During my media blackout there were days when Ray would come into the kitchen, and wait for me to look up from the dishes. He wouldn’t say anything; he’d just stand there soberly until he caught my eye. I’ve come to know that look well—it’s a sickening combination of heartbreak and anger over what someone had done to a child. It happens when he can’t bear the burden of knowing something so terrible that it couldn’t have been imagined, let alone actually happen. But it does. And it happens a lot.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked.

I listened as he told me that a man had put his baby in a microwave and turned it on.

“I didn’t need to know that,” I said, choking on tears.

“I didn’t either.”

Such events would horrify anyone, but having a child makes them more poignant, and perhaps even harder to understand. “Why would someone do that?” I find myself saying to the TV time and time again, as it broadcasts stories about children being abused, kidnapped and murdered by their own parents. It’s a stupid, pointless question.

The latest story is about Josh Powell, the man in Tacoma, WA, who blew up his house, with him and his two boys, 5 and 7, inside. A day later, we learn that he hit his children with a hatchet before the house exploded. As the news anchors and experts try to piece together the puzzle to explain why Powell did this, I find myself less and less interested in the answer.

I’m tired of the “reasons.” I’m tired of hearing that some parents are too tired, overworked, emotionally unstable, poor, uneducated, etc. to properly love and care for their children. When I had Ava and first discovered how hard parenting could be, I needed to believe that most parents, like me, were doing the “best they could”—good or bad. But six years later, I know better. I’ve seen parents scream at, bully, humiliate, and hit their children. I’ve seen kids left in parked cars and lost in grocery stores because their parents were “too busy to bother.”

So yeah, I’m angry. I’m angry that people like Powell exist. And I’m angry that thoughts of him invade my home and my heart, and most importantly, that people like him influence the world in which my child will grow up.

Ava is the single most precious thing to me in the world. If she gets a hangnail, I feel as if I lose a year off my life; when she skins her knee, I lose 5. I don’t understand how people can look in their children’s eyes and willingly harm them, but if I think about it too long, I fear I may go mad. The most frustrating things in life are the things we can’t make sense of. They’re also the most frightening.

I stopped “growing up” years ago. Now I’m in the process of shrinking toward my 40s. However, I still remember growing pains. Not the emotional pain of growing up—the BFFs who barely lasted a week or the boy who didn’t like you back because you were too tall. I’m talking about the real, physical pain of cells reproducing so fast that you outgrew your beloved pink jelly shoes even before the snow melted.

“Momma, my legs hurt,” Ava said to me sometime after midnight, blurry-eyed and disheveled from sleep.

I got her some ibuprofen (a bad habit I started back when she was teething in lieu of sleeping), and then I rubbed her legs. I massaged her little calves, her quads, her knees and even her feet, reveling at how big my baby had grown in almost six years. I felt the muscles that gymnastics, tennis and wrestling with Dad had formed. I felt the tiny calluses on her big toes she acquired from ill-fitting shoes, a testament to her emerging womanliness. She was so quiet for those few minutes, I didn’t know if she liked it or not. Then, she tooted.

“That’s my toot saying how much I like this,” she explained.

Whatever. I’ll take the compliment regardless of who—or what—said it.

When I was growing up, my mom spent hours rubbing my aching legs. I can remember peeling off my sweaty cotton socks after tennis practice, my skin hot and stingy where blisters were beginning to form. My legs throbbed from pounding on pavement (yes, our courts were blacktop and the school was public). And to make matters worse, I was growing “like a weed” as Mom would say. But Mom loved me so much she didn’t care about my “weediness.” She didn’t care that I stunk to high Heaven. She let me lay my ripe, sweaty, pre-teen body on her bed as she lovingly rubbed the aches away.

At the time I didn’t understand why Mom seemed to enjoy this so much. It took years to realize that few people would ever provide a massage without payment and even fewer would enjoy doing it. My husband, for example, thinks a neck massage means scraping the back of my spine with his index finger until he falls asleep or I begin bleed, whichever comes first. Worse yet, this sad attempt at massage only happens if my request coincides with an episode of some geeked-out television show. (He actually refers to massage as the “Star Trek rubs.”)

