Two - Showing Up

Yes, more about the race.  Sort of.

Matt's been traveling a lot lately, and was gone for two full weeks before my race.  My training was haphazard at best.

My "long" weekend runs were 3 miles, five, another five (because I couldn't quite manage six), nine (back and forth on a perfectly flat levee), then nothing.  Then more nothing.  I ran three miles the day before out of remorse and was lucky I didn't pull anything.

Not exactly the ideal situation.  But I had paid good cash money to get up at oh-dark-thirty to sweat near 5000 people I didn't know.  Even if I had trained more it could have rained or been swelteringly hot.  I could have crashed my car on the drive over.  I could have tripped on a pothole and fractured my patella after parking, without even eyeing the starting line.  

As it happens, it was a beautiful fall day.  I walked a bit around mile 10 and developed an impressive 3" long blister on my foot but I finished hard and got my race shirt.  Not a single damn person cares that I finished 20 minutes slower this year than I did in 2013.

I showed up.

Life is messy.  You can end up a single parent.  You can bomb the basics.  But you show up and suck the marrow and embrace the ugly cow medal because this is all there ever will be.  Our existence here is precious and short, no matter how well planned, and it would be a great tragedy if perfection cudgeled the good.

I am, of course, just talking about running.  Far be it from me to postulate about other issues.

Monday, Monday

Things to be grateful for on this first day of yet another week:

Pediatric dentists who have Saturday hours, and who call to remind me to order my girl's pre-dental antibiotics. 

And the sun, which made the pavement sparkle like the night sky as I walked over to the other building for yet another meeting. 

The Road Taken

Last Sunday I ran 9 miles.  It was in the 20s with a biting wind and I considered bailing, but I paid good cash money for a race next month, my first in 18 months, and I don't want to embarrass myself.

(Plantar fasciitis is the devil.  It's been a slow recovery).

I also needed to get out the house.  I was snappy and tense and didn't like the sound of my voice; nor did I want to deal with the damn dirty kitchen (again) or laundry pile (still and always).

The sidewalks were covered in snow and ice, forcing me & my shaky, aging ankles onto the road.    I told myself I'd just do the 5mile loop around town.

Two miles in, my hands were still cold inside my gloves and I'd stopped blowing my nose because the snot was insulating my sinuses.  But a mile later, when I reached the spot where my roads diverged, I turned right and kept going.

I ran facing traffic but my presence in the street still enraged one driver enough to warrant a double angry fist pump.  Another laid on the horn so aggressively I nearly fell into a snow bank.  But I also got a thumbs up from a farmer in a pick up and a not unattractive man grinned at me at a stop sign.  Most drivers just edged over a few feet and carried on.

By the time I made it back to my car and home I felt peaceful.  It was a nice reminder in the midst of my mid-life angst that the journey is the point.  Even off path and against traffic.

Still Here.

So.  Here we are, February again.  The holidays happened.  Winter is still happening.  I probably owe y'all an update, yes?

The extended family converged not once, but twice this year - at Thanksgiving here in flyover country and again in CA for Christmas.  There was a remarkable lack of drama - which is, I suppose, dramatic in its absence.  Turns out we actually all like each other.

There were no Christmas cards.  Whoops!  There was a photo shoot but then….  yeah.

Papa Fritz was very excited to take the kids out on his new boat.  I had more than a couple nightmares about the ocean swallowing my children, and practical angst my girl would freak the fuck out on the boat, but she LOVED it and no one drown.  Win! 

I am tired though.  On New Years Eve it dawned on me that my son is 9 1/2 years old and the time given me to shape him into a reasonable human being is half over.  What will he remember of his childhood?  The unending grind of school, homework and his frazzled mommy - or the Christmas we went sailing with Papa?   What will I remember of these years?  They seem too much a blur to claim the victory of a life well lived.  Too many days are spent grinding thru work-dinner-homework with an eye on the clock and yet ten years just vanished.  At the end I'll only have this woefully neglected blog and random snapshots to remind me my children were once small and needy… shouldn't I be savoring it all more?  Or is that just so much hippy-HuffPost-airbrushed bullshit?

I'm obviously in the midst of some mid-life post-vacation late-winter existential meh.  I'm weirdly not unhappy and we have lots of good things coming up, but this milestone has done a number on my head.  A situation not improved when I re-watched the jelly bean video.  Which is silly and triggers my sweet tooth, but I figure I only have about 14,000 beans left.  What shall I do?

                                

Through the pink

Matt & I have both been working long, intense hours lately, culminating in a not very healthy or productive "discussion" about who has been doing what domestic chores.  Good times!  Then he left for a two week long business trip.

The first day he was gone I overslept by two full hours.  The second day my car wouldn't start.  That night the dishwasher nearly exploded, forcing me to manhandle the much feared circuit breaker box.  As my Gigi liked to say, "That'll learn ya."

Yet in the midst of all the chaos this month, I have been gifted moments of peace.

A rare walk thru the early morning drizzle with my wolf-like puppy.

