Life's been good to me so far

Today, it was just Jacob, Elise and I at home during the school day. Grant was up at his office, A&A were at a friend's, and Isaac was at school. We sat around the table eating snack plates* and playing with Story Cubes for awhile. I'm teaching both of them to knit, this week, which is tedious as all hell but they always seem eager to get back to. We've also been working a lot with their Starfall writing journals and tear out, fold up books. The ones the two of them have are the last of my free pack of Starfall first grade workbooks and art books from 10 years ago when Starfall was giving them out free to educators and I ordered some.

After we got Isaac from school and collectively collapsed from near heat stroke, the four of us packed a swim bag and a snack bag and set out to walk up to the Y to swim. Two blocks out, though, Ms Denise (Elise's fabulous former preschool teacher) pulled over and gave us a ride in her giant SUV, which was sweet and thrilled Elise. She lives about a block from us so we knock on her door and sell her Girl Scout cookies and she always waves when Elise is playing outside as she's passing.

Anyway, swimming was cool. It's always weird for me how any mom within 75 pounds of my weight who is there with their kids is sitting on the sidelines fully clothed. I'm in a bikini, having fun in the pool. Usually after the first few minutes and/or whenever I'm not up on the deck, people stop staring. The lifeguard was fun and uncovered the diving board and encouraged kids to get on and try it - Elise is on cloud 9 for doing it when her big brothers (although she actually calls Isaac and Jake her "little brothers" and Aaron her big brother) were afraid to. The walk back was ok, it was cloudy and near sunset so aside from swarming clouds of gnats it wasn't too summer-ish.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, even though tomorrow's kinda ridic: Ananda has Girl Scout program aid training (for summer camps) from 10-4. Aaron has hip hop from 11-12:30. They both need to be picked up from Cybele's before any of that, and in the evening all 7 of us are going (and meeting various friends**) to the derby match, where Annie's junior team will be carrying the flag and generally skating around acting like they rock.

Derby matches are usually a lot of fun. And then SUNDAY!! Bwahaha, Sunday is Mother's Day, i.e. MY DAY, i.e. I will be sleeping in late, demanding all sorts of ludicrous pampering from everyone and going out alone for prolonged dates with my husband without any sort of bs guilt.

No, I am not kidding. I bought us gift cards to Outback and the movies, and new wine glasses (they were all broken over the past several months). I was just on the phone with my sister today, comparing the gifts we got ourselves - in advance of the day, obviously :p She went with clothes and a book.


*snack plates were started by my paternal, Cuban grandfather, who always gave my sister Laura and I, along with all our (all female) cousins plates of rolled lunch meat, tomato slices, olives, pickles, sometimes cheese and usually crackers. Jake and Elise are my first children to enjoy snack plates since every other kid I have hates at least one core component.

**I met this chick at the FIU transfer orientation the other day, very boho mismatched clothes, wild hair, piercings, interesting bracelets. I walked up to her and said, "I realize you shouldn't really judge people based solely off of their appearances. But you really look like we ought to be friends." This worked out very well, and before long we were deep into each others' life histories/aspirations, and planning for her to come to the match. She's a child psych major who wants to work with deaf kids :)


( +5 pics from last Sunday afternoon, which was event-laden... )

This summer's shaping up to have a lot of cool opportunities and interesting stuff for everybody. I've been in a frenzy of emails, calls, forms and combing the calendar for the last two days, as always happens this time of year. And then again before fall.

So far this is what we've got on the table as probable, counting summer as basically anything that happens after today since a lot of it begins in May:

Tina/Mom/me:

-5 classes at FIU, broken into 3 for Summer A term and 2 for Summer B. I actually have my schedule and financial aid in place since getting accepted, and am now setting up incidentals like going to get my student ID, having my parking pass mailed to me and acquiring my book advance/books.
-gardening - currently I have 3 flowering plants on the front porch, succulents and basil on the deck, about 40 houseplants, and a whole mess of seedlings in the house that will be transitioned to a raised bed in the coming weeks: white and flamingo chard, spinach, red and romaine lettuce, and lavender (for Isaac's anxiety, we're talking about it all along the way...we also have a "life cycle of a seed" poster hanging in our dining room these days).
-counseling. I finally made contact with somebody yesterday, like nails on a chalkboard though it was, and she's supposed to be calling me back about our insurance today. This is actually Grant and I both, separately and then together
-Writing dammit. It might be more like 2 hours per weekend rather than the hour per day I've been trying to strive for, but I can live with that if all this other stuff is happening.
-also with Grant, and "hopefully" - acquiring a second car, again (we sold the Civic awhile back, too many problems)

Ananda:

