Pop, pop, pop music!

So, what is getting me through, these days? Pop music! Everybody talk about, as in . . . and so I continue to miss Adam Ant, derailed by mental illness, but at least we now have Bruno Mars. M, anybody? I am all about inspiration these days, as I still battle the depression, the anxiety, the PTSD, recovery from addiction, death of my spouse, blah-de-blah endless blah and yuck and yet I am hanging on by embracing the beautiful, the divine, the brave, the innocence, the happy.

Right now my happy music is Brave and Happy.  Thank you pop music, just for being you.  And courtesy of Hope over at Grace in Small Things, I am adding on Mariachi music today and I will let you know how that goes (probably with horns).

If the people who live in my house will stop being ill or getting head lice or both (thank you grade school in all your hat sharing, scarf swapping, up close and personal glory) then I will return to blogging my way through the blues.  Right now I am charged with keeping up our spirits without spreading illness or despair. Those of you who know young children will correctly guess that this involves a lot of craft supplies and clean up, so you know I am otherwise occupied.

Whoever you are who Googles MCADD and lands here, please contact me if you need to talk about it.  We still have it and still find it to be the least of our worries, actually.

Hang on, hang on, hang on.

I am coming back and hanging on.  Really, I am. The gas tank is not empty and the cupboards are not bare.

Congratulate yourself today - you didn't give up!

Already the post title sounds trite, I know, but it is really what I want to say.

You did it! You didn't give in to the stress, the worries, the anxiety about the known and the unknown that lie ahead for you and your family, and the to-do lists, and the unending needs of those you provide for, and the fact that the long and winding road looks really long sometimes. You didn't decide that it was too much. You didn't let negative thoughts and self doubt sink your boat. You didn't feel the weight of the burdens you carry and decide to put them down. You kept going. You did your many, many jobs, and you went looking on the internet for help and inspiration and ideas from people who get it. You deserve to feel good about that. I think you should feel good about being you today.

Brought to you from a gloomy person trying to claw her way out of the abyss, who today, sees joy ahead, and hopes you do too.

Psychology Today

A roller coaster is in my psyche! I started out tired and somewhat gloomy, got a small lift at Jazzercise, back down when I had to do a marginally official task of picking up license plates from the car dealer, back to house where I almost tacked the beginning of a nearly insurmountable paper/bills/mail sort and almost cheered up, only to go to therapy where I ended up dropping back into a psychological pit.

I imagine the good news is that the yawning gulf of despair is not a permanent condition for me, and I only flirt with wholly jumping in, or getting chased in by intrusive memories and flashbacks. I suspect it is good to not have depression that never relents, but it sure would be nice to have no depression at all.  I have known a few folks with major depression, and frankly, they are not doing all that well, if they are still alive.  What would it have looked like for me if I had gotten treatment sooner, I wonder. But with my husband's activities and suicide I don't think I had a hope to avoid PTSD this year.

PTSD is kicking my butt, literally, but some days I think I am improving.  I had no idea what PTSD was like until I had it.  I didn't know what it would be like to sometimes feel that the only part of me that has substance is my eyes looking out and that my body is insubstantial below my chin, or the opposite sensations I can get that my feet are magnetized to the ground and can't be relied on to move up or forward. The most similar feeling I've had that might make sense to someone else is when my foot twists inside a slide style sandal and I find the shoe is sideways but still on my foot and not surprisingly, I am on the verge of falling.  Another mom I know who lost her son unexpectedly and also was diagnosed with PTSD asked me if I ever felt that the world around me was made of tissue paper.  It sounds so silly to envy someone else's wacky body sensations but not being able to trust the world around me sounds somehow better than not being able to trust my body.

Today I feel better than other days, my body has only betrayed me with arm numbness and anxiety. Hooray! And today I feel my sobriety is not in question, because I went to my rehab facility and facilitated a relapse prevention group. If you want to keep it, you have to give it away, and so I did, and I feel stronger.  I almost remember actual joy, and then I remember the rest.  But 10 steps forward and 2 steps back is still 8 forward.  Basic math always wins, right? The hardest to learn was the least complicated.  Thank you, Indigo Girls. Thank you sobriety.  Thank you, God.  Thank you, interwebs, for being my therapist.

posting my way through anxiety without mind numbing drugs - bite me, MCADD

Argghh, just a simple little cold/flu, the ubiquitous second week of the school year bug in all its minor chord glory, is here to rattle my cage in my new single mom state. I have decided that Hannah ate enough, is large enough, that the fact that she threw up does not mean we need to race off to the Children's Hospital in the middle of the night, getting a blood draw, IV and having her catheterized to check all relevant levels of stuff that matters in the world of metabolic disorders.

