How I almost drowned in Mexican Spaghetti

Last week was a long week.

It culminated in a mid-shower meltdown Saturday afternoon during which I sat on the floor, cried and mumbled to myself that I was utterly and completely alone.

(More on that in a minute.)

Because there were things to do and places to go, I stood up and dried myself off.

As I was getting dressed, Lily sauntered into my room.

“Mom, your butt cheeks are wobbly and jiggly and your breasts just slop down,” she told me.

I mean, what she said wasn’t inaccurate. And it would’ve been impractical to have another meltdown at that moment, so I just took a deep breath and let it go.

“Yep. That’s how it is these days,” I told her.

These days have been a bit wobbly and jiggly for sure.

On the surface, life has been status quo. The usual levels of activity. My mental clutter has been more of an accumulation of little things.

Last week, Lily had a nagging cough that kept her awake night and home from school a couple days. We were all getting a little less sleep than normal, which never helps matters. And with Lily home, the mid-day lull Annie and I usually have during the week while the girls are at school was absent.

I wanted to write a blog post to mark the end of Poemaday, but kept running into annoying formatting issues. I became convinced they had to do with the platform I’d used since starting my site seven years ago. For the past couple years, I’ve wanted to switch to WordPress, but always found excuses not to take the time to do it- mostly having to do with the idea that my little site was maybe not worthy of any big investments in time or energy.

Thursday night, on a whim fueled by wine, I decided to do the overhaul.

Though I’ve built a few sites for friends on WordPress before, I’ve never migrated a site from one platform to another. My technology background has always been spotty. I take the “I’ll learn as I go” approach relying on YouTube to fill in knowledge gaps.

The transition to the new platform wasn’t pretty. I was up late trying to troubleshoot problems I had no business troubleshooting- taking a deep dive into the rabbit hole of amateur web development.

The whole thing left me feeling like an idiot. It seemed to confirm this growing feeling in me that when it comes to technology, I’m falling behind. What if the past eight years working from home have put an ever-widening gap in my skills that will make finding meaningful work difficult?

Writers are a dime a dozen. Actually, these days it seems as if writers are a dime a five dozen. It’s not enough just to write- you need to write and know how to edit audio and video. You need to know about social engagement and data analytics.

The only data I’m analyzing around here is the amount and variety of objects Annie is willing to shove in her mouth while I’m not looking. All the sudden, my world feels very small. And that, frankly, is terrifying.

I know, I know. My self doubt can spiral pretty darn quick.

And this isn’t even taking into account my anxiety about what me returning to work on a part-time or full-time basis will look like for my family. It does not leave me with warm and fuzzy feelings.

So this leads us up to Friday. Lily returned to school. Annie and I drove downtown to join Jovie’s class field trip: A walking tour of D.C. monuments. It was a beautiful (if slightly muggy) day. I had an 18-pound baby strapped to me and a gaggle of first graders clustered around me hoping to hold her hand and feed her banana puffs.

We walked, by my estimation, 800 miles, stopping at various memorials– World War II, Vietnam, Lincoln, Korean War and MLK. Then I trudged back to the Motherhood Memorial ( i.e. the minivan- a symbol of lost hope, exhaustion and futility- and with enough room to haul everyone’s high expectations and loads of judgment) to sit in D.C. traffic while listening to a now-overtired baby scream for an hour.

Back at home I started dinner, made a batch of brownies, picked up the girls from school and took them for a long overdue visit with one of our neighbors. After that, I finished dinner, we ate and I grabbed a bottle of wine and the brownies and headed over to a friend’s house to celebrate the end of Poemaday. I was at home and in bed by 10:30. I might be exaggerating, but I’m pretty sure I was the tiredest person alive.

Saturday morning Lily had an 8:30 soccer game, so we were all up and at ’em bright and early. After that, Brad hung out with the kids for a bit so I could attempt to sort out my new site. What you’re looking at now, for better or worse, is the result of that sorting out. I know. It could use a few more hours of sorting out.