Or he thinks that my request for a massage is actually code for something more. It is not. Ever.

The problem is that Ray hates massage, which is a sure sign of an antisocial disorder. He would rather be doused with gasoline and set on fire than doused with lotion and touched lovingly. He thinks a back scratch feels like “dead bird feet” scraping across his flesh. I do not understand this, nor do I accept it. I’ve repeatedly tried to ambush him, but it always ends the same: he curls up his nose and squirms out of my grasp asking, “Why would you do that?” Because it feels good, you freak.

I want to prevent Ava from going down Ray’s pathological path. In addition to rubbing her, I’m trying to get Ava to massage my back in mom’s absence. There is nothing like her sweet, pudgy hands drifting over my tired spine like she’s delicately painting a fence. It instantly puts me to sleep. However, two minutes later she wakes me with a frantic, double-handed percussion, as if she’s trying to revive a heart attack victim.

“Mommy?!”

“I just fell asleep, Honey.”

She breaks into relieved laughter, but continues the beating because now she thinks it’s funny. My husband encourages her. (They have other gifts, I swear.) As I lay there getting pummeled, I try to image that I’m receiving a massage and not abuse.

Mom’s rubs were as much for herself as they were for me. Like her and so many other moms, I have become a giver of rubs, and less likely to ever get them in return. Which makes me think one thing: I want my mommy.

Totally what my foot looks like. No, really.

Most people I know make fitness resolutions and vow to hit the gym. My husband has his gym code taped to the fridge “just in case” he gets the urge. It has hung there like an albatross around his neck for six years. Thankfully the gym resolution isn’t one I have to make because I’m already committed. Why? Because I need that time to myself? Because I’m deeply vain? Well, yes, but more importantly, because there’s a woman with a six-pack of muscle and enthusiasm that even Tony Horton would envy. Her name is Jodie Kofod and she kicks my ass every Tuesday and Thursday morning. I don’t know what would happen if I don’t show up (beyond transforming into a manatee). But one thing is for sure, I don’t want to disappoint her.

Would you risk disappointing her? No, I think not.

My Trainer, My Love

To call her my trainer is a little like referring to the woman at the Wendy’s drive-thru as my personal chef. I have no ownership over Jodie; she belongs to anyone willing to step foot into her class at the YMCA, aptly titled “Iron Bodies.” I do not have an iron body, but for the past six years I’ve been steadily developing an aluminum body—a measurement determined by the fact that my inner thighs no longer touch (by a hair’s width, but I swear I see daylight).

Over the years, Iron Bodies has become a permanent fixture in my life. It’s a non-negotiable 75-minute appointment between my metabolism and me. I run on the other days, fueled by the fact that I’m going to spend two and a half hours a week standing in front of a wall of mirrors, lunging, squatting and planking my well to a buildup of lactic acid.

It’s Not (Entirely) About the Burn—or the Buns

The workout is kind of beside the point. I truly enjoy the gym goers in the class—mostly stay-at-home moms working to elevate the muffin top into a MILF top. They accept me in my sleep-deprived, pre-concealer state. We’ve seen each other at our worst—post-baby, divorce, illness and loss—and at our best—albeit sometimes post surgery. No one is too cool for fitness school. I’ve seen shorts rip, thongs exposed and bands snapped. If I don’t show up for class without excusing myself on Facebook the night before, my phone blows up with texts. I attend to my backside, but these girls got my back. Even the ladies in the childcare still ask about my daughter’s stuffed monkey “Muh,” as if calling on a sick uncle. Most family isn’t this nice.

A typical Tuesday

But the true source of inspiration to get up twice a week and look like a dying cockroach while performing R-rated inner thigh moves, is Jodie herself. Coffee and Red Bull course through her veins. She shouts when she talks and shakes when she tries to stand still, her body unsure of why she’s resting between sets. She has never had an off day, or maybe her off days look a lot better than mine. She gives 110% to a roomful of half-asleep, middle-aged women (and one token male). As she screams “Wooooooo!” and explodes into a series of one-armed pushups, we stare at her in vacant wonder; we’re just trying to keep our faces from colliding with the floor.

