Anxiety on the receding level means action on the mommy level. Grief is still there, depression is lurking behind (in a shadow, obviously) and anxiety still has me grinding teeth and thinking stupid thoughts while missing other thoughts of greater value, but the energy to do the things of family living is returning to our family life. Luckily, I still don't have a job, though it seems possible in the future. I keep telling friends I cannot fathom how I ever had a full-time, high-intensity job AND cared for kids and home and did all that therapy for Hannah, lived with a depressed and slow moving husband (in secret he may have been speedy, I am still not sure) and...!!!...then started on therapy for me, then spousal suicide and then more therapy for Claire, then me...then arrgghhh...then I remember that I was propped up with oxycodone from November 2010 to March 2013. And then propelled by PTSD, grief, sobriety and the need to eventually get better, then ... .... .... PRESTO! I now operate at roughly 65% and climbing of who I used to be before I married a depressed! lying! manipulative! wrongly made! sort of beautiful in a flawed but beautiful manly and deeply fucked up manly way kind of man and had children with him and eventually had all my own previous flaws and insecurities meet up with special needs! Depression of self plus spouse! Life threatened babies! Death of a parent (and beloved dog)! Life in a CAPITAL L Sense, plus regular life and fell the fuck apart. Boom. Did I mention BOOM!? So now, I figure 65% operational skills is not bad, considering. People say you need a year for grief, you need a year to get equilibrium in recovery, and obviously you need a year plus for PTSD due to its earth shattering and ass kicking nature. So sixteen months since spousal death, this is not bad, not bad at all. Except ALL. Kinda bad still, honestly, but not AS bad as before. A win!
We live to fight the good fight, and smile a little today. Knowing there are more smiles tomorrow and beyond.
In the last two weeks I have spent 40 hours or so pulling weeds, been social repeatedly on as many as four days in a row, volunteered at church, co-parented other peoples' kids as well as my own, gone to continued therapy, sorted the detritus of about the last two plus years in my homey mess and recycled or tossed quite a lot of it, and been validated for how I have cared for my daughter with a metabolic disorder and CP by people in the know who say I have done well by reducing PT and just living. I have read books to my kids and encouraged them. I have loved myself, if not fully, at least I have tried, and told myself it is OK to gain weight while I am in triple recovery, and I bought clothes for me in this size, to reconfirm my affirmation. Firm is a word that partly fits, except for when I jiggle a lot. I have prayed and meditated, though not always with feelings of peace. I have felt optimism, pessimism but less so, hope, despair (natch) but then, hope some more, belief I can truly make my journals of turmoil into a book that might help others recover from trauma and despair, doubt, and, ultimately, belief, again. We have been to the zoo, swimming lessons, the lawn mower repair shop, book club, the store (too many times to count reliably) and I almost set up the computer again to receive pix so I can catch up on holiday and event posts.
Crap, I am pooped. But also, I am having some extra coffee so I can keep going.
So we had our clinic visit at Shriner's Hospital yesterday, and the verdict is in...Hannah rocks. I sort of knew this but it is great to be told. I really struggle with accepting acknowledgment for doing well as a parent, because I am so full of self defeating thoughts about my abilities to take care of kids with better than expected needs, but the truth is, I have done well by her. Dr. Mike said so! In fact his words were "best job ever!" But enough of me and my issues, she is rocking it all, so much that we continue to not brace her during the day so she is not inhibited in her voluntary movements. We will continue the night stretching brace and knee brace to make the AFO effective when she might otherwise bend her leg during sleep. I was given the advice that ... Are you ready? ... We need not go to PT but once a year to have an eval and get ideas for activities but life is the PT Hannah needs right now, so I should encourage her to be as active as possible, continue taking walks in our hilly neighborhood, continue going to the bounce facility regularly, continue with dance and any sport or activity that she enjoys, continue to have a big variety of footwear (especially cowboy boots) and so on. We will continue with OT visits and activities, as her hand and arm still need more development but my treating team doesn't think surgeries or bracing will be needed for her gait and mobility. Ahem. Yep, she rocks. Of course we could have increased spasticity with a growth spurt but really the leg spasticity is still dynamic spasticity only. Basically, no need to borrow trouble and look for negative outcomes. And PT in life rather than at the clinic.