But there was no more time for sorting on Saturday.

Brad was driving to Delaware for the remainder of the weekend and I was heading to a welcome home party for my nephew, who recently returned from a two-year mission in Guatemala. But first, I had to make the Mexican Spaghetti.

What the heck is Mexican Spaghetti? You ask. It was the same question I asked when a family friend who was hosting the party suggested I make some. Four pounds of it actually.

I watched the YouTube video explaining the recipe. The sweet lady on howtocookmexicanfood made it look straightforward.

Just boil some spaghetti and puree a bunch of tomatoes, onions and garlic then cook it with a little ham, butter and sour cream. Nothing too fancy.

But I’d been distracted by my web site for longer than I should’ve been and I got a later start to cooking then I’d intended to. Suddenly, I was surrounded by colanders of steaming spaghetti noodles and pots sputtering with a salmon-colored sauce that did not taste all that appetizing to me. I had no idea what the flavor was supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be condensed tomato soup with strong notes of raw onion.

Brad was walking out the door. I was holding the baby who refused to take a nap. I hadn’t showered. We were supposed to leave in 20 minutes.

All I could do was triage the food, put the baby down in the crib with some toys and instructions for her sisters to entertain her, and jump in the shower.

Which, of course, brings us back to my mid-shower meltdown.

It wasn’t just that Brad was gone. It was that I feel disconnected from my usual go-to people for meltdowns. They’re drowning in their own stress or else seem far away. My worries are small and trivial by comparison. Not really worthy of laying at anyone’s feet, you know? Life is life is life.

So here we are. I’m just setting them down at the internet’s feet.

Making the Mexican spaghetti felt like a metaphor for the current state of my brain.

My counters are overflowing with pots and pans and spoons and spatulas, blending and straining devices; I’m overwhelmed by the large quantities of tomatoes and onions and noodles; there’s saucy bits staining my shirt; the flavor seems off but I don’t know what the flavor is supposed to be.

It’s not just that I’m convinced I failed the endeavor of Mexican Spaghetti, it’s also that it’s 4 pounds of failure that I have to serve to both my family and complete strangers who will be judging my competency as a person based on this disastrous dish.

I’m tired and frustrated. I reek of yesterday’s field trip and stress and futility. The baby wants to be held, the kids want to leave, I just want a nap.

But I’m OK. Everything– the website, my lack of sleep, the job situation, (though probably not my wiggly/jiggly parts)– everything will get sorted out in time for my next mid-shower meltdown– I know all this is true.

But sometimes life feels like a big ‘ol ridiculous mess. Even if it doesn’t really look like it from the outside.

For what it’s worth, the Mexican Spaghetti ended up being pretty tasty. The noodles just needed time to marinate in the sauce. Lily gave it rave reviews. Which worked out, because we took a couple pounds of it home (it poured rain much of Saturday night so there were a lot of party no-shows).

The other night, I was unloading on Brad about this blog. About how it was probably a waste of time, moving the site. How I’d been updating it all these years, but it never seems to grow. That maybe the whole endeavor was pointless.

What am I even doing here?!

Let the record show, I was really wallowing in the self pity.

Brad just sort of scratched his head. “I thought your whole reason for doing the blog was because you like writing.”

And I sort of scratched my head. And continue to scratch my head (and not just because I need a shower). Because he’s right.

I like writing. Writing is how I think. And how I sort through problems. And how I attempt to answer the big and small questions life throws my way.

And it’s also where I go to find community. Because no matter what I share and overshare on here- even the most embarrassing, awkward, uncomfortable, shameful, strange, ridiculous, gross things- even when I’m making a giant, 4-pound Mexican Spaghetti Mountain out of a mole hill, there is always someone who says, “I get that.”

“You are not alone.”

So because I love writing and because I love people and because I don’t want to feel lonely and because I don’t want anyone else to feel alone and because I can’t help but overshare on the internet, and because I have no idea how I’d switch back to the old platform anyway, I’m going to stick around here.

On this weird, spazzy-looking site.