Barnmaven

Post Holiday Wind-down (a/k/a the "wine" down)

Christmas seemed quiet up until about 1 o'clock Christmas Day.  My kids were with their dad from their last day of school on Friday.  We spent the time wrapping gifts and enjoying sleeping in.  On Christmas Eve SG went to the airport in Spokane to pick his son Josh up at the airport. 

We've had Josh's dog Kylie for a few months now while he transitioned from Arizona to Florida for the first part of Navy flight school.  He's ready to take her home now, and Christmas was a great opportunity to come get his dog and spend some time with his dad and his extended family here in Washington. 

Christmas Day we slept in, had a lazy breakfast and pretty much hung out until the kids finally showed up about 1:00.  Then the fun really started. 

They tore through their presents by 1:15 and were busy playing with their toys before the minute hand hit the 30 minute mark.

Once we could tear them away from the video console, we joined SG's family for Christmas dinner.  The wine and the conversation were excellent.  SG carved the turkey, escaping with only one sliced finger.  Why do people insist on trusting my husband to handle sharp objects?  Don't they know any better?

The kids and their cousins made a snowman in the park.

It was a damn fine Christmas. 

By contrast, New Year's Eve was extemely quiet.

Josh flew home that day, taking Kylie with him.  Roscoe misses her.  We told the kids they could stay up until midnight.  That would have been great, except the adults couldn't make it that long.  They're still mad at me.

We're still enjoying the quiet around here.  Its the third of January and my tree and outside lights are still up.

Don't judge.  Happy New Year!

 

 

First

SG and I got married a year ago today.  Yay us!

I'm very distressed, though, because the gift that I made sure I picked out and mailed early enough to reach him has not yet found its way to his hotel.  Interestingly enough, the absentee ballot I also mailed to him on the same day got there two days ago, so I'm a bit perturbed. 

His gift to me arrived on time, of course, in the form a a beautiful dozen long-stemmed roses.  I'm not normally a flowers-and-jewelry form of female, but even cynical me has to admit red roses are really the most romantic bouquet a man could ever give a woman.  I love them.  I'd trade them in a heartbeat to have him home, but since that option is not available to me I'll just enjoy the roses and look forward to seeing him in a few weeks.

I've wondered a few times before and since if we rushed into things, getting married just a hair under a year after we first met.  I've always been a creature of impulse, but as I've aged I've learned to question myself.  Oh, I still do ALL THE STUPID THINGS but at least I question myself while I'm doing them. 

I'm not one of those who thinks that every venture in life can be carefully planned so as to avoid making any mistakes.  So we didn't date for ten years or have a five year engagement. At this stage of our lives, are we beyond that sort of thing?  Is it OK to just say the heart wants what it wants, you make my girl parts hum with joy and you love me and you love me kids and all of that put together adds up to more than enough?  So we hitched our wagons together and we learn as we go, we grow as we learn, and over time we come together more easily because we've built a future on a base of love, trust and very real passion.  The faults we didn't recognize in one another we are learning to accept and forgive. 

Being a little older, besides giving me a nice antique feel, helps me understand that life and relationships have a degree of ebb and flow  SG and I, we accept that there are days we won't click or feel very close, and we have acquired the patience to get through those days with the sure knowledge that the tide will change and we will soon be back in sync.  We are in sync far more often than we are not. The not-syncing times can be unpleasant - we are smart, we are emotional, we both think we're right and we're both alpha types.  That makes for some pretty spectacular clashes, but the making up part is also pretty spectacular.

Happy First Anniversary, babe.  I'm looking forward to many more.

 

Its got Excedrin written all over it

I'm trying to post more regularly here.  I haven't been at all content with the frequency or the quality of my writing lately.  The answer to that is to exercise the writing muscles, not let them sit on the couch spooning up mouthfuls of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch  (which, might I say, is perfect for mining Heath Bar pieces of after it has been warmed in the microwave for exactly twenty seconds). 