This is one of those places where my late husband was in some ways helpful, in that he didn't get so wound up with worry and count approximate food vs. vomit ratios, and yet, I always knew that if we separated I couldn't count on him to get Hannah to the hospital should she actually need to go, and I could lose her to his lack of worry.  And still I hated having to worry so hard about her since I had to worry for the both of us.  The three times I have taken her in to the hospital with vomiting and illness were all times where her test results showed she was just beginning to experience a metabolic process that could indeed be serious and ultimately fatal should she not get her glucose into a normal range.  I know at those times I did exactly right to take her in, and get a glucose IV that would load her up and keep her going until her appetite returned as the virus ran its course. But what about the times we  just rode it out and treated her like a normal child who has a brief illness? Am I risking her life when I don't take her in?  I know from the patient education we have received that she doesn't always need intervention and the best person to gauge that is her caregiver but I don't really trust myself to get it right, even though history has proven I do. And so anxiety kicks my butt, every single time her little regular virus with a high fever comes calling.  Every. Single. Time.

Last night I kept her in my too large bed, felt the heat waves coming off her body, and gave her sips of flat Sprite, apple juice, and water in between hurling into my stock pot that I kept at the foot of my bed. But it always seemed that every sign showed she was not in distress beyond expected levels for vomiting and fever, and if I could get her to keep high calorie fluids down by morning we could make it through.  And we did.  I imagine she will not go to school tomorrow either, and hope we both get more sleep tonight, and today I have one more example to tell my PTSD addled, anxiety riddled mind that I actually am up to the job of mothering this child. And that may sound more credible tomorrow.

Let's talk about PTSD, let's talk about you and me

That title has a tune in my head, just so you know. You can imagine your own to fit it you don't like mine. When I was more myself, and sometimes now, I sing in my head and sometimes aloud, though you wouldn't really be happy to hear it.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, and no one expects a train wreck in their personal lives. That dissappointingly inadequate what to expect when you're expecting book doesn't cover special needs in the way lives are ultimately experienced, no one expects a spouse's suicide or chronic and destructive lying, and when those things happen it is rather distressing, to say the least.  Did unexpected life events come when you were unprepared, and did you feel powerless to deal? Then you have trauma.  Do you relive it, get your ass kicked by it over and over in your head and heart and body, and find yourself lost in a loop of crap? Then you may have PTSD.  I didn't feel OK about accepting that diagnosis last year before my life took a turn for the worse in February.  I thought PTSD was for Veterans, police, etc., and people would think it was bullshit if I said I couldn't function because I feared losing my child if she didn't eat, but once I had even more trauma on a whole new level of awful, and stopped medicating myself with oxycodone, now I do really know it was real PTSD before and it got bigger and badder than ever this year. Among the many things I avoid that remind me of the worst things, talking about the worst things rates pretty high up there, but dumping some out seems to be part of getting well, and if it helps any of you, then let's get better together, 'cause staying lost in a mental health mire of nightmarishness is a lousy option for any of us. Self medicating was always a poor choice and is no longer an option for me.

What I didn't know about PTSD before would fill a large academic volume, and getting to know it on a personal level, it is full of assholery and deserves a poke in the eye, just in case you wondered.  I imagine the shrinks know that it is the result of self preservation mechanisms gone awry.  Much like an allergic reaction though, when you feel anaphylaxis you really have to wonder what good histamines are in doses that can kill. I am tired of intrusive thoughts, tired of a racing heart and pounding ears, tired of my arms going numb and tingly when I feel anxious, or even when I talk on the phone about anything of any importance.  I am tired of hostage dreams, I am tired of the fear I feel when I see a car that looks like my husband's (and I know where his is as it is disabled and in my back yard but it still scares me) and I am tired of wondering when I won't be so tired of these and oh so many other things that upset my apple cart hourly.  So now you know why I stay home and watch Downton Abbey on Amazon and don't take calls and texts and emails even from the people who love me and want to help. I don't really like having to explain how sick I am almost as much as I don't like how sick I am.