Oh, happy day. Thanks be to God, Early Intervention, the Angel of PT, and an awesome kid. My heart is full.
Some of the craziest sounding PTSD symptoms I have involve the sensation of skittering on my feet while my mind is racing as I try to get things done. All of the body stuff is just plain weird but certain things are so nonsensical I don't like to even describe them, so saying I feel I am skittering out of control when I just need to do an errand is the best I can do. I know and am conscious of the fact that I am not required to go one hundred miles an hour but I feel as if I should and as I think of the steps involved, to say, get groceries, I feel mounting tension and so I just stop and do less or nothing. This explains why my house looks so bad, the do less feature, and also is part of why I seem to do nothing compared to pre-PTSD /sobriety life. I am going to check with my therapist on Thursday but I think the unease I feel that sort of paralyzes me is really about doing too much, the perfectionism trait common to addicts/alcoholics/women who work and deal with special needs kids and a million other things. All this therapy I have been getting and I just figured out I need to give myself permission to fail. Bugger.
I used to post on Grace in Small Things with some regularity, and then totally got out of the habit when sometime after my mom's strokes and my colossal butt breaking fall on the ice my substance abuse turned into substance dependence and bit by bit I stopped feeling all that much gratitude. Certainly I was grateful to get clean but still there were so many things to not be grateful for that gratitude didn't rise to the top of my emotional pool very often lately, but today it did, and I posted this at GiST. Take that, gloom.
You are lovely people, you know that? Sitting around feeling, sharing, and receiving gratitude and joy! I did miss you . . . I came back to my blog a few weeks ago, and felt too angsty to get back to thinking about things I am grateful for . . . but of course I should because it makes me feel better. Schmutzie's Instagram email today inspired me, so here goes . . .
1. I didn't die while addicted to pain pills, and now I am clean and won't ever flirt with such a thing again. Big YAY there, obviously.
2. My husband may be dead from suicide but I am not, and I have children who are most decidedly alive, and playing heartily in a very lively fashion.
3. Life has potential for MORE good things to come my way, and today I remember that.
4. Mistakes, depression, anxiety, and PTSD may be a part of my life but need not be a way of life.
5. This totally improved my perspective today. Yay!
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.
There ought to be a mathematical formula for that but it escapes me. We celebrated multiple times in multiple ways, including violently colored cupcakes delivered to her day care / summer camp class, sure to wind up even the most peaceful of kiddos. There is a pile of real angst here, that for all the critical thoughts I had for Lord Honey not doing much to help me help Hannah, at least he showed up to the party on a holiday and now he doesn't do that.
For reasons that escape me entirely, I can't load pix directly from my ipad so I will have to do a bonus birthday post when I can jump that technological hurdle, but the fast facts are:
The Sophia the First talking castle - big hit
Cheap clip on earrings and amulets - huge hits
Bouncing at Jump Around Utah with the pals - another birthday party success
For me, my kids' birthdays are always a time for review, and so I looked back to Hannah's first birthday post on this blog, entitled Lucky, and indeed I know that I am. I love you, Little Bunny.
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.
Folks, you've been mighty patient with me, and I thank you for that. I never finished boasting about Hannah's birthday. I haven't yet told you of the process of closing out our case with Early Intervention and the bittersweet farewell to the occupational therapist we had for more than two years, and the sixth bureaucratic caseworker in the same span of time. And of course, having the relationship change between our family and Michael Workman, the Angel of PT, without whose Bamboo Brace we would not be where we are today. And then I didn't get to tell you about our preparations for kindergarten for Claire, or the choice to keep Hannah in the group of the people on the younger end of her day care class - the ones who are "not quite ready" to be a Busy Bee and so will be Big Ladybugs, at least for the time being. And how this decision concerns me as it makes me wonder of the wisdom of keeping Hannah, with her late summer birthday, in the cohort that would be her regularly assigned class or might I, instead, hold her back a year so the physical disparities are not so great between her and her classmates and yet leaving her less intellectually challenged. In her preschool class, no one else knows all their letters (and has done so for eight months) and yet many others can speak more clearly about the letters they do in fact know. I haven't told you how I worry that the decision I make for this year will not bind us to a certain result in kindergarten - but the choice I make in our kindergarten year will indeed bind us for the rest of her school career. How will I get that one right?
