Hubby lost his job a month ago, and  I don’t have words enough to express the depth of the fear I have felt.  Fear that found me in the greenhouse where I tried to hide from it. Fear, that when it found me pretending to tend to the thyme, doubled me over and took my breath away. Fear that, after it gave my breath back, wreaked hell on my stomach. World spinning, ground opening, puke inducing, capital F Fear.

And lest you think I just have a low fear tolerance, let me share with you that I went on a hunger strike to convince my dad to let a family of opossums live above my room, even though there was a giant hole in the ceiling where they could get into my room. I grew up with a slew of men who knew people who knew people who could get any sort of problem taken care of if I should just ask. When I was just a little kid, my parents would get wasted and then go “four wheelin’” in places that likely hadn’t seen humans in a hundred years. And pretty much every outing ended with us stuck in a rushing river or dangling over a cliff, rear wheels spinning for purchase. In college a boy who didn’t know how to take no for an answer pulled a gun on me and tried to get me to get into his car. I punched him in the face and kicked his sorry ass out of my apartment.

I’m like young Simba. I laugh in the face of danger!

So when I was in the greenhouse, practically barfing on my herbs and wondering who the hell threw me into a swirling vortex, I was surprised by my overwhelming emotions.

When hard times hit, people often comfort themselves with the notion that God is Watching over us and that the troubles are all part of his Plan. I guess I can see how people can put all their eggs in the faith basket. When life gets scary and uncontrollable, it is comforting to think that, no matter what happens, you’ll pull through because there’s someone watching out for you. Feeling helpless and alone sucks. When your boss cans your sorry ass or your house catches on fire, or when Lucille leaves you with four hungry children and crops in the field, the desire to be taken care of, to be loved, kicks into over-drive. I think we all love the idea of having a parent who will put their arms around us and kiss our boo-boos away. God does this for people. Or, the idea of God does. And then, when a new job is found, the insurance pays out, or Lucille comes crawling back from her moonshine haze, the reaction is to Thank God for being so good, for providing for your needs, for looking out for you. Like children thanking their parents for a Popsicle.

But I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in god and his plan.  I don’t believe that the crap people go through is a test of faith and that if we just let go and let God, everything will be okay.

I didn’t pray even one time after Hubby lost his job. I didn’t beat my breast and ask the sky “WHY?” Nope. I let the ground open up underneath me and I let myself have a little emotional breakdown in the greenhouse. Then I went inside, helped Hubby file for unemployment and then I took inventory of our pantry. After that, I started the process of applying for every possible job I could while trying to keep BB’s homeschooling schedule as normal as possible.

Hubby didn’t pray either. See, he’s a godless heathen too. He filed for unemployment, he held me while I had my emotional breakdown, he had one of his own and I held him. He revamped his resume and sent it out to every possible place he could, he stayed supportive and upbeat about all the sandwiches, pasta and beans we had to eat, and he…

Got a job.

God didn’t give him a job, he got it on his own merit. When I found out he got a job, I posted the happy news on Facebook and said “Life is good.” After I posted that, I realized that substitute the word life for god and you would have a sentiment that I would never utter. I realize that one could argue that it amounts to the same thing: saying that life is good is just a pussy way of saying that god is good. If someone were to say that to me, I’d have to restrain myself from laughing at them. It’s not the same thing at all. I mean, for starters, I can prove that life actually exists. I will admit that sometimes life sideswipes me, but I’m never powerless against life. I’m never in the passenger seat while a plan unfolds itself the way it’s designed to. Life happens. Shit happens. I deal with the shit that life gives me and then things get better. Or worse. But the thing is, I’m in control. Even if I can’t control everything that happens to us, I can control how I respond to those things.

Life is good. Except when it sucks. Because sometimes life really freaking sucks. And that’s another difference. I am more than happy to stand on a roof and shout out “Fuck off, Life! You totally fucking suck!” But the “God is Good” people would never shout the same thing at God. I’m willing to say: Sometimes shitty things happen for no damn good reason, and that stinks. Then I go about fixing it. When things get better I then say: Well that sucked, but life is pretty darned good again. Whew!  The God is Great crowd says: I know God wouldn’t throw more at me than I could handle. Thank God that tornado didn’t take us along with our house!  That they actually thank god for not making a crappy situation worse is weird. But to go one further and to not assign blame for the crappy thing happening in the first place just baffles me. How can one say “Thank God I only broke my collar bone and some ribs in that crash, it could have been so much worse!” without saying “Yo, God type dude. What the French Toast? Why’d you make me crash, muthafuckah?”