Sobriety is my most joyful thing, next to my lovely girls.  Sobriety gives me hope over PTSD, oddly, even though the power triumvirate of PTSD, anxiety and depression led to my addiction.  I feel my best doing outreach at my treatment community, and the most like who I used to be, but I know ifI don't kick some PTSD butt then I won't win the war.  So, let's get crackin'.  Let's talk about PTSD and women and mothers and parents and survivors of the unimaginable.

I will be staying home for a while, not working, as I find that my energy level tanks much earlier than before, and no one will think I am sober if they see how much my hands shake.  Frankly, if people knew how busy my mind is recalling memories, avoiding memories, and keeping myself from screaming then they wouldn't think I could pay attention to much else anyhow.  So I will be back and talk about this more, here, where it is safe.  Thank you.

I now have half as many drafts as published posts. Anyone else hitting the confessional with me?

Self censorship is an obvious choice when you are spilling your guts on the interwebs, but I think I have passed all points of reason in this, now that I have 300-ish published posts and nearly 150 drafts.What gives, people? If you know me in life as well as in 'net, you might think I often can't shut up, and yet, I became a secret keeper in the last three years.  Very soon, I will publish a post that tells you a a bit about why, and just what those secrets were, but for now... how kind of any of you to read this blog at all when I am so silent. I always find my stats quite entertaining when I see I had 500 hits in a month and I managed to post only once in that time.  And are all of you getting emails from business opportunities to grow your blog with giveaways or let someone write for you? At least my blog's email doesn't get spam for Viagra giveaways and feminine lubricant advertising.

Randomosity . . . why does Disney Junior Sprout have ads for things such as I just mentioned? Am I part of the problem for mentioning them on my blog?  How have you explained to your kids what those ads are for?  I thought I would be all "there are no bad questions, little one, let me explain" when it came to Birds, Bees, and Ribbed you-know-whatsies but it turns out I am a 'fraidy cat and run for cover when unmentionables are mentioned in front of my kids, as soon as they say "What..." and I say . . ."um, SQUIRREL!" and then I chase said furry creature until they follow me.

Back to my absenteeism and censorship, I need to knock that off. Blogging here was once a very real part of my sanity.  Having recently lost the vestiges of my sanity, I need every tool in my toolkit to keep hold of the shreds of said tenuous grasp on mental health.

Sometimes when I Google my blog to find it for someone (one of the about 10 total real life people I have shown this headspace) I come across the BlogHer description of my blog, which says something like "a generally light hearted" blog about parenting.

I hope you can tough it out for a bit when light hearted veers into the long dark tea time of my soul. It is always darkest before the dawn, but joy cometh in the morning, yada yada yada, and I will ultimately prevail. Don't say I didn't warn you, though.

Friday Haiku; Writer's Block, fear, and loathing in the basement

This week, I did write
Publish those posts, I did not
I am on the fence

I struggle to choose
Just how much I should reveal
About my foibles

I do have much joy
And lots of angsty sorrow
A Debbie Downer!

So first I will put
A motherhood post out now
Remembering us

And who we really are.

A "hello" Friday Haiku, For You

Absence makes the heart grow
when it's a blog you think of
I so missed it here

But I lacked the guts
to tell the truth of my life
once I fucked it up

And effed it I did.
Oh yes, I effed it fully
and so heartily

Now I'm inching back
slowly but determined now
to find a new path.

Thank you for reminding me to be grateful

The title here is from a comment I left on someone's blog in 2011. Right before I fell all to pieces, natch.  I didn't take the hint I gave myself.  Not gonna lose sight of that again, universe, I really won't. Gonna go be grateful and come back in a few. Or perhaps I will run away and hide. I really should have stayed here for therapy from you guys and not crawled into a hole I am only now beginning to dig out of, teaspoon by teaspoon.

Blame it on Harry Potter. It's appropriate.

