Sunday night Annie woke up screaming - SCREAMING - at 3 in the morning. She had a fever and was hitting me on the arm, sweaty and inconsolable. After a frantic phone call to her grandpa (who is also, thank-my-lucky-stars, her doctor) and a feeding, as well as a hit of Tylenol, she was semi-asleep. She fussed on and off so much that I eventually put her in bed with me, breaking my long-standing rule against letting my kids sleep with me. But a girl's gotta get some rest and this was the only way.
Nestled against her hot little body I apparently slept well enough to have this dream:
I'm in a corporate office that's not a corporate office. It's more like the living and dining room of a mid-century ranch house and all the executives are circled around the dining room table/conference room table having a meeting. There's a phone booth against the wall where the two rooms meet. I'm feeding Anne, but then she pukes all over me.
I go to the phone booth and it turns out it's a shower, so I lean in and start rinsing my arm and brushing off my hands and clothes. I keep glancing over at the table. Everyone there is dressed like it's the 80s, like a scene from that movie where Diane Keaton inherits a baby and doesn't know what to do with her so she moves to Vermont and makes gourmet applesauce.
The next thing I know, my hair is getting soaked and - wait! - I'm naked! Only the meeting is still going on. Grace is in the corner trying to comfort Anne, who's not happy at all. And I'm NAKED! But still the meeting toddles on, while I try to keep my back to the group. (As though seeing only my butt somehow makes my nakedness less embarrassing.) Finally the meeting ends and I am able to get out of the shower, like I had been trapped in there somehow. And then I'm wrapped in a towel and a smarmy, blonde woman with a Mary Tyler Moore hairdo comes over to ask me some dumb question about business stuff.
And this is where it gets good....
The next thing I know, I've grabbed her by the hair, a handful of blonde flip curl in each fist, and I'm shaking her, yelling, "YOU ARE NOT HELPING ME!!!"
Then I woke up.
So there's a glimpse into my psyche.
P.S. Turns out Anne had an ear infection.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Milestones and the joy of de-cluttering.
Poor guy. He's assigned to my house today, a house with a driveway that goes uphill, 21 stairs to the front door, another 17 to the upstairs bedrooms. It's 93 degrees with not a cloud in the sky. The dude is seriously buff.
He's here - finally - to pick up Anne's oxygen supplies. Two concentrators, one huge back-up tank, seven small portable tanks and a couple of little machines with oddly old-fashioned looking dials that do I don't know what. Annie has been off the sauce, so to speak, since late March, but the supplies have lingered. They don't like to let you get rid of those too hastily since getting them placed back in your house is much more costly and difficult than just keeping them around for, say.... an extra five months.
Finally he's done, having lugged all of this heavy and ungainly equipment down all those stairs by himself. I give him a cold bottle of water that's been taking up space in the back of the fridge then turn back toward the girls, doing a shamelessly bad running man-style dance in celebration. It's go-on, it's go-on... the oxygen is go-on! In the kitchen I yank out the garbage can and stuff it with endless yards of clear tubing and small plastic humidifier bottles. I jerk the rug off the floor that had been placed to keep the concentrator from vibrating on our wood floors, and tuck a dust-coated, unopened box of unidentified supplies under my arm. Now it's my turn down the 21 stairs, down the hill of a driveway that's white-hot under the blistering sun, down to the garbage can with my eyes closed to slits like a vampire peeking out from his coffin to see what the neighborhood humans could possibly be doing with all this daylight. With a soft thud, it's all gone.
Finally.
Tomorrow it will be one year since I was hospitalized with my cervix inexplicably dilated to 5 centimeters. I was, literally, hours away from giving birth to a baby who would have been too fragile to survive. I wasn't in labor, but in the end my body couldn't keep her in. The seven days of bed rest gave Anne just enough of a boost - in the form of lung-building steroids and simple time - to get her over the hump to viability. This is just a polite way of saying that she would have a chance at survival. Viable. Survival. They sound alike, but the difference between the two is a vast chasm.