Jodie is one of the most intimidating and inspiring people I’ve ever met. She’s intimidating because her small frame can barely contain her super-sized personality and because she could crack walnuts between her butt cheeks. She’s inspiring because she cares so much for the health and wellbeing of everyone around her. She gives so much of herself to her work, son, husband, church and even her St. Bernard. Spend just a couple of minutes getting to know her and you’ll discover that her iron body is really just the exoskeleton to a very soft and sensitive center. (Me, on the other hand, I’m all endoskeleton.)

Good trainers, like good schoolteachers, don’t get enough credit. They endure our sudden water breaks (always during pushups) and our complaints about how we aren’t losing weight (as we wield 2-pound weights and gnaw on 750-calorie energy bars). And here we are getting so much in return from their commitment to us. If you have a Jodie in your life, be sure to thank her for making fitness one less thing to commit to in 2012, ‘cause you’re already there.

As for me, I’ll again refocus on eating healthier. Now, about that lady at Wendy’s . . .

"My" Jodie and me

It was not my daughter’s book. It wasn’t her bedroom. In fact, we weren’t even in our own house.

Ava and I were staying for an uncertain length of time at our friends’ Michael and Nicole’s home just 10 minutes away. Earlier that day they had traveled with their children, 9 and 14, to Atlanta when Michael passed out at the American Girl store. (It’s okay, you can laugh; he’s all right now, we just weren’t sure at the time.) He was rushed to the ER. Our friends are transplants to the South and don’t have family to call on, but they do have us. And having fixed us a fabulous Christmas Eve dinner, I guess we owed them. So when Nicole asked if Ray could drive to Atlanta to get the kids and bring them home so she could focus on the situation at hand, he hopped in the car without a second thought (I mean, it was a really good dinner).

But let’s rewind to Christmas morning.

It was our second Christmas alone. Ever. We didn’t have the money to fly home to our families so we raked up our sorry-for-ourselves feelings and tried to make the best of it. It was working, right up until the wee hours of Christmas morning when I suddenly woke to my throbbing upper lip, or what used to be my upper lip and was now a suitable perch for a barn owl. By sunrise, it had grown so large it could sustain a flock of seagulls. Better yet, the Flock of Seagulls, their groupies and a touring bus.

I lay in bed considering the possibilities. On Christmas Eve, I thought I might be getting a cold sore, but this was clearly so much more. Flesh-eating virus came to mind. How inconvenient.

I woke my husband and told him that we might as well enjoy our last Christmas together, or at the very least, my last Christmas with this particular lip.

“What are you talk—” he rolled toward me and opened his eyes, “Whoa!”

Yeah. About that.

As our daughter merrily tore through her Christmas stocking, I drank my coffee through a straw and felt bitterly sorry for myself quarantined and alone on Christmas Day. I dodged Ray’s picture taking even as he tried to convince me that the size of my lip “didn’t translate two-dimensionally.” Apparently he was lying because when I Skyped my mother she shielded her face with her hands and yelled, “Oh my God! Dad, come here! Quick! Look at Andrea’s face!” Dad and Mom gawked and pointed in horror like I was a legless giraffe at the zoo.

“It’s spreading up the side of your face!”

It wasn’t; makeup just wasn’t a priority that morning. But thanks.

Clearly, it was bad. But it was going to have to wait. It was Christmas, after all. And more than that, even my dermatologist couldn’t see me like this.

Things improved moderately overnight. I went from circus freak to Botox gone horribly wrong. We had just gotten the call from Nicole, so I knew I would have to venture outside sooner or later. There I encountered my neighbors and quickly acknowledged the elephant woman in the room.

“Ray got me lip injections for Christmas.” Cue the recoil.

“Just kidding. I have a lip funk.” They laughed, somehow comforted with the thought of a communicable disease over restylane. Clearly I played this right.

Sure, they dispersed moments later, citing a variety of made-up errands. I couldn’t blame them. Survival of the fittest. And I was not fit for public consumption.

All the same, I had things to do. I had our friends’ children to care for. When they arrived, they kindly averted their eyes and never mentioned my lip until two days later when the swelling mercifully subsided.