Life is good, except for the parts that are awful. We pulled through the jobless thing, I learned how to make a really kick ass marinara, and I feel that Hubby and I have grown closer and stronger thanks to this ordeal. But even though I can say life is good, I can also say that parts of life currently suck. We’re deep in the red and it’ll take a long time to catch up. We had a vacation planned but had to cancel so we could pay rent instead. My third hernia surgery seems to have failed and nobody can tell me why.

That’s the way life is, though, isn’t it? Sometimes life totally sucks, sometimes it mostly sucks, and sometimes life is awesomely, kick ass wonderful. But it is rarely consistent or all one way. Even when I didn’t know if we’d have to move or put BB in school,  there were still puppy kisses and BB hugs and library books. There were chocolate chip cookies and fresh thyme and the blue depths of  Hubby’s eyes. There were those little bits of good during a time that was crappy. And there will be bits that are crappy when times are good. But crappy or kick-ass, nobody is in charge of the direction of my life except me. I like it that way, too. Nothing makes me feel more powerful than coming to the other side of powerlessness by wit and hard work.

You think I’m joking, don’t you? I mean, really, why would you leave me behind? I’m awesome, I have mad chicken slaughtering skills (okay, I only participated once and I couldn’t actually go through with it even after several glasses of wine…but I totally could do it if the zombies were coming!), I’m clever, funny, and encouraging. Plus I always score at the top of quizes like “How Long Will You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse”. Okay, 34% isn’t the top of my game, but I took that quiz a long time ago and I’ve learned a lot since then!

Run! The zombies are coming!

Back in March I posted about a hernia that was finally getting fixed after having lived with it for a long time. I got it during a bike accident and after a bunch of hullabaloo and two different hospitals, I got a diagnosis and a surgery scheduled. After the surgery, the Dr. told me that it looked just like a puncture from a bicycle handle bar, and she’d never seen anything like that before. But, she said, it was a success! After nearly two years of pain, my hernia was fixed and I’d be right as rain within 8 weeks.

So I went home, relaxed, took some pain medications, and tried to carry on with my life as carefully as I could. But I just wasn’t feeling right. I had weird fluttering feelings, I had pain that made it near impossible to walk or stand. I figured that since it was a hernia I had lived with for a while, it was just taking a lot of time to heal. I went back to the Dr. and she said she wasn’t sure if the surgery “took” or not, so she sent me home to rest, put me back on a 10lb lifting restriction,  and told me to come back if the pain didn’t get better.

It didn’t. In fact, the pain just increased to the point where it was hard to wear underwear. I went back and she was able to tell right away that the repair had, in fact failed. I needed a second surgery.  So on July 28, about 4 months after my first surgery, I went in for a second operation. This was was also open surgery and it was also deemed a success. They cautioned me that the healing time would be greater because it was the second operation in the same spot (opening the same wound) for the same problem.

So I went home and made sure to be even more careful than I had been last time. I didn’t lift my cast iron skillets. I didn’t mop, took my pain medications regularly, and basically just laid around for a long time. About six weeks after my surgery, I still wasn’t feeling right, so I went in for a check-up, and guess what?

The surgery failed AGAIN!

The doctor who did the previous two operations decided that she wasn’t going to operate on me a third time, so she passed me on to another surgeon. This new guy is kind of a cocky jerk who acted like he was doing me a favor by covering the other surgeon’s ass, but I hope that he’s a jerk because he’s good. Maybe his cockiness and assholish ways are just his way of exuding confidence and skill. I have to believe that, anyway.

My next operation will be September 29th, eight weeks after my second operation. In the meantime, my life stinks. I feel depressed, angry, hurt, useless and overwhelmed. There are so many things that I just can’t do, like sit upright or stand, that have made me feel helpless and hopeless. It’s so easy to look around the house and see all the things I can’t do. It’s so easy to look at my friends and see all the moms nights I can’t attend or all the baby showers I have to leave early and it’s enough to make me feel like curling into a ball and crying. The pain is god awful, but the emotional stress of this is worse than the physical pain in a lot of ways. They can give me drugs for the physical pain, but there’s nothing that can help the emotional pain.

Fortunately, I have a wonderful network of amazing friends who have really rallied around me and helped take care of me both physically and emotionally. They have worked together to take BB for sleepovers, playdates and camping trips. They’ve coordinated bringing us food and hanging out on the couch with me while I complain. I’m very lucky to have such awesome and supportive women in my life. But even that brings me emotional pain. I feel like we’re all given an allotment of love and support in life, and surely I must have used up my allotment by now. How in the world can these women still love me? How in the world can they still want to help me? And even if they can and do, is it morally right of me to allow them? Surgery and pain should be old hat for me by now, so is it right for me to lean on them when they have their own lives? I suppose what I’d say if it were one of my friends is: “Wait a second, sweetie. Friends do this kind of thing for each other because they love one another. Friends look out for each other because friendship is a family unit all its own, and it means a lot for me to be able to help you in some small way.” I’d say that because I feel it. But I don’t know that I deserve to have it apply to me.

