Got caught up watching M*A*S*H* marathon: How awesome is M*A*S*H*?  When I was in high school, and being home tutored for most of my classes, M*A*S*H* was on about three different channels at different points during the day, and I made my way through what I assume was all eleven years worth of shows. (M*A*S*H* was only one of a few shows I could watch with Nana and not have to listen to her complain about how horrible the world was during every scene: A show about war, she had no complaints about the downfall of our society; Friends, on the other hand made her think the apocolypse was right around the corner. :shrug:)

Every so often though, I am flipping my way through, and TV Land will have one on that I either didn't catch back then, or have completely forgotten about.  But the one that sucked me in tonight was the one where the reporter comes and does a documentary on the whole crew, and how a M*A*S*H* unit runs, and is basically a highlight reel of the seasons up till that point.  And even though I know it is coming, when they show the clip of Radar reading the message that Colonel Blake has died?  I can't help but tear up.  Considering I didn't watch the show until 13 years after it had gone off the air, I had no idea what was coming, and so it was still unexpected for me, still shocking.  And I thought about what it must have been like, watching the show religiously, back when it first aired, and to have that happen.  It's not real, obviously, but that kick, that gasp, that's real.

When my father died, I had just turned twenty, and we hadn't really spoken - aside from terse politeness and arguments during which he berated me as unsympathetic and I struggled not to cry - for quite a few years.  He was a less-than-functional alcoholic, and I was his oldest daughter, the one who had to take care of all the things he forgot - like having a birthday party for my nine year old sister, or picking up the pieces when he had disappointed my brother yet again, or helping my grandmother figure out how to deal with Child's Services when his ex-girlfriend called and reported him just for spite - and I had, by that point had my fill of it.  He was irresponsible, and I, Ms. Uber Responsible, was just done playing along like everything was fine.  When the back porch door to my grandmother's house would creak open, I would automatically tense, look at the clock, and hope against hope that it was anybody but him.

It was the ultimate reversal: as a little girl, whose daddy was in the navy her entire life, I had spent years wishing that he would come home again.  But during that period, after he'd been kicked out of the Navy and moved back home to live with my grandparents, I spent an awful lot of time wishing he would stay away.

But today, watching M*A*S*H* and remembering that tiny gasp I had when Henry Blake's plane crashed over the Sea of Japan, I was also tackling a chore I'd been putting off for a while - going through the Mass Cards, regular cards, and funeral book that I somehow gained custody of after my father died - and I remembered the much bigger kick, the full body freeze that I felt when my mom told me he had died.

And I remember thinking that it couldn't be true, that I was somehow misunderstanding her, and looking at my brother's face, and the horror and fear that was so clear in his face, and thinking: "I should be feeling like him."  But I was frozen, at first - I'm not sure I can explain how stuck I really seemed to be - it was like people around me were talking and acting in a way I thought was appropriate to the situation, and I was a step back, physically doing the things I knew I should be doing  - heading straight over to my sister and grandmother, holding them while they cried; comforting people at the wake; not breaking down when his mentally disabled brother couldn't understand why he wouldn't get up out of the casket - but I wasn't in my body while I was doing those things.  I did them because that's what you do: wakes and funerals and phone calls and thank you notes - I took the steps one after the other, and did the best I could.

But here I am, twelve years later, having carried all of this stuff - the flower cards and 'guest book' (they should really call it something other than that), the crucifix he held and the ginormous bible they gave us along with his ashes - to the new house, packed away in a box in the basement, forgotten.  Except we're trying to clean the basement, and there was this white paper bag, full of things I didn't want to face, and didn't know what to do with.

Here are all the lists I had to make post-wake, in order to organize the thank you notes, which I had taken charge of (Please, god, give me something to be in charge of!): who knew these people, which great-uncle's church group had sent this card, did anybody have an address for Mr & Mrs So & So?  (My father's death came in the middle of clump of family deaths - one each summer for three years - so I had learned a lot about funeral etiquette at my grandfather's funeral the year before: how you're supposed to put your address on the envelope of the Mass Card, so that grieving people don't have to track you down to say thank you. But my friends, my brother's friends, my sister's friends - they were all young... some as young as nine, and (luckily) inexperienced in the ways of funerals, and so there was some extra legwork to be done.)  

Here are the 45 or so perpetual Spiritual Bouquets, for a guy who was over the Catholic Church and what he called all its hypocrisy.  Here are the smaller cards from the flower bouquets - one from my brother sister and I, one from his mom, one from his brothers and sisters.  And the memory of a card which is missing - that of his volatile ex-girlfriend.

{ I can't seem to find a post in which I talk about how crazy fucked up my father's wake was, but it's long so I'm not going to get it all in here tonight (Maybe tomorrow's post, if I can get it to make sense to anybody who wasn't there).  Suffice it to say, she was not welcomed at the wake, and her flowers were disposed of.  }

But there's all these things and I don't know what you're supposed to do with them: Do I have to hold on to them forever, because it seems disrespectful to just toss them in the recycling?  Should I ask my brother and sister if they want them, even though neither of them are practicing religious anymore either?  I don't know who left me with all of these stupid grown up things to have to think about.