“What happened anyway?” the 14-year-old asked.

Christmas happened. Somewhere between my over-inflated lip and the rush to our friends in need, the holiday spirit swept through virtually unnoticed.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I need to heed Stillwater’s Zen wisdom. All this bad luck was actually good luck in disguise. I didn’t spend Christmas “alone.” I spent it with a husband willing to drive ten hours to help our friends, friends willing to trust us with their children and home, and my daughter willing to believe the whole thing was one big adventure.

And the lip? Well, if I had gone home for Christmas I inevitably would’ve run into 50 people I went to high school with who would then permanently fix the vision of my lip into their collective memory and forever refer to me as the girl who “used to be pretty.”

Thank you, giant panda, for a memorable Christmas.

Yeah, I BET you wanted to see a picture of my lip.

A present EVERY day? Sign me up.

Click here to read my Christmas post on PaulaDeen.com. Hope you like it. At the very least, you can appreciate my mom’s handmade Advent calendar. I would too, except the incessant countdown to Christmas is making sugar plums and Zoloft dance in my head.

Luckily, I outgrew my counter-culture, wannabe-punk phase by the time I actually got my first car. It was then that I embraced my true self (or at least the next person I wanted to be): A young scholar. My sticker of choice said “WWU”, indicating where I’d be attending college. It made me feel grown up and unique. I stuck it on my back window, top and center—the same place every other person at the college put it.

Two used Honda hatchbacks later, my husband bought me a brand new, grown-up hatchback: a gray Toyota Matrix. As soon as I drove it off the lot, it occurred to me that everything about my Matrix said “cat lady” or, more accurately, “recent-graduate-student-entering-the-workforce-with-plans-to-start-a-family.” When I expressed my interest in sporting up my car by adding a cycling, running or Obama sticker, my husband responded, “A car without stickers says ‘adult.’ And don’t put an Obama sticker on it unless you want your car keyed.” (I think he meant by him.)

So I’ve left my car sticker-free for seven years, and now that I spend 45 minutes waiting in a line of cars to pick up my daughter from kindergarten, I’m glad I have.

Don’t get me wrong, some make me laugh. But do you really want to be known as the mom with the “Gun Control Means Using Both Hands” sticker? Not if you want to head up this year’s bake sale.

The worst offenders are the ones that rob us of our sexy, such as “Mom’s Taxi.” You might as well slap on a pair of high-waisted Lee jeans and give me a frosted perm.

Lately, I’ve been most annoyed by those stick figure families. I’m sorry if you think they’re cute. In an attempt to accurately depict your particular family unit, these stickers get it all wrong, like a department store family portrait that puts you in front of a leafy background and commands you to smile like you just got poked in the rear because, dammit, you’re happy even though everyone knows you spent the previous hour trying to keep little Johnny from smearing boogers on the faux-bear rug and little Janey from eating them. It’s too cookie cutter for my taste. The daughter rendered as a princess and the dad as a briefcase-toting salesman is a pigeonhole I don’t want my family to step in.

And what happens when the family unit changes? I recently saw a stick figure family comprised of a mom and two kids. The only evidence of “Dad” was the sticky outline where he’d been picked off. How do you breach the  “Where did stick Daddy go” discussion anyway? Or when a dog passes? Or when little Janey turns in her tiara for a football helmet?

Families are always in flux. People are always changing. So for now, I’m keeping the canvas clean. My gray Matrix can just speak for herself–even if she doesn’t say much.

As I pulled away from the airport, I felt sad—sad that I wouldn’t see them again until this summer and sad that I was heading home to a half-empty house. I say “half” because while Ava’s here with me, Ray’s in Tokyo for a couple more days. My parents served as a nice buffer while he’s been gone, taking off some of the pressure to play rock-paper-scissors (Ava’s new favorite game) until neurosis or carpel tunnel sets in, whichever comes first. But now that they’re gone, it’s roshambo-a-rama. Plus, I’m spending an inordinate amount of time engaged in strange, non-adult conversations. First there was the argument about Justin Bieber’s name. Ava swears it’s “Beaver.” It’s not. And I’m not willing to let that go. Then there was last night’s prison discussion. Ava wanted to know if I’ve ever been arrested (I haven’t) and then she told me she wants to see the inside of a jail. As far as I know, the county jail isn’t on the fieldtrip calendar, but I’d like to honor her curiosity. So I said, “Okay.”