-regularly scheduled cello rehearsals on Sundays, and derby practice Sundays and Wednesdays, for awhile more at least
-6 hour training to be a program aide for girl scout camps, in May
-part of the color guard made up of junior derby players for the adult bout on the same day in May O_o
-GMYS finale concert THE NEXT DAMN DAY good grief
-going paintballing with her derby team later on in the month
-3 weeks of Girl Scout camp in June and July, 2 as a Program Aide (volunteer/helper basically, then next year she'll get to be a Counselor In Training) and one as a regular ol' Girl Scout
-Somewhere in the midst of that, attending the Southern Regional Junior Derby...whatever it's called, rally or some shit up in central Florida - this will involve her team being in their first two bouts!*
-auditioning into whatever ensemble for GMYS for the fall, before the summer is over - I'd also like to try to get her some kind of supplemental cello learnin' but it basically has to be free so either a public school program, a magnet she only goes to the music portion of, or this Frost mentor program...we'll see
-she also wants to look into starting to volunteer at the library, we'll see, and has a goal of "being at sleepovers as often as possible this summer"
-which could be related to the whole "SHE'S TURNING 13 ON JUNE 1!!!!" thing

Aaron:

-hip hop on Saturdays and jazz dance on Thursdays**, til the eventual Dance Empire end of year recital
-I'm basically trying to decide whether to try to get him into a camp at Dance Empire or just sign him up for their intensive weeks, and/or their summer classes
-either way he wants to do ballet technique classes again, which is interesting to me and they're offered on Saturdays in one big block so yeah sure he doesn't have to pay ~shrug~ They're offering 7-15 yo barre and stretch, 7-15 yo turn and jump, 7-15 yo open ballet and pre-point for 10-16 year olds as a 4 hour long extravanganza, and he's aghast at how inflexible he's supposedly become ever since someone complimented him on his extensions (?) last week. Dancers!
-I'm sure there will be some epic TLC party before a couple of families leave town for the summer as they generally do, and he will be in like flynn
-whatever we decide to do for his birthday on June 27th (he'll be 12)

Isaac:

-the rest of the school year obviously, which features the talent show he's doing a jump rope act in this Friday
-GMYS camp for a month***, now on clarinet
-birthday party in June for a PATH kid he loves

Jake:

-GMYS camp for a month, hopefully playing drums (HE HATES THE VIOLIN SO MUCH)
-birthday party in June for a PATH kid he loves

Elise:

-turning SIX on May 1 - we're going to the Seaquarium**** because she had no idea such wonders existed, but we have been on a big Squid YouTube kick that's somehow led into whales, and she is PSYCHED. Also, she keeps asking for a science lab so we're going to do our best to set that up as her birthday present with like, basic common kitchen ingredients common to many experiments and a space allocated in the house with a table Grant's made, and some little accessories - she will love it
-those 3 weeks of Girl Scout camps that Annie will be at, albeit in separate age groups of course
-GMYS camp for a month, back on violin

All Kids:

-(well, minus Isaac in this instance) homeschool yearly evaluations
-(and plus me in this one) dental checkups/cleanings



*It will probably be Grant taking her to paintballing and the rally, for a variety of reasons - also, Grant is not travelling anymore in the forseeable immediate future, under his new supervisor that's looking like a more quarterly sort of thing...and he works from home on the days I'll be in school.

**I actually found another Dance Empire parent IN HOMESTEAD who is WILLING AND ABLE TO CARPOOL, this is life changing people, seriously, wow. I am excited.

***the little kids' camp is actually IN HOMESTEAD, good grief A&A's was insanely far last summer, that was a circus

****If you are a AAA member, in the month of May you can go to the AAA office and get a (discounted!) Seaquarium ticket, and then take it to the Seaquarium, and they will give you another one free. Since the Seaquarium is absurdly, disgustingly, prohibitively overpriced, this is a big deal that can potentially make it possible to go. It ends up being $36 plus tax for two adults, rather than $80.

Tiny art brought to me by Elise after she spent awhile watching the butterflies in our yard, as they landed on the milkweed, laying eggs - there's a butterfly, that lays eggs, and then you have a caterpillar, which goes on to be in a cocoon, and BAM, second butterfly :)


This is the kind of shit hanging in the restaurants of "old Homestead." I took this picture as I drank (excellent) tea out of a mason jar with a cat in my lap and a filthy aquarium nearby.


Bathroom reading.


Movie dates on the deck.


Coffee, for Jacob, Elise and I.


New sign on our front door.


Stems on grocery store strawberries.


Jack and Berry watching Netflix, with Jake.


Squirrely riding along in the (custom ordered) suit I made him.


Peter, always knowing when people need him and being there to help.

Grant was in Maryland every other week of November, and most of December, before taking a Christmas break that involved actual days off (because even when he's "in town", he works long hours, 2 hours away...) At the beginning of January I was dropping him back off at the airport again for 5 days (and another 4 soon after).