Often when I am avoiding something I busy myself in reading, which has become increasingly harder as my children develop more needs that must be met.  In the last four weeks I have reread all but one of the Harry Potter books and now am working through The Tales of Beedle the Bard.  When I needed one to help complete the set, and the girls and I went to the library, Claire saw that I'd found another very large Harry Potter volume, and looked me squarely in the eye and said "Daddy is not going to be pleased to see you got that, Mommy."  Horrors!  How can she (or he) have turned into the book police while I wasn't even looking?  So just exactly why am I off the blog and in the books?  I think there is something I want to write about, and think about, and process, and I am self censoring.  But not for much longer, I think.  It might just come bursting out soon.  Stay tuned. 

In the meantime - Hannah has turned into someone who goes up and down some stairs without always holding onto something for support - which both delights and terrifies me.  She is also now someone with whom one has conversations.  Her words are still second child murky, and she doesn't have Claire's startling ability to communicate at a level years above her age, but she can be well understood - and often says things that are abstract, not related to things going on in her immediate environment, and uses words I didn't know she knew.  I wish her speech were more clear, but I am so enjoying talking with her these days.  She showed me a craft she'd made in preschool today - a spider made from a piece of an egg carton saying "looka mah 'pider!"  "Oh, I love it Hannah" I respond and she looks at me with total delight and says "(s)pooky!" 


And in other news, Claire's father told her of an idea he had for something and Claire looked at him with approval and said "that's appropriate."

My girls.  I love 'em.

reasons to log off yesterday

Blogger ate my post about Hannah's second round of constraint casting.  If anyone has it in their Google reader, will you send it to me?  Mo left a funny comment and that is all I have to go on . . .

These headlines were on the Yahoo home page. 

     How to make an autonomous, acrobatic spider robot for your kids


     Spiders will be the newest astronauts aboard the ISS


     Watch a hummingbird-shaped spy drone flutter around, steal your secrets

Mind you, these headline followed a story about a woman convicted of murdering her infant daughter in a kitchen appliance (the type that cooks food quickly).  I can't actually let those words appear on my blog.  Can. Not.  She was drunk and doesn't remember. 

Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name?

My darling readers, lurkers, and wanna be friends.  Own up now - who are you?  Who, who, who who?  OK, my music references just dated me but I was not old enough to get high when those songs came out, I swear it.  I only inhaled in a room full of older people.  And it doesn't matter since I work for the man, hell, I AM the (wo)man.  Those songs hung around for a while, though, so they pop back up in my late night mind, interspersed with The Knack and The Cars and the The Fall and XTC and some crazy LA punk rock that I am sure you all know and love, like X, Fear, Black Flag, the Flesheaters.  Lyrics still go by in my mind that would possibly unhinge both my mother and my daughter simultaneously.  Heh-heh, no one needs to know these things but you guys . . .

And really, who is the 28th Follower?  Sir?  Are you here because you saw that I knit, albeit slowly?  I am about to finish projects that are more than a year old, more aged than many fine cheeses, sure, just keep a look out for it.

Some of you have joined during a time when, if you were amongst my first followers I would stalk your blog, would have commented away and tried to make you Follow me forever, but now? My small hope is to try to leave a comment for anyone who leaves me one (unless Arby's post is overly conservative that day and then I could come back later because he has to still love me as he wants me in the arms of Jesus and he can't stay away).  Someday I will answer my own comments here, because that always feels so much like a cosy cuppa tea sort of moment. The dark reality is I can't always figure out how to find your blog in the follower zone - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.  I never I said I had tech skills, I only promised doom, despair, hilarity, sickness and health.  And debris sweeping shoes.

So if you want to engage a little more, feel free (but leave directions, OK?)

Friday haiku - have I pleased the internet Gods?

Now I'm trying hard
to gain back Blogger's respect.
Let the movies play!

I spilled olive oil
with a touch of balsamic
from my caprese

Sandwich to touchpad
a ritual sacrifice
will it be enough?

blogjam strikes again

TeacherMommy has tagged me. I will answer. Sigh. It may take me a week.

The Bodhi Chicklet has challenged me to a Friday haiku and I owe one to Arby, on request, and it is really, really odd, which is why it isn't done.

Forgive me, for ye know not what you've done.

Now that the blogjam is unstuck, I should be able to post. As always, so long and thanks for all the fish and therapy.

