me, too. I want to use my 37th year to make changes to ensure that I get a fighting chance at 37 more, and make those that I do get, happy.

And I need to be accountable. My name is Mary and I have a problem. Please walk with me while I deal with it.

Comments

[Summer]

I'll walk with you. I don't have any idea what it's like to be a mom to many (but since I still secretly dream of a big family, thank you thank you THANK YOU for saying that it's not as hard as going from zero to one kid) but I do know what it's like to be stuck in an unhappy rut. I'd like to have more fun, to treat my family in a way that shows how much I love them, and stop using all horizontal surfaces as laundry baskets/trash cans/dirty dish receptacles.

Might I recommend, as a potential exercise program, the T-Tapp Basic Plus Workout? Only takes fifteen minutes, doesn't require anything special in terms of equipment or space, and it works. And if you ever wanted to drive into the city, I can offer you my amateur training services....

Say it with me: 2007 WILL be a good year.

[Angi]

I need to do many of these things too...which makes me want to hear all about "clean house issues" cause it sounds like I have that one too *sigh*

I am walking with you too :)