These two, always.

Even these times.
Actually…. especially these times. 

Buying groceries, a much loathed task, and finding the oysters my Gigi always bought.

My drive home through pink light.

There was also a recent moment when I fled my desk, this stack of paper, and the inane, incessant late Friday chatter of my co-workers.  I walked into the break room just as the rainy clouds parted and the fridge stopped humming.  The sudden sun and silence were damn near spiritual.

It is a mystery to me why these moments come - what slight shift in the brain chemistry allows me to find beauty in fleeting moments while other days I'm left gritting my teeth and slurping coffee.  Perhaps I'm being too cynical in assuming it is chemical, and should just be grateful my cold, old heart can still find magic in the world.  Even on the odd day.  

It's a Glamorous Life

File this under the cover of "families with special needs - they're just like everyone else!"

(Otherwise known as a cheater post)

This morning the odd little old lady with whom I'd had an appointment last night called and scolded me for forgetting it.  Then I learned my laid back boss is leaving and my work load will be doubling.  I got home an hour after I was supposed to tonight and my adorable father in law didn't say anything but he looked tired and quickly left.  The hamburger was still frozen so I popped in a pizza except The Girl doesn't like pizza any more (insert wildly inappropriate genetic joke about falling too far from the tree) and she asked for spaghetti via Proloquo instead.  I am powerless to resist when she uses Proloquo spontaneously.  Except we don't have spaghetti and given the choice between poop-brown Extra Fiber! Penne and nuclear-orange mac&cheese she picked the latter.  In my head I start calling it Italian night because nothing screams Venice like frozen pizza and boxed macaroni.  I find salad in the back of the fridge which is surprisingly not gross despite being from last weekend but I snacked on all the toppings last night so I just add dressing except there's no spout on the dressing and I drown the salad.  

Then the dog ate half the pizza.

Pity my children if you must, but let's agree the only genetic flaw in their lives may be their mother and her poor domestic skills.


Grab This Button

My life, in 251 words

My mom sent A.A. Milne in honor of The Girl's 6th birthday and this little gem I found inside makes me laugh and laugh. Back to work today!

BUSY

I think I am a muffin man. I haven't got a bell,
I haven't got the muffin things that muffin people sell. 
Perhaps I am a postman. No, I think I am a tram. 
I'm feeling rather funny and I don't know what I am--

BUT
Round about 
And round about
And round about I go--
All around the table,
The table in the nursery--
Round about 
And round about
And round about I go;

I think I am a Traveller escaping from a Bear;

I think I am an Elephant,
Behind another Elephant
Behind another elephant who isn't really there....

SO
Round about 
And round about
And round about and round about 
And round about
And round about 
I go.

I think I am a Ticket Man who's selling tickets--- please,
I think I am a Doctor who is visiting a Sneeze;
Perhaps I'm just a Nanny who is walking with a pram
I'm feeling rather funny and I don't know what I am--

BUT
Round about 
And round about
And round about I go--
All around the table,
The table in the nursery--
Round about 
And round about
And round about I go:

I think I am a Puppy, so I'm hanging out my tongue;

I think I am a Camel who 
Is looking for a Camel who
Is looking for a Camel who is looking for its Young...

SO
Round about 
And round about 
and round about and round about
And round about
And round about
I go.

Hippos, Lilies, & Corks, oh my!

I woke up early this morning to finish one of my NDSC conference posts, then made the critical error of checking Facebook. Facebook is where blogging goes to die.  

So although the NDSC post is languishing, I'll gift you with what otherwise would have gone on FB:

Did you ever have one of those mornings where you manage to bathe, feed & clothe both the kids AND yourself so efficiently you're actually going to be (*gasp!*) early... only to have one of your precious progeny knock a huge, whole watermelon off the counter and onto the floor where it cracks open & sprays EVERYWHERE?  No? Just me?  Ok, carry on then. 

In other news, The Girl's horse camp is a huge hit.  On her first ride they reported she was frantically signing "all done" but they told her they'd go around the ring three times.  By the third loop, she was signing "more" and gets a big grin on her face every time I ask about it. 

The hours are HORRIBLE - It ends at 3 and there's no after care, requiring intense schedule juggling and abuse of employers' flex time policies - But there's a fairy pond with massive lilies and Matt arrived the other day to find all the kids swimming in the horse trough. I love a place that encourages my kids to get dirty and, OH, is she ever dirty.  I nearly didn't take her into the store with me Monday, certain someone would accuse me of gross neglect.  

And just in case that wasn't enough, they sent home horsey crafts made of wine corks.  Wine corks!  These are obviously my people.

 

A portion of my kidney sale is funding a scrapbook with pictures of The Girl actually on the promised horses, to be posted soon.  To tide you over, however, she will demonstrate the process:

Yes, Sonic went to camp too.  The camp counselors were thrilled, I'm sure. 

If it's Wednesday it must be the washer leaking.