Logically I know that’s just a bit of depression talking. I’ve been pretty much useless for years and it’s been painful to watch the changes in both my mind and my body. I hope to have this damned surgery in a few weeks and then heal quickly and easily, but I’m afraid of that, too. What if a third operation fails? What then? At what point do I just say “Enough! I’ve tried to have this fixed x many times and I’m done! I’ll just live with it for the rest of my life!” At what point do I try and find a lawyer? Is there ever a point to find one? At what point do I look for another place who will take my uninsured ass? Speaking of which, is it because I’m uninsured that I’ve gotten such bad care to begin with?

So, like I said at the beginning of this post: If the Zombie Apocalypse comes, just leave me behind. I’m too wounded to do much good when on the lam from the undead.

Unless…

Yes…Unless…Unless you bring me along, take care of me, and then use me as bait in your great escape plan. I could totally do that.

That’s what friends are for, right?

What do you do on Labor Day weekend?

Camp?
Hike?
Cookout?
Miniature golf?

Those are all really fun things to do with a three day weekend, but not nearly as awesome as (cue thunder and maniacal laughter):

Decorating for Halloween!

Halloween. Our favorite holiday around here. A holiday all about fun and candy and jumping in leaves. It’s a holiday with out a moral, it’s a holiday where you can become anyone or anything, a time where Hubby and I can transform from mild mannered parents into Boris and Natasha.

*Note: I’d be Boris…I’m way too short to pull of Natasha.

Or my typically awesome and handsome husband can transform into amazingly sexy Severus Snape:

*Note…Mmmm…Snape…

Halloween…That time of the year when the leaves start to fall, a haze of wood smoke hangs in the air and pumpkin bread is shared with friends.  Halloween is, without a doubt, my favorite time of year. And if people think we’re a bit nuts to be hanging ghosts out in our trees two months before the holiday, so what! BB is only going to be a child once and the joy he gets out of turning our front  yard into a graveyard, painting jack-o-lanterns on windows, and re-discovering decorations that have been hidden away for a year is well worth the occasional eye roll or double take from strangers driving down our street. So what if it’s still close to a hundred degrees outside. Fall is coming and we’re ready to welcome it with open, skeletal arms.

BB is growing up fast. Faster than I can snap pictures and post musings.  And as he grows, his educational needs do too. Until recently, we’ve been doing a big old, patchwork quilt of homeschool materials. Something for math here, a little history there, trips to the library for literature and language arts, the backyard for science…Not much cohesion but lots of following his lead and interests. To be honest, we still do a lot of child-led learning, but we’ve recently incorporated TIME4LEARNING into our daily work. I have heard people talking about Time4 Learning for years, but had resisted signing up for a variety of reasons, the biggest of which was that  it isn’t free. I also didn’t like that it seemed to be all computerized lessons. I think that kids learn things differently when they are looking at a monitor versus writing things out. Okay, I’m not a learning specialist so I don’t know if that’s a valid point or not, but it was a concern. But my biggest concern about signing him up for an online curriculum was that he’s not just on one level educationally. He’s advanced in language arts, his writing skills are not where the should be, and he’s perfectly average in mathematics. I did not want to sign him up for something that would lump him into an arbitrary box.

But BB seemed to need a bit more than what I felt prepared to give, so I decided to give it a try, and surprise! My fears turned out to be mostly groundless. We’ve been using Time 4 Learning for about three and a half months, and I’m pretty pleased.  BB likes it well enough, even if he does still grumble about it from time to time. But what kid doesn’t occasionally grumble and growl about doing his work?

What do I like about Time 4 Learning?

