| putting me to shame |
Feb 24, 2008 7:59 am
Mood: disappointed with myself, 531 Views | Several years ago a friend's daughter contracted meningitis and nearly died. While she was in the hospital her mom opened a Care Page so her family and friends could follow what was going on with her daughter without having to write individual letters or make phone calls all the time.
Her daughter recovered, she's completely fine, a true miracle.
Well the Care Page site kept me on their mailing list, and one day, about 2 years ago, I clicked on the link for one of the stories. The boy was one of 4 brothers, the same age as the Lizard, and I felt a kinship to that so I started reading. His story really touched me, and the heartfelt way his mother wrote about him kept me reading. I posted a comment and she responded. She responds to everyone personally, something that really impressed me and still does. Her child has a rare disease, she has three other kids, a husband and a house to take care of, and she still finds time to give more than a cursory response to everyone who cares to post something to her.
I've continued to read about her son - Nino - following this all the way to the senate where a bill has been introduced, just this month, with his name on it - Nino's Act - attempting to gain medicaide coverage for children who are part of experimental programs, as he is, and whose private insurance won't recognize that treatment, as his won't, so there won't be a break in this treatment and they can stay as well and active as possible - as this remarkable little boy does.
Well on Friday she posted something about there being a snow day where she lives and how much she was enjoying having all the boys home. This got me thinking about myself and how I view things with my kids. So often I feel put upon in having them all here. Yes, the single mom thing can really get to anyone, and I have emotionally needy children - one with a learning disability, one with crippling anxiety, one with a mind that doesn't shut off - and it gets to be a lot. I start to relish the time they're gone just to get the break.
But here's this woman, with something far more difficult to deal with than I'll ever know, who has a joy in her kids just being there I shamefully don't share as often as I know I should. I'm sure she has break downs. I'm sure there are times she's glad to be alone, and I know it's this incredible faith she constantly refers to that keeps her going. But it doesn't seem to define her in the way I think being away from my kids can define me.
Thing is, I can't sit here and say - well, I'm going to cherish the time with my kids more. I'm going to be more like Lori. Because that, this thing she has in her that makes her that way toward her boys, I know I don't have in me.
I love my kids, incredibly, but I also know why I feel the way that I do. Even while married I was a single parent. It was all, always, put on me. I had no help, I got little to no support. After more than 21 years of this I'm burned out and tired and pretty much spent. I give them my all when they're here, but at times it's with this thought in the back of my mind of when I'll be alone again.
Lori is a wonderful mother. I think I'm a pretty good darned mother too, if different from her. But the dedication and sheer joy she has for all her boys, not just Nino, puts me to shame.
I feel kind of bad about this. Not for my boys, because if you ask them I know they'd tell you I do a good enough job with them. I feel bad for me, because I don't have that joy that can say - yipee! Snow day!! Time to play with my kids!!!
Yes, I'm sure she has this in part because she deals with the difficulties associated with a very sick child. She knows a downside I have nothing to compare anything in my life to, and that, alone, may make her joyful in ways I can only feel burdened.
Still, she puts me to shame and this morning I felt I had to recognize that.
Thanks for listening. | |
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14 Comments | |
| college visit |
Feb 23, 2008 5:29 pm
Mood: hopeful, 515 Views | Drummer Boy and I got back a little bit ago from visiting his first choice college - and the only one left to get back to him on acceptance - Illinois Wesleyan. It's small, highly selective, and VERY expensive. But it has one of the best pre-med preparations in the State, and that's the direction Drummer Boy is moving in.
This is the second time I've gotten to do the college thing, and I'm finding I'm just as excited for him as I was for #1 Son. I'm also suffering the nerves with him as he waits for the school to respond.