In the end, I weeded through them, keeping some of the ones I figured would be most important (although I still might get rid of those as well: I know who was there for me then, I don't need these cards to prove it), and putting the rest, with a thankful heart, in the bin.  (Even though it felt a little sacrilegious, even to this extremely Ex-Catholic.)  I'll give my brother and sister a heads up that I have some, if they want them, and I'll get rid of the rest, no sense dragging it along if it just feels like baggage.

And I'm surprised by how much baggage there still seems to be.

"The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?"*

It's finally snowing here in Massachusetts - three quarters of the way through January, and the shovels have only been out once (a freak storm the last weekend in October): if that's not some evidence that the climate is screwy, I don't know what is.  I've mentioned before that I find the snow both calming and serene - an unpopular opinion around here, which undoubtedly stems from the fact that I don't do any of the shoveling, or really have to interact with its actual coldness and freeze at all, but I'd much rather it snowed in the winter than rained.  Winter rain is the most depressing weather: too gray and sad, all of the wet and none of the fluff of snow.  It m akes me shiver just to think of it. Spring rains feel necessary, as if we need a good hosing down before moving into the next, and summer rains are almost always exciting: refreshing after the heat, filled with thunder and lightening, moving quick and powerful like.  Rain in the fall is like the clean up crew again - scrubbing clean the trees, stripping things bare and a reminder that the year is coming to an end.  But winter rain serves no purpose - 'it's not cold enough to snow', it tells you,' but it might as well be. You feel how wet this is?  It's all for nothing.'  Snow is just cozy in a way winter rain will never be - even its isolation is beautiful.

No, if there has to be precipitation in the winter, it ought to be snow - something you can watch coming down and remember all the times they cancelled school and you got to watch game shows all day long, or all the snowmen you tried to make that never made it past your shin but you were still proud of them anyways. 

It's funny because last winter it snowed so much they started talking about holding school on Saturdays, kids had missed so much time.  And this year, so far, there's not been more than three or four inches at a time, and most of that has blown or melted away on its own.  Even today, although it's been snowing for a couple of hours now, the grass is still poking through in some spots, the inch or so that we've got seems thin, just enough to muffle things a bit, not even a full blanket.  It's supposed to go for most of the day, though, so there's hope for a more complete covering. 

Either way, I'm planning on spending the day with some hot chocolate, the radio, some blankets and something good to read.  I hope your Saturday is filled with things that you enjoy, as well.  

*J. B. Priestley

In the ball pit

I do this thing where I start thinking - really thinking - about something that's important: Have you noticed this about yourself?  Is there a reason why you have to run your mouth like that/act so awkward around new people/ be unbelievably cranky for no good reason?  And as soon as the truth about the thing starts rushing at me - as soon as I'm starting to get to the meat of the issue, or when it starts to sort of click in my head that this is not a unique occurrence, that I sometimes act like this and maybe it is a pattern... well, when the truth starts rushing at me, I start rushing away.  Is there anybody who needs tending or talking to, or playing with?  Isn't there a show on right now that I can escape into, be mindless with?  Isn't there a book I could read that would take me anywhere but here, facing the truth?  It's such an uncomfortable feeling, this realizing things about yourself, and I would do just about anything to avoid it, I think. 

When it does come, and I have seen the whole, frustrating, ill fitting truth about myself, it sticks in my brain: a large scaly burr just big enough and irritating enough to block out anything else.  I have no other qualities except  this uncomfortable truth - I am no longer a good person, a caring sister, a hard worker - I am only an inveterate gossip, a gigantic fraud, a loathsome individual who feels lonely until she's with people and then wants nothing more than to be left alone.  Even though I know that this is not true - that all the good things I am or do are not obliterated by some newfound/newly understood flaw in my character - it is how it feels, and sometimes how it feels is how it is. 

I have recently come to quite a few uncomfortable realizations about myself, and trying to integrate those things - a certain pettiness here, a confounding inability stick to the straight facts there - into my vision of who I am is proving more difficult than I'd have guessed. I have always known that I wasn't perfect ~ contrary to what others may think, I am well aware that my goody-two shoes image is just something other people see me as - I have never seen myself as such, and wouldn't really care to.  But these inconsistencies in my character - the difference between who I want myself to be and who I really am, these are things I want to fix, to change.  And that means recognizing them first, figuring out how deep they run and (maybe) where they come from, and how to stop doing them.  It's a lot of heavy mental lifting, and, for a person who has limited reserves of any kind of energy - physical, mental, emotional - it certainly seems Sisyphean. 

So I keep looking for low energy escapes - can I ever get my Google Reader below a thousand again?  Is Reddit being entertaining or insulting today?  Is there any way I can get my uncle to have a conversation with people so that they don't think he's an ogre? Let me organize every photo you've ever taken in your whole life! - and then condemning myself for needing these escape routes.  It feels like I'm stumbling around kicking at little pebbles, all the while trying to avoid all the heavy boulders I know I have to move if I want to move forward, but just can't even look at yet. 