This has been a life changing year. A year of decluttering, both literally and metaphorically. Our priorities have come into crystal-clear focus, our needs pared down to those most simple and treasured. Our worries sorted into Things That Really Matter and Things That Kinda Don't. I mean, yeah, I'd still like to have a VW bug convertible for my 40th birthday (as Chad promised to me long ago) and I'd also like a couple of those awesome cashmere sweaters from J. Crew this fall and to go on a cruise for our 15th anniversary in November. That would be cool, but it's also cool if we stay home in our old non-cashmere sweaters.
I'm going upstairs to do something with the wide open space at the front of my closet where the oxygen concentrator used to be. I'm going to try to leave it open, like a breathing space in a sea of clothes and shoes and belts. That's how I feel getting all that equipment out of the house. Like I've come out of a fog and found a breathing space after a year of worry, fear, doctor's appointments, unwanted medical knowledge and breathless waiting as Annie has grown.
On August 20th she'll be 1. What a year.
He's here - finally - to pick up Anne's oxygen supplies. Two concentrators, one huge back-up tank, seven small portable tanks and a couple of little machines with oddly old-fashioned looking dials that do I don't know what. Annie has been off the sauce, so to speak, since late March, but the supplies have lingered. They don't like to let you get rid of those too hastily since getting them placed back in your house is much more costly and difficult than just keeping them around for, say.... an extra five months.
Finally he's done, having lugged all of this heavy and ungainly equipment down all those stairs by himself. I give him a cold bottle of water that's been taking up space in the back of the fridge then turn back toward the girls, doing a shamelessly bad running man-style dance in celebration. It's go-on, it's go-on... the oxygen is go-on! In the kitchen I yank out the garbage can and stuff it with endless yards of clear tubing and small plastic humidifier bottles. I jerk the rug off the floor that had been placed to keep the concentrator from vibrating on our wood floors, and tuck a dust-coated, unopened box of unidentified supplies under my arm. Now it's my turn down the 21 stairs, down the hill of a driveway that's white-hot under the blistering sun, down to the garbage can with my eyes closed to slits like a vampire peeking out from his coffin to see what the neighborhood humans could possibly be doing with all this daylight. With a soft thud, it's all gone.
Finally.
Tomorrow it will be one year since I was hospitalized with my cervix inexplicably dilated to 5 centimeters. I was, literally, hours away from giving birth to a baby who would have been too fragile to survive. I wasn't in labor, but in the end my body couldn't keep her in. The seven days of bed rest gave Anne just enough of a boost - in the form of lung-building steroids and simple time - to get her over the hump to viability. This is just a polite way of saying that she would have a chance at survival. Viable. Survival. They sound alike, but the difference between the two is a vast chasm.
This has been a life changing year. A year of decluttering, both literally and metaphorically. Our priorities have come into crystal-clear focus, our needs pared down to those most simple and treasured. Our worries sorted into Things That Really Matter and Things That Kinda Don't. I mean, yeah, I'd still like to have a VW bug convertible for my 40th birthday (as Chad promised to me long ago) and I'd also like a couple of those awesome cashmere sweaters from J. Crew this fall and to go on a cruise for our 15th anniversary in November. That would be cool, but it's also cool if we stay home in our old non-cashmere sweaters.
I'm going upstairs to do something with the wide open space at the front of my closet where the oxygen concentrator used to be. I'm going to try to leave it open, like a breathing space in a sea of clothes and shoes and belts. That's how I feel getting all that equipment out of the house. Like I've come out of a fog and found a breathing space after a year of worry, fear, doctor's appointments, unwanted medical knowledge and breathless waiting as Annie has grown.
On August 20th she'll be 1. What a year.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
What dog barf? Part 2.
"Eewwww! Mom! What is that?"
Grace has spotted the dog barf.
"It looks like a giant earwig."
She is pointing to the wad of regurgitated grass lying just so next to the actual barf/bile part.
I pretend to glance back as I'm wrestling Anne's car seat through the door without hitting Lauren in the head.