Financially, it would be tough to have him there. His dad and I can't get loans, the credit went down the toilet with the marriage, and the bill on this school is $40,000 a year....YIKES!! He'll get Illinois money, I'm sure academic money from the school (he has from the other three he's been accepted to), federal money and then some because of the fact there would be no loans, and possibly a campus job. Because the US government really likes smart kids with poor parents it should bring the total due below $10,000 - if we're really lucky, someplace around $3,000 which could be manageable in 10 payments if his dad helps me make them. Every year it gets better because the federal money automatically increases, and more scholarships get added if he maintains a consistently high g.p.a.
But I think I'm more concerned right now about his acceptance to this school, rather than how to pay for it. Like any parent I want to see my kids have what they want, and I know how much he wants to be at that school. But maybe more importantly is the boost I know this will give him toward his future career. The average national pass rate on the MCATs is around 50% on the first try. Illinois Wesleyan has an 85% first time pass rate, and of those, over 90% of them get into their first choice med school.
His second choice college - Loyola, which has accepted him and given $8,000 a year in academic money already - is connected to a teaching hospital and has their own med school. They're also a much larger campus and I know part of what Drummer Boy likes about IWU is the 2,100 person student body and class sizes that barely reach 20. Plus it's all undergrads, there are no graduate studies done there at all.
So to those who feel compelled, raise up some prayers, or cross some fingers for him as the admission's people make their decision in the next few weeks. He's in constant contact with his admission's counselor - another perk of a small, selective school, there's a lot of attention given - who he also spent some time with today. The counselor kind of hinted to him that he may have a better chance of admission if he switched his pre-med concentration to Chemistry instead of his chosen Biology - I sense a major change in his future with the way he was talking afterward. Aside from that, he just said he'd be in touch.
More to come on this later..... | |
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12 Comments | |
| modem-less |
Feb 22, 2008 5:43 pm
Mood: relieved, 588 Views | Last Sunday my 8 year old Speadstream modem took it's last gasping breath, and died. It happened while I was playing Canasta, breaking my 15 game winning streak, but I'll forgive it for that. It was a good and nobel modem and had served me well. It outlived most modems of those I know, survived a frozen house with no electricity for a week, countless lightening storms, and 4 moves.
I ordered a replacement on Monday and was without Internet.  I had access at work, but I can't go to places like this - the content filters are too high - and I couldn't play Canasta, nor write a decent eye bleeding e-mail to M1KM. I'm sure it was much worse on my kids who were off their MMORPGs for 4 days. By Thursday morning we were having to do chest compressions on the Dreamer, he was close to death. 
Then last night it took me nearly 3 hours to get the new modem working with my home network. My house is wireless and I'd recently replaced the router, but it didn't want to play nice with the new modem. I think it was jealous and didn't want to give up its newest in the house position so quickly.
I got on the phone with my Internet provider's customer service because the help for the router was online only - took a real genuis to put that together. Carrie, from India, talked me through gads of nothingness for almost 2 hours before she said she was going to get a level two tech to help me out.
While on hold I took every wire out of every socket and switched them with their neighbors and voila! Internet!! It was like magic.
Amazing, with all this technology, the self diagnosing tools, hardware smarter than the average adult, switching the cords around fixed it. Go figure!!
I have days of Internet surfing to catch up on now but wanted to say HI to you all first.
Enjoy your weekend!! | |
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18 Comments | |
| Happy Valentine's Day |
Feb 14, 2008 4:48 am
Mood: happy, 685 Views | Whether there's someone special you can hold, in your heart or in your arms, I hope everyone has a wonderful day! Take time to appreciate those around you - your kids if you have them, you co-workers if you have a job, your neighbors, your friends. This is a day primarily thought of as for lovers, but I think it should also be a day to let those you care about know how important they are to you no matter what place they hold in your life.
So to all of you....Happy Valentine's Day!! | |
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22 Comments | |
| in memory of mom |
Feb 12, 2008 7:32 pm
Mood: thoughtful, 538 Views | Tonight, at about 11:30 p.m., 17 years ago, my mom died. She had been in surgery - an emergency appendectomy, though that's not what killed her, or even what she was in the hospital for. She was there because of her heart.