It feels that way about everything - about all the work I have to do to manage my illnesses (and the question of when I decided that just 'managing' is enough for me), about all the things in my own behavior that I'd like to change; about all the topics in my family that need addressing, and all the ways we find of not addressing them; about not making time for friends and then wondering why they aren't making time for me; about the world as a whole and all the things spinning out of control in it.  It just feels like there's too many important things that should get looked at, poked at, lifted up and examined, fixed, and I don't want to touch a single one of them. 

A perfect example in the physical world is that my space is still not undecorated from Christmas - oh, the actual decorations are down, but the furniture is still all in the wrong places for every day living.  Thus making it more difficult to do things like get towels, because we moved the cart that holds the towels behind the chair, so you have to climb over the chair to get ready to take a shower.  It's little ridiculous things like that, but also huge life changing things like deciding to call the PT again, and see where that takes me, or actually changing my diet enough to prevent this diabetes thing from happening - and I just don't want to face any of it at all. 

And here I write the necessary caveats that "we've all been sick since Christmas! - and I mean sick sick, like the flu that won't die sick" and "I've just spent two months caring for a wonderful lady, whose head is harder than the stairs she fell down!" and "blah blah blah Chronic Illness, you idiot!" but all of that  - while true and real and just so much - doesn't feel like enough of a reason to let everything else pass me by.  I never feel like I am juggling half of the balls I need to juggle, there's just me, standing with maybe the three or four largest, most fragile balls, throwing them up and catching them (sometimes by the skin of my teeth, but still, catching them), and all the while, the floor around me is littered with a million other smaller balls.... It's basically me, standing up to my waist in the ball pit of Chuck E Cheese, trying to catch all these biggest balls, but knowing I've let a thousand more go.   And not knowing which of those thousand was the next most important - the one that needed me now, and I won't get to it for another three weeks.

I don't know what to do about all that - how to climb out of the ball pit, or juggle better, or even begin identifying the colors of all the stupid things I'm standing in.  I know this feeling will pass, or fade, because it has in the past, but it never goes away... I'm always fumbling something, and I wish I knew how to stop. 

Flu

I suppose, after that title, I don't have to do a lot of explaining as to where I've been.  Without going into too much detail (you're welcome), I had a pretty rough week, and am still on the mend here, but finally feeling semi-human again.  Now I just need Mum to recover from her bug ~ which seems to include a hacking cough from which I was thankfully spared - and then I'll be able to take a real shower again, and up hopefully up that to actual human being.  Just exhausted, mostly, still.  That's going to linger for a bit, I know, which is frustrating. 

I will mention, however, that the flu bug most likely came courtesy of my grandmother's visiting nurse, who TOLD US, the day my grandmother and uncle both came down with it, that she probably brought it in with her the previous day, as "all her patients seemed to be getting it."  Hmm... Maybe - and this is just a thought - you should check your hygiene practices if you're going around spreading the flu to your (mostly elderly & infirm) patients?  I think you might be missing a step somewhere.  Now, if I could just get UJ to hand them all the Purell bottle when the walk in the door.  (Although 3 out of 4 of them always smell like it when they come in, and usually do it again as soon as they take off their coats.  But it's that fourth one that sneaks up on you, I guess.)  Both Grandmother and UJ had it, then I brought it home with me, and poor Mum picked it up last.  Everybody is doing much better, but I'm going to make Mum call the doc tomorrow about that cough (with her COPD, it can get complicated pretty fast). 

So flu.  Which leaves me with no interesting stories, no internet wanderings to report, no nothing.  But I figured I'd check in and tell y'all that, even though this winter has been unseasonably warm, it is still finding ways to kick my ass.  Now, let's have some good stuff happen, so I have things to talk about, shall we?

Am heading to my (overburdened and I know it has erased all the oldest thousands of posts) Google Reader next, to see how all of you are doing out there.  Hope none of it includes the word flu.

On the plus side, though, I did re-watch all of Firefly yesterday (I still haven't written the post about how traumatizing it was when I recently lent the DVDs to my sister and she gave them back because it was - gulp - 'boring and talky'  I may never recover enough to lend them out again); caught a marathon of Quantum Leap (no lie, I definitely had a crush on Dr. Sam Beckett when I was younger.  And yet I didn't think I was a geek?  I obviously did not understand the word); watched 34 episodes of Match Game 76! (I miss game shows: aside from Jeopardy, the ones on now aren't worth watching, and that makes me sad); and cleaned out about 50% of my DVR - so I definitely accomplished something. 

In which I morph from Grumpy to Weepy, all in four short paragraphs!

For a large portion of the day, I felt so grumpy that I didn't think I should be allowed around other humans.  I almost typed "grumpy for no good reason", but then I thought about it, and it was more like "grumpy for a thousand good reasons, but none that I can do anything about right this second", which basically amounts to the exact same thing.  I came here, all prepared to write (yet another) endless rant about lord only knows what, but sometime in the last half hour, while sitting at the table with my family eating a very late dinner, the majority of those bad feelings shrunk down to manageable, and I think I'll save the rant for another day.  For tonight, I think I'll tell you how glad I am that I'm just sitting here, wandering around through the internet, while most of the people I love are accounted for. 