"It's dog puke," I say. "Not a giant earwig." Now I'm laughing. "But that's pretty creative, Gracie."
"We need to clean it up, mommy," she says, looking back furtively as I urge her to keep moving.
"We've gotta go, honey. I don't have time. Daddy will get it." I hope I sound convincing, but I'm really just thinking there is no way I'm cleaning that up. I'm not.
Tuesday night the puke was gone.
Grace has spotted the dog barf.
"It looks like a giant earwig."
She is pointing to the wad of regurgitated grass lying just so next to the actual barf/bile part.
I pretend to glance back as I'm wrestling Anne's car seat through the door without hitting Lauren in the head.
"It's dog puke," I say. "Not a giant earwig." Now I'm laughing. "But that's pretty creative, Gracie."
"We need to clean it up, mommy," she says, looking back furtively as I urge her to keep moving.
"We've gotta go, honey. I don't have time. Daddy will get it." I hope I sound convincing, but I'm really just thinking there is no way I'm cleaning that up. I'm not.
Tuesday night the puke was gone.
Monday, August 9, 2010
What dog barf?
This morning my dog puked in the basement, near the door from the house to the garage. I noticed. But when I left at 8:40 (leaving Chad to get three girls ready and out the door on his own) I pretended I hadn't. Noticed, that is.
I mean, a girl can't do everything, ya know?
I mean, a girl can't do everything, ya know?
Friday, July 30, 2010
Of road trips, blueberries and laundry.
I just went to the back room to fish my cell phone out of my lunch bag in the refrigerator.
And now that I'm back at my desk I don't remember what I needed my cell phone for in the first place. Which is a little bit alarming.
One of my grandmothers has dementia (caused by hardening of the arteries) and I'm fairly convinced my mother is on the verge of early onset Alzheimer's, although not from hardening of the arteries. Alzheimer's is really not the way to go, so I'm hoping that today's brain fart - not the first one I've had today either, I think – is more about brain overload than the beginnings of cottage cheese brain.
I haven't written in what feels like forever. This is partly because it's summer and I tend to hurry through stuff at work to get home and do something more fun. It's also because work has been screamingly busy. And it's also because I've been on brain overload. Here's what I've been up to in the last, say.... three weeks.
• One daytrip to Riley Hospital (three hours one way) to get Anne's g-tube replaced after it fell out of her belly while my stepmom was feeding her. Putting it back in took approximately 2.5 minutes and then back in the car for another three hours.
• One trip to Tampa to make a new business presentation that included a lovely few hours of lying by the pool, reading a magazine UNINTERRUPTED.
• Two trips to the high school to get B signed up for this fall.
• One impromptu pool party that included the largest marshmallows in the known universe
• One baby shower for two moms.
• A trip to the blueberry patch with all three girls and no sunscreen (duh)
• Another pool party that was originally scheduled for a completely different day.
• One really fun White Sox game that kept me up waaaay too late for the second new business meeting I've had this month that was the following day.
• Umpteen trips back and forth between daycare, my sister's house, the office, the place that repairs our car, the grocery store, the beach, my own laundry room.....
I don't know.... looking back, we've been having a blast. Lots of time with friends, lots of beautiful beach days. But too often it all seems to happen in a rush. Too often it seems like one thing gets pushed to the back in favor of another, whether it's keeping up with the laundry, reading bedtime stories too instead of just singing a goodnight song, getting that ongoing web content project actually done, cooking a real meal with real food, spending time just hanging out with my husband who is really fun to hang out with or cleaning the desk drawer that is starting to look an awful lot like my phone drawer - not good.
It's hard to admit it, especially to myself, but I am NOT superwoman. So I'm working on tackling one thing at a time. Paying real attention to that thing. It's amazing how much less pressured I feel when I make a list and do one. thing. at. a. time. It's also amazingly liberating to realize that no one is judging me more harshly than myself. So I've been working on talking to myself in my head the way I would talk to my friends, which is with kindness and a for-god's-sake-give-yourself-a-break good humor.