• It gives BB access to multiple grade levels. Actually this is the reason I finally decided to give it a try. When you sign your child up, you register him in a specific grade and they give you access to that grade, the grade above and the grade below in every subject. In BB’s case, he’s a 4th grader and is doing 4th grade science and history but 5th grade language arts. We do not use Time 4 Learning for Math because I like what we’ve been using for the last few years and don’t want to change systems on him. But I do like the flexibility of him being able to access the material that is relevant to where he is right now.
• BB doesn’t have to do the lessons sequentially. If he already has idioms down pat and doesn’t want to do them, he can skip that lesson and move right on to something else. This is a huge plus for us, since he grasps a lot of concepts quickly and easily.
• The Language Arts Program. It is engaging, fun, full of wit, and it makes BB laugh.  In fact, he like the language arts section so much that he always saves it for last…as his reward for trudging through the subjects that aren’t so fun. What makes the language arts so fun for him is the guided instructions sections. That is where there is narration by one of two voices, along with passages to be read and occasionally animations to go with the passages. The narrations are intelligent and funny; full of humor perfect for my kid’s funny way of looking at things. After the guided exercise, there is often a quiz on what was learned, and humor is added there, too. The screen flashes, you hear thunder, and  then a crest with a giant head with blood shot eyes comes on screen. The crest has the phrase “Imagination and creativity are overrated” in a flowing script under the image and the narrator, sighing and exasperated, says something along the lines of  ”It’s that time again. Time for The Department Of Multiple Choice to test you and see if you really understand your stuff.” I don’t know if the Language Arts section will continue to entertain BB, but for now, it’s his favorite subject.
• The Art Program.  Okay, we haven’t actually made use of the art program, but I love that it’s there.
• Progress Reports and Student Records.  Time4Learning keeps track of BB’s progress and I can log in as a parent and check on his work. This gives him the opportunity to work completely independently of me, but gives me the ability to make sure he’s not skipping things I think he needs to work on. In fact, just today I realized he’d been blowing off his quizzes in Science and Social Studies. He thought he could move more quickly through the subjects if he just refused to take the little quizzes they have after each section. I guess he didn’t realize I could track him, but he admitted to skipping them when I asked him about it.  That brings me to another feature I really like.
• The ability to redo lessons and retake tests and quizzes.  Needless to say, if BB pulled that stunt at school, he’d have been busted before now and he would have been in huge trouble. Or he’d have gotten zeros for what he didn’t do. But we’re homeschoolers and I don’t feel like yelling at him for not wanting to do something that’s boring to him. Heck, I hate to do things that are boring, too. So instead of getting angry or taking away the things that matter to him, I’m just not going to allow him to progress with his lessons until he makes up the things I think he needs to make up. If that means re-reading stuff about Mesopotamia, so be it. We have all the time in the world, and these lessons aren’t a one-shot deal.  I love that we can just back up and do it again if we have to–Whether it’s because a concept wasn’t fully grasped or because a certain someone decided to skip right on through.
• It is secular. As an atheist homeschooler, it’s really hard to find solid, secular curriculum. Especially science. But Time4Learning is pretty darned good. I really like the content and I appreciate that it doesn’t seem to dance around discussing “old earth” or evolution.

So there’s this top-notch rated private school in our town for grades 6-12, and  BB, who’s now a  fourth grader has decided it’s his ambition to go. The testing process begins in January of the 5th grade and applicants are notified in May whether or not they get in. I feel so conflicted about this. Like horribly, terribly, keeping me awake at night, conflicted.

My issues are:

Financial- Tuition is $19,335 PER YEAR. They offer financial aid, but no scholarships, and my family is in that crappy lower middle class tier that makes too much to qualify for any type of assistance (from medical breaks to cheaper spaying/neutering for pets), so he would need financial aid to pretty much cover the whole tuition if he got in. But even if he were able to get his tuition fully taken care of, books and supplies run between $250-$500 per year. That’s not a huge deal breaker, but it’s a lot to pay out all at once. Plus, I’m not convinced that *any* private, non collegiate school is worth nearly 20 grand…even if he got full financial aid. It feels wrong to me to participate in that kind of price-gouging system. One could argue that this particular school has a proven track record of churning out students who go on to ivy-league schools, but, in all honesty, I don’t care if Ethan goes to college. It’s not my dream for him to spend 8-12 years getting a PhD. If that’s his dream, then that’s fabulous and I’ll support it, but it’s just not important to me and my husband that he go to a university.

Emotional- Both his and my emotions. BB’s a great, smart, wonderful, empathetic, emotionally intelligent kid. A huge reason we homeschool is that I want my son’s personality to be his, not some mash-up of what is expected by friends and teachers. He’s sensitive and is likely to cry if he sees someone hurt. He wants to help kids who fall down, when he’s experienced mild forms of bullying, he wants to engage the kid in conversation or walk away. I don’t want any of those things to be buried by peer and social pressures. And he’s innocent. At 9 1/2, he’s still just a little kid. He isn’t into games that blow people up, he’s not into girls or baggy pants or acting cool. He’s not embarrassed to hug me in front of his friends and he’s not embarrassed or ashamed by us. I want him to hold on to that as long as he possibly can.