I spent last weekend in Indianapolis at my third NDSC convention and I'm only now coming off a high that's probably illegal in most states.  I love-love-love going to these, despite being a grumpy introvert, despite the money (though I wrangled grants this year!), and despite the emotional landmines I occasionally hit.  This year was no different.  I want to run thru some of the sessions on here but thought I should play a little catch up first.  

Yosemite!

We've had fun! exciting! events almost every weekend this summer - I went to Yosemite by way of a work trip, we attended Gigi's memorial in Nebraska and saw extended family (happily without the expected fireworks), the whole family played extras in a movie, we finally did the local Step Up for Down syndrome walk right (turns out mimosas are key), The Boy went on his first official Boy Scout camping trip and built a rocket, and we had some of my favorite weekend guests for July 4th (happily with fireworks!).

The Rocket

Each of these deserved its own post.  Sorry 'bout that.  It never happened because I've also been fighting the chronic, unwinnable battle of trying to get my **** done at work.  It's a 60+ hour/week job and I only have 40 hours to give it, which leaves me constantly frustrated.  And tired.  

Camping!

The frustration's compounded by the fact that something expensive is breaking around here every.single.fucking.week.  The best (but sadly not the least expensive) incident was when The Girl, who has taken to acting out her favorite videos with her dolls and iPad (adorable!), took the iPad into the tub (That she'd filled herself! Such initiative!) to reenact a certain Sofia the First Mermaid episode.  Turns out drying electronics in rice doesn't work.  At all.  The monitor on my computer then died in solidarity.  There were various other trips to the vet, optometrist, and thousands of dollars spent on the cars, only to lose first gear on one.   

I still can't run on my effing feet, so I tried to tackle the garden to blow off some steam, but we live with heavy clay... and the $%^&* tiller stopped working. You gotta laugh, right? 

The Schedule

Piling on, child care this summer has been patched together with scotch tape and old chewing gum.  My father in law has been a tremendous help with the gaps but I feel like we've over-imposed and my calendar of who's where watching which child looks like a NASA flight plan.  The Boy at least got to go to some YMCA camps but The Girl... did not.  Which is a whole 'nother series of laments I'll spare you.  Out of desperation we just signed her up for two weeks of hippotherapy camp, which I've always wanted to get her into and am a bit giddy over, but I'm going to be a kidney shorter by the time it's over. 

Step Up for Down syndrome!

I think I'm most frustrated with myself - all of this is just so much first world, (sinking) middle class bullshit.  I mean, hell, we had an iPad and cars to break, right?  I have a job I mostly enjoy.  Why can't I keep hold of the joy and let rest roll off?  How did I let a needy corporate America worm its way into my head?  

Both my kids are healthy and thrilled to be spending so much time with their Papa*.  Matt's cousin's new baby was just diagnosed with leukemia and they've started a six month stay in hospital.  They would chew off their own legs to be worried about car transmissions and summer camps right now.  

I don't really have a solution - this is just me wondering what the **** is wrong with my head.  Look at these pictures - it's like a magazine spread of Must Do Summer Fun (most of these photos are also the ones that ended up on FB - should we talk about people putting up a pretty front?).  Arghhh.  I miss running. 

 *I should clarify Papa Fritz is pictured here because we saw him in NE, he stayed with us for a week, & helped The Boy build his rocket.  I am horrified to discover I have no pictures of the kids and Papa Jim.  Sorry Papa Jim!!!

Smorgasbord on Aging, Stress, and Working.

- Since Easter I've pulled 4 all nighters for the corporate gods and I'm still hyper ventilating in the morning at the sheer volume of shit that needs to get done.

- These days, an "all nighter" means staying up till 2-3am.  I really should have powered through till dawn 'cause I could have used those extra 3-4 hours but…  then I'd have keeled over and not had to worry about anything ever again.  Come to think of it, that sounds rather relaxing.

- I thought I was supposed to need less sleep as I got older?  I call bullshit.

- I miss you guys.  And I know it's the devil, but I miss you guys on FB too.  I'll be back soon.

- I did take a little time off ~ On Friday I took The Girl to Children's for her annual labs.  Fun stuff.  We were about 4 months early because for the first time in her entire life she got a nosebleed.  And then a second.  And then she fell asleep on the stairs. And then her teacher sent home a note about how abnormally tired she was.  I didn't say anything because I knew I was being ridiculous but if there is anything that could break us right now it would be leukemia.  Fiscally, emotionally…  I know people find a way, but bankrupt, unemployed, and heavily medicated to stop the shrieking was not on my bucket list.  (Her labs were fine so I was being silly and also, YAY!  Also?  I wonder how other people live when they don't feel constantly stalked by Death.  I assume they're happier, yes?)).

- The weekend was chock full of parties and playdates and swim lessons.  All great stuff but Matt had to work both days and my daughter spent all of Saturday demonstrating her very best elopement techniques near various busy streets so by Sunday I was looking forward to going back to work.  Hyperventilating over my mammoth corporation's money is exponentially easier than keeping my small child off the neighbor's front bumper.

