Life's been good to me so far

I just got diagnosed over the phone with pernicious anemia.

Basically that means my body can't absorb B12 from food anymore. So, I have to get B12 shots and/or take oral megadoses of B12 for the rest of my life, because symptoms of serious B12 deficiency are straight up terrible - everything from exhaustion to dangerously enlarged liver - painful joints, nerve damage and "impaired cognition," and heart arrhythmia, weakened bones...generally speaking, though, as long as you get your shots you're fine. "Pernicious" means deadly, because this used to be a death sentence, before it was so easy to supplement the B12.

Causes can be autoimmune, wherein your immune system is attacking a protein your stomach normally makes called intrinsic factor, which enables your digestive system to process B12. Eventually your stomach lining gives up even trying to make more intrinsic factor and you just don't have any. And I do have inflammation, which points to autoimmune issues.

It can also be because you've had part of your small intestine removed, which I obviously have.

It is scary as hell to think that I've been falling down stairs and unable to move myself around and CONFUSED all the time, because of this. My numb, tingling, weak hands... I am trying to just console myself that lifelong B12 shots are wildly less terrible than the colostomy bag I was warned I might need (in 2007, pre-op). And, pernicious anemia is not degenerative as long as it's treated, so obviously that is a much better option than RA, which I was very afraid of...

People with pernicious anemia are about 3 times more likely than the general population to develop stomach cancer. The normal odds are very very good/small, though, so that is still "only" about 4 out of every 100 people who have pernicious anemia that are getting it. Except that being hispanic also doubles (or more) your risk factor for stomach cancer. And that is like, basically the least survivable cancer, since it's almost impossible to catch early. NO WORRIES THERE O_O

And so I am trying to console myself that I really could have died in the ICU, and I didn't. Instead I have somewhat increased odds of one day developing a rare cancer. WAY BETTER, right? I mean I'll probably die on a Miami highway before that could ever happen.

Pernicious anemia is also called megaloblastic anemia, because what it really is, is an inability by your body to produce enough healthy red blood cells, since B12 is used in the production of red blood cells. Instead you have these huge, too-few red blood cells. Which effects you systemically, until you start supplementing.

Apparently there is irreversible and reversible damage happening leading up to diagnosis, while your blood is all wack - brain, nerve, organ, bone, TEETH (I've gotten 10 of my 15 fillings done so far), etc...and this varies for everyone. The earlier you catch it the better, though, as far as what goes back to normal, and it seems from my reading that most people are way worse off than I am before they do figure out this is what's going on.

I would like to think this is related to surgery partially because otherwise it is very hereditary; one of the things on the list of things to do is tell my kids and siblings all about it, since any of them may also have or develop it.

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Five minutes of crying, half an hour on the phone with my sister and some distractions later, I am ok with this situation. There was still some part of me hoping that the potentially subjective things I was suffering from could add up to be, you know...nothing. Something that passed unexplained, or was at least curable. But (like Laura said, and is obvious...) things have been way TOO wrong for that. So! This it is :p It means doctors appointments forever and explaining this to people over and over and over, and all in all it's not so bad. It shouldn't be hard to get my disability allowance for last semester when I explain WHY I was a wreck with a firm diagnosis, either. And it should also not be too hard to get back to being a better student.

I am slightly squinty eyed with suspicion about how this can sometimes be a piggybacking disorder that coincides with some other problem (like RA), but, you know...we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.

If you'd like to see an overwhelmed, long winded ramble about WHAT I CAN DO DIFFERENTLY TO CHANGE MY LIFE, that is under the cut. It is not really something finished, with an ending. I wrote it almost 2 weeks ago and, as so often happens, writing it out and then reading what I'd written made a lot of answers very clear to me. Usually when this happens I just delete the entry without posting; this time though it was saved and when I went to update again, ( it was here. )

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What I wanted to say today, was:
1.) I realized yesterday how huge the backlog of pictures I want to post is becoming, and then spent over an hour selecting, resizing and uploading almost 80 of them. There will be at least a couple of huge picture posts really soon :) I have some great stuff!