I think I'm finished here. Time to move on to my next task - scouting a garage door to see if it will make a good shooting location for an upcoming project. Then I have to come back and locate an actor who can juggle while wearing a mail carrier's uniform. Maybe he'll have some tips for me on keeping all these balls up in the air.
And now that I'm back at my desk I don't remember what I needed my cell phone for in the first place. Which is a little bit alarming.
One of my grandmothers has dementia (caused by hardening of the arteries) and I'm fairly convinced my mother is on the verge of early onset Alzheimer's, although not from hardening of the arteries. Alzheimer's is really not the way to go, so I'm hoping that today's brain fart - not the first one I've had today either, I think – is more about brain overload than the beginnings of cottage cheese brain.
I haven't written in what feels like forever. This is partly because it's summer and I tend to hurry through stuff at work to get home and do something more fun. It's also because work has been screamingly busy. And it's also because I've been on brain overload. Here's what I've been up to in the last, say.... three weeks.
• One daytrip to Riley Hospital (three hours one way) to get Anne's g-tube replaced after it fell out of her belly while my stepmom was feeding her. Putting it back in took approximately 2.5 minutes and then back in the car for another three hours.
• One trip to Tampa to make a new business presentation that included a lovely few hours of lying by the pool, reading a magazine UNINTERRUPTED.
• Two trips to the high school to get B signed up for this fall.
• One impromptu pool party that included the largest marshmallows in the known universe
• One baby shower for two moms.
• A trip to the blueberry patch with all three girls and no sunscreen (duh)
• Another pool party that was originally scheduled for a completely different day.
• One really fun White Sox game that kept me up waaaay too late for the second new business meeting I've had this month that was the following day.
• Umpteen trips back and forth between daycare, my sister's house, the office, the place that repairs our car, the grocery store, the beach, my own laundry room.....
I don't know.... looking back, we've been having a blast. Lots of time with friends, lots of beautiful beach days. But too often it all seems to happen in a rush. Too often it seems like one thing gets pushed to the back in favor of another, whether it's keeping up with the laundry, reading bedtime stories too instead of just singing a goodnight song, getting that ongoing web content project actually done, cooking a real meal with real food, spending time just hanging out with my husband who is really fun to hang out with or cleaning the desk drawer that is starting to look an awful lot like my phone drawer - not good.
It's hard to admit it, especially to myself, but I am NOT superwoman. So I'm working on tackling one thing at a time. Paying real attention to that thing. It's amazing how much less pressured I feel when I make a list and do one. thing. at. a. time. It's also amazingly liberating to realize that no one is judging me more harshly than myself. So I've been working on talking to myself in my head the way I would talk to my friends, which is with kindness and a for-god's-sake-give-yourself-a-break good humor.
I think I'm finished here. Time to move on to my next task - scouting a garage door to see if it will make a good shooting location for an upcoming project. Then I have to come back and locate an actor who can juggle while wearing a mail carrier's uniform. Maybe he'll have some tips for me on keeping all these balls up in the air.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
My cart runneth over.
It's amazing how often people feel free to comment on some aspect of your life, whether they know you or not, whether it's appropriate or not. I was incredibly, alone at the grocery store, my cart piled high with everything from Flamin' Hot Cheetos (B's rare request - he's either the least picky kid on earth or afraid to ask for what he wants. I can't decide yet.) to baby formula, dog food, laundry soap and coffee creamer. The guy behind me in line had, like, five items and I felt badly that he had gotten stuck behind me.
"I'm sorry you wound up behind me," I said. "It's going to be a while."
He laughed. I laughed. He said, "well you certainly have all ages represented there," and nodded toward my heaping cart.
A flash of annoyance raced across my brain, and then I thought he's right. The kids in my house range from a 17 year-old with a hollow leg to a 10 month-old experiencing sweet potatoes for the first time. There's also me, my husband and our neighbor/grandmother-in-chief, Grandma J., a dog and a cat. Our dietary and personal grooming needs are varied and many. We eat at home a lot. And we go through toilet paper like, well... water.
