Reality Bites

I blame network television. Or summer. Or the fact that we're too cheap to get HBO.

It all started in May, when our favorite television shows went off the air. We were bored.

We tried watching reruns. We tried exercising and doing housework. We even tried talking to each other. Nothing seemed to hold our attention and keep us occupied.

There was something else - something we really hadn't gotten into in the past. We knew a lot of other people did it, and we were curious. We were consenting adults, and it wasn't illegal, so we said "what the heck" and decided to experiment for ourselves.

We started watching Reality TV.

It started out pretty tame. I started recording Jon & Kate Plus Eight right as Season Five premiered. This was apparently my "gateway show," which soon led to Cake Boss, The Little Couple, Kathy Griffin, Real Housewives of New Jersey, and -- this is really bad; prepare to lose respect for me -- I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.

Most of these shows are terrible, yet they offer enough of a payoff to keep us watching. I'm willing to watch countless minutes of boring sextuplet antics to get the latest on Jon and Kate. Teresa's crazy table flipping on Housewives is destined to become a classic, and Kathy Griffin is always good for a few laughs. My sides hurt this week when Kathy made her mother and housekeeper campaign for Grammy votes. Here's a partial clip (here, little girl, would you like some candy???)

Still, most of reality TV is a wasteland.

I've heard that something becomes an addiction when it has a negative effect on other parts of your life. If that includes skipping couple time and losing sleep because I was heartsick about Jon and Kate's marriage, then color me addicted; somebody page Dr. Drew.

My husband is guilty in all of this; we are reality TV co-dependent. I gaze at him across the darkened room, disgusted by his weakness, though it truly just a reflection of my own sick habit.

For the record, SJ is the one who got us into I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, which he claims is ridiculous but fundamentally high concept.

"Seriously," he said. "Someone realized the absurdity of having people watch worthless celebrities who think they are famous, but really people are mocking them. It's brilliant!"

Right. You just wasted fifteen minutes of your life watching Stephen Baldwin eat a bug and you're calling it art.

The final straw came this week when SJ amusedly commented to me that "you know, when Serena was groggy waking up from her nap today, she looked just like Janice Dickinson."

The moment my husband compared our precious, innocent preschooler to a 54-year old leathery, drugged out fame whore, I knew we had hit rock bottom.

Time for a Netflix subscription.

The Hacka

At least once a year, our front bushes need pruning. Naturally, this is best done by my superhero alter ego, The Hacka.

The Hacka was born ten years ago in McLean, when we bought our first house. The bushes in our front yard were excessively overgrown due to years of neglect. I donned gloves, a sweatsuit, and electric hedge clippers, and I felt the change come over me. I was no longer the good girl in a mock turtleneck and mini skirt; I was a kick butt, saw-wielding force of nature.

I was The Hacka.

Bushes quiver in the Hacka's presence. Weeds shrink back. Flowers swoon. The Hacka never hesitates; she just keeps on cutting.

The Hacka is super strong, super effective, and has one major super power: not getting electricuted. This is obvious since she has now cut through at least five extension cords. Although this is quite dangerous for an average person, the Hacka has never suffered more than a tripped breaker and few disconcerting jolts of electricity.

No one is sure how this happens, since the Hacka is in most ways a paragon of intelligence and caution. I blame the surge of adrenalin. The Hacka doesn't obey your mundane social conventions. She slices through overgrown branches, leaving (ha!) an exilarating mix of devastation and beauty in her wake. It's not surprising that this passion leads to slight miscalculations from time to time. You don't blame the Hulk for ripping his shirt, do you?

The Hacka will not be stopped, though she did pause momentarily after cutting through another cord earlier today. She briefly mulled whether it was a bad idea to prune while no one was home to call 911; undeterred, she resolved to be slightly more careful and went on with her mission.

The Hacka has her haters. Her husband chastises her for dangerously cutting through the cords, and points out that it would be cheaper to pay a landscaping service than to keep buying more extension cords.

But then, he never prunes the bushes himself, so methinks somebody likes being married to a superhero.

And perhaps that somebody should invest in some gas-powered clippers.

It's Hard When It Doesn't Come Easy

I recently learned that someone we know miscarried her first child.

I don't know her that well, so I'll just send a card with a caring sentence or two. If I knew her better, I would say more.

Dealing with miscarriage is very personal; it's something most people go through but not many people talk about. Nevertheless, I'll share my unwritten letter here, in case someone might find it helpful.
________________________________________

Dear ____,

I was very sorry to learn that you lost your baby. I know how much this hurts, since we also lost our first child. Even now, years later and with three wonderfully healthy children, the memory of that time brings back a poignant sadness.