2.) Aaron and I have started a documentary unit study. It's micro learning in many senses - 3D printers! What is meth, anyway? Tibetan monks, gun control, Nikola Tesla - but the macro learning is what I'm more interested in, with this. We started with this big talk about how every documentary is made by a person or persons who have some kind of driving agenda, and the totally contradictory yet factual cases one can make for various things. For instance, a hypothetical "FIU is a totally green university" vs a hypothetical "FIU is a university that is destroying the environment"...both are highly defensible and could be made into a convincing hour long presentation. Neither are the whole truth, though. We're also doing a lot of talking about how documentary subjects overlap. They're often organized into groups that include things like, "science" even though technically, "drugs," "the environment," "nature," and "technology" are all also science. There is biography in politics, and politics in conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theories in philosophy, and so on. I want to show him at least a couple of single-topic documentaries that are totally against each other. We're highlighting the ways dramatization can blur the truth or seem persuasive, and I'm asking him to try to see what he can learn from a given documentary as well as what questions he should ask about it's motivations, sourcing, and so on.

Aaaanyway, today he watched the hour long National Geographic special on the Bermuda Triangle (available on YouTube, not actually on that list I linked previously). He was extremely frustrated with how open ended it left the whole issue of WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE SHIPS AND PLANES AND WHY ("the methane gas bubbles could happen anywhere, it's just a coincidence if they're happening there over and over!") but then he was like, "You know, Mom? It seems like anything 'supernatural' is just peoples' way of explaining things they don't understand yet." And I was like, "Welp. That's a pretty profound statement many other people have also made." Then we talked about that tribes from a movie a generation ago that incorporated found Coke bottles into their religious ceremonies and saw planes flying overhead as God, and he wanted to go back to this big conversation we had weeks ago about placebo and I was like LISTEN KID. I've got stuff to do. Your brain's gonna have to quietly explode in another room while I wash some dishes and figure out what's for dinner :p

I think it's a great supplemental thing for him, that is very very painless compared to, say, getting him up to grade level in math and forcing him to do creative writing. Both of which are deeply painful.

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ETA: I've learned that the anti-anxiety med they gave me at the ER - Lorazepam, aka Ativan - is strongly contraindicated for dissociative disorder (which I have) as well as being seriously addictive. Meaning that, you know, maybe the ER nurses shouldn't be able to hand out and advise people on psychiatric medications? This chick sat with me telling me I needed to experience it, see how I felt, if it was something that could help me, she really sat down with me and talked it up for like 15 quiet one on one minutes - and I went home with a prescription for a whole bottle of it (that has just sat). *sigh* This is right on the heels of them trying to refer me out to a cosmetic dentist for the first lump on my wrist, and the year after they gave Aaron DTaP when I asked/signed for a tetanus shot only (an old nail went through his Croc, into his foot). Aaron has had three years of DTaP shots before without incident so for him this is not the end of the world, just a booster. For a kid like my nephew Brian, or Elise, who have had previous seizures, though, and not been vaccinated with DTaP because of it, it could be a big fucking deal to a parent. The fact that they injected a kid with two more things than the parent signed for is a huge liability factor and just another sign of their weird general carelessness :/ I'm starting to feel a burdensome responsibility to write them a letter laying a bunch of this crap out on the table.

Ugh, I don't know what my deal is, but here are some samples of what I'm ugh-ing about:

Yesterday, BARELY got up (it was a near thing) from 8 hours of sleep, dragging. Took B vitamins, choked down water. Forced through motions of cooking breakfast, getting Isaac up and ready, walking him to school, waking other kids. I ate (and it's gluten free steel cut oats with fresh strawberries and coconut milk). Gave everyone schoolwork and hugs, collapsed asleep for a couple of hours. Fought with the snooze button, arms like lead, eyes not wanting to open. Putz out to the kitchen, made myself a salad, talked to kids, made Elise a salad, walked and got Isaac from school (and the salad is like, all organic, no dressing, includes frozen peas and lots of dark green leaves and sauteed shrooms among other things...). Checked on everyone's school progress, fading. Fell asleep for about 45 minutes. Banana snack. Read to Jake in the hammock, took him on the bike ride I had promised him I would, got back with like shaking legs and hands, feeling nauseous. Grant arrived home, took Isaac out like he'd been waiting for. I enlisted Ananda and Aaron's help, spent about 30 minutes cooking (really good) dinner. We ate - mushroom risotto, and chicken with broccoli cooked in lemon juice, olive oil, salt and herbs de provence. Yum. Then I'm in the bedroom full, clicking around on the internet to stay upright, begging Grant to make the kids brush their teeth. He brought Seinfeld episodes on a thumb drive and we watched two episodes and then I fell asleep. At like 11:30.

