Life's been good to me so far

I am all about Spellbound Books. It's a local bookstore that's opened here in Homestead, owned by a really great family. The mother is a former La Leche League leader and a homeschooler with 5 kids. Her kids are at the bookstore almost all the time, and two of them are twin 9 year old girls that have fast become Ananda's best friends. Every time we walk in, one or both of them comes running up yelling "Annie!" and they hug. Aaron gets along fairly well with them, too - good enough to have a fun time and participate in their talks at least. There's also an 11 year old boy who is great with Isaac, and a 14 year old girl who's a little "young for her age" and just nice to talk with. The oldest helps the mom with the store a lot, and has a goth edge. I keep thinking that if my brother were still down here they would get along great.

Aside from hosting the LLL meetings for free (we needed a space after the YMCA started charging...), they have things like "Game Night" once a week where kids just all bring their board games in and play in the big meeting room in the back (where meetings also happen). And they have Open Mic Night once a month for anyone and everyone, and on Saturday they had this woman come in from some "Protocol School of Washington" and do a big Afternoon Tea Ettiquette thing - I took Ananda and it was so fun. All the little (and big) girls were dressed up like it was Easter, even with hats and gloves, and we all sat around learning a lot of nonsense about what a faux pas is and how to fold a napkin in our lap without holding it up where others can see - all based around an Alice in Wonderland theme (introducing yourself and others as the white rabbit should have done, hosting guests NOT like the madd hatter, being punctual, this and that...) I broke my sugar fast for the yummy treats. It was all linen tablecloths and silver serving trays with china saucers, and that sort of thing.

Early next month PATH is taking a trip to a live performance of The Wizard of Oz, just in time for Isaac's obsesssion, and Grant is going to take Ananda, Aaron, Isaac and their twin girls.

After the Tea dealy I browsed as they were having a "Used books are $1" sale that really rocked. I got an "Almost Vegetarian" cookbook (exactly how I eat!) and a big hardcover science and nature thing for the kids, that they've already done experiments from, with Grant.

It's frustrating that they are a Christian family, and that has gotten out enough that there are Atheists and Jews in the area who don't want to go to what they think of as "the Christian book store". But it hasn't gotten out ENOUGH because there are also a bunch of Christians saying they don't want to go to "that Pagan/Wiccan bookstore" (because it's called Spellbound Books and in a sort of hippie, new age-y area of town). It's JUST A BOOKSTORE!!

Anyway. Today was good. Got up too late, was surprised by sudden cold front moving in, took advantage of opportunity to layer us all in seldom-used warm clothes. We went to the Farmer's Market and got a ton of stuff for very cheap prices, to augment the incredibly cheap meat we just managed to score all on Buy One Get One Free from Winn Dixie. Stopped on the way home and checked out the Redland Herb Farm, which sponsored the tea ettiquete deal - it's pretty great. Ducks, geese, flowers and pond and an amazing all wood house furnished and decorated like heaven in the middle of it all. They sell fresh eggs there. We won some lemon balm plants from them in a random drawing at the tea and Ananda has been eating the leaves off of it ever since. Aaron wants to send some to Zoe, who he is almost TOO preoccupied with writing to O_o It's so cute though...he was asking me questions about her and it's only made it "Worse" that she was Darth Vader and a Paleontologist for Halloween the last two years, and that she got a skateboard since we were at Dama's house, and that she likes skulls now. "So she's not into a lot of frilly girl stuff", he says admiringly, and Annie feeling threatened pipes in "That just means she's basically a boy!" *sigh* He signed his last letter, "Love, Aaron" and next thing I know I hear him sounding angry - "That's just how people sign letters, Annie, lots of people write that!"

After the herb farm trip Shaun came over, and Grant and Jake took a nap while I took the others for a good walk in the cold. I started feeling depressed from, I think, not having sugar after I had a bunch of sugar at the tea the day before...G and I made a great dinner together, though, and then layed around full together and tickle-wrestled all over the house afterward like fools. So that all helped. He was down the night before and I talked him through it and massaged it out of him. I like that we can still mostly switch off with bad moods so that one of us can pick up the slack.


