Chocolate

I went to about 5 different grocery stores before Easter searching for Cadbury mini eggs. Nobody had them! I am telling you, I drove all over Pittsburgh. Turns out, all the mini eggs were stockpiled at the ghetto Giant Eagle in a shady neighborhood near our house. I popped in there to buy some stuff for a road trip and was affronted with $.99 bags of the mini eggs. I bought 5.

Then I hid them from my husband, knowing he eats as many of them as I do. Which is a lot. I've been doing my best to ration them out, to only eat a few per day. But this has been one of those weeks. I have been eating so much of the chocolate. I just cracked into my last bag. What will I do til next spring?

To try reserving the precious mini eggs, I've been supplementing my chocolate cravings with Trader Joe's dark truffle chocolate bars. I force myself to eat only one square at a time when things are rough. I put the screaming, napless baby in a jumperoo or in his room and sink into the sofa, slowly enjoying my one square of dark, dark chocolate while I breathe and count to 10. Or 11.

What is it about dark chocolate that has made it so valuable to me in these 9 months of parenthood? I honestly don't think a single day has passed where I haven't had at least one square. If a day did pass, I'm sure it was an unpleasant one. I guess that makes me pretty addicted. I'll take it. I haven't had any beer or wine to speak of since I got pregnant in 2008. And I smoked my last doobie around then (two wonderful puffs to last a lifetime...).

I think I convince myself that I need and deserve the dark chocolate because I abstain from all of these other pleasures, like caffeine. To be quite honest, I greatly prefer this to even a good Belgian wheat beer with dinner. If chocolate is my new vice, I'd say I'm not doing too badly.

sleep

I haven't had sleep in days. 90 minutes here and there...that barely counts. I kind of feel like I could shake the person who invented the phrase "sleeps like a baby." sometimes I hold other people's babies and those babies just become asleep. POOF! Asleep. No marching up and down the stairs. No nursing while an angry baby digs a hole in my upper arm. No pleading with Jesus for the baby to just become asleep. These other babies just enter that state and stay there. It seems like magic to me.

Sometimes I wonder if my son will ever take after his father and become a champion sleeper. Corey's party trick in college (and beyond) was his ability to fall asleep on anybody's couch, no matter how rowdy the party or gathering. Corey can sleep for 14 hours in a row if you let him. He sleeps through thunder and alarm clocks and...crying babies. I hate him a little for this.

Miles sleeps through nothing. Except sometimes car rides. But today, I am too tired to take him on one of those car rides to put him out. I fear I will run over a bicyclist or drive through a red light.

It's been 9 months since I've had sleep. To look at it that way, think about how long that really is, makes me feel humble. I know I'll sleep again someday because Miles will eventually move out of the house, right? But man, I need a nap.

Snacks

We're heading to the zoo and it is law that when you go to the zoo, you better bring snacks. Ugh. Dirty zoo hands – inevitable – touching food, touching lips. I am so bad at packing snacks. I usually forget – rushing out the door, trying to find the keys, lugging all the stuff – and snacks just don't quite happen. My kid looks longingly at other kids' snacks until their mom (who didn't forget) offers some.

I had a friend who hated the word “snack.” It creeped her out, made her skin crawl. I would tease her by using the word way too often. She also hated “goopy.” Pairing the two – goopy snacks – was even better. Snacks are often goopy. Especially when those little zoo hands are touching them.

So here I am, writing instead of packing the snacks - attracted to the word and thoughts but not the doing. I'll do anything other than pack snacks. I mean, what do people even eat?

Grasp

I have been hungry non-stop since I gave birth to my second daughter four months ago. I am a floating head, detached from its body – chomping hungrily at the air. I grasp for something – anything – to fill what is missing...which,I guess, is my self. I grasp for my youth and the days when I would meditate for hours on end. I grasp for the beautiful moments happening now – the sight of my daughters laughing at each other or the soft, warm back of the baby's neck- things I want to hold on to because they are leaving me way too fast. I grasp onto my fantasies about the future – my future fit body, our future financial stability – these things coming right around the corner...right?

I grasp for the earth like I did at age 17 when washed away in a flash flood. I grasped at the grasses on the river bank as the water carried me away, my hands slipping off each time. Just moving so fast. I swear it was an angel or an act of God that pulled me up eventually and landed me on a fallen tree. And I survived.

Now the waters move me and I don't know where. But I am hungry and lost and really all I want is to feel myself in my body again. Right here, right now – feel the fullness of this moment and feel sated.