Today, he's working from home, so he got up and took Isaac to school. He woke me up at 10. I ate some leftover risotto and some chunks of cold pineapple from the fridge, checked in with children, gave Elise lots of affection and talked to Annie about her dreams, caught up on facebook and tumblr, pet a cat. And for the last half hour (not even an hour and a half into BEING AWAKE) I am BATTLING to stay awake. Like it's hard, in this way it's only ever been hard in my whole life if I'm pregnant (I'm not pregnant) or postpartum and on narcotic pain meds. Ugh. I can't stand this shit. These are particularly bad fatigue days, and it's some kind of spectrum I guess, but I'm having really bad fatigue days and/or really bad pain days at least a couple of times a week for awhile now...and then if my sister shows up at my door or someone calls unexpectedly it's this huge effort to PERK UP and deal with them? That's really fucking weird for me.

I have to quantify fun and energy to comfort myself - I had fun spending a day with Nancy up in Delray, and I had fun out at a roller derby match with Gloria and LJ, and one night Grant and I went to see a play Shaun was a part of and that was great. Of course there have been PATH, TLC, blah blah blah, although a lot of that time I spend feeling pretty hazy. One TLC day was great, and Ananda and I walked laps around the track while the little kids rolled around on the grass in the middle. It's definitely easier to stay alert and with it when I'm out places among people - it doesn't always work, though. I was struggling to stay awake in my classes all last semester, even the ones I found very interesting and sat up front in... Now we're down to one vehicle again, we homeschool, and we're not exactly rolling in money at the moment - so it's not always a simple thing to be out among people. Sometimes I can have the right music playing and the doors and windows open and fake it til I make it. Sometimes not.

I get really excited by external things now and then - like my books arriving in the mail, or the research I'm doing for my current writing - and it's really good, and then it fades super fast, and leaves me all slouched and drowsy again. It's really something, for me, that I am actually sleepy at night sometimes these days O_o Historically, I'm energetic at night regardless of how I've felt throughout the day.

Anyway. On my way to get (more) blood work done...

This morning, after I took Grant to the train and Elise to preschool, Aaron woke in terrible pain - crying uncontrollably, even yelling. It was his swollen glands.

Aaron got what was diagnosed as mumps (he was fully vaccinated at this point and there was some argument among professionals) at 3, his face swelled up like a chipmunk, and ever since whenever he gets ill, his glands get big and tender. Throughout the last year or so, though, they seem to swell and feel tender more often - almost continuously at times. It's been hard to decipher what's going on with them since Christmas, since we have had two different illnesses that have lasted weeks and they're often subtly enlarged or slightly sensitive.

Four days ago, though, with all of us better, his glands suddenly got huge like I haven't seen them in a long time. It was a Saturday and I didn't think it was worth the ER. He layed around a lot. Sunday (Easter) was the same - he layed on a couch under a blanket while the rest of us dyed eggs on the deck, and didn't eat much candy since he can barely chew :/ Yesterday it seemed a lot better - they'd gone way down and hurt a bit less. No fever.

Then today, wailing and gnashing of teeth first thing. It takes a LOT for Aaron to act like that. The silver lining in this situation is that it snapped me immediately out of my funk and into focused action. Also, Dr Geraldi was able to see us this morning and Ms Denise didn't mind keeping Elise longer.

My pediatrician - this guy -


He has a bit of a fixation.

(I apologize for my nausea-inducing angles, I didn't really get it until I saw it myself)

And we love him, and he is amazing. He came in, with his gray braided rat tail and his heavily embroidered and colorfully sewn jeans, in his Spiderman lab coat, knowing us well enough on sight to ask about all my other kids by name. This is the guy my Aunt DeeDee used to drive all the way from Key West to see, for my twin cousins, and there was actually someone there from Orlando today. He checks Annie for anemia via nail beds and eye lids rather than doing bloodwork, he diagnosed Isaac's appendicitis in his office, and he's been cheering for Elise from day 1.

So, it's a little disconcerting to see him calling in his assistant, trading notes, looking things up on his iPhone, and hypothesizing.