It seems, at least to me, that my life - and the lives of the people I am closest to - has become a series of blundering our way through one emergency to another, from one crisis to the next, ricocheting from one hectic gathering to the last, often leaving very little time for essentials of life, such as breathing or eating.  Every day has taken on an urgency that didn't used to be there, and at the same time, leaves me with such a useless, futile feeling: It's as if I'm running as hard as I can, and getting nowhere, not understanding that there's a treadmill beneath my feet as opposed to a street.

Moving all the time - at least mentally - and making no progress.  Even the areas where I can see progress being made, it feels like so little, too little to ultimately matter.  I am that prototypical lone sailor, trying to bail out my boat with a teaspoon, only some days, it seems more like a thimble.  So it's a rare treat when I can stop running for a little while, put down the teaspoon/thimble, and just be.
And even a half hour of just being.  Of just letting a good book take me far away, or sitting with my family at dinner listening to them bitch, or here, in the dark talking to you fine people, is invaluable.  (Literally had to just google invaluable to make sure it meant what I wanted it to mean.  It does: you guys are priceless, google says I say so.)   Back to the bailing, would appreciate larger spoons. 

Oh goodness (AKA here are some parenthesis that I think you'd find interesting)

So ~ how was your December?  Eventful, I'm sure.  Mine, as well. 

In lots of good ways (holidays, Grandmother getting discharged from rehab, lots of sleepovers, etc, etc) and lots of not so good ways (pretty much that exact same list, plus all of the illness-y issues myself and others were kind enough to contribute) as well.

I took a bit of an unscheduled break there, for a little bit, but only because... well I didn't have any brain cells, energy atoms, or unattended moments to spare.  (Did you know that your inbox will stop receiving e-mails after a certain number?  Or that Google Readers could - not literally - overflow?  Or that the entirety of the world wide web would continue without you?  Now you do!)  Not because I didn't have posts I planned to write (and composed on during my daily drives out to/back from the rehab), or because I needed a break after NaBloPoMo (quite the opposite, actually: I was pretty psyched to keep going), but just because there was none of me leftover to sit and type with, at least not at an appropriate time, anyways (as in, when I was near the computer).  So, unscheduled blog break, it is.

Yesterday was our first full day without any extra people (people I love dearly, but now it is so! quiet!) in the house since Christmas, and I spent it at Grandmothers, trying to make sure she had what she needed (a little dose of "sanity", and a sponge bath care of Mum) and chatting about relatives I never knew, some apparent candidates for sainthood and others surely roasting in the fires of (imaginary) hell.  I am still trying to decide if it would be better if I packed up & moved in over there for a little bit, but it's an impossibly difficult decision for a million (totally overwhelming to only me) reasons, and I'm just doing the best I can to be in both places (often at once) for now... that might have to change soon, I don't know.  And today I was back over there to monitor her PT while my uncle drove SisterK to the airport to head back to Iowa, plus my mom had to have a liver biopsy (as follow up to her stint in the hospital), and then I came home just in time to be scolded by no less than 4 people (for completely ridiculous/arbitrary/WTF-ish reasons), and it's been a wonderful sort of day.

In other words, things are SNAFU( Situation Normal, All Fucked Up) here in NTE-land.

BUT: I am going to start eeking out some writing time, because I'm doing that 'my brain is a ticking time bomb' thing again, and that's not good for anybody.  (ANYBODY)  In the meantime, Happy New Year, everybody... have we decided yet if we're hoping for the Global Thermonuclear Zombiepocalypse this year, or not?  Cuz I'm still kind of on the fence. (Ok, not really.  But I might be, if I have to watch any more Republican debates/caucus/still in existence crap.) 

Just... no

Doing some of my christmas shopping online this year (as most years), I've come across some things that are definitely NOT on my giving/receiving lists.  I thought I'd share a few of them with all of you, in case you wanted to punish someone on your list: 

Beer Belly  - a pouch you can fill with liquid, wear strapped to your stomach, and drink out of with a tube.  This sounds reasonable to people?  (Oh, and in case that's just not girly enough for you, there's also the Wine Rack, which is basically a sports bra you can drink from.)

You say you're not a big drinker, but still, somehow want to show that you have no manners?  Try these Bear Claw Forks, so you can just rip right into your food.

You could buy this Hand Grenade Soap for any of your lovely friends, so long as you're not flying anywhere over the holidays.

Now see, this Magazine Cover Pillow Case isn't such a bad idea, at its core.  But the ad for it - in all its sexist glory - pissed me off so much that even if I loved them, I wouldn't buy it. 

That's just the beginning of the ridiculousness I've seen so far... If I find others worth commenting on, I'll be sure to pass them on. 