Speaking of bad moods. There is this intense, deep anger both of us keep getting suddenly consumed by. I don't really know how to explain this. But a lot of people leave me comments calling me Super Mom and talking about how I make it look so easy, etc etc. And I won't lie, G and I don't really fight, and are mostly happy, and the kids do make me laugh all the time. Nevertheless, though, there is something about having them one after the other (after the other after the other after the other) that is wearing us down. I don't *think* it's coming through too much in our parenting (so far?), but it's there and it leads to things like me calling him on the phone, frantic, crying, telling him I can't do this anymore and he has to come home or figure out how to get a babysitter because I'm going to start screaming or leave the house and never come back. Generally speaking this happens about every 2-3 months and culminates with a big crying jag and him having to stay on the phone for an hour or more listening to me rant, while I barricade myself in my room with the door locked. Or, he slams something around in a very uncharacteristic way and then stomps off in the middle of me depending on him for help without a word/starts gritting his teeth with his fists balled up out of nowhere over something dumb/etc. I think it has to do with getting 3-5 hours of broken sleep per night and not even getting to go to the bathroom by yourself for years on end. It's like every now and then someone starts crying or wakes back up or pees on the floor and you just snap inside. Which is better than snapping outside. But I don't ever remember feeling it this way when I just had Ananda and Aaron, OR EVEN when Isaac was a nutso high needs baby that never cut us a break. Jake and Elise are easy as pie, as babies go, but sometimes I can hear him whimpering about not going to sleep to G as he kicks me in the back, while Elise is clawing and kneading my boob with her talons and biting my scabbed over nipple with her new teeth, when all I wanted all night we tried to outlast them was to lay down alone with my husband on the couch for 5 minutes...and I don't know. I'm a calm person. I don't yell, I don't hit, I don't even normally understand people who yell or who hit. But all of a sudden I'll just want to SLAP MY BABY so bad that I have to tense up my whole body and breathe deep. And then usually I cry and I feel better except that I feel like a jackass because she is beautiful and little and warm and just wants her mama. And Jake is out by then. Bah.

In a similar vein, we were talking the other night about how when we remember 2007, above and beyond all the calamities, we are going to remember being TIRED. More than anything else, I think. Just tired, and beaten down. And maybe last year is what is boiling up inside us when all of a sudden one of us needs to go out alone and get some air, even though we were peacefully reading poems with Aaron a minute before. But the TIRED! Tired like, I was on the phone from the ER terrified I was about to die in emergency surgery they were bringing the doctor in for from home, and G couldn't be there and was so worried he'd never talk to me again...but he asked me to make sure I called him back right before they took me in so he could stop thinking about it right then and go to sleep for an hour, and I understood. Like, really understood. He'd been up all day and all night and I wasn't coming back to help anytime soon. Hell, the way I rationalized that surgery to myself beforehand was, "I need a nap. They're going to give me a nap. I'll just go to sleep, deep nice sleep with nobody bothering me, and when I wake up this will be over." It was so bad that that actually helped! My mother called me from the hospital, in tears, a couple of months later, thinking she had bacterial meningitis and freshly admitted, and I was brought the phone in bed and I actually said, "Can I call you back?" to go back to sleep! I couldn't sleep after that, in the end, and then felt absolutely horrible when I called her again in like half an hour or something, but...that's how tired we were last year. Even when I think of Elise in the NICU, meeting with neurologists, driving driving driving back from Boston for 12 days because she hated the van so much...it feels tired in my mind.

*shaking that doom off as best I can at 5:30 in the %*&@ morning....*

I have been feeling better in general without the sugar. Really noticeably better. And it also doesn't hurt that I've lost 11 pounds! Stretch jeans I have that are normally uncomfortably tight right out of the dryer but perfect a few hours later and loose the next day, were loose right out of the dryer! I'm excited. I really feel like I can do this. I'm even gonna come right out and go out on a limb and say...I've gone from 212 lbs to 201, since January 1. I can't wait to be under 200 and never anywhere near it again for the rest of my freaking life. I already feel such a difference in energy and just...motivation to get up and move, you know? I need a lot of that, all I can get.

I have a lot of health fears right now...some of it may just be paranoia, some of it may be justified. I honestly can't tell the difference anymore. My periods are torrential hemmoraging downpours for 2 days that then dissapear except for transient spotting that lasts like a full 7 day week after the extra-heavy-tampon-and-pad-soaked-by-the-hour floods stop. This, two months in a row. But I'm tandem nursing (not that it mattered in the past...) And I have times where I can feel my heart pounding when I'm just laying there or sitting there, racing to where it reverbrates through my whole torso, and I had such a lot of that in the ICU so recently that it really scares the shit out of me and I know sleep deprivation is bad for your heart, but not what to do about it. I'm eating better? I pray about it. Argh. My whole abdomen is also just shaped very strangely. G sees it too, so I know it isn't in my head. The part that protrudes the most, like what would poke out against the fabric of a loose dress or tshirt, is right above my belly button. Not below. It rather freaks me out to imagine my insides rearranged and suspended by scar tissue, after 5 c-sections cut in two directions and the bowel resection that was somewhere else entirely...and why the hell are surgeries all "Sections", what does that even mean? The gist of this is, I think I am fine, I feel better than I have in a long time, I'm taking the best care of myself that I can, but I have quirks that worry me and when they do, it's bad. Like gut clenching sudden fear. I never knew just precisely how mortal I was before. I never want to be in the hospital again. AHF;odishgoiat

Nancy is coming down in just a few days and I am very eager to see her.

My OB from the Brigham has been in touch and his honesty, candor and sincere apologies strike me as genuine. I can't talk more about that now though for "liability reasons".