Anyway his leading theory is that the glands are catching a lot of drainage from the illnesses and Aaron's allergies and they're clogged and possibly now colonizing bacteria the same way our ears can. So we're doing allergy meds, decongestants and antibiotics - and he's gotta stay on ibuprofen and pedialyte around the clock so as not to get super dehydrated, since it was hurting too much for him to eat or drink and that was becoming a problem :/ He goes back Friday.

With all that in him, he was like a new albeit low energy man and wanted to go to TLC like usual.

Again I enjoyed a good day...good as in, I felt like myself and was able to do things and act human. We picked up Elise, filled prescriptions, had pasta and sauce for lunch, went to TLC. I did some dishes and had a dinner plan. I'm enjoying Grant's company.

Somebody last night left a lengthy comment suggesting she thinks I'm bipolar. Having known several bipolar people well over the years, online and IRL, my first instinct was to say "No way", but I do spend an awful lot of time thinking I need to come back and explain how good things actually are and how excited I am about x, y and z, as well as thinking it's important to emphasize just how awful it is and how I can't deal anymore. So for the hell of it, I took an online assessment that seems to be relatively widely accepted and hosted by fairly respectable looking sites, and was like, wtf?! I got a 51 and a 48 the two times I did it, 53 being the highest possible most bipolar score O_o Lots of words like severe and where to start to get help.

I talked with Grant about this for awhile. I know a LOT about bipolar because of the people I've interacted with over the years who suffer from/through it, and if that is me I think that I either have a higher set point, mood-wise, than what I've seen in others, or else I don't have the piggy backing disorders, or it's a newer development...or all three? I'm going to the doctor either way, I had already decided I want my thyroid tested because, truly, I fit that picture to a T as well. Who the hell knows.

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Tonight, I want to tell you how incredibly cheap it is to make a big pot of lentil soup for dinner with a bunch of chilled pineapple for dessert. Onions, (tons of) garlic, carrots, celery, chicken and beef broth (cubes for me), tomato juice (I use some from canned tomatoes and then save the actual tomatoes for something else), lentils, water, salt, seasoned salt. It's so delicious! You can garnish it so many ways and serve it with bread or salad or bruschetta or antipasto or nothing. All of my kids tear it up, and a pot big enough for all 7 of us plus lunch for a couple of people the next day is only ~$4 with me buying all the ingredients at BJ's.

Then 3 big cans of pineapple out of a case into the freezer and that's about a $2.50 dessert for all the kids. Ran through the food processor frozen and eaten with a spoon they go crazy.

And I'd like to mention, in case anyone hasn't realized this yet, that you can google image search coupons for any restaurant you're going in, pull them up on your phone, and the waittress/cashier can scan it. The 7 of us consistently do healthy all you can eat at Sweet Tomatoes for $21 this way (it would be about $58 without the coupon deals they keep renewing).

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Last, look at my hot husband sweeping the bedroom floor after putting away tons of laundry and making the kids laugh the whole drive home:

We're busy bees.

Tuesday (the 13th): Got up at 8:30 and had everyone else up by 9, as part of our new Earlier Scheduling. Breakfast and over to the new house to meet with people, bleary-eyed. Found out our home inspector has very little roofing knowledge and that, no, actually it is not a $1500 roof repair that we need, but a $15,000 brand new roof. This was confirmed by a handyman with no personal bias and an unrelated roofer who my mother in law trusts. As it is, "a Category 3 storm would rip it right off" and there are multiple code violations. This is also the day we realized the great, new looking stainless steel fridge...doesn't work. We started using our new Abeka english curricula and I was really, really happy with that - Elise sat happily in her little feeding chair while we worked, A and A were into it, seemed effective to me. Felt incredibly burnt out by the end of the longer day. Sick to death of trying to figure out what's for dinner.

