Life's been good to me so far

I find it inexplicably hilarious that in my facebook feed it says, "Tina Walker likes Jesus Christ (public figure)"



My ENT, this morning, had the jovial news that I had a great big cyst in my ear canal and all he had to do was anesthetize that side of my head, cut it open, and suck all the fluid out with a vaccum for me to be fine. True to form, he called out the opened door, "Ayanna!!! ...Jody!! ...Somebody!! There you are - I need a machete and an instruction kit."

It wasn't...that..bad. One of the needles hurt a lot because it went in a swollen awful place but other than that I didn't feel the actual cyst lancing. Because behind the ear is muscular (this was his explanation) part of my left arm was numb, and normally I have to kind of work to not check out when I start going numb because it's just TOO triggering, but I think I managed to only act a little weird.

Certainly not like the weirdo who was screaming and screaming and howling when I was in there last week. Doc said, "he asked for a cortisone shot in the neck, I've given them to him before. Then after I was done he started that racket - I was trying to get his attention, 'What's wrong, what hurts, I'm not doing anything anymore!' - he said he was just scared *shrug*".

He also believes I don't need and wouldn't benefit (at this time) from tubes as this has been a middle ear infection that only moved deeper after well established. Whatever man. I have a followup to get it all looked at and ANOTHER WICK (this one to keep the cyst from reforming) removed on Thursday, at which point he believes all will be well.

In the meantime it's a fun alternating of pulse-throb-ow and DEEP DEEP ITCH WHOA THAT ITCHES.

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Tomorrow morning, Jake has a tooth extraction scheduled. He does not exactly know this. He knows he's going to the dentist, which he thinks is awesome, and that Elise is jealous, and that it gets to be just me and him and Daddy, in the Prius...and that she's going to fix his cavity. He's pretty chill and did very well with x-rays and an exam last time. I am really hoping for the best. Grant is more of a mess about it than I expect Jake to be, as Grant has major dental trauma history, but I felt like I had to have him there as I can't lift Jake and he may not be in a state to walk out after twilight anesthesia. We talked about how there will be medicine that makes him feel funny but I don't think he really "gets" it. He's sleeping in my bed tonight so the nutcases laughing and playing rather than going to sleep don't keep him up.

In other news:
I am increasingly psyched about this Usborne Books gig. Last Saturday I had a show - which involves me driving to a friend's house and eating brownies while we look through catalogues - and I made $65 and went "bronze" (as I sold more than $750 in my intro period) meaning I get $50 in free books for us. Now that friend is becoming my recruit so I can make 11% off of all of her sales.

Shut up Bobby!

No but really, I was...uh..trepidacious? about getting involved with any form of multi level marketing, pyramid scheme bs. But I did not initially invest anything in this one, and a good friend of mine who's having great luck with it got me involved. Back in the day I knew several people doing various commission based sales gigs and these are the differences as I see them:

-I actually love and am interested in this product - hello, good kids' books, it's not tupperware or makeup or magazines
-I naturally hang around a lot of other people who also love and are interested in this product - it's not like when I was telemarketing or if I were going door to door
-there's no high turnover rate, and no high pressure...Dama's boss has been doing this for 11 years and supports herself, her husband and their three kids and pets this way in a home they own. I don't really expect or desire to get to that level but it bodes well for legitimacy

So anyway. I have a huge show coming up with a massive ($700) consigned order of books attached and two other possible recruits and I'm already getting contacts and meetings with local schools and libraries. The migrant association I mentioned before wants an ongoing contract and I'm really close to finalizing things with Miami Children's Hospital. It's not a passion or a career, really, but damned if I don't think I've found a way to bring in some money and get free Christmas presents for everyone while staying home with the kids. It utilizes my natural ability to talk myself into or out of any situation. Except really.


I am currently embarking on a pretty massive grand plan of SCHEDULING ALL THE THINGS - because I have a pretty massive lot of intense stuff to juggle.

Ahem:

-All five children are now being taught around here. This is...interesting. But I have big plans and a lot of materials and I think that with 3 hours per day of structured sit down time and half an hour of planning each night on my part, all will be even better than well. I'm actually really excited about our school year in a nerd sort of way, but not yet at a point where I can detail it accurately as we're still ironing out details

-Our pet load is approaching "astronomical"...some of these beasts of burden will soon be relieved, as our friends are coming back into town and picking up their guinea pigs soon, we hope to place all these kittens in the next few weeks and our bantam chicks are approaching the point where they'll be able to go in the coop with the other chickens and become low maintenance. In the meantime it's sort of ridiculous and we have to have a big check off list with rotating persons on it or else something might die.

-Usborne Books, as previously stated, is becoming something perilously close to a Real Job. I find myself having to don real shoes and get up in the AM horribly often for it lately, and I always seem to be making the kind of phone call that requires actual quiet around me. I'm thinking I can input orders, brainstorm and email people in one of the hours I usually waste on facebook between when the kids go to bed and when Grant gets home, and keep scheduling things in advance that require me live or in person... mostly I tend to get up way before everyone else and arrive home before they've woken up, as we're on such a late schedule, and it sort of works out that way in an "I don't sleep, but when did I ever?" way.