She went into the hospital for the last time on January 31. She had a life threatening arrythmia caused by severe damage to the right side of her heart brought about by a silent heart attack that the doctors really couldn't pin a timeframe on. Sometime between March and June of 1990.
Before that she had been in and out the psych ward of the hospital, her psychiatrist trying to find an effective medication to combat her bipolarism with. She wouldn't stay on medications for long, as soon as she felt better she'd stop taking them. She'd say her PDoc - read that psychiatrist - told her to do it. That was never the case, she always decided on her own, and when unmedicated, would become manic and wind up in the hospital.
When mental illness patients mess around with their meds as much as my mom did, they cause something called kindling, where drugs lose their effectiveness, it's almost like a resistance. That's where she was in the fall of 1989, that then led to her being hospitalized into the early spring of 1990.
I don't know what med she was on. My parents didn't talk about that kind of stuff, not in the culture for their generation. But the med was new, very strong, and caused an irregular heartbeat, that, coupled with untreated high blood pressure and chain smoking, contributed to the heart attack.
The EP - electrophysiologist - who took care of her said she would have had the heart attack at the age of 56 no matter how she had taken care of herself. She was the third oldest daughter in consecutive generations to have a heart attack, it was in her genes. But she would have survived it better had she been taking better care of herself.
She didn't want any tests or treatments. She went home from the hospital at the end of June, 1990 with about a dozen medications for her heart, and an order to be in cardiac rehab at the hospital 5 days a week. It was while at rehab, two weeks later that, for all intents and purposes, she died. But because she was in the hospital when this happened they were able to bring her back. It was then the Drs said she had to undergo further tests to see exactly what they could do to help her.
A month later, after angiograms and countless EP studies, the bottom line was that the heart attack left her with a life threatening arrythmia too serious to be treated with meds alone. They gave three options:
One was a heart transplant. Except on closer examination she had too many other physical issues to be considered.
Another was remapping, a process where they would cut away the dead tissue of her heart and leave her with a smaller, but healthier, heart in exchange. They did the preliminary tests but because so much of her heart was dead muscle from the heart attack, there wasn't enough good muscle to successfully remap it.
The last was what they then called an AICD - or automated implanted cardiovertor defibrillator. These items are common now, in general use for a long time. But in August of 1990 only 7 of them had been implanted, all done on an experimental basis in select hospitals across the country. Illinois Masonic was one of those hospitals, and my mom was a candidate for this procedure.
She didn't want to do it. But she said she wanted to see her babies again - and she didn't mean her three kids. She had 4 grandkids then, two of them were mine, my oldest sons, the other two my brother's. She hadn't seen them since being put into the hospital in mid-July. She didn't want us to bring them, not wanting to scare them with where she was at - telemetry - or how sick she was because they were so little. Based on this, she said she'd have the surgery.
There were two weeks of preparations, mostly emotional, for her and us. We saw videos and talked with her team of doctors. They made sure we were well prepared, no questions left.
The FDA paid for the surgery and the morning of she had to sign a stack of papers releasing her information for use in whatever way the government needed it. Her surgery would be filmed, her case detailed, though not her name. She would just be a 56 year old female.
The surgery took 8 hours. When she got out they warned us how she wouldn't be breathing on her own, wouldn't know who we were due to the time she was on the heart/lung machine. But there was none of that. She had her eyes open, she was alert - she asked about her babies.
This was August 25, 1990. I only remember that day because it was the day before #1 Son's fourth birthday. Labor Day weekend she was released. She came to our apartment that afternoon, right after getting her hair done.
My mom was a lady in every sense of the word. Never without her "face" on, always dressed well, her hair done. It had to have driven her nuts to have been in the hospital almost 2 months without her hair getting done.
My grandmother, her mother, died on October 12, 1990. At the wake my mom's AICD unit went off. With all the preparation they gave us, they didn't mention that we would be able to hear it from the outside of her body. It was very eerie.