- I took another half day yesterday to get a mammogram and Girl Check.  I'm sorry, I know you must be jealous of my lollygagging ways, but please note this is not the wrinkle-free, sag-free, mid-30s baseline "practice" mammogram.  Shit's gettin' real, yo.

- Many years ago I wrote this post about meeting my friend RK for the first time.  I opened with a line I was sure, ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN, came from a Mid-East class I took in school.  Except I've been watching old West Wing episodes at night because I don't have the emotional energy to invest in anything new and….  I am full of crap.  It was President Bartlett.  I'm sure Aaron Sorkin and/or my college prof were not the first people to have stumbled into this bit of wisdom but I now have the highly uncomfortable feeling that MY stumbling into said bit of wisdom did not come courtesy of my Stafford loans.  Since pretty much everything I know or believe seems to have originated with the WW series, I'm wondering if I could get my tuition back, please?

- I am the heaviest I've ever been, including those immediate postpartum days, and despite all the love yourself/don't buy into the media hype bullshit I'm full of self-loathing.  I have not suddenly taken to eating pans full of brownies by myself in the closet (though that is enticing), leaving age, stress, and the slow creep of the western civilization to blame.

- Compounding that fun is an epic, albeit self-diagnosed case of plantar fasciitis. Nothing starts my day of better than getting up out of bed and nearly collapsing to the floor.  Nothing helps fight Middle Age Spread than being unable to workout because my feet hurt because they're carrying too many pounds, preventing me from working out to lose said pounds.  Feeling young and vibrant I am not.

- I did sign up for a cheapie Parks & Rec yoga class. Matt might kill me for sneaking off twice a week but it would be soooo much worse if I didn't.  Because while I'm fairly certain this is Yoga Lite and it's not even challenging for a yoga-novice like me, it is amazingly relaxing and I leave feeling much less creaky.  I'm also leaving in that gorgeous late afternoon light amid all the spring bulbs my tax dollars bought, and it's just blissful.

- On my 2nd or 3rd session I'm pretty sure I fell asleep during the ending meditation bit.  I jerked awake and everyone else was already sitting up and the teacher was saying her goodbyes.  I think I should have been embarrassed but… it was weirdly nice.
And on that note I'm off to bed!

The Very Best Kind of Homecoming

On Wednesday The Girl was crying so much I finally to put her to bed at the unholy hour of 6:30.  And, to my great concern, she went to sleep immediately without complaint.  Passed out, really.

Clearly she was sick, right?  I was sure she'd be up puking at 3am but she actually just snuck in my bed around 4 and ground her teeth next to my ear until I stopped pretending to sleep.  But she was chipper & ate so off to school she went. 

Last night I picked her & The Boy up after work and headed to the store for a lovely rotisserie chicken & maybe some fancy foccacia or garlic sourdough.  Maybe a bag o'salad.  Did I mention Matt has been out of town again?  Cooking during these times is a luxury my sanity cannot afford.    

She was asleep in the back seat before we left the gas station.  Are they making her run laps at school?  What the hell?  [It will surprise none of you that fatigue without other symptoms immediately set off a tsunami of alarms.  The fact that I did not call the ped and immediately demand a blood draw yesterday is, I believe, a sign of my good mental health and maturity.  Well... that and it was after hours.]

So in lieu of a happy organic chicken raised on love & hand fed oats, humanely slaughtered after a simple prayer to the great poultry god, & slow roasted over an open flame of sustainably harvested hardwood, we hit the KFC drive thru.  

Oh, yes.  We did.  Because we'd had McD's the night before and nutritional variety is important.  

But there are some things that will just never taste as good as they did when you were 6:  bright orange mac & cheese, IHOP, ice cream drumsticks, and -turns out- KFC.  

The Boy, however, is not yet legally at the age of reason and practically licked his plate. 

Two hours later?  Puke.  From the "healthy" one.   

You know what we're out of?  Paper towels.  At least he hit the toilet….  mostly. 

Sadly for him, Matt had in the interim landed and made it back home - just in time to fetch a huge bowl and a trash bag.  Welcome home!

Mental Health Day

Yesterday I thought about taking today off but then remembered the three reports I have to finish by yesterday and decided against.  But by mid-morning today I felt like I'd had 2 pots of coffee and, while I don't technically have a history of anxiety, I was pretty sure that's what a panic attack feels like.

Did I buckle down and crank thru my work?  Ha!  No. 

Did I take compromise with a half day, go home, and efficiently fold laundry while watching old West Wing episodes?  No, I did not.  

I abruptly left and went to the very first movie starting, which turned out to be Noah.  Nothing like the annihilation of all living things to really put things in perspective, eh?  It was fine.  As infrequently as I get out, it was glorious.  I was in a dark theatre with a large medium sized bag of popcorn (old age is a bitch) and there were no talking animals or cartoons on the screen.  (No offense Kermit, you know I love you).