Wednesday: Grant back at work for a few days. Got up at 8 and got them up at 8:30 (see how this is getting earlier as time passes?) We did more Abeka schoolwork - this time with Elise driving us crazy and Isaac whining a lot, but still, I was really happy with the schooltime. The materials are great. We did some shopping at Target for the new house's cleaning supplies and bathroom outfitting and things, which was a little bit fun but tempered by Target's system being down for over an hour and checkout consequently taking most of the afternoon. I got my own belated Mother's Day presents: A "Gryson for Target" purse, a green paisley tote bag I've been using for diapers and snacks ever since, sunglasses and a hat since I've finally given in and surrendured, in this heat, and two shirts for myself. Capped sleeves, almost but not quite puff sleaves...really not something I ever thought I would do, but here I am. Big kids went to AWANA while Isaac continued to recover from appendectomy. Dinner was kind of a bust because Isaac, Jake and Elise fell asleep between dropping A and A off and getting to the grocery store, and I was not at all in the mood to wake them all up and drag them in...Bedtime reading has been great and eagerly anticipated as we're almost to the end of HP#3. Cried my eyes out to G in bed (where he was going to sleep, but I was getting up to go watch Jake and Elise until I could make them sleep) about how I'm having an identity crisis and don't know who I am anymore. He was comforting but also surprised me by acting like my identity crisis is old news to him and I've been having it for awhile, and that it's way bigger than capped sleeves and an obsession with handbags. Then we had passionate, emotionally connected loving, but just barely before it was time to haul myself back into the grind because there was entirely too much shrieking going on in the living room...

Thursday: Got up at 7:30, had them up at 8. Jake helps me wake up Elise every day, and then they freaking CUDDLE and LAUGH for a while...I die. He's so protective of her, and careful of her, they wrestle all over the place and she pulls his hair and pokes his eyes and claws at him, and he just squints or moves her hands or whatever, and does everything in ways that don't hurt her. I'm so proud of him lately. How they sleep:

Excuse the uncovered pillow, it was a bad laundry day a couple of weeks ago after we were de-lousing and there was a case shortage that actually prompted a shopping trip.
Still enjoying renewed closeness with Isaac after the whole appendix thing.
We had awesome schooltime, Thursday, A and A were asking for it and everything. It felt like a lot of balls in the air and of course I was all fuzzy headed from lack of sleep, but I also felt super productive and satisfied with all the cleaning, meals, waking up, educating, everything. Isaac even did some Handwriting Without Tears, and Jake colored. *Great* PATH meeting. Ananda hung out with her new "secret club" again, Aaron was up a tree or riding scooters with boys that are starting to be real friends, and Isaac played slow, invalid soccer with a really nice teenage guy. His favorite thing is having an older person faun over him, so this made his afternoon. I really, really like a couple of the other moms at this (new to me) park group and am glad we started going to it. It's actually a social outlet for me, too, not just a thing for the kids. Unfortunately in the evening I had to remove the dressing on his "tummy" (NOT my belly, my TUMMY, Mom), which was...an ordeal.

Friday Up at 7:30 and them up at 8, again. I felt incredibly vindicated when Ananda told me she doesn't know what the big deal with reading was, and how she reads great, while we were doing school. I WAS SO DEAD ON ABOUT HER JUST NEEDING TO GET HER CONFIDENCE BACK, and this is the perfect system for that, between the copious, thorough and methodical review, and the slow advancement forward. "Spiraling", I think they call it. Barely missed a flooring person at the new house due to our cordless phone dying, my cell phone being lost, and general frustration about times - it was a lot of hectic planning all for nothing, and caused the kids to get the snack they were supposed to have here over there and make a huge ass mess (no dining table, no feeding seats, just strawberries and nutella as promised...) Only Laura and Brian showing up over there to keep me company and provide adult conversation kept me from losing my mind. We went to Game Night at Spellbound in the evening. After an initial good time for the first half hour, it got reeeeeeeeeally stressful as Jake and Elise were just into absolutely everything. I had no stroller with me and ended up leaving the big kids in the store and imposing timeouts for Jake in the van with Elise on my hip. No good, it was awful, and bedtime was later than I wanted it to be. Realized that I really will LOSE MY MIND if I don't have some hours to myself at night to break up the neverending mothering during the days, it makes a big difference for me. I didn't just suddenly go insane, I lost my coping skill when I started going down with the babies.

Saturday: Got up early despite later bedtimes, cursed these weeks that Grant has 4 12 hour shifts instead of 3. Was thrilled when Ananda asked to please, please do schoolwork today too? I got an email from my friend Jess, who lives down in Marathon, saying she unexpectedly got the whole weekend off from work and would love to come up here and hang out -! So we drove on down there and grabbed her. The ride up was fun, talking and laughing and catching up, and we stopped at a state park to let the kids run around and eat and play for awhile to break up the drive (it's about 2 hours each way). Then in the evening my sister called and said she was really, actually, definitely, no backing out singing at Open Mic Night, so we hit it over to Spellbound again...Grant met us there, done with work for another few days, and, well, she sang. It was dead, which was dissapointing, but honestly - I was blown away. I didn't know my sister could sing. I've never really heard her sing before. I was very afraid the honest critique she expected from me would be soul crushing :x I spent the first half of the first song looking into my lap so I wouldn't make her laugh or make her uncomfortable, thinking it was gonna suck to tell her that the vocal track was still on her cd and nobody could hear HER at all...but then I realized it was her I was hearing, when I looked up for the first time, which was WEIRD. That "real singer" sounding singing, was her. It was also fun to tell her, after she was done with her two songs, that she was being broadcast on the big speakers out front of the place and Grant could still hear her when he got to our van half a block away to change Elise.