It also wouldn't stop going off. The more upset my mother got by it happening, the faster her heart beat, the more it triggered. When she finally got to the hospital we were told it had gone of 98 times since August 25. Most of those happened before that day, but we never knew it. It would go off and she wouldn't say anything. She didn't want to worry us.
The unit continued to trigger, her heart rate too erratic to properly set it, and her body's reaction to this triggering become more severe. By January of 1991 she would black out when the unit went off, which is what found her in the ER of a local hospital the night of January 31.
She was a lab experiment. Her chest x-rays were hanging in the room, this surreal light gray outline of wires and leads attached to her heart, and the battery pack inside of her, at her waist. Doctors, nurses, techs, were all finding reason to come in, take her pulse or listen to her heart, comment on the x-rays, and leave.
They transferred her to Illinois Masonic where an angiogram showed her arteries were closing and she needed angioplasty. But first they had to let what they thought was a stomach virus pass. When it didn't they thought it might be the medications, so they adjusted them. Then on the morning of February 12 they diagnosed appendicitis and there was no choice, weak as she was, she had to have it removed.
Before surgery she asked for a get well card in her room, and a pen to write in it with. She sealed it into the envelope it came in and gave it to my dad, telling him to only open it if she didn't make it. He gave it to me the next morning, after she died. In it she had detailed what she wanted to be buried in, even where to find the items.
She was at peace. Though I didn't see her from January 30, until February 15 in the funeral home at her wake, she and I talked, alot. We had talked alot before then too about how she felt with all that was going on with her. She was a Christian with incredible faith - a person who definitely walked her talk. She was okay with dying, she knew where she would be. She was just going to miss her babies.
She survived the surgery. My dad called, excited, she had made it, was in recovery, but still on a respirator to give her heart a rest.
Despite the good news I couldn't sleep. Something kept me up, though I had no real definition of what. I'd been crocheting a shawl for my mom. Since her surgery the woman who had always been warm, was suddenly always cold. I had just finished it when the phone rang and I knew, before I picked it up, that it was my dad, and that my mom was gone.
He told me her heart went into an arrythmic pattern that caused a vacuum to form and irrepairable damage. She had a heartbeat, but no pulse, it wasn't strong enough to move the blood effectively.
When the head doctor of the research team, who was with my mom in the recovery room when she died, came out to tell my dad, he was crying. They knew she wouldn't live long. She was a control in the study - a knowledge I didn't have until after she died. They knew they couldn't save her life, the damage to her heart, and the poor health of the rest of her, was more than even that experimental AICD could help. But they needed a certain number of people whose conditions would tax the unit, and my mom became one of them.
We got six months with her we wouldn't have had otherwise. All our birthdays are in the fall, and she got to celebrate one more with us - as well as one of hers. We got a last Thanksgiving and Christmas, and she got to see me finally quit my full time job to stay home with my kids, something she had been wishing for me to do for awhile.
My mom was a good samaritan. There was never a person she wouldn't lend a hand, her ear, her heart to. When she was in a good mental state, there was no one you'd rather have in your corner. It was fitting that the last good deed she did on this earth was to have the battery pack of the unit, that also had a computer that read her heart patterns in it, removed. Who knows what they learned from that, or who was helped because of it.
There were more than a hundred cars in her funeral procession. People who hadn't seen her for years, but whose lives she had touched, came out to say good bye.
Despite the perceived downfalls of having a mother with a mental illness, were the lessons she taught me. She persevered, no matter what. She had an unwavering faith, and a positive attitude, up the very end.
I rarely cry over my mom anymore, just sometimes when I talk to my kids about her. Only #1 Son has any real memories, and they're very few. Drummer Boy was 20 months old, the other two weren't even born. But I did make a conscious choice about 10 years ago that this day, the day she died, would not be a day of depression and mourning, but a day to celebrate the beauty of who she was - and she was a beautiful person, down to her soul.