I also haven't told you how delightful the two girls are to be around. Fart jokes aside, they have lovely manners and they are wonderfully loving to each other (excepting the odd and oddly lethal sounding disputes over the toy of the moment). I think they truly miss being in the same school even though they didn't play together on a daily basis there. Hannah was given a chance to select a sucker from a large jar as bribery for allowing a medical assistant to weigh and measure her, and she took two - so she could give one to her sister - and then wouldn't even open hers until she saw big sis later on and could present it herself. I haven't told you how joyful Claire really is - even in the roughest moments. Case in point - the new kindergarten schedule has us waking so, so, so early (compared to last month, that is) and when I went to wake her she threw her arm around my neck and said "Mommy! Mommy! Woo-woo-woo!!" (the traditional family way to praise someone about virtually anything). At 7:40 a.m.! I think she likes kindergarten.
I haven't told you how discombobulated I am to not have to consider the dog when I want to slip out the back door unnoticed, or I start to pour water in her bowl until I realize her bowl is no longer needed. We failed to adequately recognize the extraordinary effort she put into cleaning the floor, and have had to increase the mopping schedule considerably and we still are not up to Sophie's standard of cleanliness.
And finally, I haven't told of Hannah's extraordinary progress in gross motor skills generally and in foot function specifically that led her treating physician to decide that she didn't need to wear an AFO, and we'll re-evaluate in six months but it looks quite as if this is a child who might not spend her childhood in braces.
And so we say goodbye to footwear like this:
And hello to cheap footwear from Target - every girl's dream.
I started this post at the beginning of September. I have moved it forward in my drafts folder since September 1st. Getting this out is why I said I'd post all month, although I didn't. But even though I've not resolved all my issues, the load gets lighter day by day, just because I was going to tell you this. Aren't you effective little therapists, you! You should be charging more. Hey, those pants look great on you!
So, Hannah had a stroke. We thought she had anoxic brain damage as a result of her metabolic crash two days after her birth. To avoid the "MCADD babies can't be allowed to fast" issue, we waited until August 27 to get her MRI, and the findings are twofold: a stroke occurred sometime in the past, and also something akin to anoxic brain injury but not looking very textbooky, so much so that the neurologist couldn't fully interpret it and referred me to the neuroradiologist who did the analysis. It is still freaking me out. Like the dogs in Up, and their immediate reaction upon even thinking of small furry bushy tailed chattering creatures, I find myself shrieking (only on the inside) STROKE!!! My thoughts race from MY BABY HAD A STROKE (in all caps) to oh my God how can she be so cute! So determined! So smart! So joyful, and frankly, so pleased to be her. How can anything be bad with a child like that? STROKE! Did you see her just use her right hand? Watch her run! See her joy level? That kid is pleased with herself. STROKE!
I went on antidepressants approaching a year ago - my infant was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, I work full time, and getting her up and moving was taking a huge toll on me, and I couldn't keep my shit together at all. I hate to cry that much, and especially in front of either child as I hate to make either of them think they make me cry, and I hate crying anyway because it gives me incurable headaches and then I'm just not me. I switched to a different antidepressant when I stopped nursing/pumping altogether and it is a better fit for me, and I am eternally grateful such things exist to push me through, besides my love of cheese and candy. Now that I finally got an MRI of my my baby's brain, and found out she had an actual stroke, I am back to the beginning of the grieving and the anger and I am now obsessively thinking all the time "wow, see her learn that new thing. STROKE!! " This bouncing back and forth between thoughts of such extremes is wiping me out. But look at her walking, running, using to learn her hand, MY BABY HAD A STROKE and on and on in a cycle of HORROR! JOY! HORROR! JOY! I feel like I might be getting a taste of the manic depressive lifestyle as my mind cycles wildly with "my life is better now than it's ever been" and MY BABY HAD A STROKE. Let's just say I am fond of Xanax, and glad I am no longer pumping and unable to take such a gift as a muscle relaxer. Someone whose blog I like to read mentioned thinking of trying some therapy to deal with anxiety. I've never done therapy because I know if I talk about what is on my mind I will cry for an hour and get a whanging headache and I just can't see how it will help me. If my fellow blogger gets benefits from this, it will help me reconsider my position, maybe, but if I have now found four hours in a week to get to Jazzercise how could I possibly give those hours up for a crying headache, when instead, (turn on your inner Bee Gees soundtrack) "you should be dancing YEAH! Whatcha doin' on yer back?? Yeah-ah-ah Whatcha doin' on your back?? Yeah-ah-ah! You should be dancin', YEAH!!"