Today has been a doozy, though, and I was so very tempted to bypass writing anything in favor of a hot bath and hiding my head under the covers.  I was up in the middle of the night last night with abdominal cramping.  When I made it to work today I was hit over the head immediately with a major and extremely inconvenient problem opportunity and a few minor and somewhat less problematic issues.   The cherry on top of this shit-sandwich of delight was the pounding in my head and the frequent feeling of needing to throw up. 

I took something for the headache and it sort of went away and then came back, but the intermittent nausea has continued and by about 3 pm I waved the white flag and went home.  I don't know what's wrong with me, I suspect a combination of tension and maybe not eating as well as I should be, but who knows.  My tummy has felt quite acidic of late and I wonder if I'm not developing heartburn as a way of coping.   Work is just tough right now, its one foot in front of the other with the finish line barely visible.  This part of the year is the busiest we get and I'm down staff.  We are all pitching in to fill the gap, and we are getting it done, but we are paying the price.  Today's hitch in my giddyup is possibly my body's way of asking me to please slow down more and to fret less.

The good news, of course, is that the finish line is quite reachable and we will get there, by hook or by crook.  Then we can enjoy a few months of breathing space and start girding our loins for the next challenges heading our way.

SG hasn't heard yet if the job he's on will go longer, but right now they are operating behind schedule so its likely.  I have been very purposefully not tying my heart to a specific return time and just reminding myself that we are more than halfway through this one either way and I will get to see him in fewer days than I last got to hug him.  Our first wedding anniversary is this Friday.  Yeah, we don't get to celebrate it together and that sucks more than a little.  We will celebrate it though, and it will be good to be in each others' company and have fun.   And on the up side, he's not stranded somewhere in the Northeastern part of the country where everyone's more than a little froggy after "Post-Tropical Storm" (my ass) Sandy hurled a billion gallons of rain and seawater at them. 

Yes, I'll take not-here over flooded, power-less and stranded.

Ugh.  Me and my headache are going to go have a lie-down.

Cats are for soaking up tears

The nights when the kids are at their dads are simultaneously awesome and terrible.  The house is so quiet.  Too quiet.  I shuffle around in my slippers, turning off lights, locking doors, talking to the animals as if they could understand and respond.  Crazy cat lady.

Back when I was newly separated I had gotten in the bad habit of letting the dogs sleep on the bed.  Three big dogs, nicely filling up the empty side of the bed and making me feel somewhat less alone.  Except there's a problem with dogs and beds.  Pretty soon they think they have a right to be there, and if for any reason you don't want them up there, they sit on the floor and whine incessantly.  Or they growl at you when you want to move them.  Or they take up so much space there's not much room for you any more.   Not a problem - so long as you don't ever get remarried.  It turns out that teaching your dogs to stay off the bed takes just about as long as it takes to teach your kid to sleep in his own bed:  three nights, and the occasional slide into bad habits.

Cats are a different story.  Cats do not take up an excess amount of space.  Cats, unlike small dogs, do not burrow under the covers and do their best to put their nose in your private parts.  Cats, if you are not allergic, are wonderful heat sources.

Juliet has slept with me most nights the last couple of years.  If she's not sleeping with me she's in my daughter's bed, but most often she's with me.  She will leap up next to me, knead the covers a bit, then plop herself down with her back pressed up against my stomach.  I pet her a little, and she purrs quietly, making soft snuffly noises.   At some point in the night I will roll over, and she will use this opportunity to crawl under the covers and rearrange herself in the curl of my belly or behind my knees.  We have a predictable and comfortable arrangement, she and I. 

There are times of late that my bed seems huge and empty, there are times when the fact that I am lonely hits me like a freight train.  There are times when I realize that my closest and dearest sleeping companion is a cat.  Then I start to feel a little bit sorry for myself and the tears flow.  Once Fortunately Juliet doesn't mind getting a little bit soggy. 

Comfort, thy name is Cat.

 

 

All its cracked up to be

Someday when I write my autobiography - or someday when I'm dead and someone has the notion to make a television sitcom about my life - the title should be "Six of one," except I'd be borrowing the title from Rita Mae Brown and it wouldn't be a fictional funny drama about one woman's coming out story.  It would be the story of the woman whose life story seems to consistently be pointing how life is this continual mishmash of good stuff and hard stuff - ALL THE TIME with the good stuff and the hard stuff.