I see her in my kids now. The Dreamer, born a year after she died, looks just like her, he even has her green eyes. Drummer Boy has her empathy and compassion, and her very soft soul. #1 Son has her need to be there for others, someone else who has the willing ear and hand, and a heart to care. The Lizard, he has her deep faith. He sees God everywhere, even in his current chosen future career. No, not a pastor or missionary. Ask this child what he wants to be when he grows up and he says a carpenter, just like Jesus.
I'd give anything to have my mom back, just for 15 minutes so I could talk to her, or give her a hug, or most importantly, introduce her to her grandsons. But I don't spend time wallowing on that. Rather I thank God, constantly, that of all the women He could have given me to as a daughter, He chose that one.
I was blessed.....very, very blessed. | |
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10 Comments | |
| on being transparent |
Feb 11, 2008 6:57 pm
Mood: thankful, 546 Views | In my last post 4 ever fun....aka Michelle....brought up the fact that M1KM and I have a transparency between us.
I hadn't thought too much on this before. So much with him is what comes naturally, there isn't a lot of deep thinking or soul searching. Not because there's nothing of substance, quite the contrary. There's so much substance it scares me. But there's nothing hard about it. Nothing I've had to put under the magnifying glass to make sure I could see it clearly, or give a litmus test to so I won't get burned by what's happening. And why? Because he's transparent, and he's given me a safe place to be transparent back.
This transparency doesn't mean we talk for hours about the collective meaning of our lives - separately and as a couple. It just means there are no subjects off limits. Nothing is taboo. Complaining is allowed, and cheering, sharing joys, frustrations, whatever is going on at that particular time.
I don't have to always be up, or strong. I've had meltdowns, and so has he. We've talked when one or the other is sick, too tired to hold the phone, upset about something, but also when there's been joys to share, good news, smiles, and some really really bad jokes (because those are the only kind I know). We've discussed car parts, siblings, parents with us on earth and the ones now in heaven, there's been bad times when my kids haven't let me talk for more than 5 minutes without interrupting, or when #1 Son called incessantly one night and wouldn't give up. But always, when we said good bye, I can honestly say, it was all good.
There's also safety in knowing, no matter what was said, no matter what we had done, the other was going to be okay with it. There might be disappointment, there might be advice, and often times there's shared joys, but there's never silence, a changed subject, and most wonderful for me, never a feeling that if I'm at a point of being less, that it's a bad thing.
One could say there's still a shine on all of this, and that might be true. Long distance relationships can hold a shine longer but I think that even if we were face to face all the time there would still be a shine. I have no fairy tale illusions about him. That transparency also means the stuff we'd like to hide, isn't. Those warts show on both of us and I have a good idea of who this man is on the inside.
I really like that person, I even like his warts because it means he's not perfect and that's such a good thing because I'm not either.
I've said this to him many times, but to share with all of you, I so appreciate the person that he is, and the one he lets me be. So to that sweet man who lives in the sunshine, from the woman in the freezer....thank you, from the bottom of my heart.  | |
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11 Comments | |
| if becomes when |
Feb 10, 2008 3:44 pm
Mood: happy, 504 Views | The other night M1KM and I were talking and he mentioned that we don't seem to use the word "if" any longer in relation to one another. Like "if we get together in June"....there seems to be some givens now. We will get together in June - or possibly early July. Depends. But it will happen. Not an if. (We will see one another sooner, in April, but I have this thing about planning, so we're already talking about the time AFTER the next time).
Anyway, there's been something nice about these "ifs" becoming "whens". The puzzle pieces are interlocking in more places, the border is almost finished and then? Well time to find how the rest of the picture will fit together. But what's been really great for me is that he has every desire to do this with me. He has his life - I have mine - there is no back pocket stuff going on here but at the same time, he's still caring enough to sort through those random pieces with me to see what fits together. What's the next step? How does this now work with what's already there?
