The Opposite of Normal is Coming!

When I was in fifth grade, I announced to my Hebrew School class that I did not believe in God. A hush fell over the group, and then one kid loudly exclaimed that was awful.  We never talked about it again.

It's thirty five years later and my feelings about God have grown and changed over the years. As a Reform Jew, I've been taught to question everything about my religion. And I do.

It's my experience, thinking about religion so much, and how it's impacted me, that started the shape of my new book, The Opposite of Normal. (It's out in just a week and a half!)  But I didn't want to write a book solely about religion. For one thing, I'm not interested in doing that. For another, I wanted my book to have many layers.  Religion -- specifically Judaism and Christianity, and how characters use their religion for both good and bad -- is just one layer.  The book is really about growing up, surviving the confusing teen years, as well as learning to live with grief and how not to let grief destroy your life.

I like to write what I know. I completely admire those authors who can step into other worlds, like the 1800s or some science fiction-y place a million years away, but I'm not that kind of author.  I like to write about (and, honestly, read about) contemporary women and families and relationships. I like to read about why characters make the decisions they do and then I like to think about what I would do in that situation. I want characters to feel real to me. That's what I try to do in my writing.

So the time for The Opposite of Normal is getting close. It's nerve wracking and exciting all at once. I get to hear how readers feel about the book -- and whether they like or it not, I have to take responsibility for my words.  Please let me know how you feel about it, either way.  And if you have a book club and want some home baked treats while we talk about the book, just let me know.  I'd love to bake for you and talk about it.  What you, my readers, have to say is what's most important to me. 

My Last's Firsts

My youngest child will be 16 in a couple of days.

This is so weird to me.

When we are parents, I think a lot of time we focus on our firsts.  Our first child's first steps.  Our first child's first words.  Our first child's foray into school.  Her first concert. Her first sporting event. It seems a big deal when that child does all of her firsts. And then she is first to go to college, and that feels gigantic.

Where does that leave the rest of our kids, specifically our lasts?  For me, as my last does her first of everything, it reminds me that this parenting thing is definitely time sensitive, and that it will end.  Not in the way that other jobs end, because, face it, they leave and still need us.  But that her life with me will end. And now that she's 16, it will end soon.

Lauren's firsts always sort of shock me. When I commented the other day that I couldn't believe she was turning 16, she rolled her eyes and responded that I say that about every age. That's probably true, but there's something about 16 that screams there's no going back now. Maybe it's the beginning of driving that makes it seem so final. Or how she's choosing her Junior Year schedule right now. Or that colleges keep sending her mail.  I don't know. But 16 seems a lot older than 15. (She says I say that about every age, too, and she's probably right.)

Lauren has always been my baby. She might cringe as she reads this, but it's true.  She nursed for a much longer time than my older one did.  She wanted me close by for much longer than my older one did. It took a much longer time for me to feel she was ready for Kindergarten. Who knows if that's just me dealing with her last-ness or really her? My mind messes with me.

Sixteen just seems so...impossible.  Like, Are you sure? I look at her and think, "Lauren is a teenager." I say it to myself to keep in my mind that she is one, not the baby I keep seeing.  That she is sixteen. No two ways about it.  

Everyone has "Stuff"

Everyone has stuff.  We just don't always share it with the world.

You know the family in your town with the perfect kids -- good looking, straight A honor students, president of every club, varsity sports? They have stuff.

The family in your town with a lot of money, vacations to exotic locales and owns the nicest house? They have stuff.

The Stay-at-Home Mom who is always prepared, bakes from scratch, is on every volunteer school committee? She has stuff.

The guy who always beats you out for promotions? Who bought his teenagers brand new cars for their sixteenth birthdays? He has stuff.

Lately I have a lot of friends going through stuff -- whether in their own lives, with their kids, with unemployment...

When you're going through stuff, it feels like you're all alone, that you'll never get through it, or that it's going to take a very long time, at least. And that can feel even more awful than than the fact that you're going through stuff in the first place.

Sometimes when you're going through stuff, you look around and think that other people -- those who look "perfect," those people you're secretly jealous of because they seem so perfect -- never go through stuff. But they do.  

There's not much you can do when you're going through stuff but remind yourself that it gets better. The new job will come, the kid will straighten out, the illness will improve.  So to all my friends going through stuff right now, hang in there. Brighter times are ahead.