Motherhood, juxtapositonally speaking

My sister made a point to tell me Happy Day for Claire's birthday, and told me she always feels extra special on her kids' birthdays. I felt special but sort of bitchslapped too, so much so that I ended up crying at the bakery when I picked up Claire's fancy cake for the family party. I thought of how I'd brought home a cake from that bakery when Claire got home from the hospital, and how much bigger it was than her tiny wee head, and how addicted I became to that buttercream frosting, making her at least %25 butter for the next two months when I stayed home with her, trying to fatten her up.

It had already hit me some on Saturday, with her party coming up and me racing around doing party prep errands on a sunny spring day, high on my SECOND Starbucks Venti Caramel Macchiato, blaring Tom Petty in my minivan, and feeling the love. Jason had said something like "I wish I'd gotten this much when I was a kid" and I said yes you do, everyone should be so lucky to be as loved and cared for as my dear girl. It all came together in some weird "I won't forget this moment" sort of way, with the pleasure of giving her a great time and making her feel cherished and important, and the sun was shining and then came the juxtaposition of some of my old punk rock playing on the iPod, followed by Tom Petty with me screeching along with "oh baby don't it feel like heaven right now, don't it feel like something from a dream?" Yes! It is heaven! I get this lovely creature to spoil and fawn over and cradle in my arms, and then I remembered how I almost didn't get her at all. Once it hit me I couldn't let it go - how close I came to not getting to have heaven on earth. My doctors had no idea my baby was struggling, since I measured normally and the heartbeat was strong, but she is only alive because I asked for that extra test, just because I felt that I didn't feel enough movement. As soon as they slapped an ultrasound on me it was apparent the baby was not growing and needed to come out and be fed. When I asked how they could have just been willing to let me go home from the clinic that day, and what would have happened had I not sought extra testing, the doctor looked me straight in the eye and said "stillbirth."

I am normally a glass half full kind of gal. My glass has pretty well stayed on the full side except when it comes to motherhood. I should be able to just revel in the result, because the results I have are indeed astounding and glorious. Not for nothing did I make up a song like "Claire the Magnificent" to croon to her at night. Something about motherhood brings out the naked part of my soul. Any of you read the Narnia books as a child? When a character who has done wrong, really wrong, meets the Powers That Be and the all powerful Aslan rips through the extra bits right down to his soul, all naked and slippery? That is about how this motherhood gig goes. I am tooling along with just the joy, on a sunny day, in my minivan, and smack here comes the other side of it all, the fear and the worry and the oh-shit feelings. My people tell me how wonderful I am to have noticed and taken action, and saved the day for Claire, but it doesn't always look that way inside my head, through the PTSD. They tell me this too in relation to Hannah, that I noticed the signs of her CP before her doctors, before her father, and jumped on the therapy bandwagon at the first possible moment. I keep remembering how shocked I was that there was a problem for either of my kids, how inexplicable it all seemed, how close I came to not getting that first baby at all, let alone the second. I think sometimes how if I had not planned to breastfeed my second baby, despite all the motherfucking pumping and hassle with feeding Claire, in fact probably because how hard that all was I was determined to breastfeed baby number two and get it right, but if I had chosen to just formula feed, Hannah might not have CP at all, because she would never have dipped too low in calories learning how to nurse. Am I a good mother? Well, of course I am, but on the inside, I doubt, I wonder, and I feel guilty as hell. And then here comes that joy again, when I snuzzle them on the backs of their necks.

Twice this week total strangers asked me for advice about the big parts of motherhood, how to pick a day care and whether to use a day care for a medically fragile child. My name gets given out as an example of someone in the know. Fuckity, fuck, fuck I say! I don't know anything!! Of course I give advice but still, on the inside, I am full of self doubt. I keep wondering if I'll get caught faking.

Claire now has a new favorite song, because we played The Waiting for her on the way to the party. And now the poor girl at Mrs. Backer's bakery thinks I am insane since when I ask her to prepare a cake for us, I find myself telling her why I have to have a Mrs. Backer's cake on the actual birthday even though Claire would be happy with a Costco cake or even one of lesser quality, but I must have the buttercream icing that says "Claire came home" to me, and always will.