It's been a lot of solo parenting, and because my best local friend Kristin moved away in early November, and I won't leave the kids alone at night to go visit Laura like I can do when G's home in bed, I've been feeling pretty isolated a lot of the time.

I even graduated from Miami Dade College in December (going back to university in the fall) - I would kill for some classroom discussions, some afternoons.

Loneliness anecdote: My awesome friend Jess came down with her boyfriend Cale, to see her Dad and also me. We agreed to meet up on Lincoln Rd up in Miami Beach one Friday night. I put on earrings, and makeup and junk, and Grant was here manning the fort, so off I went...only to get stuck in THE WORST traffic of my entire life, literally. I was stuck on causeways and bridges where you can't make a u-turn or get off for hours. Eventually, Jess and Cale had to give up and leave our meeting place, since they had hours of driving to do that night - I just barely managed not to run out of gas.

I have a good sense of humor. I was texting them all the while, about for instance these people who got off a city bus and started walking, and this girl who peed in the emergency lane. At one point, I was like, "Merge, loser!" and the person I'd been talking to had his window down too and actually heard me and replied, and I lol'd in surprise. I watched a drug deal go down under the overpass I was stuck on and marveled that this dude was just standing there in the dark counting stacks of cash like a block from where that guy got his face eaten off a few months ago.

After getting my just-in-time gas I called Shaun, who lives right around there, but he was off at some other thing with some other person. I ended up hanging out with the bartender at Burger and Beer Joint, critiquing the hair band music they were playing (that I unfortunately know all the lyrics to and trivia about). It was actually sort of fun, but THIS IS MY LIFE.

I did manage to meet Jess and Cale for a pretty kickass brunch at a local diner before they headed back to north Florida. But that was THE ONE TIME in January that I hung out with a friend, you know?

Sometimes I just pace around here when everyone's asleep feeling like a caged animal. I actually got on chatroulette one night...and promptly remembered why THAT is a bad idea O_o

Anyway.

I had some pretty intense cramps, one of these isolated sort of days, and grit my teeth through all the homeschooling, chore enforcing, cooking, etc until I could get to this:




Brownies with homemade chocolate sauce and freshly whipped cream, plus blackberries. Yessssss...

I find there are few things that attempting to boil myself alive in hot water won't fix.

Look at this girl - sun burned, COVERED in mosquito bites. This is how I found her, happy as a clam, when I picked her and Aaron up out in the Everglades from Izzy's annual birthday camp out. She told me stories of charades and being doused in midnight rain while I made us breakfast.


Nigella's blackberry and apple kuchen, and coffee with coconut milk and turbinado sugar.

I don't think we were really supposed to whole wheat that. Oh well.

Elise has rediscovered her photobook, and keeps it with her when she's sad and missing Daddy.


Tellin' me all about it, one afternoon.


My napping view, from my bed.

That's two pictures, side by side, lookin' all wonky.

Carrot cupcakes for tea.


The meal Jake laid out for me one afternoon, while I ran around doing errands. It was a surprise.


This is the look I get for peeking in her french doors and snapping pics while she works on a book report at her desk.


Part of Ananda and Elise's room, from outside on the deck.


And mine.

We keep all the doors open (dining room and tv room have french doors, too) lately, it's always lovely - even if it does mean Jake and Isaac invariably end up running circles from inside to outside in rowdy games of tag.

View from my hammock.


Our last night at Santa's, before they closed.


My Beast got a haircut! She demanded it, one afternoon. I love it, and so does she. She ran around ultra hyper exclaiming about it all that first day, and keeps saying hilarious adorable things... "I know I'm still me, but I feel like a different person!" "This outfit looks even better with my haircut!"






Sometimes having the doors open at night leads to weird problems.

That's Annie screaming. We initially thought it was a bird or a bat O_o

It wouldn't get off of him, once he had it. He had to basically shove it off and run, after awhile.


Salad of the gods; I've been combining these two things every day and tearing it up. Mmm....


Copied and Pasted facebook stuff:

January 29:
So apparently I've probably got a ganglyonic cyst on my wrist (pending x-ray). Ow. If I can get out of here in time, I got invited JUST NOW via email to the 2:30 meeting of Miami Dade College's literary magazine, as a guest of honor (former student/published author)

Later:
Hmm, I should have known that "special guest invitation" to the college literary magazine meeting was just a way to try to rope me into volunteer writing/editing/etc.... Now to decide whether or not I'm going to do it.

January 30:
So I have to follow up with a specialist. A couple of things about my hand/wrist lumps aren't consistent with ganglyonic cysts (heightened inflammation on blood tests and pain). Based on many things I've felt and researched in the past few months, my father's medical history (I TOTALLY take after him physically), and things said while we were there, I'm pretty sure I have some kind of autoimmune disorder, most likely of the arthritic variety...it would definitely explain the crazy fatigue I've been having and trying everything to combat, for quite awhile now. I've decided to give that poor bastard Google a break from my ceaseless interrogating and just act super zen until I can speak to some experts.