I suppose that's my blog theme.  I wish I'd figured that out a few years ago.  Here all this time I thought I was writing about horses and special needs.  See what the wine does?

I hit the grocery store yesterday after dropping the kids off with their dad (hint:  if you take your kids halloween costume shopping do not finish the trip by dropping them off with their other parent.  Kids with new halloween costumes want to go home and put them on, not leave them with you and go to their other parent's house).  Since my Mom has been picking up the kids after school , she does their homework and feeds them dinner, which makes my grocery list rather sparse.  Unless there's someone to cook for, I don't cook.  What's the point?  Its cereal for breakfast and dinner is eggs or soup.  So I'm at the grocery store and putting my things on the moving belt at the checkstand and I realize that everyone in line behind me probably thinks I'm a middle-aged single woman with no kids and a house full of cats. I was half tempted to throw a True Confessions in with everything just to say "La la la, I don't care what you think!" but actually no one even has True Confessions on the shelf anymore and I at least just managed to establish the fact that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth.

Its a big silence to wrap my thoughts around, those first hours after the kids have gone.  With SG on the road everything is at the same time both more and less meaningful.  I put away the groceries, empty the dishwasher, wash the few dishes in the sink.  I have six more hours before I have to go to bed, and I can pick and choose how I want to spend the time.  I'm lonely and not lonely, all at the same time.  I do realize that with a house full of pushy cats and large, noisy dogs that I'm never really alone, but since I'm the only one who can actually talk, its a lot quieter.  Being alone with my thoughts is a really dicey proposition.  I'm one of those people who can go either way -- and sometimes its a matter of a few minutes between happy as a lark and sooooooo lonely and sad.

Is this just part of the human process, learning how to accept while still retaining the option to complain when we don't like what's happening?  There's a distinct line between "doormat" and "punch life in the face." 

Last night life gave me a 90 pound puppy who thinks she's a lap dog and a 22 year old horse who was on the verge of colicking, a chicken intent on sitting on eggs I do not wish her to hatch and a husband whose phone couldn't get a clear connection to give us a chance to connect for five damn minutes.  Life also gave me a nice bottle of wine, a friend on the other end of the phone to be a substitute shoulder, and a nice cold evening to make my dinner of soup ever so enjoyable.  So who am I to complain?

Six of one.  Half a dozen of the other.  It all balances out in the end.  Its all good.

Pick your cliche'.  Any one of 'em will do. 

 

Bounce

Sometime around 5:30 this morning I went to take the garbage bag from under the sink out to the bin.  It was still dark, and as I lifted the lid I lifted my face away from the stink and scanned the sky.

About two blocks away I could see an enormous billowing cloud of smoke, full of sparks and backlit by orange flames and street lamps.  "Oh, crap," I said.  Because, you know, I'm all eloquent and shit like that.

I grabbed my coffee cup (when your dad is a retired firefighter, fires are spectacles, not events), stuck my flip flops on my feet and moseyed up the street.  I don't really know the people who lived in the house, but their outbuildings were ablaze and they were frantically spraying water on their vehicles and their roof to keep their house safe.  Its an old farmhouse, and probably would have been in as bad shape as their garage and barn except right about then the first firetrucks arrived.

By the time I left for work, the fire was pretty well out.  I stopped and got out of the car to see if they needed anything.  They had an old skinny horse tied up to a tree, and I inquired if they needed a place to put him.  The two young guys that were there said the man who owned the horse was at work, and they didn't really know.  I checked him over - he was a little shocky, but more concerning he was clearly underweight and his feet looked like they hadn't seen a rasp in about 10 years.  He was very kind and patient and let me look in his mouth and pick up his feet without protest.  I suggested they get him some water and then I went back home and threw a bale of hay in the truck to give them.  He was eating and drinking water when I left, so I was encouraged.  By now I'm late for work, but its not every day you wake up to a fire in the neighborhood.