Checking in

Guess I needed a little breather there, huh?  Actually, it's just been more of the same: rehab with Grandmother most every day, driving back and forth (worrying about making mom drive me out there every day, when she's supposed to be taking it easier herself), trying to get Christmas stuff done in the in-between times... same old/same old.  Grandmother is improving by (smallish) leaps and bounds: her bruising has gone down remarkably, her arm is healing bit by bit, and she's itching to go home (albeit to the first floor) in time for Christmas.  We'll know more after her review meeting with the staff on Tuesday.   Christmas is progressing as well... I'm not as close to finished as I would like to be with my shopping, but I'm getting there.  Tomorrow is Santa at the mall day (I'm pretty sure No Longer Youngest Nephew is just about over that, which makes me saaad, but I'm going to enjoy it full out, if it's his last one), and I might try to peek at something while I'm there (although that usually doesn't work out so well).  And that's about all I have to say today, but I will try not to be be so scarce now that I've got some words back. 

How's your December going? 

Made it!

Here we are at the end of yet another NaBloPoMo, which makes my 5th November NabloPoMo and my 6th overall (I did a July a year or so ago), all of which I have completed.  Even though at least one of those Novembers included one of the most horrible holidays I've ever experienced, and more than a quarter of the posts tend to mention how I'm either a) feeling horrid or b)not able to think of anything good to say.  I said something, though, for each of those days, for all of those months.  I finished them, and that actually means a lot to me, because I'm so much more likely to see myself as someone who doesn't finish things - not always by choice, but usually by circumstance - and to know that I persevered with this, it definitely feels like something to be proud of.  Especially since Novembers seem to hate me, and this one has been doing its best to ground me into dust.  Still.  Here I am: not dust.  Having completed a goal, and feeling pretty damn good about it.   And to know that I'm here, six years into blogging, and I still (mostly) feel like I've got things to say, and people who show up to listen to them.  So: Thank all the gods and goddesses, including the FSM, that November is over, and let's bring on December and some good news, shall we? 

Nope, not writing today

At least not anything that requires brain cells cooperating with each other.  Am thoroughly (oh my goodness, if you could see how badly I spelled that before spell check fixed it, there would be no need to complete this sentence) exhausted, and not feeling creative at all.  Spent a pretty hard day at the hospital with Grandmother.  Hard only because her pain meds make her confused, and so there were some tough moments when she couldn't keep things straight or thought people who aren't alive any more were still going to come and visit her, but I can deal with that.  It's hard to see her in pain though, and to see how frustrated she is by the fact that she can't do what she wants to do.

 Her roommate has a bleed on her brain somewhere, and her behavior is often confused as well: at one point the OT had her up and walking around, and when she saw Grandmother's face (which, thanks to her blood thinners, is spectacularly bruised), she almost started crying and just kept saying "What happened to you?  What happened to your face?!?"  Grandmother kept asking me who she was, and telling her that she fell down the stairs, but it just got loud and started to spiral up into semi-chaotic cloud of craziness.    At that point, it took a lot for me not to start crying too, because between the two of them it was just randomly intense... they each played into the other's bewilderment, and I heaved a huge sigh of relief when the doctors came in to talk to the roommate (who seems like a perfectly lovely woman, btw) and her family. Her family seems so lost, I could see on her daughter's face the sense of "what the hell is going on? and why can't the doctors fix it?" and I felt so badly for them, wishing I could help.  And knowing exactly how hard it is to look into the face of someone who has loved you every minute of your entire life, and not know how to help them. 

I seem to be spending a lot of time doing that lately, and I am not appreciating it AT ALL.

Sometimes being a grown-up really sucks, you guys. 

On the plus side, we all apparently survived the end of days

In an apparent effort to ensure that a member of our family has to visit the hospital at least once every two weeks, my 94-year-old grandmother fell, face first, down the fifteen (thankfully carpeted) stairs in her home early yesterday morning.  My uncle heard her fall and rushed down the stairs, where she was gushing blood from a nasty gash on her forehead, struggling to sit up, and frantically asking him if she had gotten any blood on the new wallpaper.  (She had not, in case you, like she, care about that at all: I, in case you were wondering, do not.)

I spent most of the day today at the hospital with her, where I was shocked at her battered appearance, although, I don't know why, since she fell down a flight of stairs - she's mostly black and blue, with two huge cuts on her forehead, as well as numerous smaller cuts on her face.  Her main injury is a broken shoulder bone, which was immediately operated on, because it was putting pressure on (or cutting off ? My uncle is not so good at communicating medical stuff) an artery.  She has various pins and screws holding the arm in place, and the artery was repaired by a graft, but she's in pretty tough shape.  Between her head injury and the pain meds, she wasn't completely on target while we were there - the nurses kept asking us if she was usually more lucid, and I said that she never takes more than an aspirin and she banged her head up pretty badly, so I thought she was doing pretty well, even if she did say "Bahama" was the president, and that we were in a library that she was afraid would be closing soon.  (Also: it is December 28th, 2012 - hence this post's title.)

