Good bye, giraffe pajama. Good bye.

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

When my first child was a baby, I didn’t treasure each moment. It was hard, I was tired, and I knew I was going to (Goddess-willing) do it again. 

I remember gazing at him breastfeeding when he must have been seven- or eight-months old and thinking, “I can’t wait to stop breastfeeding you. I’ll treasure it next time.”

(Is that a weird thought? Maybe, but it was a real moment. Breast-feeding was hard with him and I was over it.)

Having been blessed with a second child and going through milestones now — like outgrowing the giraffe pajama for the second time — my brain is oscillating between feeling a sad sort of nostalgia that this period is over and actively trying to convince myself to have another child.

I don’t want another child. I don’t like being pregnant. I am not a huge fan of birth. And babies (and kids) are a lot of work. I always told myself that I would have three children (just in case one’s a dud, you know), but we. don’t. want. one.

End of story.

Except my brain does.

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Today, I am 40.

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

Or as we like to call it in my house, 34 base 12.

As I embark on my fifth decade on this planet, I truly feel like the luckiest person in the world. My life is wonderful. I have ease and joy and love on a daily basis. I have a four-and-a-half-year-old to keep every moment interesting and a baby gestating inside to ensure the next years are even more full. I have a loving family, supportive friends, a wonderful home, a garden that never fails to deliver a dose of wonder and magic just when I need it. I have a business that gives me creative satisfaction and material comforts. I eat amazing food and enjoy modern comforts like running water each and every day.

I’m wise enough to know that appreciating these things is what will give me daily happiness. I’m practiced in the art of noticing and naming my blessings.

Yes, my life is full of the earthly delights. At the same time, what I want for the world feels impossible. I want to wave a magic wand and exhaust the Dixie fire, saving my in-laws’ house and so many others. I want to live in a society that values science and our responsibility to the planet, that somehow finds an immediate and effective solution to this climate crisis. I want ample reparations for affected communities to atone for America’s racist and genocidal history. I want to feel confident that today’s children and their children will have a chance for a livable and happy existence.

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I want to have sex with my dishwasher

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

It’s 2020 and the world has gone to shit. I’m focusing on the positives and I feel like I have to come clean:

I want to have sex with my dishwasher.

In any other year, this would not be good news. I’m happily married. I’ve never had any sort of sexual feelings about appliances despite my collection of increasingly provocative vibrators. But, in 2020, the desire to have an extramarital relationship with an appliance somehow lands in the Good News column.

I’ve spent my adult life doing my dishes by hand. I even convinced myself that I liked it. “I get ideas while washing dishes,” I told my friend Madeleine years ago when she introduced me to her portable dishwasher.

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“No more baby.”

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I had a miscarriage ten days ago and it sucks.

My year was laid out before me. Six months of killing it at work and then a little baby as a reward. I had this plan to hire a project manager and potentially have a little maternity leave this time. I had a plan for world domination. I felt like I was on fire with my goals and plans and good energy.

I was 11 weeks pregnant; one week away from telling the world. We were calling it “Circe” and I was in an internal battle with myself over whether we should find out the sex. The baby was the size of a strawberry. I wanted it to be a girl so badly.

One tends to refer to a miscarriage as one would an on/off switch: one is pregnant, then one isn’t.

It’s not like that. My body spent seven weeks devoting all its resources to building a womb, that strawberry-sized baby, and the placenta to support it.

It’s closer to a birth than an on/off switch. Everything my body created had to come out. The uterus has to return to its normal state. Hormones have to stabilize.

Like birth, miscarriage has been so much harder than I ever would have thought. Continue Reading

Another Fucking Growth Opportunity

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I have been really struggling to find the willingness to engage in my annual ritual of listing my successes.

I’ve had some challenges this year that have been overshadowing my successes. The Lee Hazlewood lyric, “I’ve been down so far, it looks like up to me,” was pretty much my refrain for the past two months.

The nature of this challenge was intense to the point where I didn’t want to get out of bed. I was surprised by how often the word “depressed” came to mind and how all my usual self-care habits flew out the window. I didn’t want to eat healthy meals; it was all I could do to eat anything. I didn’t want to talk; I didn’t want to call friends. I just wanted to hide.

I was lucky — it was only a matter of weeks before I pulled through. It’s a blessing — and a curse — to run a business and have clients and contractors and employees relying on you. I can’t remember the last full-on sick day I took (the curse). But the world kept turning and we had work to do; I could not indulge my desire to hide; I had to keep moving (the blessing). Continue Reading

Get Rich Quick Scheme #432 – The Bar Laundromat

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

>> I wrote this post in April 2013 and somehow didn’t publish it. Seize the day! Today. For publishing a blog from another time… A simpler time. 

I stumbled upon some notes from 2005 the other day. Notes just 8 years old, yet they transported me to another place, another time.

I had just started this blog. I was working as a temp doing odd jobs. And I was dreaming.

A lot.

One of my dreams was to own a Bar/Laundromat. The slash was a key ingredient; when discussing the plans with friends it was always pronounced “the-bar-slash-laundromat.” Never just “bar-landromat.” The Bar-slash-Laundromat. Continue Reading

Our first Music Together class!

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

For Christmas, Marsha, my mother-in-law, gave us a session of Music Together classes at our local chapter.

Will and I postponed signing up with the excuse that we were going to transition from one nap to two and had no idea when that would happen and thus could not commit to a time.

Marsha reported back to me that the woman she had spoken to had said earnestly, “oh, they should come sooner.”

And she was totally right.

If you know me very well, you likely know that I have a history of crying at such mundane banalities as long-distance phone call commercials (woah, dated reference!), soap operas, the Great British Baking Show, virtually all movies… You get the idea.

I didn’t have a chance to put on my eye makeup before we headed over and within the first five minutes, I was so glad. It was all I could do to stifle my tears. My mascara would have been all over.

The kids were soooo cute. The songs were soooo fun. It was such a relief to just be and forget my busy week and weekend. And watching Quinn become comfortable and then boogie his little butt off during free dance… Well, my heart warms and tears spring just thinking about it.

When Will and I put off signing up, we were seeing these classes as another weekend obligation.

But, I can’t wait to go back. I had just as much fun as he did. I’m excited to hear him add some of the songs we are learning to his repertoire that currently consists of mainly a slurred “Twinkle, Twinkle” (or is it the “ABCs”?? I can’t wait to figure that out!).

Our teacher in the class made a distinction between making music and consuming music; a distinction that I hadn’t considered before. We listen to a lot of music as a family, and we have a lot of silly songs that we sing already. After Sunday’s class, our daily activities have become even more musical. Will actually got out the guitar the other night. Instead of singing along to music on the stereo, I’m more likely to sing a song and invite Quinn to join. And I downloaded the Music Together app so we can sing the songs we sang in class on our way to and from daycare.

We are making more music as a family and it is the best ever.

In class, we are making music with our neighbors and that’s pretty cool too. No cell phones are allowed so you are forced to be present, musical and silly. I can’t think of a better way to spend forty-five minutes a week.

RIP Lucid Dreams

Posted on by Jennifer Heller

I’ve written a few posts in the past… Turbomode and Turbomode Take Two.

Life sometimes levels up. Shit gets super crazy and insane for a year or two… and then it dies down.

But now I have a kid. And I want another one. So I know, rationally, that this Turbomode has a shelf life of 14 or so years. It is not going to let up.

Somehow after having a baby, I can no longer sit tight with all my ideas. It’s like they are bursting through. The actual feeling of them inside me, undone, is suffocating in a way it never has been. I’m confronted with a choice: do I create or do I sleep? Continue Reading