Even better? This is all subconsciously being done. No pointed "relationship" discussions. No pondering over what it all means. It's just happening, progressing on a path neither one of us is consciously directing and I think I know why - at least for me, he'd have to speak for himself on this one but - I think it's because my mind has nothing to do with this. It's my heart.
A couple years ago I came across something on one of the Dove promise wrappers that I liked so much I kept it - it says - "trust with your heart, not your head."
I trusted with my heart before, and all it got me was disappointed and disillusioned. But this time? I don't think that will happen. I'm not going to project, the "ifs" now are on that level, the ifs of what will happen if we fall in love, if one of us has to make a decision to move, if, if, if......
Still, I think I won't be disappointed or disillusioned because this is someone willing to work with me, who wants me to work with him. If there's an ending, it won't be surprising, it will be as mutual as the rest of what's going on.
Do I think that's going to happen?
'nuf said
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10 Comments | |
| a life more ordinary |
Feb 7, 2008 6:25 pm
Mood: ordinary, 579 Views | About 10 years ago there was a movie with Ewan McGregor called "A Life Less Ordinary." I don't know what that movie was about, I never saw it, but at the time, and for a long time before and after that, I'd wished for just the opposite - a life MORE ordinary.
I've done nothing spectacular in my life, aside from giving birth to 4 quite spectacular boys, but I've still lived, for nearly the full 45 year expanse of it, a life much less ordinary.
Let's start with my birth. There were no on call OBs in 1962, and my mother - as I would also find myself to be when in labor - had this bad habit of not seeming she was going to have her baby one moment, and be at ground zero and ready to go the next. Literally. I didn't quite understand this until I had mine, but you know those one to ten centimeters you're supposed to travel through to give birth? Three times I went from 5 to 10. The last one was 3 to 10, literally, in one contraction each time.
It's my mom's fault, she was like this too, and her OB was certain that, at 4 p.m. on November 15 when my mom went to the hospital to have me, it would be hours before I made my arrival. So he got her tucked in at the hospital, and went to dinner.
My official birth time is 4:28 p.m., and being this was before cell phones and pagers, it was just luck that he came back to the hospital to deliver me. Well, not luck, an answer to my mother's prayer. The doctor on call was a psychiatrist, who looked like Freud she told me, and she was praying to please, please, not let the first face her baby sees be that man's.
Her OB came back. Maybe someone ran him down on his way to his car, who knows? But she said he walked in, walked into his gloves and gown, and caught me.
I was also thought to be an intellectual wunderkind. In second grade, when they gave the class those standardized achievement tests, I completed the entire book in the amount of time I was supposed to do just one section. I remember coming into the school on a Saturday with my parents and being given achievement tests for hours. They were going up by grade, and I didn't get stumped until the 8th grade level.
Now understand, I was not a wunderkind. I have a brother who's 6 years older and he liked to play school with me. He'd come home and teach me the things he knew, and I soaked these things up like a dry sponge.
No one saw that though. They saw child genius and wanted to advance me to the 4th grade. My mother, God bless her, refused. I have a late birthday, I was already nearly a year younger than my class, so she had them keep me right where I was.
But until high school I was treated like a junior Einstein. Sometimes it was nice to be so revered by the teachers, other times it was just ostracizing because the students didn't really like me. I was the teacher's pet - worse, all the teachers' and the principal's pet too. Make it worse by the fact I went to a tiny Lutheran school, I had 17 kids in my class, there were less than 150 from K-8. I was an oddity and couldn't wait for high school so I could get lost in the crowd.
Then there was my family. Charasmatic Lutherans - want to talk oxymoron! I went to tent revivals and healing ceremonies, witnessed people speaking in tongues, pastors with bull horns so they could be heard above the shouts of
"amen" and other praises. But every Sunday morning we were sitting in the Lutheran church in order to keep the tuition at that school free.