And so my cart runneth over. And my view of grocery shopping - a chore I once hated - has changed. Now, every time I lean into the cracked plastic handle of the cart, heaving it around the corner by pushing my own body weight against that one wobbly wheel, I realize that I am blessed with abundance. Blessed with the ability to afford it all, to be sure. But blessed completely with an abundance of people to love, feed, groom, do laundry for, read stories to, laugh with, fall asleep watching a movie with, share my life with. What I give to them I get back, and more.
Now if someone would just help me put it all away.....
"I'm sorry you wound up behind me," I said. "It's going to be a while."
He laughed. I laughed. He said, "well you certainly have all ages represented there," and nodded toward my heaping cart.
A flash of annoyance raced across my brain, and then I thought he's right. The kids in my house range from a 17 year-old with a hollow leg to a 10 month-old experiencing sweet potatoes for the first time. There's also me, my husband and our neighbor/grandmother-in-chief, Grandma J., a dog and a cat. Our dietary and personal grooming needs are varied and many. We eat at home a lot. And we go through toilet paper like, well... water.
And so my cart runneth over. And my view of grocery shopping - a chore I once hated - has changed. Now, every time I lean into the cracked plastic handle of the cart, heaving it around the corner by pushing my own body weight against that one wobbly wheel, I realize that I am blessed with abundance. Blessed with the ability to afford it all, to be sure. But blessed completely with an abundance of people to love, feed, groom, do laundry for, read stories to, laugh with, fall asleep watching a movie with, share my life with. What I give to them I get back, and more.
Now if someone would just help me put it all away.....
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Guilt, with a side of guilt.
Monday - Anne to daycare; Lauren to swimming lessons, then daycare; Grace to basketball camp and - ooops! - a make-up softball game that hubby has known about since last week but forgot to mention. Get to work at about 10, leave at, oh, 3:30.
Tuesday - Lauren to swimming; Grace to camp; at home with Anne for PT appointment. Got to work about 12:30. Left work about 5 and still had to do daycare pick up. Home. For dinner. It's a miracle.
Wednesday - Anne to Auntie's house, Lauren to swimming, Grace to camp, get to work at about 10:15. Pick Grace up at 3 and go straight to Auntie's to round up the littles for another softball game.
Thursday - Lauren to swimming, Anne to daycare, Grace to camp, to work at 10, left for hair appointment at 11:30 (General Sherman's army could not have stopped me from making this appointment), pick up Grace at 3, back to office for an hour then off to Auntie's and daycare to round up the littles for softball game #3. Please God, let us pick up pizza for dinner tonight.
Friday - Lauren to swimming, Grace to camp, Anne may or may not have a speech therapy appointment and/or a 6 month evaluation by Early On - my calendars are conflicting. Honestly? Not sure if I can squeeze this work thing in tomorrow.
Some weeks, if it's not one type of guilt it's another. It's also hoping like hell I can remember where everyone needs to go and actually get them there on time.
Tuesday - Lauren to swimming; Grace to camp; at home with Anne for PT appointment. Got to work about 12:30. Left work about 5 and still had to do daycare pick up. Home. For dinner. It's a miracle.
Wednesday - Anne to Auntie's house, Lauren to swimming, Grace to camp, get to work at about 10:15. Pick Grace up at 3 and go straight to Auntie's to round up the littles for another softball game.
Thursday - Lauren to swimming, Anne to daycare, Grace to camp, to work at 10, left for hair appointment at 11:30 (General Sherman's army could not have stopped me from making this appointment), pick up Grace at 3, back to office for an hour then off to Auntie's and daycare to round up the littles for softball game #3. Please God, let us pick up pizza for dinner tonight.
Friday - Lauren to swimming, Grace to camp, Anne may or may not have a speech therapy appointment and/or a 6 month evaluation by Early On - my calendars are conflicting. Honestly? Not sure if I can squeeze this work thing in tomorrow.
Some weeks, if it's not one type of guilt it's another. It's also hoping like hell I can remember where everyone needs to go and actually get them there on time.
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