Yesterday SG left for Nebraska.  Oh, I know we thought he'd not have to go back on the road, but at some point the not-finding of the local work and the pile of bills (not to mention getting hay put in for an embarassing number of horses) dictated otherwise.  He'll be back mid-November.  If there was anyone as conflicted as this man about leaving for a job I've yet to meet them.  Granted, it was a short notice scramble as he got the call about this job on Wednesday for a Monday start.  The adrenaline rush gets you booked and packed before you've had a chance to really think about whether you really want to go to Nebraska of all places in October and November.

Still, it was three or four in the afternoon on Saturday, his flight was leaving at 10 am Sunday and he was still waffling on whether he was staying or going.  I finally threw my hands up in despair and headed out to the barn to escape the anxious pacing and the muttering.  

It shouldn't be THAT hard a decision to go to work or not, especially in a down economy.  You just don't question the gift of paying work - even if it DOES require packing your long underwear.  But then you think back to the last couple of outages which all went much shorter than they were supposed to, which meant the private contractors didn't make nearly as much bank as they were counting on, and you count weeks and paychecks and you think that maybe it won't pan out - but in the end its still a job, and so the decision gets made.

And so we kiss goodbye before his folks come to take him on the two hour drive to the airport and then later on that afternoon the kids' dad comes to get them and suddenly I'm alone, trying to decide if I'm happy about it or not.  On the one hand, there's all of the ALL that is our crazy little farm and that's challenging when there's two adults to handle it.  And there's the lonely part of things, especially on the nights when the only warm bodies you can find to cuddle with are furry and don't have opposable thumbs with which to rub your back.  But then you think about how nice it is to have a bathroom to yourself and how much less laundry there'll be, and dishes too, and then you wake up to see your neighbor's whole life going up in flames.

And then you read a post on Facebook from a friend you've known for years who just lost her husband.  And you realize pretty quickly how good you have it.

My man might not be home right now, but I still get to talk to him and hold him again in a few weeks' time.  My house might be a little quiet and empty, but it is standing.  My husband might not get as much work out of this as he wants, but it is still work. 

This is how you bounce back.

 

Being there

I love my job.  I love my company.  If I had to pick a commute (provided not commuting was not on the table), I'd pick this one over most - but grudgingly, what with gas prices exceeding anything resembling reasonable anymore.

Working or not working has never been a choice for me as a parent.  Like most parents, the kind of choices I can make have more to do with what kind of work I will do, what kind of hours I will accept, what kind of pay is necessary to keep us housed and fed and reasonably healthy.  Less often anymore is it a choice over whether a parent will stay home.  So many families are struggling to find jobs in this nerve-flogging environment of unemployment that for many families, both parents might be home full time. 

And when work is available, for most families, both incomes are necessary to pay for the necessities.  I have much respect for those families where parents have made the sacrifice of spending any time with one another to work separate shifts so that the staggering cost of child care doesn't make working untenable. 

When families do have a choice of a parent staying home, more and more Mom isn't the automatic default.  While I still think the career/parenting paradigm is more of a struggle for women than for men, I'm gratified to see many fathers being engaged in the nurturing and care of babies, some to the point of being the parent who is present for daily activities.

I used to think that if I had an actual choice to work or to stay at home, I'd always choose work.  Of course, back then I didn't have fence to mend, irrigation to repair, painting to do or horses to ride.  I know better now.  I am also faced with the fact that as my children age, the time is soon coming when their need for an available parent close to or at home will wane.  What if I had the ability to meet my family's financial needs and still be more available to my kids?  What if that came at the potential cost of delayed promotions down the road?

Deborah Spar, president of Barnard College, suggested in a article in Newsweek that too many women these days think they are supposed to do it all and do all of it perfectly.  That even when we know better, even when we tell other women its OK to not be able to do it all because no one can possibly be a full time career person, homeschooler, designated team driver and keep a perfectly immaculate house and have dinner on the table each night, we don't allow ourselves the same leeway.

Spar quotes a former student:

 'Girls need to have all their grandmothers wanted them to have, while looking as pretty as their mothers wanted them to look ... You try so hard to be who everyone wants you to be while attempting to maintain some kind of individuality and in the end you seem to lose everything.'