Educational- I have no doubts that he can do the work he needs in order to pass the test and get in. But I do doubt that he will thrive in a school environment. He seems to be a right-brained learner and he folds under the pressure of worksheets, busy work, and “showing the work”. When he does math, he can often do it in his head, but he’s very convoluted in the way he arrives at the correct answer. For example, if he has to subtract 17 from 22, he’ll turn the 17 to 20 and the 22 to 25, subtract those and then arrive at 5. If I ask him to show his work he gets caught up in the minutia  of writing and forgets how to work the problem he just correctly solved in his  head. It’s not a huge deal to me if he can show his work, as long as he has a system to correctly solve problems. But schools don’t work that way. He has to get used to showing his work, whether he wants to or not, and I’m not convinced that that’s a good thing. Or that it’s any better than how I’m letting him find his own method now. As it is, I know that he has a solid foundation in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. He understands the functions behind the problems, so I don’t see the point of making him do it the “correct” way. He also crumbles under time restraints. His brain just freezes when he has a time limit and things I know he knows can’t be retrieved. I’m afraid that a high pressure school environment will make him a nervous wreck. This school is supposed to be more progressive, especially in 6 and 7th grades, but that pressure is still there and he’s sensitive to pressure.

Philosophical- We are homeschoolers for a wide variety of reasons. I was a former Montessori teacher, my husband was a Junior High teacher, yet our son has never gone to school. Not even preschool. I have seen the underside of private school education. I know how burnt out the teachers are, how exhausted the kids can be, and how everything is so damned political. I also can’t stand the idea of my free-spirited little boy being forced to conform to a set of social mores that are put in place for no reason other than to keep the kids orderly and under control. I am not at all convinced that 8 hours of school plus 2-3 hours of homework will create better educated, more well rounded adult than what we’re currently doing. I see great benefit to allowing him to read what he wants for as long as he wants. I see great benefit to skipping a day just to hang out and build dams and rivers out of mud in the backyard. I think it’s far more well rounded of him to not see adults as authority figures. Right now, he can talk to complete strangers without fear, but if he goes to school he’ll quickly learn the pecking order and he’ll discover that adults are harsh and mete out punishments if they are crossed. I don’t want that for his life.

However, he really, really, really wants this and I  feel that it’s my job to help him attain his dreams, even if they aren’t mine. So I’m conflicted. We’ve talked about what he needs to work on in order to pass the test, he knows what he needs to practice and do, but I don’t know how much to push it. I remind him that he has to do his math (or whatever), and he grumbles. So I remind him that at The Academy, he doesn’t have a choice. He doesn’t get to decide to just do it later or do double tomorrow. If he’s going to do this, he has a lot of work ahead of him and I want him to tackle it a day at a time instead of cramming before the test. But there’s that nagging little piece of me that feels like I should just put my foot down and say “Son, I love you and I want you to be happy. I want you to have  your dreams come true and I want you to follow your heart, but this isn’t your decision. As your mom, it’s my job to make sure you have the best possible education you can get, and I think you’ll get a better education as a homeschooler. Sorry, but you’re not going.” But somehow that doesn’t feel like the right thing to do either.

I also know that a year and a half is a long time. He could change his mind and decide not to test in, he could make major leaps in his ability to show his work, or I may decide it really is the best thing for  him (I don’t think so, but it’s not totally outside the realm of  possibility).

I don’t expect anything from anyone who has read this. I just needed to put my thoughts out there in a quasi-organized fashion.

About sixteen months ago I was in a bike accident and I got hurt fairly badly.  Nothing too broken, though; just a dislocated shoulder and a honking big internal hematoma (hard, blood filled sack.  Trust me, don’t image search it).  I was told the hematoma would be absorbed by my body and I’d be right as rain in several months to a year.  Hubby asked the hospital if it was possible I had a hernia and the hospital said no.

After a couple of weeks, he was still convinced I had a hernia.  I went to an urgent care clinic, sat there for hours and hours and was told to go home and rest, it was just a hematoma…the CT scans from the ER didn’t show a hernia.

A year went by and I wasn’t feeling much better, but I told myself to relax.  It was just a large hematoma and something so big   might take quite a while to go away.  I started exercising and felt a lot of improvement in my shoulder, but that was the only improvement.  About a month and a half ago I really started to hurt again…well, I’ve been hurting a lot since the day I crashed, but it was starting to get unbearable.  I couldn’t sit, couldn’t stand, and couldn’t lie on my left side.  But I kept positive…I thought “finally!  My body is absorbing this damned thing and I’m going to be okay!”

Two weeks ago I went to the ER because the pain was so bad.  I sat there for three hours before they were able to get me to triage where a nurse took a look at me, poked my swollen pelvis and asked if it hurt.  Then they had me go back to the waiting room where I sat for another four hours before they could get me to a room.  Once in a private room, they gave me a gown and I gratefully shucked duds.  A nurse came in and did a second, more thorough exam.  I was barely able to hold back the tears by this point, but my stubbornness prevailed.  I laid there for another hour before a doctor came in…

And did a third exam on me.  He pulled.  He poked.  He prodded and pushed and…I swear to god this is the truth, he had me look over my right shoulder and cough!  Stubbornness be damned, that hurt like hell!  Tears started to fall, but I managed to stop them.  Mainly because crying hurt.