Oh, wait.  Except there were large stone monsters.  Er, "watchers".  I skipped Sunday school but later checked with Matt who assured me there were no rock Transformers in the Old Testament.  That's ok, what's a little creative license with the most quoted written work in Western civilization?  

It also got a little heavy at the end, what with all the genocide - and then he nearly killed the babies too (WTF?) but I was Alone!  For two hours! With popcorn!  I was happy.  (That sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?) 

I was also happy because I don't get good FB material that often, what with all the report writing & laundry hereabouts: 

I went home four hours further behind at work, a small car payment poorer, and the laundry still isn't done but I feel fabulous.  I can totally rock this working mom thing!  Sometimes, apparently, by not working.  

The Old Man and the Sea

Almost immediately after his mom (Gigi) died, my dad left for the sea.  He'd bought an older sailboat about a year & half ago but family shenanigans ensued so it's sat in various shipyards across Europe ever since, getting cobbled back together as time & money allowed, and while on breaks from taking care of Gigi.

But then she died and he sailed from somewhere in Spain to the Canary Islands, to Cape Verde, and then finally west across the great blue ocean.  He was supposed to be emailing coordinates daily (Technology!) but one day Matt pointed out that we hadn't heard from him in a while.  We proceeded, as people under stress are wont to do, to argue about whether we should, in fact, be worried.  Really argue.  Which was asinine because either one is or one isn't, much as my dad was either afloat or not, and there wasn't a whole hell of a lot we could do about it ten thousand or so miles away.

Cape Verde

I confirmed he'd actually left his last port and wasn't languishing in a Cape Verdian hospital or ditch, then decided he'd either lost the damn phone overboard or was just being uncommunicative.  A day or so later he emailed and was fine.  Technology glitch.

Oh.  OK, then.

The very same day he wrote, a friend of mine called - she knew my sister went to Purdue and had I been watching the news?  Noooo, I was home with the kids on one of the 256 snow days they've called this winter.  There was a shooting.  Another damn shooting.  I called my sister, the phone picked up, and there was crackling - like little firecrackers (or gunshots).  Then the line went dead.

I died.

No, actually, that's not true - in one of those surreal, slow pan, rising music moments I actually thought that there was no fucking way THAT just happened, so I texted her.  She wrote back immediately - and the world kept spinning - she was in class and couldn't talk because even though the building was on lock down her professor was plowing forward.  Linear algebra is important, yo.

Oh.  OK, then.

Exactly one week later my brother received a clearly auto-generated text with coordinates and this mysterious line, "Accuracy Horiz: +/- 8 m Vert: +/- 32 m".  Thirty two meters, for products of this great American school system, is about 105'.  A hundred foot wave would be…. something.  But even if they weren't Perfect Storm big, a 210 foot "accuracy" swing certainly suggested rough seas, right?  And why the auto-text?  One island couldn't be reached, we assumed because of the storm that had just passed thru.  My brother swung into action, various nations' Coast Guards were notified and a pleasure cruiser was even diverting.  I spent all morning at work trying to figure out how to confirm his Epirb had, actually, gone off.  This time I thought it was real and I tried to imagine what a little boat might do in 100' seas.  So this is how it happens.  

And then he called.  Guess what he just figured out his sat phone can do!  Auto-texting!!

Oh.  OK, then.

And these are just the highlights.  There has also been car drama, the aforementioned 256 snow days, the resulting employer dissatisfaction, plumbing trouble (and not the fresh-water-from-the-shower kind), and GI upsets. There has been too much eating, not enough running, not enough pictures, and not enough wine.  Never enough wine.  (There was quite definitely too much coffee.)  There has obviously been no writing.  I'm not unhappy but I am so, so very tired.  Tired of the cold, the angst, and of my pathological inability to balance family, work, and me.

But there have been lots of snowy PJ days, movie nights, and hugs.  There have been stars rendered in Play-Doh.  And, at one point after we were washing the dog and the carpet and the child, who had all intersected in a Bermuda Triangle of Poop, I started to laugh.  What else can you do, right?  

You can go sailing.

31 for 21: The 24th

It's the 24th today which means my grand 31 for 21 blogging effort is huddled in a corner, shaking, cold, and wet.

But look at my pretty button!


Grab This Button

The Girl's first parent teacher conference is tonight which should give me LOTS to write about, but in the meantime, here are a couple things that never made their way onto Facebook:

~  I was doing errands over the weekend after a particularly awful week at work, and between stops listened to Radiolab's bit about probiotics and stress.  This isn't new news but the swimming rats with "behavioral despair" nicely embodied my week.  Instead of medicinal yogurt, however, I went home and made a huge plate of french fries.  Those worked just fine too.

~  I remain, however, highly concerned about my state of mind.  REALLY WORRIED.  To wit:  I went to the grocery store, picked up various foodstuffs but forgot to buy both wine AND coffee.  What the hell?  This is akin to forgetting to breath.  I resisted the urge to call 911 but clearly need to take action before it's too late.  Neurologist?  Personal yogi?  Personal shopper?  Double order of the medicinal fries?