I think I'm old enough now to appreciate - and more importantly, accept - that there is no way to win the game when half the cards I'm holding are still face down on the table. 

The upcoming months signal a big transition for me and for my company.  When the rubber meets the road, I will likely be making some decisions about where I want to go right now career-wise, and it will probably be the nearest opportunity I have to work toward a path that - for now - means I do something that affords me the ability to be there for my kids in a way I can't at the moment. 

I think its OK to accept a career path that has a flat point in it for a while and then re-evaluate down the road a little bit what it is I'd actually like to be when I grow up.  And, truth be told, I'm ambivalent about what it really means to be "successful."  Does that mean making lots of money, having lots of power or having a personal life that is stable and enjoyable and where I have the leeway and time to be the mom I think I should be?  In a perfect world, those things wouldn't be mutually exclusive, but in the real world they most certainly are.  I don't want to take a back seat to anyone, but does taking a path where I have fewer people to manage and more time for my family really mean that I'm not still in the game?  Maybe it just means I've swapped out a few of my cards.

 

 

Planning ahead

NOW when the number of my years

is all fulfilled, And I

From sedentary life shall rouse me up to die,

Bury me low and let me lie

Under the wide and starry sky.

Joying to live, I joyed to die.

Bury me low and let me lie.

                    ~Robert Louis Stevenson

 

On the days I'm actually in the mood to hear what's going on in the outside world (its an election seasion, mostly I'm not) I tend to listen to NPR's Northwest stations on the way to and from work.  Sometimes I have to throw in a CD or switch to a music station if its early morning and I'm having a hard time waking up or if its the way home and the soothing voice of Robert Seigel starts causing me to nod off at the wheel.  One of my doctors told me once that an attribute of unmedicated ADHD is  tendency to be extremely sleepy in the afternoons.  That was a BINGO! moment for me, as I had been having terrible trouble driving home from work on a daily basis.  Once I started medication it got much better, but I still have days when I'm a little overtired and driving home is a crapshoot.  But I digress.  Again.  I know, you're so surprised!

So a couple of weeks ago Diane Rehms did a segment on aging and preparing for end of life issues.  One of the guests kept talking about a program called Five Wishes.  Its basically a living will but with extras, like telling your survivors what you'd like them to say when people ask how you wanted to be remembered, picking songs or passages you'd like at your services or if you even want services, along with standard advance directives.  In most states, signed by the proper witnesses, it stands as a legal document. 

Its not easy to talk about death and dying, not for most people.  I don't mind it, but my parents have been very open for years about their wishes for end of life issues.  Mom keeps a folder with all the pertinent instructions and information on where all the necessary documents are located.   Other people aren't so comfortable about planning for or talking about what will happen if they get ill or very old or die suddenly.  I suppose most people don't often like to think about the fact that we're going to die someday.  Its the great unknown, isn't it?  It will happen to everyone, but we don't know how or when and we don't know for sure what happens after.  We might believe certain things about what happens when we die, but there's no clear information to be found about exactly how that goes down.  Is there a test?  A door greeter?  Is there really a Rainbow Bridge and will there be a Noah's Ark of all the animals I've ever loved waiting there for me?  Who's scooping all the poop up there in the meantime? 

I do know that I'm not afraid to die, per se, but I'm afraid of dying while my children are still young.  And because my children are still young and because I only recently remarried and I don't have a current will and my advance directive is about twenty years out of date, I really dug into what the folks on the radio were saying.  SG and I talked some about what we would want to happen after Ken died, but we never went ahead and put anything on paper.

When my brother died, it was completely unexpected.  I can't remember ever talking to him about what he wanted done when that time came, it just wasn't something we thought about.  We talked about what we knew our parents wanted, but it never occurred to either of us that we might not outlive our parents.  Because he'd never had those conversations with anyone and because he didn't have any advance directives, his death was exponentially more difficult, especially for my niece and nephews. They are young adults, and my niece was in the position of having to make a lot of decisions without really knowing for certain what her dad would have wanted.  She also had to deal with the pressure of making these decisions with a lot of different people telling her what they thought she ought to do.  Its a position I would never want to be in, and its a position I don't ever want to put anyone else in.