“Wow. I was not expecting that,” she replied.

Well, that’s one of the perks of having a husband like Ray. He’s like Mister Rogers. He’ll manage to book an all-access tour and easily answer all of her difficult questions appropriately—an area in which I often fail (you may recall my explanation that God makes the water come out of the faucet). Now I just have to stall until he comes home.

“The jail is closed this week.” I’m not proud.

Super Dad

It’s been 15 days since Ray left and not 24 hours since my parents got on their plane. One thing is painfully clear: I never want to be a single parent. It’s too hard.

But it’s not just that. There’s something else. I spent a long time last night trying to put my finger on the “something else.” After reading some “brave” anonymous-mom blast me on my blog for being a bad parent and overall bad person (apparently humor doesn’t always translate), I wanted someone to assure me that this woman was a complete moron and that I’m in fact, the greatest writer, mother, person on the planet. Had my parents not left, they would’ve done just that. They’ve always been in my corner cheering their hearts out—albeit sometimes a little too enthusiastically (my Mom earned the nickname “the bucking bronco” for her seemingly involuntary whoops and gesticulations during my high school volleyball matches). I could’ve called a number of my closest friends, but it was late and this was about ego, not life or death. If Ava had been awake she would’ve hugged me and assured me that I’m the “best mommy ever.” But most often this responsibility falls on my husband for two reasons: general proximity and the fact that he’s so damn good at it. He gives pep talks that could inspire the blind to see. After 15 years, all I have to do is show him my frowny face and mumble, “I need a pep talk.” He delivers every time. Sometimes I even loan him out to friends in need. I needed him tonight—not just for the support, but for the love I’ve grown accustomed to getting. Come to think of it, I’ve needed him ever since we first met.

Because of my parents, I was lucky enough to expect that the people I surround myself with should be my biggest fans. They should be the ones willing and able to pick me up when I fall flat on my face. And if they’re not, I don’t need them. This has become especially important as I grow older and realize that whenever I put myself “out there” as a writer, teacher, parent, or basic human being, there’s always someone who thinks it’s their job to tell me how much I suck.

Lucky for me, my husband makes damn good earmuffs.

I regularly quiz Ava about her kindergarten social life in an attempt to tighten the chord between us that gets a little slack after seven hours of school. I know the kids in her class by name. I know which ones I would like her to play with and I’m not afraid to make suggestions. After all, as a woman in my 30s, I’m a better judge of character. And yes, if you must know, I have some control issues that sending my child to school has managed to expose like an open, festering wound.

“I played on the bars with Tristan,” she replies.

It’s been the same answer for the past week. Tristan seems like a nice kid—though a little on the quiet side (which makes Type-A freaks like myself a little nervous). But what about her two BFFs from class?

“They play with another girl,” she responds, matter-of-factly.

“Well, can’t you play too?”

“No. The other girl doesn’t like me.”

“I don’t think that’s true.” There’s actually no way that could possibly be true.

“No, seriously. She told me. She said, ‘Go play with somebody else. I don’t like you.’”

I do not like this “other girl.” But enough about me.

“Does that hurt your feelings?” What I really mean to ask is, “Are you going to grow up wearing all black and drawing temporary barbed wire tattoos around your wrists with a Sharpie?”

Ava just shrugs it off. She’s either trying to act tough or she’s a bigger person than me.

Regardless, I hurt for her. It pains me that kids are so cruel. Ava’s guilty of it too. Not too long ago she spent the better part of a day in “timeout” for not being a judicious playmate. But it stings more when it’s your kid on the losing end of the cat o’ nine tails.

I had lots of friends growing up. At least I think I did. See, I’m under the impression that everyone likes me. I mean, why wouldn’t they? I’m nice. Funny. Easy to talk to. Logic (i.e. my husband) tells me there’s no way everyone likes me. But my delusion has served me well for more than 30 years. What’s the harm? A healthy dose of ego never hurt anyone.