Then there was my mom - God rest her soul.  She was a little, shall we say, off. Not in a bad way, more like she would get overly religious, start reading Revelation and not sleeping, then begin preaching to people, walking around barefoot in shorts and a tank top in the middle of the winter to do this, and seeing messages from God in the newspaper. My dad would take her to the hospital when this happened and they would sedate her so she would sleep, and after a few weeks of sleeping, she'd be herself again. Until the next time.
It wasn't until I was 21 that they gave it a name - manic depression, or what is now more commonly known as bipolar disorder - to be really correct about it, she was a bipolar 2.
This began when I was 7 and escalated through the years, with these episodes getting closer and more severe. She wasn't violent, quite the opposite, a real bunny rabbit, she just wanted to save people's souls. When she was manic, she was a prophet. When she came down, she hated men and refused to have my dad or brother around her. When my younger sister and I were smaller my dad would call my aunt from up north and she would stay with my mom - and my sister and I - until they got my mom a bed in the psych ward. When I was 16, my mom became my responsibility.
So from 16, until 29 when my mom left this world, I was the primary person with her when she was manic. She never remembered these episodes, but they left quite the mark on me. The neighbors too I'm sure, since she'd go preach to them - usually in Italian, her first language. Even after she was diagnosed and properly medicated - at least for that time - she wouldn't stay on the meds. So it was a constant rollercoaster.
I got married at 19 and into an abusive life from the start. It got progressively worse over the years, but was always there. More not ordinary things.
I've written about my first pregnancy, but all of them had something about them not usual. I lost the second to miscarriage. With the third (Drummer Boy) the bank I was working for was robbed and a teller killed. This wasn't my branch, but they locked us down and that stress caused me to start cramping and bleeding. All was eventually fine, but I had a heck of a time for a few months. Not to mention I was also out of remission - oh, did I talk about the inflammatory bowel diseaser I have? Unspecified, how could it be anything else in my life? I have a cross between Crohn's and colitis but not enough markings of either to be labeled one or the other. I was on steriods when I was pregnant with Drummer Boy, had horrendous morning sickness for 5 months - it was quite the trip.
With the fourth pregnancy (#3 son, The Dreamer) my placenta was previa. Until 3 weeks before delivery, he was going to be a C-section. Then my water broke but labor was unproductive, they induced, afraid of the cord prolapsing because the placenta was so close to the cervix, and MY OB left the hospital - to have breakfast, claiming I wouldn't deliver for awhile....sound famliar? They had to call her back. Good thing. The cord was around his neck and I'm sure he did better because of her being there.
The last pregnancy was trouble from the start - diagnosed blighted ovum, bleeding the entire time, pregnancy induced hypertension that was so serious they had to deliver him 3 weeks early and then, no OB was there - no one was there. Okay, a nurse was there on the phone calling my OB who was taking a nap but The Lizard was born on the bed, no one to catch his 5# 8 oz and TWENTY TWO inch body. He had failure to thrive because of the blood pressure so he didn't gain weight. Poor dude didn't even have a butt, there wasn't an ounce of fat on him until he was nearly a year old.
Then there's the issues with The Dreamer - I'll have to do a blog on him sometime but suffice it to say he's full of initials (CAPD/ADD, GAD, ADHD and allergic, truly, to life). Severe ear infections, had tubes, didn't hear for 4 years, but of all my sons, he's my hero. He has such obstacles, but he doesn't give up. Doesn't always work real hard, but doesn't give up.
I've already talked about The Lizard and his mind. There's an incident with Drummer Boy, a bush, and an air ambulance (read that helicopter to be airlifted by). #1 Son's prep school tuition was paid for by a benefactor. Someone gifted him air miles to fly for free to the Rosebowl Parade in 2004 that, by the way, he marched in. Let's not forget my mom either, and that amazing thing she got to do before she died - but I'll blog that later too...in fact, next Tuesday, in her honor.
I have a divorce that's taken 3 years to complete. A nearly ex-husband who has no malice and who works with me for the better of the kids. I have a job that allowed me to go to Nigeria in 2005. A job I love but with a place not the norm for most people's employment, an international ministry. A 40 million dollar, 70 year old ministry, so no fly by night operation.