I kind of forgot about the Five Wishes site for several days, but at some point I had a chance to actually use my laptop at home and I checked out the information there.  I was planning to sit down with SG at the next opportunity to talk about the end of life planning and the need for us to outline our wishes and probably get wills made.  And then...

(This is where the hair on my arms starts to tingle a little bit)

...the doorbell rang.  The dogs freaked out, so it took a few seconds to shove them into their crates.  I opened the door and there was a very nice looking older blond lady standing on my stoop, holding a clipboard and carrying a casual looking briefcase.  She introduced herself and as it turns out, she is a sales representative for a local funeral home. 

COINCIDENCE?  Does this stuff ever happen to you?  Isn't it really spooky when it does?

It wasn't really a good time to have her come in and sit down with us (kids rampant, house messy, in the middle of things), but we made an appointment, and she came back a few days later.  We talked for a good hour or so, and she left us with some materials.  One of the materials is a pamphlet we keep even if we decide not to do any pre-planning, where we write down all of our important information, things we or our families would need to know if when we die.

I'm not planning on dying anytime soon, and neither is SG, of course.  Most of us aren't.  But this is a one way trip, boys and girls.  Making plans isn't something we are doing for ourselves.  Its something we are doing for each other and for our children and our families and friends.  When my spirit no longer lives in my body, what happens to my body won't matter to me.  It will matter, though, to the people I love.  And so we plan ahead, hoping that those plans won't be needed for many years to come, but having some peace about knowing that they are made just in case.

(No, SG, I'm NOT having your body shot into space on a rocket.  Stop asking me.)

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/justintron/6245250507/

 

Finis.

Passages

Over the years I've fallen in love with so many blogs.  Every so often I'll see someone I really look forward to reading stop posting with any regularity, and I wonder if they're OK, if this is the beginning of the long decline to the end of blogging altogether or just the silence while they weather a crisis or a dry spell.  When I first started blogging I was so enthralled with the form and the media I couldn't imagine ever wanting to stop.  I'd see someone I really like put their blog on haitus or take it offline entirely and I'd be so perplexed...why would anyone want to go silent like that? 

I also remember being a woman without children and I'd watch people who were parents say and do certain things and I'd be absolutely flummoxed why parents were so crazy.  I, after all, would never say or do such things.  I'd never buy my kid a happy meal just to make him stop crying for one goddam second.  I'd never fill my kids rooms with plastic crappy toys or ignore them just so I could have one minute of sanity in the bathroom or let them wear clothes made in third world countries by indentured servants to the smiley face or...and so on.

I gather this is the standard process for most people.  When something is new or not yet experienced, we bury ourselves under the weight of uninformed opinions and find ourselves surprised when we one day find out just how little we actually know about anything.

The good news (depending, I suppose, on your point of view) is that I'm not planning on falling off the web into that large graveyard of discontinued blogs.  The bad news, if there is such a thing, is that I have no current urge to write much at the moment and no idea how to solve that problem.  Or even know if that's actually a "problem."   My health has been a bit difficult of late, work has been very challenging and stressful, and the things that need doing far outnumber the hours of time available.  In truth, my attitude about blogging and bloggers has changed dramatically over the last year or so, and my reasons for writing, such as they were, are no longer the same.  My goals for blogging have changed significantly, and my self-knowledge of my place in the world of blogging has clarified.  I'm ok with where I am and who I am, and I'm less worried than ever about accidentally offending anyone or even whether or not anyone "important" is reading, because I DO get, frankly, that everyone who takes the time to come here and read my continuing attempts at writing has given me a great gift of time and attention, and I'm grateful for every single one of you. 

Lately I'm in a state of wonderment at the ability life has to be simultaneously amazing and awful.  Or joyous and depressing.  Or stressful and flatlined.  Pick your metaphors, they all fit. 