That’s when he said it.  ”You have a hernia, but no signs of a hematoma”.  A hernia?  ”Yes, a hernia.  It’s a classic case, we won’t need to do an ultrasound or anything like that.  Are you in pain now?”  Am I in pain?  How about I kick you in the teeth and ask if that hurts? Of course I only wiped my eyes and croaked out “yeah”. The good Dr. asked if I wanted some ibuprofen for the pain. “Nope.  I have tons of that stuff in my purse.  Silly to pay for a pill.”  Did I want something stronger than ibuprofen?  ”Well, yeah.  I actually do.  But I’m not going to accept it.  I don’t have insurance and I can’t afford a $40 pain pill.  Thanks, though.”  He left the room to call surgery to see if they could get me scheduled.  He came back and said the surgery department would call me within a week with my surgery date,  and that I could go home now.  But, he cautioned, “if you are in severe pain, come back.”  Severe?  Like so bad I can’t sit for more than 10 minutes at a time…like for the last MONTH? “No…Have you ever had a child?”  Yep!  ”Did you have an epidural?”  Yes.  ”Ah.  Well.  Then you don’t really know the pain of childbirth, but if you feel THAT, come back.”  And that was that.  After I picked my jaw up off the floor I slowly got dressed and waited for the nurse to bring my discharge papers.

And here I am.  After some false starts, some phone calls, and a friend pulling some strings, I was able to get my surgery moved from the end of May to tomorrow.

They are going to fix a hernia I didn’t even know I had.  Hubby has been saying for a year and a half it’s a hernia, and I blew him off.  The hospital blew him off…Poor man was right this whole time!  The original ER from 16 months ago missed the hernia (or such is the theory of this other hospital) because the blood from the hematoma obscured it.  Well no wonder it wasn’t getting any smaller or less painful!  They think I had it all along because short of the initial accident, I don’t remember feeling  anything exceptionally and suddenly painful.  I guess that makes some sense.

I’m a little scared, but ultimately very relieved to be on the road to getting better.  FINALLY!

This post has taken me a while to write, and as I mentioned, sitting for too long causes a good deal of pain.  In fact, that’s exactly why I don’t update as often as I’d like.  Maybe in a month or so, after I recover, I’ll be able to post a couple times a week.  Here’s hoping, anyway.

Thank you, all my wonderful friends.  You’ve been supportive and awesome and I love you!  And thank you, Hubby, for encouraging me to go back to the ER and for not letting go of your hernia theory, even when I was calling you paranoid.  I love you and I appreciate you.

I’ll update as soon as I can post-op.

Yesterday I posted on my Facebook that sometimes I wish I could believe in a god so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the hard stuff on my own. It seems like it would be so nice to say “Gee, this thing I’m going through really stinks, but I know it’s all part of a plan that’s greater than me. I know everything will work out the way God wants it to”. It seems almost luxurious to have that thought to lean on when times are tough. I can easily understand the appeal of religion; it makes the burden of emotions a bit lighter and then, of course, it dangles the lovely carrot of eternal peace and happiness in front of your nose.

Sunday was the anniversary of my dad’s death, and I’ve moved beyond seeing him as a saint to seeing him as he really was–a drug addicted enabler. He was not my abuser, but he knew what my mother was doing and he allowed it to continue and even encouraged me to behave better so I wouldn’t make her mad. It’s been hard to face the reality that my daddy was passively abusive, and Sunday was a tough day for me for that reason alone. But I was also worried that my mother might try to call me, looking for pity or sympathy.  So when my phone rang at 4:00 I seriously considered not answering it.

It turned out to be my grandmother–my mother’s mother.  She was upset and told me that my grandfather, who is only 75, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s related dementia and that there’s nothing they can do to reverse or slow it down.  This came as a complete shock to me. We saw them during the summer and he was fine.  He seemed perfectly normal; the same grandpa I always had. I’m not sure what this will mean for my grandparents in the end. I imagine they’ll eventually have to sell their condo and move in with one of their kids, but I’m worried about what the meantime will look like.  I worry that my grandfather will forget how to balance his checkbook and pay the bills. I’m worried that I’ll call him and he’ll have forgotten I exist. I’m worried that he’ll go to the grocery store down the road and get lost or get into an accident.  I worry that my grandmother can’t deal with the realities of Alzheimer’s and Dementia.  She doesn’t know how to drive, isn’t able to read very well, and has never had to deal with finances. I don’t think she knows how to pay bills or write a check. They don’t have a computer, so they don’t have internet access.  She’s also not likely to ask for help if she needs it. I worry that my grandfather will die and I’ll have to see my mother.  I worry that I won’t be able to make it up to see them again before he slips too far away.  Of course I always understood that my grandparents wouldn’t live forever, but I thought there was more time.