Comment downthread in there:
my weird painful wrists only started about 3-4 years ago, and it's very intermittent - usually triggered by stress on the joints. I've also been waking up REALLY stiff (like sort of hobbling from the bed to the bathroom and then feeling totally normal within a couple of minutes) for the last few months, and just...I don't know. There are a lot of weird things that point in this direction. 6 months ago my feet suddenly hurt terribly and seemed misshapen, with funky lumps, and Grant was massaging them at night a lot, and one day that stopped and went away - I attributed it to my funky hips, as though I was out of alignment and it had effected how I walked badly, but looking back that seems really silly. The whole episode was similar to what's happening with my wrist and hand now. When I wake up in the morning, for the past couple of months, I can't grip half the time...like AT ALL. Like, my iPhone alarm starts going off and I can't grab the damn thing to turn it off O_o All year last year I was semi-alarmed by how tired I often was...I've never taken so many naps, and am no longer an insomniac for the first time in my life. I kept getting confused because I'm not depressed, and I have this link in my mind that people who don't want to get out of bed in the morning are depressed. I'm actually pretty stoked about life over all, I just want to sleep half of it away :p

My father has semi-intense rheumatoid arthritis that started in his 20s. I've kind of been in denial about this, I think, getting my thyroid tested and saying I need to get to the chiropractor more often. I don't know.

Today was a day of little firsts for my little kids.

1.) Elise drew her OWN coloring page (a house with bricks, which she drew every single one of on the facade), and then colored the whole thing. Her drawings are getting way more detailed - this house, in addition to the bricks, had a chimney and a door and windows. The other day she drew me an elephant with four legs, a little tail, big ears and a long trunk. She's so sweet and affectionate lately, although that's partially because she's really having a hard time with Grant's frequent business trips. Perhaps more so this week, because she's had a cold.

2.) Isaac WROTE WHOLE PARAGRAPHS, creatively, on his own, for pleasure! I was totally floored. He's reading much, much better lately - I don't know if he was just ready, finally, for something to click, or if the software they use at his school is really what he was missing (Reading Plus - it's actually the same thing my college uses to teach ESOL kids English). But I haven't ever seen him write this way, before today. He's allocated his whole journal to be for a short story on one page, and a drawing about it on the other. <3

3.) Jake took a shower. This may not seem like a big deal, since he plays in the rain routinely and the hose sometimes, but he had never done it before and acted as though he were some sort of clean, strutting man afterward for skipping the bathtub. He's also been singing a lot, mostly songs they learned over the summer at GMYS camp, and I eat it up. In a very nonchalant way, because otherwise he would get self conscious and quit.

---

I interpret an awful lot of things as pros or cons for moving to Maryland. This week, for instance,

Pros:

-Crime rates are way better, there - right after getting our window busted out of the van and our GPS stolen, I was completely ready to just GO
-My kids keep talking wistfully about snow, and trying to even understand the concept of seasons
-Kristin left (in a moving truck headed there) yesterday! I'm going to miss her a lot, and it would be great to have her there waiting for me
-my earth space science teacher devoted 20 minutes to climate change, today, in the most doomsday way possible (MIAMI IS ONLY 10 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL, if Greenland melts WE ARE SWIMMING!)
-Grant is really set for a pretty significant promotion if we go, and his boss is pressuring him
-I, as usual, spent way too many hours driving on the highway to get everywhere I regularly go
-we're ready for an adventure!

Cons:

-I went to my old, good friend Kathy's baby shower with Ananda, and it was so fun, and she's having a BABY!! I love her, and her mom, and :/
-we helped my sister move - my sister! And my kids' cousins!
-Gloria and LJ spontaneously dropped in and ended up staying for dinner and a projector movie, Saturday night. Then, Monday afternoon, they watched kids for me while I went to an appointment. Support systems are important!
-I mean I ran into my old high school guidance counselor in Panera the other day and it was SO GREAT that we've got a catch-up date tomorrow.
-Jess is seriously considering moving down here, after all these years!
-Ananda and Aaron went to Miguel's 17th birthday party, which was on a boat with a beach and pool portion, and just generally had a blast and regaled me with stories of their awesome friends the whole ride home that night
-And this past week we've had our first seasonal visits to Knaus Berry Farm AND Santa's Enchanted Forest :/

Ah well. We're probably all going up there by train sometime next month (or maybe January) for the first of a couple of trips that involve "scoping it out."

---

This happened, and while I see it more as a very small part of something bigger - that something bigger is exciting!

I'm planning a trip to the Portland area, for some time in the coming months, to work with Memo to get the kids' book totally done (he's illustrating), and to get with some people who want to contribute to my PTSD book (narrative nonfiction).