They're talking about weeks of recovery - hospital and rehab - and this is her second go 'round with all of that, so hopefully it will all go as smoothly as it did last time.  I'm just glad she's doing as well as she is... it was pretty terrifying to read my uncle's e-mail ( I mentioned, about the not being good at communication, right?), and then seeing her today was pretty rough as well.  But tomorrow will hopefully be a little bit better, and we'll get this healing show on the road. 

After all, we have to be in fighting form for the apocalypse, right? 

PS - why do hospitals have to smell like that?  It is hideous. 

For getting up in the morning purposes

(especially if you are the sister who reads my blog: just for you!)

Nymphs are not what you think they are

Did you know a baby llama is called a cria?  Yeah, me either.  There were some other surprises too: just finished reading Chuckling Ducklings and Baby Animal Friends   to LilGirl for her bedtime story, and I was not aware of a lot of those names... Elvers (baby eels), leveret (baby hare), eyas (hawk).  A lot of new information for two very tired brains.  I have a feeling we'll be reading it again tomorrow, just for some clarity.  But the pictures are adorable, and it's pretty cute, overall.  She really loved it, and her big brother was paying attention when we were naming some he didn't know either, so that's a bonus.  It's great when facts are presented in a fun way, you know, so you can trick kids into learning. 

By the way, the title refers to one that wasn't in the book: did you know that a nymph is another name for a baby cockroach or grasshopper?  I'm going to go with grasshoppers, just because roaches should not have such evocatively beautiful names. 

I had a piece of one of these for breakfast, and I'm considering having another piece to take my last round of meds. Pie is totally a health food: FRUIT (or VEGETABLE, depending)! EGGS! SPICES! ~ Good for you! (If you have ever seen Bill Cosby: Himself, then you should have the song 'Dad is great, Give us the chocolate cake!' running through your head right about now, like I do.) Anyways, to repeat myself, YUM.

Hope yours was happy too!

Our Thanksgiving was peaceful, full of yummy food, and about as stress-free as I think I am capable of at this point, so that's pretty awesome.  We played Pictionary, which is always good for some laughs (or rants, depending on how the rest of the day is going):  Today, my brother-in-law (I am still not used to the fact that I now have TWO brothers-in-law) was drawing on his team, and he wasn't feeling great, and they were doing so poorly that he decided to just draw a picture of a sad face, with tears.  "This is me, not wanting to play this anymore," he said when the timer ran out.   I am still laughing about it five hours later.  Because he did look so woebegone, and I thought he was just going to lay down on the floor and take a nap, that's how tired he was.  (And, considering that at least a quarter of the other people in the house were sleeping already, I don't know why he didn't just find a soft spot and curl up, but I am not the boss of everybody.)  Besides, then we would've missed out on his beautiful drawing skills.  

I am not planning on doing any shopping tomorrow, at least not from anywhere except the possible comfort of my computer screen: If you are, more power to you.  I can't think of anything that I want badly enough to go out there with those people, but if you're after something special, I hope you find it easily (and safely!)  As for me, I'm hoping for some quality heating pad time, and am getting a jump start on that right this minute.  Just wanted to sneak in and wish y'all a Happy Thanksgiving, before it was over.

It is pie day.

Four hours, and four pies later, I am to sore to write much.  But the pies look really yummy.  Happy Pre-Turkey Day all! 

In which I tell you about a random website, and you waste time typing a hundred or more words

I'm sorry, what is this website about, again?  I get a kitten every time I get to a hundred words?  This sounds worthy of an investigation.  So I am typing right on through here, and am about a third of a way to a kitten already... what type of kitten is this anyways, Written? Kitten!?  I'm wondering if it's a real picture of a cat, or what? Or a little animated kitten like that stupid paperclip that used to pop up and ask if I needed any help from way back in MS Office, circa 1996? (Since I specifically remember that ridiculous thing showing up during a particularly taxing English paper Junior year.)  Question answered - it is a picture of a cat (or in my case, the back of a cat), from what I assume is some random site on the internets.  I am going to keep typing, however and get to the next hundred, just to double check that it results in a kitten picture every time.  Let's see... it just occurred to me that this would be a time where using the phrase "here kitty, kitty" would actually be appropriate, and, when you're typing, those occasions do not occur often,  (Just FYI - it was another picture of the same kitten, only this time I got to see its face.)  Also? you can adjust the word count that you want to reach (100, 200, 500, 1000), which might have come in handy back when I was typing up those ridiculous papers.  Although: Fair Warning, the site tells you copy and paste often, because it doesn't automatically save your work.  Which would be a major drawback for me, because I often forget to to save things until right after they crash, and I am left starting over again, but if you are smarter than me (Oooh: new kitten.  Also cute: It's got a little freckle on it's nose!), or more obsessed with kittens, then you might want to check it out.  The address is writtenkitten.net/#  Enjoy! 

Ghost girls

Supposed to be feeling thankful, and right now, I ain't feeling it. I ain't feeling anything, honestly, besides jealousy and .. longing. All of the family posts at this time of year, and it hurts some that I don't have the family I want.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Back in June, around my birthday, when all my cousins and friends were turning up pregnant (again), and my littlest nephew was being all toddlery up two hours away from me, and I realized that this fall would be the first time I would not be participating, in an every day active sort of way, in the raising of a child, I felt an overwhelming sadness. It was horrible: because I was happy for them - some of them worked really hard to get to this point, and others were just so excruciatingly happy it was catching - but I was so sad, for me. I am still so sad, for me.