In my heart of hearts I think it is completely legitimate to feel cheated and angry and everything else. I feel many of these feelings because my daughter, my dear sweet daughter who only deserves the good in life, is afflicted with CP, the after effects of a stroke, and so on, and I am angry, jealous, overwhelmed and simultaneously filled with joy over every small accomplishment and blessed not to have lost her and frankly sometimes I feel completely whacked out because I am SO UP and SO DOWN at the same time. It is doing my head in. I think we have to forgive ourselves for these feelings we don't like, give them recognition and don't blame ourselves because feelings are feelings and you have to feel them, and you can't beat yourself up over it because you remember those feelings and cry at stoplights. And since I started this post, at the beginning of the month, even as I moved it forward and forward in the drafts folder, I have cried less, and felt more joy. WHOMP! upside my head, because that all makes so much sense.
Hannah is going through this amazing blossoming transitional phase as she now goes with the big babies, the twos, at day care and spends all day walking on the slidy shifty wood chip playground, and interacting now with the kids her age instead of the ones who were at the barely walking stage, and she is an absolute delight to behold. She understands everything I say, and while I was on the verge of doing a speech eval, but dreading having any more damn therapy, in the last two weeks she has said at least twenty new words, many of which she continues to use, and tried out sounds of others. She'll say "Hi Mama!" (a two word sentence!!) or "Hi Dada" or "Hi doggie" and today said "thank you" to someone she doesn't even know particularly well. Tonight she pointed to the fruit bowl and said apple and after we all shared an apple and the girls wanted Cheetos, I held out a Cheeto (natural Cheetos only, here) and said "say Cheeto, Hannah!" - she did and it was clear as a bell. I praised her and handed her a Cheeto and she said "thank you." She loves to use her right hand when I cue her to and have me praise her. She stuffs asparagus spears in her hand and waives them around for praise. She gets all smiley and flirty, and when I'm not making her use her right hand she is still more two handed all the time, sometimes just to get me to praise her. She is amazing and then I get this neurological news - I've not actually met with the doc yet as she was off the whole next week, and when she had time for a short call, she told me the results were too complex for her to interpret and I should speak to the neuroradiologist. I think I will follow Jo's advice and just not call him. This big damn bag of HIGHs and LOWs cycling in my head all day long is plenty of fun, I'm not sure I want an expert to give doom and gloom, when I can just work with my glorious daughter and enjoy her. I'm kind of more manic and nervous than ever, trying to be uber special needs mom, and kind of my happiest ever to see my results with my girls. They are some effective little charmers. It is like a Hallmark special here all the time, what with the learning and giggle fits and the sister kisses and hugs, and the joy they show to be with each other. Every time one kisses the other to cheer her up from some injury or pratfall I think my heart will burst with joy. Even Hannah, despite all the selfishness of being two, will go hug Claire if she has fallen (but she wisely does not when it is obvious Claire is overreacting, which I find hysterical). Claire, who is a very astute observer, has picked up on my cues and watches Hannah and praises her for using her right hand - very specifically -"Hannah, you put your necklace on using Righty! Good job Hannah!" And at least once a day, Claire tells me I am the best mom in town. I think they like me! Right now, they really like me!
I know it won't always be so blissful. My wise big sister tells me the good gets better and the hard gets harder, and I know I'll be shattered when they start doing the things I did (Lord help us all) and Hannah won't necessarily escape some surgeries and procedures to keep her progress progressing, but just look at the videos I've posted here and tell me I shouldn't wear rose colored lenses. And then, SQUIRREL.