The March of the Babies

We are not marching. We are celebrating the girl who lived, the brave little toaster, the three pound baby that could. I could make her go on the March and ask her to understand, but instead I am selfishly celebrating my miniature girl, who turns four next week. We will host ten to fifteen other four year olds at a Little Gym class and eat a Costco cake and open a lot of presents wrapped in pink paper. For any of you out walking and supporting the March of Dimes, I give you my eternal thanks for helping an organization that helps preemies like mine, low birth weight babies like mine, children with metabolic disorders and kids with neurological diseases and injuries, again, like mine. Since I got to to keep my kids, I am celebrating them and donating to the teams walking for these kids and all the other like them:

Little Maddie Spohr, an angel flying too close to the ground

and

Ames, whose twin sister Simone lives on

and

and micro preemie twins Holland and Eden, whose mother asks only that people pledge her team for a dollar (or more) per pound of baby birth weight they had (nine pounds and three ounces for me, so under the new math I rounded up to ten)

and a whole lot of other babies whose needs are great and who look to us for help.

The proof is in the pudding:

Tempus fugit

Isn't that Latin for time flies? I don't even have time to google it for myself. Gas food lodgers have been on the move, on the hoof, in the van, hoptoiting all over it seems. For example, yesterday morning I blew off work, had PT at home for Hannah and Claire with me, dropped Hannah at day care and went to Claire's very first ever dental visit (not a success) grabbed bad fast food to eat in the car on the way to art class, dropped Claire back at day care and hit Costco for necessities then back home to put the dinner I would be serving my bookclub later on delay bake and finally back to court for work after spilling my venti caramel machiato and having to get a replacement. After work I had eight friends over for the most relaxing part of the day, as I served them everyone's favorite homemade mac and cheese. Ahh.
I am working on stuff to get lined up for an upcoming conference, scheduling a bunch of extra medical and dental stuff and working on costumes for the St. Patty's Day Parade this weekend. I promise to be more delightful soon. Entertaining and delightful.

Did you miss me?

My sister did. I remember last year when I had started reading blogs regularly and I read some through November and I LOVED NaBloPoMo when it wasn't my job to post every day. I started this post on Wednesday and still have not hit publish. So be it.

Claire has been exceptionally, heart wrenchingly funny. She was naked and getting herself dressed when she said, as if she were quite annoyed, "Godsakes, it's cold in here." I decided not to correct her and tell her no dear, you say "For God's sake" because, well, correcting her use of profanity or expletives just doesn't seem quite right. The next morning Jason was trying to get her to say it again, asking her if she was cold (she said yes and put her coat on) and to describe how cold she was (very). After demonstrating her ability not to fall for her Daddy's ploys, that evening as I was driving the girls home from day care she leaned towards Hannah and said in a stage whisper "TAKE THE BAIT!" After I recovered I asked her why she told Hannah that, and she said "Mom, I was watching Madagascar today," as if that explained everything. Next day she crawled into bed with us in the morning, and said "Mom, where do ladies get husbands?" so I told her how I met her father. "Where will I find a husband?" I gave her some ideas, like college, in about twenty years, but she is thinking she'd like to get married and have babies in the next two years.

Hannah is an eating, pooping machine, apparently in a growth spurt. I live in fear of her metabolic clinic appointments, where I am terrified someone will tell me I am not up to snuff and that I can't keep Hannah. will I ever let go of this fear? They always tell me she could be bigger (I'll discuss that with her) and that her diet has too much fat (hello, breast milk) and then they poke her to get some blood and I cry all over her head. Good times, good times. So Monday will kinda suck that way and then I can return to pre-Christmas madness and power knitting.

The end of something, but not the end of everything

NaBloPoMo is coming to a close. I can't say I am entirely sorry. I don't need one more self imposed "must do" to feel crappy about, so I won't be restarting NaBloPoMo for December, but I have liked some of the things I've written this month. I meant to post a special dedication to a sweater I have been knitting for a long time, but I haven't finished the sweater because I've been blogging every evening. There was something I wanted to say about my gratitude for the village that's raisin' up my with me, but apparently you guys forgot to come over and babysit so I could write children more. You are bastard people and you know how I feel about your ass-faces. And did you all notice that I never once posted about poop? I meant to. I may still.

Reflecting on the internet addiction, though, has been fun. I am still thunderstruck at how enchanting online interaction with perfect strangers can be. You are all very good for my mental health. Thanks!