---

I'm excited about Thanksgiving. So far I've got my Dad, Laura and her kids, Robby and Corey, and Gloria and LJ as confirmed guests. Grant Sr and my Aunt Michelle also have standing invitations (as does Frank, but that's highly unlikely). And, so far I've got the turkey, the potatoes and sweet potatoes, a bunch of cream of mushroom soup and fried onions, a frozen Cheesecake Factory cheesecake, a couple of sacks of cranberries, and a lot of wine and sparkling grape juice. We've also finished the deep cleaning of one measly room, thus far.

---

Tomorrow will start with Elise to school and an abdominal ultrasound for Isaac (the latest in a series of tests and visits since his hospital stay in September - we're making real progress with him being able to go to the bathroom regularly, and being more comfortable). Then I'll be teaching, hanging out, cleaning, cooking some batch stuff (probably lentil soup with sausage and red beans and rice). Grant will get home from the airport just as I'm taking Aaron to ballet, and meeting with the counselor guy I ran into to catch up - he's so great, he asked about Laura and my friend David and passed on messages for Grant. I don't even understand how he keeps everyone straight after all these years. He's still working at a high school!

Grant was out of town for all of these, and Robby and Correy were along for both but unpictured :)

( Halloween with all the kids, 16 pics )

( South Florida Day of the Dead Celebration in Ft Lauderdale, 20 pics )

I don't understand households where the beds are made first thing in the morning, and then everybody stays away from them all day.

When I was a kid/teenager, my bedroom was my entire universe, and so my bed was, like, my only chair, my couch, etc, as well as the place that I slept. That was where I read, and pet my cat, and sat talking with friends who came over.

Having a boyfriend meant spending an awful lot of time lying around kissing and wanting or, later, doin' it. But I mean when Grant and I were really young we sat on his bed playing video games and watching movies and talking and having tickle fights, and sometimes just looking up at the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling with the blinds shut.

Once I had kids, which if you recall overlaps with when I was a teenager (see boyfriend portion of this entry), I co-slept. And when you have a newborn, they take a lot of naps. I didn't have or know about slings with Ananda or Aaron, and I only ever really mastered side-lying nursing with them, so yeah. We spent a lot of time in bed. They both learned how to sit up and how to roll over on my bed, with me there with a camera. I would lounge near them propped up on pillows, reading books, as they napped.

With my later kids, I did have slings, and a busier house, but there was still always a time or two (or three) spent lying in bed attempting to nurse someone down for a nap during the day.

Now, my kids are older, obviously, and we have way more communal living space. But Jake comes to me begging to have "love in the bed" every day at some point, which means, "curl up under a blanket and snuggle with me and talk, for awhile!" If my kids bring me books, they always want to go dive under a blanket to listen as I read it. Grant and I take afternoon naps together every weekend. And we lay in our bed and watch shows on a laptop a couple of evenings a week.

Something I really love is when people just totally get this. When I go to Kristin's, I end up on her bed with her looking through sewing projects. When Kathy or Gloria comes over here, they don't even hesitate to hug my pillows as they cozy in while we're talking. Years ago, when I would be lying in my bed nursing Elise down to sleep, and Laura would be sitting in my computer chair at the desk in my bedroom nursing Brian, I was like, "this is perfect." Going to Laura's now always means I sit on the edge of her bed while she nurses Isabelle down for a nap and we talk.

All that said, here's ( 38 pictures...warning for a skinned up knee, I guess, if you need a warning for that )

I definitely unraveled a bit over the course of yesterday, being a mostly useless lump desperately wanting to go to sleep or at least hide under a blanket while Grant and all the children put shutters up, brought things inside, cleaned off the deck and porch and so on...until, late last night with the kids in bed, I was crying and being irritable with Grant and it all sort of clicked into place. Like, "OOooooooh......fuck."

Because, you know, I'd been up all day from 5am and then all night (til dawn), with Jake at the hospital in a freakin' mini surgery session that featured arguing with a guy in scrubs, and then we came home to hurricane prep, and it did some kind of time warp horseshit to me that made it feel just like when Jake was born - severe sleep deprivation, hospital, hurricane after hurricane. Walking through my house with my internal time clock all messed up, with shutters blocking the sun and the grill and benches and big plants on stands and discharge papers all cluttering the place up.

In case you don't know, what PTSD is, on a neurological level, is (bad) long term memories stuck in the short term memory part of your brain. When "triggers" set you off, and you call upon those memories, your brain and body act as though you're still stuck in the actual situation, often resulting in a fight or flight adrenaline rush - but it can be all kinds of different responsive feelings... I was walking around with phantom smells of Grant Sr's house and the crampy-sharp displaced shoulder pain I always get after surgery, hating everything, with this huge heavy irrational sadness crushing down on my chest as it did with Jake in the NICU miles away while storms raged outside. Jerking and twitching when anything touched my back where the hematoma was. Ugh.