This was the reply from my friend when I had texted to her "sux" in reply when she texted me that she couldn't join us on our trip to the local farm park. Since I happened to be by a rooster at the time, I sent that picture back in response to her question, and said she should be glad I wasn't by the pigs or cows.
Obviously my friend and I can slip into pre-teen behavior at the drop of a hat. I've been thinking a lot about development lately, as I wonder whether Hannah needs speech therapy to get going, and also as I watch both she and her sister changing nearly by the day. I had asked Claire to ride the pony at the farm for me, to show Hannah that pony ride was in fact a good thing, and Claire answered that she would, because she had "big sister powers." She changed her mind though, and would not ride to inspire Hannah because she found the pony's pen too stinky. Big sister powers indeed. Claire is so verbally skilled that she picks up things said near her just one time, including song lyrics. Lately you'll hear her singing "shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you, from doing all the things in life you'd like to" after my recent Smiths festival. When she wore a shirt and sandals with rhinestones we played Rhinestone Cowboy a few times, and now you'll hear her tonelessly singing "I'm gonna be where the lights are shining on me!" So tonight, when Jason was running through a series of things on Pandora, I told him not to mention the name Cherry Poppin' Daddies under pain of death, but I was perfectly comfortable dancing naked to the Violent Femmes' Blister in the Sun this morning, go figure.
Hannah's physical development just sent her flying by leaps and bounds with her new found mobility and she walks around the house just to walk, and climbs into the Flintstone style cars at the day care in the big room and howls if made to leave. She only accidentally said "pig" when she saw a balloon over the meat counter at the store and will not under any circumstances repeat this word. She loves to have me read to her and makes me name any picture or image she points to. Shorter board books, or those she has memorized are her forte, and although she'll choose "Little Fur Family" it is too long for her and she loses interest when the fur child gets to the fish and she wants to skip to the parents holding the fur child's paw and singing to him in bed. In bigger news, her "ooh ooh" sound made every time she shes a monkey of any sort will now come out as "ooh ooh, aah, aah" so I presume she is making headway with speech. Her "un-uh" to tell me no can be delivered with wide ranging inflection. And every now and then, just every once in a while, she will forget that it pisses her off and she'll turn the page of a board book with her right hand just because I usually make her do it. Baby steps for righty!
I am thinking we are in for a period of adjustment coming up as Claire goes to summer camp and will have outings four days a week, including two days of swimming lessons, and with truncated naps most days. Hannah will need to adjust her feelings about a pony and a helmet for hippotherapy. As a child I saw summer as almost a period of stagnation, not development. My memories are mostly post reading so I remember summers by what books I devoured but it seems to me now that by having routines change so dramatically we will be in a period of rapid growth, as Claire goes out every day, and Hannah's wee class prepares to join the "teddy bears" which will require her to be able to walk in the wood chip playground. I say, prepare for Armageddon, I am tired already.
Hannah used her crawling skills to great effect at finding eggs. See her on an uneven and unfamiliar surface? Isn't she just a wee star at crawling?
Notice her careful examination of shiny things. Next stop, jewelry.
Claire got 31 eggs in the little kid egg hunt. Only one child in her group got more (40) but this kid was seven years old and significantly taller. Significantly. She has a future in hunting. Hunting what I don't exactly know, but I think she'll be very effective.
It's hard to go to bed after eating all those Peeps.
I heard this week that a criminal defendant was pulled over and about to be arrested for DUI when the arresting officer found him driving amidst a cloud of pot smoke. Later I learned from his probation officer that he was not charged with a drug offense when it was determined that he was not indeed smoking pot, but instead smoking Spice, a weedlike substance that is, in fact, not weed. It looks like weed, smells just like pot, and is available at local headshops for purchase. I had to ask the probation officer I had been speaking to "Wait - this here weed is for those who aren't cool enough to smoke pot but want others to believe they are cool enough? Who wants to be thought to be that cool, but really isn't cool enough to smoke pot? Who??" I spent some time pondering what the purpose might be - not wanting to fail a drug test at work but not wanting to lose face with homies? Is it like a pregnant woman who misses beer and gets an O'Douls out of sentimentality? I pictured a woman who has fake breasts, fake nails, dyed hair, and an O'Douls out on the lawn at a summer concert, sending a Spice joint down the row, smiling and saying "pass it on!" Um, I laughed. A lot. Because I am too cool to smoke fake pot in order to be thought cooler than I am.