Living with chronic illness

I'm kind of a private person, but lately I've been thinking that people might understand my life more if I talk about what it's like for me to live with Chrons Disease.

Chrons is a digestive disorder that can affect not only your entire digestive system (in my case, I'm affected from my mouth all the way down) but also other major body systems. In my case, it affects my joints and skin as well.  I was diagnosed with Chrons thirteen years ago, when I was thirty three and was at a low weight of eighty eight pounds, but I'd had symptoms for many years prior to that.  The only way to diagnose Chrons disease is to have a colonoscopy, and because Chrons patients have a higher likelihood of developing colon cancer, I've had four.  I am constantly anemic.

Chrons is a chronic disease with no real rhyme or reason why or how it strikes, other than we know it can run in families. (My aunt has it, too.)  I can be fine for a long time, and then get a flare up. A flare up will land me in bed for days or weeks, unable to eat, unable to function.  I have not been off medication at all for the last thirteen years. Until about a year ago, I took all oral medication.

There are a ton of medications for Chrons, but unfortuantely, most don't work that well, at least for me. For about two years, I spent much of the time feeling awful, and my doctor finally threw down the gauntlet.  She wanted me to start IV infusions.

IV infusions up the ante dramatically. They're a whole new ball game.  For one thing, they take up far more time than oral medication does, obviously.

Right now, in fact, as I type this, I'm in the hospital getting infused.  I come every eight weeks to spend a morning here.  It starts out with getting my vitals taken.  I have to swear up and down I haven't been sick because infusions are dangerous if you have been.  Then I have to "pre med," which means taking an an anti allergy and Tylenol to ward off effects of the infusion medication.

They set up an IV. I'm told I have great veins but it still hurts as they poke around, trying to find one that will work.  They run saline as my infusion meds are mixed at the pharmacy.  While the actual medication I take is a two hour drip, between all the pretesting and saline dripping and then flushing the line at the end, I'm here about three to four hours.

Infusions make me tired. I'll probably go home and take a nap this afternoon.  The medication lowers my immune system's ability to fight infection. This winter is the first winter on infusion, so I'm extra paranoid about getting sick, because I've been warned that a cold can easily turn into a hospital stay for someone on this regimen.

The infusions are helping.  For the last few years, to save me from the constant flare ups, I was almost constantly on prednisone. I haven't been on any prednisone now for four months, and I can count on one hand the number of days I've felt bad since the fall.  So they are worth it.

The UNresolution

Happy New Year!

I hope you rang in the New Year in whatever way you wanted -- whether at a large party or a small gathering, out on the town or in bed before midnight.  And I hope 2014 is wonderful for you. The launch of The Opposite of Normal is next month so I'm hoping 2014 will be a good year for me.

With the New Year always comes the discussion of resolutions.  People discuss their resolutions on tv., on Facebook, on Twitter, and everywhere else.

I think New Years' resolutions can be good -- a friend told me her New Year's resolution last year was to stop smoking -- and she did.  But generally speaking, I feel like New Years' resolutions are about resolving to do or be something we're just not -- and ultimately, we wind up feeling worse about ourselves when we're unable to keep the resolution.

A lot of resolutions seem to be about losing weight.  Now, if you're losing weight to save your health -- if you're morbidly obese, if you have high blood pressure, if you have high cholesterol, whatever -- trying to lose weight makes sense. But if you're ten pounds over what you'd like to be and have tried a million times to lose it and just can't, and you're otherwise healthy -- why not try to accept that you're not as young as you used to be, or that you're a really good person with the fatal flaw of eating cake a little too much -- and just not make that resolution, which come a month or two or three down the road is going to just make you feel bad?

What about being a procrastinator? It's one thing if you procrastinate to the point that you always miss your work or school deadlines. Yeah, you have to get a handle on that. But do you do your holiday shopping the day before the holiday? So what? Do you wait to clean your house until your guests are practically on your doorstep? That's not really such a bad thing. And it's probably inborn, so if you're doing it, trying not to do it may just make you feel awful about yourself -- for no reason.

I could resolve to do a lot of things.  I could keep my house cleaner, I could try not to be so cheap with my money, I could promise myself I would not watch so much mindless tv.  But these things are part of me. They don't hurt anyone else. So instead of resolving to change these bad habits, I'm going to resolve not be so hard on myself. To accept myself as I am. Who's going to join me?