My friend Debbie, who has taken the reins over organizing my barn, my pastures, my horses and trying to convince me to implement ten thousand fabulous ideas all at the same time, says constantly "Its amazing how you're just so normal!"  I think she has it ass-backwards.  I think we get along really well because on a certain level we have brains that work the same (wrong, not-normal) way and we don't get frustrated by the tangential nature of practically every conversation we've ever had.  Over the course of the summer we've repaired stall doors and expanded so that I now have three working stalls.  When there was only one stall functional and three to four horses being fed with different requirements for supplements and each with the right to be able to eat without someone else chasing them away from breakfast, things were a little crazy out there.    She's also picked my dry pen clean of weeds and rocks.  She's found someone to haul away the manure pile.  She's found someone to put up wall racks for tack and someone to paint.  She's cleared the area behind the barn where all the scrap lumber and fencing materials used to get tossed (don't look at ME, the old owners started it, I just kept the tradition alive) and put down pallets and tarps and quadrupled our ability to store hay.

She also drives my husband a little batty because he is used to being along much of the time and she is by nature a very chatty person.  I can tell he likes her though. 

The kids this summer...what an amazing change in both of them.  My daughter is getting taller and more beautiful by the nanosecond.  She's taken two sessions of swimming lessons, gotten to level three and only needs to perfect two things to get to level four.  She's at that stage of transformation between little girl and startling long-legged tween and she's just stunning.  That's not even subjective mother-pride.  Its just God's honest truth.  What I find fascinating is her ability to verbalize her understanding that she knows she's growing up but she's not in any hurry to do so.  "I just want to be a kid, mom.  I don't want to grow up yet," she'll say, and my heart melts with love and pride and bittersweetness all at the same time.  She will grow up whether I will it or no.  I know that little girls can change dramatically as they age, and I hold onto the firm hope that the person she is, the things about her that make her so awesomely her will stay intact.   She gets more out of my reach every day, and as I let go with a heart that strains under the hope and fear, I simply pray that God lets life be gentle with her for as long as possible.  In les than two weeks she will be a fifth grader. 

My son is learning to negotiate.  His anxiety and ODD issues make certain things difficult.  He hates taking showers because he doesn't want to get any water in his eyes, but baths take too long and his anxiety informs him that soaking in your own dirty water is just YUCK.  So showers were always a struggle, until he came home from his dad's one weekend and announced that he and his dad worked out a deal:  Daddy bought him swim goggles and now he doesn't get upset in the shower.  I'm not sure who thought up the idea, but hot damn if it hasn't made getting the little dude clean a much less stressful event.  Hallelujah and pass the cornbread!  He's gotten tons more compliant about taking his meds, and he's learned to negotiate that as well.  We've also had to learn to listen when he starts to refuse things - sometimes we have a hard time remembering that his anxiety makes certain things far harder for him to tolerate than we can understand.  

SG has been a stay-at-home stepdad all summer and has had both kids pretty much every day of the week since their dad and I are both working, and I really believe his even-tempered nature has had a positive impact on both of them.   Their dad and I both tend to moodiness, and I sense that our unpredictability has been stressful for them.   They have evened out much, both of them, they fight with one another a lot less, and its clear that they both adore their stepdad.  School starts soon, so my husband will be joining the ranks of the employed unless I either get a highly unexpected and very large pay raise or I actually buy a lottery ticket and it turns out to be a winnah.  He's been my rock the last month or so while I've struggled physically and mentally.  That's love for you.  I am not afraid to admit that my patience is thin and my attitude bad, and he has endured it with a great deal more grace than I would likely exhibit were I in his shoes.

We lost Mojo kitty this summer.   He disappeared in the spring for a few weeks and when we finally found him he was so skinny and deteriorated we weren't sure he would make it.  He recovered for a while with special food and supplements and monitoring, but then he went suddenly downhill and we had to make the tough choice to say goodbye.  I suspect it was cancer.    He's joined Hercules, Lady and our little old banty hen Cin-Cin under the tree out in the back pasture.  I think I've learned pretty well the last few years that people and animals too often leave our lives far sooner than we are prepared for them to do, and it reminds me to make a point of taking time each day for each animal to have some attention, for me to be more vigilant about picking up the phone, and to treasure every opportunity to play with my children and create memories to sustain me when they have grown up and begun lives of their own.  It will happen sooner than I think.