It all got a bit less funny when we realized it is actually a drug which is impairing and which contains some variant of cannabinoids but is different from dope on a molecular level and is therefore dopey but not dopey enough to be illegal. Yet. So it is way less funny and one more thing for parents to be concerned about, as it now gives a basis for those wacky younguns to insist a water pipe really is for smoking something legal. Twenty five years ago I might have saved up my babysitting money to buy Spice, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.
My kitchen clock is meant to look Victorian, with scrolly letters and an aged look, which is demonstrated by its representation of fake mold. Yes, fake mold. I realized this some time after I hung it on my wall. I decided I had to keep it until it wore out but I vowed then not to ever buy anything that represented fake decay. Real decay maybe, but no more fake decay.
She calls this her Belle dress because it makes her feel like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. At other moments it is her Bo-Peep dress, and when she puts it on I have to get on my hands and knees and say Baa-Baaaaaa and eat 'maginary grass. Or get back in the barn.
Time? Where have you gone? You frickin' taskmaster. You've left me here twisting in the wind, a cold and bitter wind I might add. If I destroy a clock and a calendar in a ritual burning and I perform all the right incantations could I get some time added to my life? I see that bumper sticker that says time spent fishing cannot be deducted from a man's life, but if I paid to add some fish to that guy's river could I get a couple extra hours?
Today found me taking a day off work, sending the girls to day care, sorting through the entire mighty toy collection in our living room so I could downsize it to make way for new items that might be coming if a certain redhead stops screaming no at me. We like a largish sort of tree, once that needs its own zip code, so it is best to remove some pieces of furniture before the tree gets here. All of this meant that I might as well dust the mantle so I can proudly display my Christmas cards sans dust bunnies and parts of dead flies, and I finished up eleventy zillion Christmas cards but didn't get them to the post office, and I baked twelve loaf pan sized carrot cakes of joy to serve as gifts to day care teachers and neighbors who please me. I sent clouds of powdered sugar out beyond the expected mess perimeter making the cream cheese frosting and blamed Lord Honey for the cake he dropped and broke (I think he wanted to ensure one carrot cake would stay with us.
For a few days earlier in the week I felt like I could make it all happen. Sure it would be busy, there would be no knitting or blogging time as every non work non child moment would be filled with planning, purchasing, ordering or wrapping, but still I was filled with the joy of the season and the feeling I could do it all. Not any more. Now I think I might scream. My mind is filled with questions such as why the tender touch doll available in different races has the Latino doll smiling the most, white next, black after that (and not a big smile) and the Asian doll is virtually not smiling at all. Why? What about these posable wooden families who come in "contemporary outfits, these 4-pc wood families have flexible arms and legs for sitting, standing, and greeting company." Will they have a lot of company? The laundry day play set will likely fall flat at our house, since my children have never seen me use an iron. Some of these things just plague me. And I know I'll be running around next week without a bit of peace. Not one bit.
Five days left people, five days left. Ho, ho, ho.
Fricken' hell, Friday it's already here, again time moves so damn fast
I could do without each year's Daylight Savings Time. Changes steal my sleep.
And how do the days ever since I turned adult march by so quickly
Haiku Friday, brought to you by the number I don't think so and the letter L for late. Read this one while you think of "They Might Be Giants" singing their song Older . . . and join in.
Mother of two, step-mom to two more. Married. Work in the theatre of the absurd, behind the curtain, and pulling the strings. First daughter was a preemie, new Baby has MCADD, or Medium Chain Acyl-CoA Dehydrogenase Deficiency (Mighty Crappy Aggravating Disorder) and mild Cerebral Palsy, because the fun never stops around here. Foggy mind. If I wore a button it would say: Lose mind now, Ask me how! Things you might find here: bits and pieces of fluff about babies with wacky disorders, mommying, knitting very slowly, and stuff I don't say at work. If you want to send me free stuff just email me at gingerbblog at gmail.
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