~  Have I mentioned The Girl has completely mastered the TV upstairs?  Not that I encourage it but she likes to get up at 5am and I'm in no position to argue.  As long as there are no resulting ER visits, whatever happens before mommy is caffeinated is free time.

I put The Girl to bed the other night, went downstairs, then heard the TV upstairs turn back on.  I headed back up but she must have heard the gate open because the TV was off again and she was hiding.  I marched her back to her room but she stopped me at the threshold and shut the door in my face.  Hard.  Who needs verbal skills when you can slam doors?  Gawd, mom, you never let me do anything!  My 5 year old, going on 15.  Awesome.

~  I don't think we need to worry about excessive compliance in this one:

Well! Hello there!

At the end of May, the powers that be let go of one of my co-workers, sending a crap ton of work in my direction and forcing me into a literal month or two of Sundays.  And the occasional Saturday.  Then, just as I was starting to see daylight again, they let go of someone else.
$%^&*($%!!!

I'm now either the next target or completely indispensable (yay???).  I nixed the weekends on this second go around and have even been leaving at 4 every day now that school started back up, but I am wiped out.  Done-burnt-crispy-drained-exhausted.  I love my job but by the time I get home, parent the children and shuffle them off to bed, I can barely wrangle the remote, much less a complete sentence here.

I have, admittedly, been watching unseemly amounts of TV.  Meh.  Passive, mind numbing, checking out (I'm mostly bitter because of the last Dexter episode & because I finally watched Million Dollar Baby.  Both left me grumpy).  It's better than becoming a raging alcoholic though, right?

All this naturally led to the mommy guilt.  In the middle of a FB discussion about after school activities, I chimed in with this little ray of sunshine:  "I'm back on 5 days/week and am home by 5 but I'm done, they're done, and we just don't... It's a great night if I make them turn off the TV and sit with them when they eat. It seems like such a bleak, subsistence only existence. No dance, no music lessons, no swim team.... 

How much fun are we?  Thankfully, the little Dear Abby voice in my head told me to shut up and fix the damn problem.  We haven't signed up for after school Spanish and basket weaving yet, but I've made a super human effort this last month to get out and DO things - Science Center!  Library!  Nature walks!  Greek parties!  So I do have blog fodder but, perversely, all the fun allowed even less time to sit down and write.  Why is finding balance so hard?  It seems to be a universal problem.

[The embeddy thing doesn't seem to be working in Feedly - here's a link to this very issue, explained in jelly beans]

This blog title was originally just a place filler but it stuck - life is not a trial run.  I just wish I could shake the feeling that I need more practice time.  Hrmmph.  

The Daily Grind

...continues.  I was thisclose to being caught up when my co-worker quit this week. *sigh*  
Work-life balance is a myth. 

However, for pure entertainment purposes, I have four post-ettes ripped almost right from the headlines ...of that month old paper you haven't recycled yet.  I tell ya, it's almost just like CNN over here. 

Angelina Jolie gets a double mastectomy
This sparked quite a bit of conversation online but, although we have lots of other issues, breast cancer hasn't made an appearance in my near family.  Of course Gigi only had boys and my mom is an only child so my statistical group might be a little skewed, but let's not quibble.  So about a month ago I went to see my ob-gyn because the girls were sore, aching all the way down to the muscle and getting worse.  He said...      (*dramatic pause*)

I SHOULD DRINK LESS COFFEE.

(*sob*)
I'm not trying to make light of this and I know I should be grateful it's not anything real, but please, please, please don't take away my coffee.  Please?

Parents sue over their son's photo
I've thought off & on about the risks of putting my girl's picture out into the world but this space is tiny enough to avoid the creeps' radars and haven't done anything about it.  But I don't let the schools use or publish either kids' photo.  Because I am a hypocrite.  Of which I was again reminded when The Girl's daycare primary called a couple weeks ago to ask if I wanted her included in the end of year video.  I said no but thanked them for asking - I'm sure they were just as worried I'd flip out over the exclusion as the potential liability for breaching the 'no photo' form.  It's got to be tough for them to navigate a bunch of ferociously overly-sensitive parents.  Meanwhile I'm on a self imposed photo blog ban till I get this watermarking thing figured out.  Time to follow my own obscure, conflicting, Kafka-like rules. 

This post by a huge NDSS fundraiser, telling them off.
Unlike the NDSS, our local group’s new president has taken the ‘advocacy’ in their mission statement to heart and has been emailing updates on the Robert Ethan Saylor case, calls to contact state congressmen to preserve early intervention funding, and federal Reps on the seclusion/restraint bill.  Weirdly I can push, bully, and charm people on the phone all day at work without qualm, but I hate-hate-hate talking to anyone at home.  Cable people and babysitters are solely Matt’s responsibility.  But goaded into action by my local group, I summoned up all my emotional reserves and made whopping 1 minute phone calls to each of my Reps’ snarky staffers.  And then I signed up for this year’s Step Up walk [ours is a “Step Up,” not a Buddy Walk, so they don’t have to kick back any of their money to the NDSS] because I can’t complain about the national groups' colossal failures without supporting my group when it’s doing it right.  I’m not that much of a hypocrite.