How's your summer been so far?

 

Uterus, redux

The title alone ought to scare you off.

A couple of years ago I treated you all to the mental imagery of the bloodbath that followed the removal of my first Mirena.  I waited a few months before deciding what to do about birth control, and since there wasn't any actual having of The Sex, it wasn't an issue.  Later that year, along came SG and I made the decision to have a new Mirena installed.  Personally, I wish I could forego using any sort of birth control whatsoever.  I don't like interrupting my natural cycle.  With the Mirena I bleed like hell when they put it in and when they take it out and not a drop in between.  No periods.  On first blush, it seems like a great idea -- but the truth is the thought of interrupting my body's natural  uterine function really bothers me.  What else does one do, though, when one is seeing someone who lights her up like a pinball machine and its too soon to talk about serious ongoing relationship issues like do you want any more children and do you want to get married and would you please have a vasectomy even though we're only dating?

Well, we did get married, and no, we don't want any more children, and surprisingly, he's not opposed to being the one responsible for managing our mutual fertility.   We weren't in a hurry to make any decisions about it, though, with another three years of shelf life left on my IUD. 

Until last week.

I woke up in the middle of the night Tuesday with something that seemed like a horrific conflation of the worst IBS attack in the history of the universe and an abrupt return of the most extreme symptoms of endometrisosis I'd ever experienced.  All the pressure of the IBS episode was causing me to feel like someone was slicing up my reproductive system with a machete.  I assumed it would pass, I really did -- but it didn't. I managed with the assistance of a lot of fiber and other handy-dandy gastro-intestinal remedies to solve the pressure problem, but the pelvic pain just wasn't going away.  I couldn't even sit down and pee without having such bad pain I couldn't catch my breath.  It even hurt to walk. 

By the end of the second day I figured it was time for a medical intervention.  Dr. A was pretty concerned.  He ordered labs, started me on antibiotics and a buttload of pain control medication.  And I do mean buttload.  Hellooooooo Valium, Hydrocodone and Donnatal, my new best friends. Within 24 hours I could manage walking upright, but it was clear things weren't really quite right down there.

Dr. A made a followup with me for a few days later and requested I also make an appointment with my gynecologist as soon as possible.  Except I don't actually HAVE a gynecolist at the moment.   He gave me a referral to a local guy and so I called their office to see when I could get in.  "As soon as possible" when you're calling a gynecologist's office you've never seen before turns out to be something like a month from now, unless, like me, you're willing to turn on the waterworks over the phone in which case it turns into that afternoon. 

We didn't actually get to see the guy we were referred to , we got one of his associates, but that was fine.  He checked the labs my doctor had ordered and agreed there was infection.  Then he put instruments of torture up my vagina and did something so horribly painful to my cervix that I practically leaped out of the stirrups and through one of the ceiling tiles while my head did a 360 degree rotation on the top of my shoulders. 

Once I could again breathe normally, I asked him what might be causing said painful infection.  He rattled off a number of potential reasons, but mostly he thought it was the IUD.  I asked him if leaving it in would make it harder to get rid of the infection and he said that he believed yes, it would.  Et voila.  Out with you, then.

He then gave me prescriptions for more antibiotics and requested I come back in two weeks, with orders for absolutely no sex in the meantime. 

No.

Sex.

As if that weren't bad enough, it turns out the one of the antibiotics reacts badly with caffeine and the other reacts badly with alcohol.

Two weeks. 

No sex.

No coffee.

No booze.

 

And just like the last time I got my IUD removed, the river of blood has commenced, which has done absolutely nothing to improve my mood.

But you know, I'm a generous girl.  I believe in sharing my pain.  I've asked SG to find a urologist in our insurance network with the first available appointment and go ahead with getting neutered a vasectomy.  Misery, as they say, loves company. 

He loves me, that man.  Its a damn good thing.