Well, almost anyone. As it turns out, my sister didn’t always enjoy playing with me, especially when we played “school” and I appointed myself as the teacher. But it wasn’t my fault she kept failing my classes; she had a lot of promise, she just never applied herself.

“Ava’s a lot like you,” she explains, “so maybe these kids are just tired of her telling them what to do all the time.”

Ouch. And, “She’s only trying to help them play better.”

“Uh-huh.”

Clearly, my sister doesn’t get it. So I turn to a friend unlucky enough to be trapped next to me while we wait for our children to finish their gymnastics lesson.

She listens patiently as I worry and fret about Ava’s social life and mean-spirited kids who are attempting to squash her sparkly pink soul. She nods. She tells me she understands and then follows up with, “You’ve met my son, right?” Her son is a beautiful, blond, big-hearted boy just a year older than Ava. He also has special needs. My friend tells me that her son doesn’t have any friends at school. He sits by himself on the outer edge of the playground. Every. Single. Day.

She tells me that she can’t think too much about it or she’ll go crazy.

I can’t stop thinking about it.

I can’t pick my daughter’s friends. I can’t make it so every child likes her. But I can teach her to be kind and compassionate to all children. Better yet, I can insist on it.

Ava and one of her BFFs

Glad you're boosting the economy. Glad I'm in bed.

There was a time when I’d wake the day after Thanksgiving at 5 AM to drive 90 miles to Seattle to shop. But two things were different then: I didn’t have a child (and thus, complete respect for sleep), and the sales began at 7 AM, which was considered early.

These days, “early” is actually “late.” Most major stores opened at midnight, while the big daddies sprung their doors at 10 PM for “doorbuster sales.” The prices are good if you’re in the market for an off-brand TV or a Dora bicycle, but there’s no guarantee that you’re actually going to get one of these because you and three thousand other people with a dream are clamoring for limited stock. The stores don’t really care if you get what you came for. All they need is to get you in the door, then they can tempt you with the things no human being needs: a chair massage pad or an Orbeez Soothing Spa (you know you’re curious). And because you can’t leave a store at 3 AM empty handed, you impulse buy a zoo’s worth of pint-sized Pillow Pets.

And then there are the inevitable fights that break out. Who’s surprised by that? People have spent the past 12 hours cooking and listening to their relatives debate the difference between sweet potatoes and yams and then, tired and probably a little bit drunk, these same people line up outside Walmart in the middle of the night prepared to do battle in the name of Christmas. Some fool brings pepper spray for some crowd control and the rest belongs to Thanksgiving legend.

That said, when heartburn stirred me from my turkey-induced coma around 4 AM, I admit that I felt as if I was missing out on something by choosing sleep over sales—that “something” being a 30-percent discount on the Victorious Doll Ava covets. But the feeling only lasted until I rolled over to discover that my daughter had sneaked into my bed and was fast asleep, all cherubic and satisfied. I happily conceded my $5.99. Victorious would have to wait until another day, another sale.

I did go shopping for a couple of hours with my mom this Black Friday morning, but only after we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and cup of coffee. I avoided the ads and commercials altogether and instead stumbled upon a few deals, making me feel as if I really found something.

I didn’t want to know what I was missing. Instead, I focused on what I was gaining.

Libbie is a food stylist, culinary producer, writer, etc. etc. etc. Most recently she published The Whole Hog Cookbook. It’s not your mother’s cookbook. I know, because I don’t cook and I still read the thing cover-to-cover because of the beautiful photography and stories. Reading her book at least makes me want to learn to cook, or raise pigs, or travel around the world and be fabulous. But that’s what Libbie does best: she inspires.

So when she told me that she had something brewing, I knew that the best thing to do would be to go along for the ride. And I’m so glad I did.

SaltedandStyled.com is a site dedicated to food-inspired living. It’s the brainchild of Libbie and photographer, Chia Chong, so it looks as good as it tastes. I’m going to join this team of uber-talented women to flex my writing (pork)chops with a series of blogs and profiles about fascinating people doing everyday things. And, at the risk of sounding like an 8-year-old girl, I hope you like it-like it.

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