One of my oldest friends has been doing IVF for about a year now, with no results. She's discouraged, but not completely, and she and her husband have decided to give it a rest until February, just to have some space to breathe. She and I have talked about how hard it is to want something and feel like you're never going to get it, and I think we mostly understand each other, but not completely. Our situations are the same, in that we want kids, but our bodies just aren't able to provide them right now, but in almost every other way, our lives are very different: She has a high-paying, successful job, and a husband, and two houses, and I barely make it to the kitchen to feed myself some days, haven't even considered dating in years, and I live in a room (and a half, if I'm being honest) at my parent's house. So we can both be disappointed about that one specific thing together, but, for the most part, I feel like she doesn't get where I am coming from, and I know she feels the same about me - she's actively trying to have kids, and is finding it doesn't work, whereas I haven't tried once, and can't know if it would be as easy for me as it seems to be for teenagers the world over.

I know my sisters want babies, and that there's stuff keeping them from having them, and when we've talked about it, we can sometimes get on the same page. But the response I get most often is something along the lines of "How can you even be thinking about that right now?" And I don't have a good enough answer for that question, really.

So, back in June, like I said, I was really really sad for a few days; it just seemed like I've been waiting for things to get better for so long, and all that waiting had really gotten me was older, and fatter, and sicker. I mean, I've been proactive - I've done the things the doctors tell me to do, but ... it just hasn't felt like I've done much of anything, you know? So after the being sad, I made a decision: starting in September, which was when all the kiddos I usually have around me would be going back to school, I would FULLY commit to me: I would push this 'getting better' thing for all it was worth.

This is probably a good time to tell you that this is something that happens fairly often: this cycle of "Full Court Press"/"Shit this isn't working, what am I doing wrong?"/"Why the hell don't doctors know anything that actually helps me?"/"Fuck it: I'm not going to the doctor again unless I am on fire." The results have been, to various degrees, semi-positive, mostly negative, completely hellacious, and/or neutral to the extreme (as in nothing freaking changed). The best full court press I ever did was right before I went to college, and the doctors diagnosed the orthostatic intolerance that was making me pass out. They gave me the wheelchair, and meds that worked (for a little while), and things were on an upswing. That upswing only lasted about 5 months, and then the meds stopped working, and I've been stuck in the chair ever since. The worst cycle of complete nonsense was when I started doing PT while I was in college, and it was so exhausting and debilitating that I had to drop all my Monday classes, even though I was taking PT on Fridays: I would still be too worn out to attend them, and barely made it to any of the others during the week either. Luckily, I started this right at the end of a semester, so the teacher didn't mind the absences so long as I did the coursework, and then I crashed so badly that I was stuck in bed from the beginning of May until the end of August that year. I literally got up to use the bathroom, and that was it. It was not a fun summer.

But still: full court press, because the thing I want most, in my whole life? Is a child. That's all: I want to be a mom. And I know that in order to be a mom, I can't be this mom ~ which isn't to say I have to be healthy and fine and normal... I know that's never going to happen. But I can't take care of me right now, so adding a baby to that isn't a smart choice. So I was going to commit myself to making a whole lot of real positive changes, and finding out what the hell I'm not doing that I should be doing (including, and this is one I HATE to even consider, but PT, again. Because they swear that water PT is good for FM, that it works and doesn't wreck you. And I don't know if that's true, but I won't know if it works for me unless I try it, right?)

But then: September. September 1, my last full weekend with the kiddos, and I fall and hurt myself so badly that I am barely functional for the entire month. And a half. And my sister-in-law starts her chemo, and I'm trying to do the supportive thing, semi-long distance, but I know I'm not giving it my all, because I've only got half as much to give right now.

So we're halfway through October, and I'm starting to re-emerge from my injury seclusion, and this doctor tells me I may have diabetes, and that doctor tells me that I don't have diabetes, but I might have it soon, and both of them tell me to see a nutrionist who wastes four hours of my time trying to explain how to read the caloric counts off the side of the box. And I am left pretty confused, but trying, and then, all of the sudden, completely unable to eat. And throwing up, and now it's the goddamn flu, and this is what I get for not getting the flu shot, but I got the flu shot last year and still had the flu, and you know what? This doesn't feel like the flu, because my FM isn't any worse, because I don't have a fever, but food won't stay down, and how can I count carbs, when the only thing I have been able to keep down for 5 days is mashed potatoes? Screw carbs: eat potatoes, they don't make you puke.

So then I eat potatoes for three weeks, bringing us into the middle of November, and it turns out it wasn't the flu, but probably my gallbladder. Or my gallbladder AND my liver, which has decided to act up again, after 5 years of silence. And then Mum is in the hospital, and parts of her are falling apart too, and I don't know how to help her with that. And now it's the end of November, and the liver guy can't see me until March, and I have achieved an absolute zero on my "making strides/full court press" agenda, and actually have more things wrong with me than before, and more people to worry about than before, and I am definitely onto phase 2: this is complete and utter bullshit.