I'm trying to renew myself, in addition to better food and excercise, by cooresponding again. I sent some postcards over the weekend and am trying to call relatives more. I want to buy and actually use thank you cards, and get Ananda stationary for her birthday now that she has a penpal. Maybe Aaron too, if I could find some I thought he would actually like.

I am closer to Isaac than I think I ever have been before. Both of us call him "My Personal Penguin", after a book and song we have by the same title.

Jake is getting back to his normal self. I'd say he's at 75%.

I am also looking forward to having a garden again. I think it's beginning to be feasible for us, so long as we keep it small for now. Especially since A and A are old enough to actually help with it. Probably just tried and true things that will really save us money since we use so much of them - most likely roma tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, maybe some big tomatoes, and basil.

And...I have to go to bed. Whenever Grant Sr comes out to make his coffee while I'm sitting here it just really makes me feel like a fool.

Excuse me while I say - THIS FUCKING YEAR. What a roller coaster ride, geez man geez! I was just browsing my friends' page tonight when an entry linked to another page that led to a picture that just summed up birth and vbac and motherhood all at once, in a single image, everything I wanted when I was calling and emailing people for months and worried in my bed at night and driving across the country; everything I planned for, when I walked into that hardwood floored, sunny apartment and imagined. It was like a punch in the gut and I started crying, when I'd been fine a moment before.

The years of research, physical pain, medical complications, guilt and regret that led up to the months of searching, frustration and over the top going out on a limb, all culminated in...another c-section. A FIFTH c-section. It's like I used up all my sick days playing hooky, and then I was screwed when I really came down ill.

And how do you even take the time to mourn the birth that didn't happen, when you're waiting for your baby to wake up, when you're watching her for seizures, when you're on the phone with the doctor in the middle of the night, when you're in pain and thinking you might die and going to the gp and the surgeon and even the dermatologist because maybe that mole is cancer and THAT'S why you're so exhausted.

What the hell.

I went into my archives to skim a bit of this year, and just in January I failed a class, had a pet bird die in my hand, and was accosted with my children by a man with his penis out on our way to the grocery store. My whole list of New Years' Resolutions is like a joke.

There have been good things. Mind bogglingly good things. We saw the East Coast. I met Dama and her kids and feel like we're friends forever. I deepened my friendship with Heather. Grant and I sat up in the snowy night together and Jake potty trained and, well, Elise has turned out (so far) to be even better than "fine". I came back from the brink of extreme septic shock and got out of the ICU. I think we may've even found a church home. Laura and I are a whole new level of sisters. We got all kinds of great "things", like a king sized bed, the dining table of my dreams, a dyson that actually cleans the carpet. Short stories started flowing through my brain and onto the keyboard. I caught up with my two real life best friends and got FAR closer to my dad. And, I was reached out to by hundreds of strangers who, along with an absolutely miraculous devotional book, made God real in a whole new way.

But I'm rung out. RUNG OUT. Grant is up 30 pounds from the beginning of the year, from stress eating, I'm struggling with something that might be depression and might just be transitional problems as I readjust to my normal level of responsibility. And we've exhausted every resource, you know? There is no where to turn if we were to need anything, even an afternoon of babysitting or any item from the store that we'll pay for, as everyone has went so far beyond the call of duty for our various crises that...well, if I were related to us, knew us or even just read about us, I would be sick of us.


I realized two nights ago that there are some major overhauls that need to happen around here. Structure that needs to be implemented. It seems like a monumental, intimidating lot to do. But I'm trying. Because in a lot of ways we're still living in crisis mode. Everyone eats and wears clothes and there are still bedtime routines and outside activities...but our schedule is shot to hell, and everything from school time to G's work time to time for me to have a shower is fly by night and might not happen at all - not just on a given day, but for a given week, depending on who's teething, who really needs one of us one on one, how sore I am, who has to go to the doctor. I'm tired enough of all of it for it to trump how I'm just generally TIRED, and move me to action.



Totally unrelated to our year, Ananda and I went to Starbucks tonight by ourselves. It's a brand new one right here in town, so we don't have to drive 25 minutes north anymore. Which is good and bad ;) It's a great location, though, probably the biggest one I've ever been in. I sat in there with her feeling the smallest bit of hope after a miserable day of faking it because...because of what? I don't know. I really don't know. I tried to dissect it. I tried to figure out how to duplicate it at home. There's the incredible smell, I'm sure that's part of it, and I was holding a cup of icey cold, chocolatey sugar and caffeine, which also can't hurt. It felt more than that, though. Warm colors? Christmas decorations? That the rest of the world is still in holiday mode and some of it feels as if it could be a haven? I'm afraid it might just be that for 5 or so years now I've mostly only gone in Starbucks when we're traveling or it's a special occasion, and so it seems far removed from normal life. Perhaps that's why I want to be there every single day now - to escape. Unfortunately we can no way afford $4 drinks everyday...besides, if I went that often the associations would fade and it might start to seem mundane and, well, THAT is just too sad to deal with.