And because of this situation with my grandpa, I’m feeling some pressure from family to kiss and make up with my mother.  For some reason, it’s my responsibility to call her even though she refuses to acknowledge any of my letters.  I need to let go of my boundaries, and  stop waiting for her to follow through with my conditions before re-establishing a relationship with her.  She has had half a dozen chances to write me and open up the lines of communication with me.  I have extended opportunities that she has chosen to ignore, and somehow it’s my job to make things “right”.  I had to take care of her emotionally when I was a child and, apparently, that’s still the expectation.  I’m sorry that my decisions are upsetting my family, but I am doing the right thing for my life.  I have gone beyond wishing my mother would finally be the mother I never had and now I only wish her siblings and parents could accept that I’m my own person doing the best I can with a shitty situation. I don’t think that makes me a terrible or evil person. On the contrary, I think I’m pretty damned healthy, all things considered.

I guess for now, I’ll just call my grandpa and grandma regularly and try and find some time to get up there soon.  I want to make the most of the time I have.

Meatloaf.  What does that word call to mind?  Does it bring memories of grandma standing in front of the sink of her yellow kitchen?  Does it bring forth images of family dinners as a child–corn buried in mounds of mashed potatoes, cold glasses of milk?  Some people love their memories around this dinner staple, and some people love remembering that they hated it.  As Ralphie’s brother, Randy, said in “A Christmas Story”: “Meatloaf, smeatloaf, double beetloaf.  I hate meatloaf”.

I don’t have any childhood memories associated with the food, pleasant or otherwise.  My father, who did all the cooking, was an avid hater of two things: Liver and meatloaf.  He never, ever, ever prepared meatloaf, and suggesting otherwise was one sure way of having the patented “ice look” thrown directly at you.  My own grandmother was Hispanic so I was more likely to get fried pork chops, fried potatoes, and green chile–all smothered in cheese–than meatloaf.  In fact, if I search my memory bank as far as I can go, I’m pretty sure I never actually had meatloaf until I was already in my twenties.

But now, as a wife and mother, meatloaf is a meal that says “love” to me.  When I say the word meatloaf, I create my own memories for it. I see a mother from the 40′s, complete with apron tied in a bow, pulling a beautiful mound of golden meat from her tiny gas oven.  I see that same woman at the market rooting through the onion heap and then humming softly to herself as she chops them by her deep sink.  I’m not sure, but I think meatloaf was invented out of the necessity of making a complete meal out of a bit of meat.  It was born in the time of rations and wars, and maybe it was a relatively easy meal to throw together when there was little food to be had.  But underneath it all was a mother, who was broke, stressed, and afraid, trying to make sure her family got a proper meal.

It’s that woman that I lean on when I make meatloaf for my own family, and I have actually found myself humming to myself as I chop onions by the sink. But I have more resources than the woman of my imagination and I use them.  My meatloaf, created from scratch without a recipe, is never the same twice.  That’s something I love about it.  I can use the meats I have on hand, whether sausage, beef or ground turkey, and I can add seasonings and spices according to my whim.   Right now I have an Italian meatloaf cooking away.  It’s full of garlic and oregano, basil and bell pepper.  Other times I go for a more traditional loaf with celery seed and lots of ketchup.  Sometimes I throw brown gravy on top of it instead of ketchup.  Once, when I was dying for a cheeseburger, I made one full of caramelized onions, cheddar cheese and topped with bbq sauce.  I served it with baked beans and French fries.  I can cook them as a loaf, as miniature loaves, or as a big pie in my favorite cast iron skillet.Maybe not having any preconceived notions of what meatloaf is, and isn’t, has opened me up to a world of possibilities.

All I really know is that it is an amazing canvass that not only reflects my whims and moods but also the love I have for my family.

Kids grow up.  It’s just the way things are and the way they should be.  They start out completely dependent on you for every little thing and for most parents that responsibility is both invigorating and scary as hell.  Thankfully kids don’t just suddenly wake up twenty-seven years old- even if they do think they’ve grown up overnight.  It’s a gradual process that allows parents a chance to settle into each new phase of growth before another sets in.

But kids aren’t the only ones who grow up.  When I got pregnant with BB, I was sure I had all the answers for everything life could throw at us.  I knew how I would parent, I knew how I’d feed him, I knew what life was going to be like.  I imagine I wasn’t the only pregnant woman to ever feel so damed certain, and I’m sure I wasn’t the last.  I think it must be a natural phase of the continued growth of women. I grew a lot after he was born, but I was still pretty sure I had all the answers…or at least most of them.  And the answers I didn’t have could be plucked from good books or websites.

I think I pretty much rocked being the mother to a baby and toddler.  My nanny experience, my Montessori experience, my natural patience all had me feeling well prepared.