This is complete and utter bullshit. I want to get better. I want to build a family. I want to have all those Christmas mornings and temper tantrums, homework hassles and squalling, red-faced baby nestled into his mother's arms at the hospital photos. I find myself, in this season of giving thanks, not constantly thinking about the things that are missing - not even daily thinking about them - but feeling they are missing so acutely sometimes that I want to burst into tears.

My grandmother asks me how my cousin's youngest is doing and I tell her about his colic, she replies "I'm so glad to have those days behind me" (she raised 9), and all I can think is "Will those days ever be ahead of me?" Mum's in the hospital, and even though I know it's not serious, I start to think... what if I keep waiting and all the people I love aren't here to see me finally get there? Dad, in his extreme melancholia while Mum's in the hospital, likes to start conversations with "Well this person died right when they were achieving their dream" and "You know, I think it's a real tragedy that you can't have kids: you'd be an awesome mother." I can't seem to just take the compliment and let the rest drop - it crawls inside me and echoes: will I never be an awesome mother? Will it be a tragedy, for always?

It's not all the time, this ache, but it's there, and so deep sometimes it throbs: I hold my newborn (2nd/1st once removed) cousin, and stroke his cheek, and have to turn away so nobody notices I'm crying.

If you want something, go after it. That's what everybody says: You have to have a plan to achieve the things you want in life; specific goals and ways to meet them.

I have the goals, I have the things I want; I just can't figure out the plans, the steps, the hows. For me, it seems, there's more and more obstacles, and less and less clarity. More things to overcome, and less answers (or hell, even applicable suggestions) on how to surpass them. And I know, I really do know, that it won't always feel this way, that other people have been in a lot worse situations and figured their way out of them, that it won't be the worst thing in the whole world if this is a dream I simply can't accomplish.

But the wanting, right now, is sometimes so strong that I feel like I am sitting with a ghost, of the mother I could be, or the children I could have. The ghost of who I could've been, of the girl/woman I thought I would be: that's something I deal with all the time... I think if you have a chronic illness (or if you have a thousand other things happen in your life), you can get this feeling, this picture of the person you might have been... a ghost of a person past. But this is a new ghost, for me, this ghost-girl of the mother I still could be. And I want to be her so bad, that sometimes, when the image fades, I am heartbroken... to not even have the illusion of her.

And I don't know if any of this makes any sense to anybody but me. (This is that post I've been re-writing so much that the words all sound ridiculous and make-believe, at this point.) And maybe it won't: Not entirely. But I think there must be others out there who live with ghost selves, who deal with the what ifs of the past, and for the future. So I hope that this makes sense to some of you, and explains where I am right now, to the rest of you.

"But when it comes to fiction, the writer's only responsibility is to look for the truth inside his own heart. It won't always be the reader's truth, or the critic's truth, but as long as it's the writer's truth - as long as he doesn't truckle, or hold out his or her hat to Fashion - all is well.

I have now written three drafts of a post I'm trying to get just right, and have been fighting with over the course of about a week, and every draft (while making minor improvements) seems so far from where I ultimately want to wind up, that it's discouraging.  Sometimes the words just don't want to come.  Sometimes too many of them come, but they're all the wrong ones, or they're wearing the wrong outfits, or they showed up to the party three days late.  It's a good reminder that writing is a craft, and that you have to work at it.  Of course, I'd rather that the words just showed up, appropriately attired, when and where I want them to, but that's not always the way it works.  So, tonight, because time is running out to actually get something up, you get this instead - a post (whose title is probably longer than the actual post) about how I'm having trouble writing the real post, and I get to go try to coax the words out of wearing sombreros and galoshes for a little while longer.  


*Stephen King, Full Dark, No Stars

It's time to light the lights...

I know I've told you that I am wicked excited about the Muppet Movie coming out this week.  I am a huge Muppet fan - from Sesame Street through Fraggle Rock, The Dark Crystal, and every Muppet movie or show I could get my hands on (I liked Muppets Tonight, people!)  Miss Piggy, although suffering from a more than a bit of Smurfette Principle, was the first character doll I ever had: dressed in a purple gown, with gloves and, oddly, a turban - I wanted to be her, purple sparkly turban and all.  So, I'm psyched about the Muppet movie, and am going to get someone to take me (which actually might turn out to be pretty easy, because one of my sisters has a crush on Jason Segal).   How about you - You interested?


In the meantime, head on over to Tor, for their awesome Muppet Week reads.  If you're in the mood for a little early Christmas viewing (which I am not: come Friday, it's fair game, but today I'm still in Turkey Mode), I can heartily recommend Muppet's Christmas Carol (which one of my other sisters will roll her eyes at the fact that I watch it every Christmas season).  Oh, and here's a picture of my Miss Piggy Doll, although you can't see her turban (with ear holes) all that well: