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By Root 333 0

baby woke up and I had to feed him lunch with the cameras on me. Then the baby went down for his nap again and I had to film; then he’d wake up and I would take him out to Penn’s Landing on the riverfront. He’d crawl on the grass and see ducks, and then I’d rush back to put him down for a nap. While he was napping, I’d do interviews and voice the narration part of the show. That would take us well into five P.M., when he had to eat again. Finally the producers would put the cameras down, and I’d go and mix up his little food or get spaghetti and veggies. I’d blend his food, heat it up, change him, put him in a high chair, call Hank, arrange various things for the house and our life, work, film, and then try to get the baby down for the night, hopefully in the seven-to-eight-P.M. range. After that, for me it should have been pass-out time. But I barely had anything to eat myself because these days were never-ending, so I tried to have a late dinner. I call those days the three weeks of pure hell because this was my schedule for the most part while Hank was gone. At nine P.M. we’d Skype and that would be it for the day.

Ultimately, I decided neither Philly nor Minnesota was right for me and the baby—so we moved back to California.

Of course, the fact that I didn’t have a home to go back to in L.A. was just more great drama for the show, but for me it was just another sad reality of my life and my marriage. The show found a real estate agent who showed me this beautiful house that looked great on paper and I was like, “I want it.” It was supposed to be this beautiful house in Pasadena and I got there and I was like, “What is this?” It was three miles up a mountain and you had to drive up the side of a cliff to get to it. Once you got to the house, the last thing you wanted to do was drive back down that scary road, especially with a kid in the backseat.

A perfect fit, right there on my shoulder. We make each other relaxed.

So I started not wanting to leave the house. And I got it into my head that the house was haunted, so in addition to not wanting to leave, I also didn’t want to be there! I’d gone from feeling isolated in Philly to feeling isolated and trapped in Pasadena. I couldn’t take it anymore after more than three weeks, so I called Hank’s parents to help me with the baby—in-laws 911! They flew out for a few weeks and helped me with the baby while I did photo shoots and interviews and work for the show. I couldn’t do it all and raise the baby alone. I could feel myself unraveling.

I started to blame Hank, and our relationship began to deteriorate fast. I said, “How could you do this to me? You don’t even know where I’m at right now.” I felt like he had let us down again. He wasn’t involved in our day-to-day life and it was like he had checked out, at least in my mind. I felt us drifting farther and farther apart. Hank is a very caring, loving man, a good seed. If this is the kind of interaction he has with his family when he’s away for the season, I can only imagine what some of the bad seeds out there are like. I started to question his involvement and devotion to us. What kind of a father and husband is that? I didn’t want to be one of those “wives” who ended up on a reality show with other wives bitching about my lowlife, cheating, absent husband who’s on the road all year playing football. I knew deep down Hank was a good man put between a rock and a hard place, but I felt like he didn’t man up. Forget me; didn’t he want a better life for his son? I was so focused on and angry about things that had already happened and couldn’t be changed that I really started to lose it. You shouldn’t dwell on the past but I was focusing on what had happened over the last few months and it was causing me to freak out in the present. My past has always been a disaster. For me what works is looking forward, but I’m not always capable of doing that.

Chapter 6

Meltdown in Minnesota

When the house didn’t work out in Pasadena, I flew out to Minnesota with the baby to live with Hank for a couple weeks so we could try