Although I gave my friends and family exactly two weeks notice and of course everyone is booked. *sigh*  Baby steps, people, baby steps.

Manhattan women buy disability guides
I know you all heard about this, but it reminded me I never wrote about our last trip to Disney in January.  Sadly it will likely be literally the LAST trip, because just after we came home Disney abruptly killed our travel industry discount, both cars now need timing belts (and happy car fairy dust), and we (surprise!) didn't withhold nearly enough money last year for the IRS.  Boo.

Oh, wait...  So if we stand in line with the nice lady from New York and her family she'd pay for our trip?  We wouldn't have to talk to her, or anything, would we?  Hmmm.  

I'm joking!  (kind of.  maybe.  depends on the offer - what's our souvenir allowance?)

We were there to run Disney's half marathon but I brilliantly took the kids to the park the day before in awful, terrible, no good, very bad shoes.  My feet hurt by the end of the day and they hurt worse the next morning, right before I was supposed to run 13 miles on them.  I was lucky though, because I ran the whole way with this nice lady here and it was the first time I've been able to talk and run at the same time.  It was a personal worst, as far as time goes, and I whimpered for days after like I was walking on broken glass, but I didn't think you could have that much fun running.  It was awesome. 

(ms. see-tee-via!)

There were fireworks!  

Every race needs fireworks.

At one point in the park I was holding The Girl while Matt and The Boy were off procuring provisions.  A guy approached us, said my girl was gorgeous (of course!), and to dispel the potential creepiness, he waved over at his family, including an older boy with Ds, they waved back, and we all chuckled a bit.  Then he palmed his special needs pass like it was hot watch and asked if I knew what it was.  Then I really laughed and showed him ours.  Who knew?  There really IS a secret club card.  

I truly hope that the socialite doesn't screw it up for everyone else.  The first time we went I felt a little guilty because The Girl wasn't any more of a pill than any other 3 year old, but there's no way my almost-5 year old tornado could stand in line for an hour or two.  Not a chance.  Even the couple times the special needs line was long and we had to wait were not great - she's too big to hold for long, yelled to get out of her stroller, and kept trying to bolt thru the crowds.  I suppose this would be more persuasive for Disney if I didn't preempt my story by saying we were too poor to visit but we'll get back - one way or another!

Rambling

The weeks have been flowing by so swiftly I'm starting to lose my footing.  Emails aren't sent, errands are forgotten, FB is ignored (the horror!), and I'm certain I still must be only 33* or so but next month I'll have yet another birthday and my brief time on this planet is that much less.  In the movies they always show those quick short cuts of daily life - happy, sad, or otherwise...work, commute, dinner with the kids, repeat - right before the calamitous plot twist.  Daily life, interrupted.
    *I'm no where even close to 33.

Let's hope for no more plot twists.

But we need a little bit more life around here, yes?  Daily life, elevated & constructed into something blog worthy?

Shall I blame the job?  Maybe.  Given the choice between staring slack jawed at the second hand as it sweeps around from 4:59, and the current all consuming "Hell, how did it get to be 4 already?", I definitely have the better deal, and it's not always this busy, but I am d.o.n.e. when I get home. 

But it hasn't been all work.  The boy & I have been reading Harry Potter together at night - two weeks ago we reached the end of Book Four, I turned off his light, then I abandoned all restraint and spent the next 4 days reading ahead to the end.  Not to worry, the kids were perfectly happy eating cereal & PB&Js, and I'm sure they they picked up some valuable life skills in my (emotional) absence -   don't keep PB in the fridge!  Also, if I know you IRL, I apologize for the recent heavy HP references.  And last?  The book made me a wee bit sad for all the moms, me included, who couldn't keep their babies safe with the magic of love alone.  Leave it to me to get weepy over a kids book.

What else?

On Friday I hit another work-i-versary and was gifted with a bunch more vacation time which I immediately started burning by flying to Los Angeles to see Gigi.  She's not doing well and she is quite explicit about wanting to leave us.  I find it hard to reconcile these two ends of the disability spectrum - my daughter, just starting out, and Gigi, who was ragingly independent for over 90 years and is suddenly, profoundly not.  Her heart is strong and her pain is, we hope, well controlled - I believe her wish for an end is a direct function of her lost independence.

There's obviously no easily framed picture of disability.  Everyone draws their own lines of what is and isn't acceptable, of what is and isn't compatible with life.  Decent people don't try to inflict their lines on others and I suspect most find the line to be a mirage anyway - if they get up close it dances off again.  You adjust, adapt, and find joy where you can.  I don't know where I'm going with this...  It strikes me as naive to wish a 94 year old woman rally but her new world isn't dramatically different from those of several children with significant needs I follow here on the world wide web and, well, it's difficult.  I want to respect the feisty woman she is, I think she's earned the right to go out as she sees fit, but there are great grandchildren to admire, the smell of toast in the morning, and the sound of the wind in the eucalyptus trees in her backyard.  