See not all of this out of the ordinary stuff is bad. But it is out of the ordinary. People around me would tell me I should write a book but I'd always contend that if I did, no one would believe it. Unless people were around me awhile they had trouble thinking anything other than my overactive imagination, the one I honed for 10 years in a professional writer's group, hadn't just gotten the best of me.
Now though, I can see my life settling into some things a little more ordinary - just with extraordinary people. Like my sons. Like M1KM. Like some of you who I've been privileged to know in more than a passing way - and some new people IRL who are the same.
Ordinary is not a bad thing. It's not boring. It's not even predictable, and there is something to be said about living a life that doesn't seem like it should be part of a blurb on the dust jacket of a best selling fiction novel.
If my ordinary life has allowed my boys to be extraordinary. If it's brought someone so neat like M1KM into my life, then I hope to be so ordinary me, and white bread, could be confused for one another....for the rest of my life.
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| my boring life |
Feb 5, 2008 5:14 pm
Mood: relaxed, 591 Views | I feel like I've been doing nothing but living the life of the extremely boring and I have nothing to write about, so, I'm going to write about nothing.....
In the last week:
We had a snowstorm that shut down all the schools in Lansing, and most of my building didn't make it in. Of course I live on a municipal street that always gets plowed. There's a fire station a half block north, the high school is 2 blocks south, all between two main roads. I had no excuse to not make it in.
Then we had this dense fog - thought I'd come out of work and wound up in New England. So weird to have that this time of year.
Now it's raining. We're due to get more snow but where I am, south of the city, it's only expected to accumulate to 1-3 inches. With all this rain though, there will be a nice layer of ice beneath that snow - much fun to drive on going into work tomorrow.
Okay...covered the weather......
Work is fine....busy.
Kids are fine.....getting on each other's nerves and thus mine.....normal.
M1KM he's fine too. I'll be buying tickets in the next week to make my way down to him and visit his turf. Looks like that will happen the end of March. Original plans had me leaving the first week in April, but the n-ex, well, to him saying he's on vacation "the last week in March" didn't mean the same as it did to me. To me that meant the last full week, the one that starts with the 24th. To him it meant the week starting with the 31st and he has plans to be out of town that first weekend in April. All's good with that though - gets me to M1KM a bit quicker.
I finished crocheting my afghan of many colors....I joined a charity granny square group.....I have 10 wins in a row in Canasta.....I am just the epitome of excitement!
So.....how are all of you? | |
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| the scorpion in me |
Jan 29, 2008 7:01 pm
Mood: contemplative, 632 Views | There's a Zen proverb about a scorpion and a fox. It can be seen as being about the true nature of who we are, though I see it as being about how self destructive we can be.
I've spent some years being the scorpion. Not having a bad nature, but sabotaging my own life. Creating my own unhappiness.
I saw this, yet did little to make it change. I didn't like it, but I can also stand with my face in the corner pretending what's going on behind me isn't there.
This scorpion part of me came to light in a glaring way last week so I faced it. I didn't like what I saw and began to make steps to change it.
Seems I rediscovered my morals, or maybe just turned them back to black and white instead of the various shades of gray they had been.
Seems I've also discovered I only know as much about myself as I don't understand, so I need to take steps to understand myself better.
Mostly though, seems I found in another something worth keeping clean. This very sweet man who lives in the sunshine and likes my eyes, well, there's too much good in that to risk poisoning it by letting the scorpion inside of me continue to roam around.
He knows this. We talked about it last week when I first faced it all. The beauty of who he is becoming in my life. Someone with whom I can be baldly honest without fear of repercussion or jumped to conclusions.
So to you who has been immersed in Shakespearean deceit these last few days, I thank you kind sir and wish you a pleasant good evening.
Now off to find a good sturdy cage to keep that scorpion inside of...... | |
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