Losing any pregnancy is terrible, but miscarriage before you have other children seems particularly cruel and difficult. In an instant you plummet from the incredible hopefulness of new parenthood to grief and anxiety - you mourn for the real child you lost and the imagined future you had planned, and you worry about what this may mean for other pregnancies.

The bad news is that you've lost some of your innocence. The nursery rhyme progression -- love, then marriage, then baby -- doesn't happen automatically for some people. Like many of us, you're going to have to work a little harder to get there. Now you know what can happen, and you'll always have an extra layer of worry on top of what's expected when you're expecting.

Parenthood isn't for sissies. You probably knew that in your head before, but now you've felt it with your body...and your heart. Parents need to be strong to get through the bumps and bruises, joys and pains of raising a child. Unfortunately you've had to build up some of your Mommy calluses earlier than expected.

The good news is that if and when you become pregnant again (and the odds are very, VERY good that this will happen) you will never take your kids for granted. My miscarriage made me more patient and more grateful when my infants arrived. Colic, sleepless nights, and dirty diapers seem like nothing when you put it in the greater context that you now understand. "Bring it on, Baldy! This is nothing!"

I received a card after my miscarriage from an older woman who had lost two pregnancies and raised five children. "God has something wonderful in store for you," she wrote. I was surprised and skeptical that she wrote that at such a painful time, but now, looking back, I can understand her thinking.

Miscarriage sucks and you'll need time to heal, but you're going to have a wonderful family. You'll never understand why this happened, and you'll never compeletely get over it, but you will get through it. It'll be part of what will make you a great mom.


I guarantee it.

Tri-Curious No More!

(ok, not as funny as Stephen Colbert's "Dubai-curious," but that didn't stop me from saying it thirty times this weekend.)

Me after the bike ride

I am now a triathlete. I completed my first one at Sunday's Reston Sprint Triathlon.

I signed up against my better judgment due to peer pressure from my sister, Kaye, her husband, Kelvin, and my friend, Nicholai. "Sure, what the hell?" I thought, despite loathing running, rarely biking, and sucking at swimming.

Fear was my motivation, and I was a faithful trainer. Sunday morning, I was rested and ready when the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m.

My waking first thought was "gee, our air conditioner really sounds like rain!" Then I pulled back our bedroom shade to see raindrops on the window glass and a pitch black sky sliced open by a bolt of lightning.

Great.

My brother-in-law, Kelvin, was pissed. More than that, he was hurt. As a loyal devotee of the weather channel, he couldn't believe that the weather gods had let him down. Kaye said he kept shaking his head and muttering in disbelief: "They said a zero percent chance of precipitation! Zero percent!"

The race was still theoretically on, so Kelvin and Kaye picked me up at 5:30. We arrived at the Reston race site at 6:00 to get our numbers, put on our racing chips, and lay out our gear. This is no small effort, since triathlons are largely an effort in sports crap management. You must lay out the necessary equipment to change from swimming to biking, and then biking to running, and you must do it strategically to reduce your transition time.

Not that we were too worried about our times. It was our first race, so we were mainly concerned with finishing within the allotted two hour limit. We proudly dubbed ourselves "Team Bringing Up the Rear," though we secretly harbored hopes of finishing not quite last.

Unfortunately, the race is in a pool, so our slow self-declared swim times meant an assigned start time of 8:04 a.m. This might sound early to a normal person, but remember that we had be be there at 6:00 a.m., the race started at 7:00 a.m., and we were standing around in our swimsuits. IN THE RAIN.

Luckily my years at the pool during various stages of pregnancy and its aftermath have beaten most of the self-consciousness out of me, because there is nothing more daunting than shivering in a swimsuit surrounded by competitive triathletes. You can see their Terminator-style visual assessment: "Puffy. Shockingly pale; must train indoors. Not a threat. Moving on."

In the end, all went well. The swim was harder than expected, since I practiced in a pool half that size, and was thus accustomed to pushing off the side twice as often, but the bike and run were much more enjoyable than I thought they'd be. Kaye and I stuck together throughout the race, and came in at a respectable 1:46. It would have been two minutes less if I hadn't gotten my sports bra stuck over my wet head after the swim. Lessons learned...

The best part was the end, when we were greeted by friends, family, and doughnuts, brought by my loving husband. My children were thrilled by the doughnut fest, and the fact that Mommy ran by at one point was a nice touch.

The worst part was my choice of running, rather than biking shorts, which gave me palm-sized, bright red chafing marks on both inner thighs that will be very noticeable and very hard to explain at the lake this weekend.

In all, it was fun, and I think I'll do it again next year.

From now on, there is no more try the Tri, there is only do. (Still working on that, but I have another year to perfect it...)