Checking In

I haven't had too much to say lately.  The weeks fly by.  I go to work, come home, feed and water the children, repeat, repeat, repeat.

That's not entirely true.  I've had LOTS to say about the death of Robert Ethan Saylor, mostly on FB.  I've spent an egregious amount of time, actually, writing letters, begging people to give a damn, and harassing the national Down syndrome advocacy groups into, you know, advocating.  I even joined Twitter (I know! Collect yourselves) to help with the #justiceforethan campaign (which is what yesterday’s post all about), but I wonder at my efforts.  I wonder why people with a national platform and easy access to media, like Albert & Deidre Pujols, Jamie Foxx, and John McGinley, people who know and love someone with Ds, can't even be bothered to direct their press agents to draft something up.  Meanwhile my house is filthy, I'm neglecting my employer, and I'm short on sleep.  Thanks for being patient with me here.

I did manage, however, to provoke THIS response from NDSC.  It has sadly since been taken down, but will forever after be known as The Hallmark Plan and I'm insanely proud of it.  Let no one doubt my ability to poke the bear into revealing his true colors.

(not my picture but my screen shot had too much work stuff on it.

Not that I was on FB during work hours, or anything)

Ridiculous, right?  You wouldn’t think the working mom with two kids should have to join Twitter when there are not one, but TWO national advocacy groups out there, but this what we’re dealing with.

What else?

• Matt is Catholic and The Boy goes to Catholic school.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about this but he’s getting a good education… and will be confirmed tomorrow.  There will be cake.
• There is a special place in hell for the people who decided those felt communion banners should be “family projects.”
• The news is so heartbreaking – that little boy in Boston with his felt communion banner.  I just can’t…
• This is completely inane, but do you remember the movie the Peacemaker?  It’s a popcorn action flick but I still remember this line:   …there are people out there who don't care about money, who don't give a damn about respect. People who believe the killing of innocent men and women is justified. For them it is about rage, frustration, hatred... they feel pain and they're determined to share it with the world.
• I’ve been trying to take better care of myself.  Right now that means I’ve been using my cheap wrinkle cream every night.  Such an indulgence.  Isn’t vanity a sin?  I bet The Boy knows.
• A while back my MIL gave me her fancy Mix Master with the bread kneading attachment thingy and I’ve become a little obsessed with making bread – French bread, regular white bread, focaccia with pesto and parmesan …. mmmm.
• I was ready-ish to run a half marathon last month but it was cancelled due to blizzard and I think I’ve put on my shoes exactly twice since.  So much for taking care of myself.  And I’ve been eating a lot of bread.  Maybe my problem is a lack of vanity (& self respect & self control)?  But in some dark & twisted way this meme has me newly motivated and I think I’m going to finally sign up for a full 26.2 miler.  Fuck ALL the bullies.  I was toying with the idea of running one to celebrate my 40th year but… um….  Anyway, if I run the local fall race I’ll only be 3 months late. Wish me luck!

Happy March 21st!

Three Twenty-One, up

close.  This girl, joy, love defies

numerologists

But much as I adore this girl, I could not summon the energy last night to make several dozen sugar cookies to accompany my now traditional Down syndrome awareness email-to-the-co-workers.  So I brought pies.  Store bought pies (the horror!).  We didn't celebrate Pi day so I'm calling it a two-fer.  Three-fer if you add in St. Paddy's day.  Happy March!



Way to Teach Your Children New Vocabulary

Update:  Gigi moved out of ICU yesterday, and into a “regular” room. Her MD also recommended even more PT so we’re now in pure recovery mode.

~  It finally happened.  I drove halfway to work this morning before realizing I didn’t have any shoes.  I usually drive barefoot so the fact that this hasn’t happened before is a testament to the mountain of shoes I keep in the back seat except I cleaned out the car this weekend my competence and organizational abilities.

~  Both kids were tired on Sunday and I shuffled them off to bed early with nary a protest.  I was nearly delirious with the freedom a 7:30 bedtime brings when The Boy suddenly reminded me he was student of the week and we had to fill out a bunch of 3x5 survey cards and find recent pictures of the family/his pets/himself.  Efffff…  Except that’s not actually what I said.  The Boy was highly amused.

~  I also recently nearly hanged myself on a car door:  I had The Girl with one hand, got her backpack with the other and was trying to elbow the door shut when she tried to bolt across an active parking lot.  I lunged after her but had shut the door on my scarf and got stopped like a bad dog on a leash… tragedy was only averted through a surprisingly sturdy inch of the fuzzy stuff on the edge of her hood.

~  The Boy was horrifically, negligently overdue for a dentist appointment.  I called to schedule it and made a crack getting in before Social Services showed up.  The lady was not amused, “Mmm-hmmm.”  I take my childrens’ dental health seriously.  I do.  But please see above – I’m lucky if I show up to work with shoes.