I told her she had to buy Brian a book they sell called "Hands are not for Hitting" before she could bring him back to my house ;) and we laughed at Frank and Grant commiserating about the "I got up early for work and now my stir crazy wife is dragging me around town blues". Jess found some good used books for practically nothing and called my sister's voice "velvety".

Sunday was JAMP PACKED craziness: We were all up between 8 and 8:30 again, and G and I double-teamed a waffles, eggs and turkey bacon breakfast. I swept and swiffered, did the dishes and scrubbed the bathroom while he vaccumed and sorted/put away what has to have been at least 6 loads of laundry. He took Elise and spent a long time at Lowe's, asking questions, calling me to confer, and having me look up online reviews of products, while I cooked. I made (packaged) tortellini with some organic red sauce, totally from scratch brown and wild rice with wehani, cooked in broth and loaded with mushrooms and salt and a little butter, two loaves of banana bread and a pitcher of iced tea, and we took it all over to Kristin's house for Darien and Naja's joint potluck birthday pool party. G ended up staying here with Jake and Elise, who were napping, and Jess and I took Ananda, Aaron and Isaac over there. Highlights include:
-the snow cone machine
-laughing hysterically with Kristin about our kids' most recent antics
-feeling awkward because Jess didn't really feel a part of things, being childless and not knowing people - she didn't complain and said it was ok, but you know, once the person you brought to a social event is reading a book off in a corner it makes you feel bad
-Isaac being the star of the show with his little marked up belly in his swimming trunks...nobody could believe we just had ANOTHER hospital thing. Least of all me.
-Isaac nearly DROWNING when after an hour playing on the steps with A and A swimming nearby, he drifted off and I suddenly heard Aaron screaming, Mom! Isaac! Mom! Isaac! Turning to look at him - not ten feet from where I was standing, mind you - the top of his head was at the surface of the water and his arms were working uselessly. So I dove into the pool fully dressed and fished him out, and he was hysterical because I grabbed him without considering his sore tummy :/ It wasn't until I was adjusting my dripping shirt and getting him a candy necklace to soothe his troubles that I realized the whole party had gone silent and then breathed a sigh of relief as they saw he was alright. I dried gradually over the next couple of hours :p
-He also managed to fall into her bathtub and bruise his arm while going to pee (?)
-the food I made was awesome, as was a lot of the other food.
-my finished belly cast looks good
-a total stranger held me by the arm and told me how great it is that Elise is doing so well and we're getting a house, because she reads the blog every day
-Kristin's very cool under-the-sea mural'd bathroom inspired us for the kids' bathroom. Annie is psyched.
We left there and all met up with Grant, Jake and Elise at Lowe's. There was some big sale ending yesterday that we've been watching, but forgot the deadline for. We ordered our dishwasher and double oven :D - both KitchenAid stainless steel - and our cooktop, and he bought a grill and his woodworking tools, as well as browsing flooring and countertop options, and fridges, and microwaves...I left A and A with him and took the younger 3 home with us.

Gave Jake and Elise an adorable bath. They are so, so good together, I melt. And the fat clean naked squish, oh my.

Once he was home, Jess and I went up to Wild Oats alone for his natural soda and non-refined sugar cookies, where I also found some great silvery lime green nail polish, and then hit it up to Barnes and Noble. This was a little before 10pm. I ended up buying the latest Elle, a really inspiring Crochet magazine, and the new Mothering, which has Ani Difranco on the cover with her daughter :D Also bought Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, because I've never gotten around to reading it, and I like keeping things like that around since we're homeschooling. I'm reading a LOT lately - in the bathroom, at the hospital, while I nurse people to sleep. Jess got her dad drumming and other specialty magazines for Father's Day, that aren't available down in the Keys.
And then we were home, reading HP to A and A again, laying with Annie for awhile because she was feeling down, getting Jake to sleep with Elise crawling on him, eating an amazing spinach salad full of warm chicken cooked in lots of olive oil with seasoned salt, in one big bowl Grant and I were sharing...