In case it has ever not been clear, it is Jake's birth (October '05) that I have PTSD from. It was compounded and complicated in many ways, by the things that happened in 2007. But what actually gave me some kind of fucked up mental disorder that makes me feel crazy, was that whole 3-days-straight-of-hard-labor that ended with this awful hospital I've had dozens of caricature nightmares about. I think my brain - my whole self - was especially vulnerable to long term trauma because of the intense sleep deprivation and prolonged high pain levels, before I even arrived at Jackson. So being accused of terrible things at a yell by the staff, separated from Grant, threatened with everything from mortality to legality as people tried to physically force me to do things - having it be DIRTY with cops and CPS officers everywhere in a dangerous neighborhood, my baby catching penicillin-resistant staph from their facility and my previously 4 inch wide pencil line scar being this long, crooked, unrolling thing with my muscles hanging askew in front of my pelvis - the hematoma and talk of re-opening my back, the major hurricanes passing through that I had to be separate from my newborn for...even the half-dark hospital in that surreal dark Miami, with no working elevators after Katrina (or Rita or Wilma) with just 5 flights of stairs to get to my baby when it was hard to even lift my leg...

And... I'm fucking crying, sitting here all but 7 years later.

I continue to be vaguely ashamed of having PTSD, as I've always felt I have a higher mental/emotional constitution than PTSD tends to imply. I mean I've been through a lot of shit, and I haven't gotten PTSD from most of it...whatever. It is what it is, and perhaps I'll go get more emdr therapy sometime.

I'm leading up to something, here. I talked recently about how different I am, pre- and post-sepsis, you know? That's all a blur in some ways to me, "back there", between Jake being born and Elise being born - I have a lot of clear and distinct memories, and some of it was really good, but getting pregnant before Jake was a year old threw me for a fucking loop, and it's this trauma situation with his birth that made me PANIC when I got pregnant with Elise, you know? PTSD drove me to Boston to avoid anything similar as much as anything else, I just could not repeat that situation. In some weird ways Elise's birth was healing because although it was HORRIBLE in totally different ways, the staff of the hospital we were at were so respectful and caring, and that whole place was so clean and good, and I felt all along that they were truly helping us -

Although yeah obviously they also left a sponge in me. Life is complex, right?

I promise I am gradually circling my way back around to the point of this entry.

Last night I was in the bathroom, all wigging out, and I caught a scent - maybe real from packaging in my bathroom or maybe phantom, I have no idea, it could have been from the trash can I opened - of LUSH bath bombs. And it was SO GOOD, like, not just "wow LUSH smells good," it was this comforting thing to cling to like it could save me from my shuttered up bathroom where I couldn't lean back against the toilet seat or else it would push on my spine.

Because LUSH came so far after all of that, for me, and has NO ties to any of it. It's part of a whole different phase of my life where I don't get pregnant or have babies anymore.

That started me on this huge landslide of realizations. One really good friend of mine who read that entry I recently wrote, about being a different person before and after a trauma, was not cool with it, because her husband tried to tell her the same thing - that he was not the same person anymore after his Iraq war traumas. It's part of what broke up their family, and part of his justification for having affairs. And I remember her telling me how he listened to totally different music and went out with friends to bars for the first time in his life and I was like... yes. This makes perfect sense!

If you can be triggered into remembering things that completely fuck up your day, physically and emotionally - maybe your week or your months - by anything from a certain time period, you are going to try to find new shit to surround yourself with. You are going to naturally gravitate towards things you have no previous experiences with.

I was sitting on my bed, indian style, explaining this to Grant - walking around South Beach. Falling asleep on the beach. Rum. Florence and the Machine, LUSH, going to Key West alone just the two of us, preschool, Izzy babysitting - it's all like YES. Get me as far away from that shit as possible. I am a totally different person. Think about my nose ring and my publisher and tumblr, I have an IUD, ok.

Earlier in the evening, when he'd wanted to be all affectionate, I was just...grossed out. I don't even know how to explain this. It fucking felt like when we were having this close/intense awesome sex when Jake was in the NICU, this sex where foreplay was crying and we were really too tired, but, we needed something. So I was thinking, no. I'm not even jealous anymore, I like it when he goes on roadtrips now because I need some space and he wants to travel. He was in Maryland and we were skyping and it's NOTHING like when we were teenagers at his father's house, think about texting pictures back and forth and walking through the sex store browsing toys and watching True Blood together and Ok, there, now I'm turned on. THis can work, we bought this bed at Rooms to Go, this song wasn't even out back then, this is a whole other part of my life.