Then one day when BB was about four–the age where I start remembering my childhood abuse–I had a complete panic attack in public.

Hubby had to go out of town and we opted to go with him.  I dropped him off at his conference and, since it was too windy and dusty to go to a playground, we headed to McDonald’s playland so he could burn off a little steam.  I’ve always hated places like that.  They stink, they’re full of germs (and I am not a germophobe), and since they’re colored tubes, you can’t see what’s going on inside.  Maybe it was the wind.  Maybe it was being in a strange town’s even stranger Playland.  Or maybe I was trying to work through some issues without being aware of working them out.  For no reason in particular I became totally, 100%, absolutely positive that there was a pedophile at the top of the structure, safe from the prying eyes of mothers, just waiting for my boy.  My mouth went dry, my lips went numb, I got dizzy, I couldn’t feel my feet or hands, and the room started spinning.  I stumbled to the slide and called up to BB.  He didn’t answer.  I could feel sweat trickling down my back, hear my heart pounding in my ears.  I called again, in the calmest voice I could muster: “Come on BB.  It’s time to go now.”  No answer.  Shit.  It wasn’t paranoia after all.  It was my instinct kicking in.  My boy was in trouble and somehow I could feel it.  I stepped back and surveyed the structure, looking for a big shadow, looking for an easy way up.  I went back to the slide, determined to climb up the damned thing.

More sternly now, “BB.  Let’s go. Now, please”.  I heard thumping and moments later my sweaty, curly haired little boy slid down to me, all smiles and perfectly unharmed.  I gathered him in my arms, breathed in his little boy smell and started sobbing right there in front of the slide.  He was safe and he was with me.  But I realized that anything could happen to him any time and any where.  I felt so powerless.

For a long time I was guilty of surrounding him in what I believed was a wall of safety.  I refused to leave him at a friend’s house for a playdate, if he climbed a tree, I stood right under him the whole time, every time I showered I’d lock every door and window in the house and then leave the bathroom door open.  I could get through a shower in about 2.5 minutes.

Of course this level of fear and paranoia is not sustainable and most certainly not healthy.  I slowly pulled myself out of it, allowing BB more freedom even though it hurt me to do so.  The first time he rode his bike up the block (not even around the block, just up it) I thought I was going to throw up from fear.

I still have a lot of growing up to do in the parenting department, but I’ve learned to let go quite a bit and letting go has been one of the best things I could have ever done for both of us.  He has playdates and sleepovers without me all the time, and while I sleep with the phone next to the bed in case he calls, I feel fine about it.  I have worked hard to create a network of people that I love and trust with my son and I know that they will keep him safe in my stead.  It’s nice to know that he can have a break from me and that he’s fine.  It’s nice not to worry about the imaginary predator in the play structure or behind the bushes.

This isn’t a perfect world, and I’m painfully aware of that, but I know the odds of bad stuff  actually happening to BB are statistically low.  I guess I’ve finally grown up enough to focus on the good things that do happen rather than freak out about the bad stuff that could happen.

Who knew regular sleepovers could be so cathartic?

Last night BB pointed out that we were in the 12 days of Christmas.  Now I’ll profess ignorance here and say that I don’t  know or care what the significance of the 12 days is; I just loved watching BB make a connection and get excited.  Nothing beats a kid doing the happy dance!

We have been doing a lot to get ready for Christmas this year.  It’s been kind of difficult and emotional for me at times, but hey it’s not about me is it?

We used to buy those obnoxious Christmas window clings, but I’ve never really liked them.  They get dusty, the fall off, they look cheesy.  This year we took our windows out of the box store’s pre-fabbed, ticky-tacky, all the same hands and decorated them ourselves.  It was so much fun, and I love knowing that there aren’t any other windows in the world that look like ours.

Living room window

Kitchen Window

Front door

Painting

I just think this is a neat picture

BB also had a really nice visit with Santa.  He took his letter, a list and some blue prints for a couple of robots he invented.  He hoped Santa would have his elves work on the robots “so they will be available to buy by next year!”

BB is explaining his blue prints

Santa promised him he’d send the plans to the elves straight away so they can get to it.  I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to have two fewer toys to design.

Checking the list

Merry Christmas, Santa! You rock!

Later in the evening, we went to the local botanical gardens to see their Christmas light display.  It’s pretty hard to get good shots of Christmas lights, but I think we got a couple.

Yellow Submarine!

Two cute guys having a cocoa break

Sunflower

When what to my wondering eyes did appear but a friggin' big T-Rex!

Wednesday night is a Mom’s Night In Christmas party, Thursday is our homeschool co-op Christmas party and Sunday is another party.  I have tons of baking to do, a Christmas Dinner to plan and maybe even some EGGNOG to make.

Mmmm...spiked eggnog...