And today, Monday: Waking up felt kind of...easy. Ananda and I planned her birthday cake and used my new nail polish on our fingers and toes, and then we woke up everyone else. Grant met with flooring people, and roofing people who say we DON'T need a new roof and that's ridiculous and the home inspector was right O_o I don't know what to think, obviously it would be great to save the money, how does one make this sort of call? I took all the kids up to Target with Jess, who really wanted to shop before she left as there is nothing like that down where she lives. She tried on clothes and picked through racks while I got a bunch of things I've been planning on getting -
-a handheld vac for the van, which is entirely too full of crumbs and/or sand all of the time
-a 4 cup glass measuring cup, since our old plastic one with the markings rubbed mostly away finally melted in the dishwasher
-springform pans for Ananda's special birthday cake
-divided trays for when I'm serving the kids buffet-style finger food lunches
-giant hair claw, since mine busted yesterday
-mini-loaf pans because that rocks

I nursed Elise and then Jake in the van, then G got in it and Jess, Ananda and I took the Prius to take Jess home. The ride down was hard...she's going through a lot of trouble with her bipolar meds, and just where she's at in her life, that make her pretty sensitive and emotional and I couldn't shake the feeling that it's become a little more of a gap between us, that I have a bunch of kids and a husband and she just feels alone in the world sometimes :/ It's seriously NEVER felt like an issue before, not since day 1 when I told her I was pregnant, back in 12th grade. But usually when she visits or I visit, it's a lot less "involved" with the whole family...me staying up late for many hours with her to watch movies and eat food, or going out alone with her. This was more like, what my sister gets. Me talking and trying to pay attention, but as I cook, sweep, bathe, change, etc - as long as you don't mind me not looking at you and 15 million interruptions, it's all good ;) I almost feel as though she maybe didn't realize the reality of what my day-to-day life actually is, and is alienated now, but I could be projecting that. We hugged and I'm sure we'll continue to write, I guess I just wish I could do more for her, and see her more often.

Ananda and I had a great time on the way back up. We stopped at the Dolphin Research Center together, and then had lunch and walked down to the ocean for a few minutes. I feel like she's practically in my lap sitting in the back of the Prius, it's so different than having her in the 3rd row of the van.

After catching up with G and tandem nursing my thrilled-to-see-me littlest ones, he took A and A to the batting cages, where they presumably are now?

*sigh*

Bedtimes have moved back from around 2 am to 11:30, so far, for Jake and Elise, and from around 12:30 to around 11, for the other 3. The babies are slower going because they make it up with naps during the day no matter what I do, especially with lots of van time. But we're getting there...I'd really like to get all five of them down by 10:30 tonight so I can start waking them up at 7:30 tomorrow morning...that is my goal time, that will make things like zoo camp, VBS and preschool seem far easier when they come around, and will hopefully make a 10 o'clock bedtime possible?

We've been doing GREAT with chores, Ananda tidies up the bathroom and puts away the clean dishes and Aaron clears anything that might be on the dining table, opens the blinds and takes out accumulated recycling, each morning. In the afternoon we have a general cleanup of common areas, mostly clutter, that includes Isaac and Jake, and then in the evening, Aaron closes blinds and takes out the next load of accumulated recycling, and Ananda clears the dining table (which is usually a formidable task in the evening...) I've fallen into a routine of cleaning up their room every morning while I'm in there waking them up and we're talking about plans for the day, that usually includes sending everyone out on their way with a pile of something - clothes, water cups, things to be thrown away, books that go in my room...

I got enough socializing, shopping and "out of the house" over the weekend, along with G helping so much, that my malaise of last week is mostly gone. I feel good again about just being here with my little family and and doing our thing.

Moving into this house feels a million years away. The people today who said we just need roof repair, said they can START in 3 weeks :/ And we're waiting for that to be done to do other things, and...argh. It is just like extremely late pregnancy, when every day that actually brings you closer just makes you FEEL like you're further than ever before.

( a couple of mediocre pics of Isaac in the hospital, that I never had time to post )