I think it's fairly common knowledge that PTSD can make marriages and family life difficult a lot of the time - especially with war vets - but (I think?) people are usually connecting that with violent or hostile behaviors, an inability to really connect or be intimate, just general "PTSD symptoms" that add up to something along the lines of extreme moodiness. But this is not just that - what I'm talking about is this very urgent need to distance yourself from things that take you back and, thus, will make you hurt badly. I'm 100% sure this factors into how trapped I felt in my marriage a year and a half ago, and how overwhelmed with motherhood I get sometimes in the past couple of years.

It's like these people that I love are tying me down to this traumatic response, and I can't dig myself completely out of it and be safe, as long as my life is intimately wrapped up with theirs and they keep unwittingly sending me back, mentally.

In that vein, I found myself thinking, "Oh yes we should DEFINITELY move to Maryland, I do not ever want to prepare for another hurricane again, I mean NEVER."

I get so pissed, about being sad about this shit AGAIN. Like, wtf, really? This? AGAIN? I hate the work of unravelling that it is in fact this, again, that I have to do before I even realize it, and that I need to realize before I can move on and stop acting like a crackhead. I think this is the second big PTSD "episode" I've had this year, both having been brought on after multiple trips to the hospital as well as various repetitive environmental factors (unexpected ER/OR scenes on shows, people forwarding me news stories about traumatic birth and birth intervention statistics, pregnant friends planning their births online and IRL, etc). Enough of it piles up and it buries me, until I have to dig myself back out again. The other time...I feel like it was around March. I get little trigger-y uncomfortable stuff here or there more regularly but it doesn't impact my life or relationships.

I like that it's been almost 7 years in a certain potentially therapeutic way. Maybe I can sit around meditating on how every 7 years we are completely new organisms, as far as cell regeneration goes, and how credit/debts are forgiven on that time line. Or maybe that's all ridiculous. But I need to get down to some kind of new age, affirmations-on-the-mirror business because I am so over this and don't want to fall down this hole over and over for the rest of my life.

On that note, I am going to clean the hell out of this messy bedroom until it is one part of my house that is not cluttered or hurricane-y.

Did I mention it isn't even RAINING?!

I've spent a lot of time trumpeting all over the internet how having a big family is awesome and a bunch of closely spaced kids is not nearly as hard as people make it out to be, or as expensive, or whatever. This is EASY! Pregnancy blows, but have a million kids in a couple of years anyway, you'll thank me later, just WAIT!

In the interest of full disclosure, I'd like to qualify some of that.

I was right that BABIES ARE FREE, for the most part, and that closely spaced babies, toddlers and preschoolers are easier (for me) than kids with wider spacing. You may be someone who, like me, is totally happy to lay around reading while babies nurse down for naps, and is fulfilled on some inexplicable level by knitting longies and hanging prefolds in the sun to dry. It may be easy and and natural to you to sit on blankets in the front yard with someone who can't move while small people ride trikes and swing nearby, taking pictures and thinking about the clouds. You may really like baking and the feeling of someone in a sling and the microcosm of the midwifery, La Leche League and Mothering.com world, and manage to never buy baby food, bottles, most baby gear, or damn near anything available through grocery store "baby clubs." You may think all the while about how great it will be for your kids to have each other in adulthood, for the sake of themselves as well as to share the burden of you as you age, and get really emotional really often about how fast they're all changing, and applaud every accomplishment from your spot on the floor of the living room.

IF SO, it is probably gonna be REALLY FREAKING UNNATURAL AND SUCKY a few years later, when you're trying to deal with your kids all wanting to be in a different activity that occurs at a different time and place, for a different amount of money, every one of them potentially valuable and enriching. You're probably gonna think it blows, when your preteens start smelling bad and rolling their eyes at you, at least on some levels - especially when they're clearly judging you (as people who see your shortcomings on an intimate level). It's going to be extremely overwhelming when everyone's ideal education (home, school or otherwise) is something different and some people have certain medical things and other people probably should have various counseling things.

I'm just saying. THIS, this 5-12 year old kids stuff, is way simpler in the sense that I can go out on a date with my husband or have lunch with a friend. I have personal aspirations again, my own life, awesome, right? But I FEEL that I have FIVE KIDS in the way that other people say FIVE KIDS, now. I suddenly understand why people go bug eyed and stutter about how full my hands are, in the grocery store. Because this shit is convoluted, and extensive, and sometimes impossible.

I realize some people who have big families have "family systems," for education, for healthcare, for activities - one size fits all protocol that individuals adhere to for the sake of the whole, sanity, etc - but while I am not judging them, I can't do that. I see my own kids as totally distinct people who need totally distinct things from me and from life.

Which is very different with babies (high needs vs average vs easy) and toddlers (more reading or more running around) and preschoolers (how will we unschool, what type of vegetables will this one consume, what bedtime routine works) than it is at this phase.

VERY.
DIFFERENT.

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Isaac and I studied his horrific vocabulary definitions, last night, and he had an easy-peasy time with some math (place value to the hundred thousands). We went over the behavior and the homework contracts together and signed them, and I filled out his other (emergency contact) forms. I put a sketchbook in his backpack since he said he needs one for art. He had his probiotics and his miralax and tons of fiber filled food and drank water and had some meltdowns that involved locking his bedroom door and crying on his bed extensively ("Dot cumein" warning people not to come in, taped on the door...). He read some simple books to me and we talked about how he told his teachers that he just couldn't read, when in fact he can read many things, but he has little confidence.

And then I sat around thinking, about how he is really the fucking PICTURE of the kind of kid I would normally say needs to be homeschooled - ahead in some areas but behind in another, bright and enthusiastic but with some kind of non-neurotypical thing happening. I wonder if his excitement over school will fade with the novelty factor, or not. I think of how he enjoyed the PE classes PATH offered, and the enrichment classes they sometimes do, and how he's staying in GMYS and maybe I should just pull him out of school and stick him in soccer or something. And teach him real grammar that makes sense. But... :/

Pros in favor of his staying in:
-He really wants to go, and LOVES. IT.
-he really seems to light up and thrive in outside structured environments in general, whereas he is not a self-led happy person at home much of the time
-we spent over $300 on his uniforms and supplies, got him into a school with a waiting list after two years of trying, and have been telling him this is what's going down for months
-it is valuable for Isaac to be around adults who don't know all of his history and kids who don't stigmatize him for everything from his historic poop issues to his weird past behaviors; he needs to be able to step outside of all that and just BE, sometimes...
-Jake is like a different kid when Isaac is or is not here, and I feel much better about the latter. He spent all day yesterday while Isaac was at school building or drawing quietly when he wasn't helping me clean or doing BrainQuest sequencing. Right now he's out there on Reading Eggs. While Isaac was home, they fought and ran and yelled and broke things and hurt each other and had weird tense telling on each other, for several hours. Isaac instigates a lot of situations that make Jake and Elise seem complicated, whereas when he's out of the house they're the simplest things in the world.

I normally (obviously) really believe the whole philosophy that even if you do NOTHING with your kids at home, it's better than sending them to school, because they're free to develop into who they are and explore their environments and not get influenced negatively or taught a bunch of bs...I DO do things, with the kids, but I think you know what I mean - I normally take the attitude that school is not just inferior but really kinda harmful in a lot of ways, teaching them to see learning as wearisome work and teaching them a lot of crappy societal attitudes and taking up all their time so they can't just play or go at a natural childhood pace. I realize this is controversial and am not trying to start a debate. I'm just making the point of what a departure it is for me, to be considering all these things as I am. With Elise I'm thinking to myself that Kindergarten is still pretty young and innocent and I can take it one step or year or whatever at a time and pull her whenever I think that's beneficial to her. I have already had her bring some weird attitudes home during preschool (everything from someone made fun of her for eating yogurt so she can't do that anymore to girls shouldn't play with cars because her teacher was giving our Barbies to girls and cars to boys). It's balanced with good stuff, thus far, and we talk about things.

Elise is loving kindergarten, for what it's worth.

I'm currently waiting for a call back from the principal of the school, on when we can meet, and from Isaac's evaluator, to see about getting an academics-only version of his evaluation to give to the school.

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Ananda still exists, haha...I write about her less partially because she is very easy for me at the moment, and partially because I am trying to honor her privacy more and more as she gets more of her own social life with web savvy kids. Grant took her out day before yesterday, for hair dye and a guitar string that had broken. I dyed her hair and we worked together to reorganize the library, yesterday. She's happy that we're going back to TLC this afternoon after picking up her siblings, and that she's going to Cybele's with Aaron this weekend, for a water balloon fight and swimming sleepover. The latest horror movie she did with G was Darkness Falls, and I've told her I'm going to try to get her cello (albeit rent to own or layaway) after he gets paid on the first. She is totally caught up in how adorable Elise is in her uniform with her backpack and things, and did Elise's hair in pigtails for her this morning. She's better at hair than I am. She shares her nail polish with Elise, too. "Our" school year is really starting September 1, which is when Virtual School starts.

Aaron is still asleep at 10 am and I'm letting him, because he's so ill with God knows what :/ He had (COPIOUS O_O) blood drawn at MCH on Tuesday and we have a follow-up in about a week and a half to see what all the panels and tests say. He goes for the occasional bike ride with me, and does his chores, and is funny at times, but it's rare for 3 hours to pass without him complaining to me that his glands hurt, his stomach hurts, he's tired, his throat hurts, etc. He definitely lays around WAY more than normal. I'm really worried about him.

I can get myself into a seriously nauseous snit, between him and Isaac, just lately.