-I refuse to let Usborne take the place of my writing. DAMNITT. I like Usborne and I can be good at it but it's not what I've been burning for since I was 5, or how I'd like to define myself. So, if I'm going to really have a niche for a writing career, I have to MAKE it happen. I'm thinking one or two 3 hour blocks each weekend depending on what else is happening, and 1-2 hours per day alternating between when the kids are off on their own during the day (for editing/submissions), and when I'm up by myself at night (for actual writing). That is a lot of time for us, but...I wasn't laying on my (near) deathbed in the ICU panicking about this maybe never happening just to let it go. Also Grant thinks it's a worthwhile investment of time so we're on the same page and that helps.

-We have to eat and I'd like it to be well. I'm finding a lot of help in cooking things a day ahead, Grant cooks sometimes and I've also kind of altered my standards to "there's nothing wrong with fruit and nuts for breakfast or apples, cheese and crackers for lunch" - one good hot prepared meal per day is probably a decent minimum to look at.

-I have always journaled and always will, it's just how I process living, so monetizing the blog makes a big amount of sense for us on a lot of levels...right now that ball is mostly in Grant's court as he's the web designer and Noel various factors have led me to thinking a wordpress site is superior to a blogspot domain.

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I'm glad it's going to cool off a little again soon...it's nice to think about being back in "camping season" and park days and things like that.

Also, did I mention, I have ( 7 tiny new kittens in my house...and a couple of other pics )

Last, I realize I am late, but I don't have cable and my sister just pointed it out to me. I think this is worth watching all the way through to the end. I mean...so many singers these days lip synch anytime they're on stage and she's really singing - freaking amazing.


Or, you can see it with (MUCH) better (video and audio) quality but no embed options here - http://www.mtv.com/videos/shows/vma-09/435685/sober-live.jhtml#more Actually I highly recommend clicking the link rather than hitting play :p

Today was a horrible day.

I had everything going against me from the get go - very little sleep last night, back to eating healthy and in moderation (i.e., goodbye coping mechanism), and Ananda is having a "birthday tea" on Sunday and so begins the Clean Up For The Party shannanigans, which always leave me somewhat overwhelmed...

Still and all. I was trying, I really was.

My Dad called, crying - and it kills me, I cannot stand my Dad crying, I have heard my Dad crying more in the last month than I previously have in my entire life, I think - because, 1. Madie (his very very long term girlfriend) is...wait for it...in the hospital. She had a heart attack and then lolled there in his arms while he tried to force feed her aspirins while they waited for the ambulance. She was admitted yesterday. Then, 2. today my Aunt DD, who is now caring for his dying father (who I call Pa), called him...Pa is getting out of the hospital again in central Florida but they want him to go to a convalescent home. DD says it is a nice one. But Pa doesn't want to go, he wants DD to take him home. But if DD does that, Pa loses his insurance coverage (Medicaid) by going AMA. And there is no question he'll end up back in need of hospitalization very soon. He says - Pa says - why can't I just go to Arthur's and die there? I'm dying either way, I don't want to be in a convalescent home. Arthur is my Dad, Pa's son, DD's brother. Arthur also has to work 12 hour shifts driving a cab to even eat right now, and his girlfriend is in the hospital...so he has to say no. Because Pa would be alone, all the time. And isn't even supposed to be alone for, like, an hour. And this really sucks.

Then I talked to my Mom. Who is still camped out with my stroke-damaged Nana, mourning her Dad, skinny from the misery of new divorce, and damn it all...I don't know. I wrote THAT Pa, Nana's Pa (I grew up with a Ma and Pa, who were Cuban and paternal, and a Nana and Pa, white and maternal....) - I wrote him this big long email about my own neurology references and links and book titles and therapy knowledge and blah blah blah...they are facing some very heavy, heavy choices about whether or not anyone with the resources to do it has the wherewithal to bear tedious, frustrating, seemingly endless hours every day of helping her to get better...or whether they are going to accept her as she is now. Meanwhile, he's made the decision to sell her car, which is effecting my Mom badly. And my brother still being in Titusville, sort of stranded at my aunt and uncle's house is also effecting her badly, as he wears on them and they wear on him...my brother is kind of irritating as a houseguest, let me tell you, and old enough to be WAY more independant than he is (he'll be 19 in July)...and yet, I know how she feels, because he is woefully unprepared to magically turn into an...adult. All of a sudden. Now. Out of necessity because my mother in indefinitely indisposed.

And my Nana gets snippy and mean and argumentative with my Mom, who takes it personally, and feels terrible, terrible guilt when she loses her patience in any small way.

Such a lot of heavy crap.

Let me state for the record - if we all lived closer together - I would be visiting my Nana and my Pa all the time in hospital. I'd be cooking meals for my non-hospitalized Pa. I'd be making my mother laugh in person. I'd be helping to motivate and guide my brother. My sister would also be doing all of these things. And, our kids would cheer up my father and give his life meaning where all the other meaning seems to be slipping away from him. As it is, though, we act as though this entire state is our hometown and so everything is 3 to 7 hours in the car. And the strain is so much more, on everybody, as a result. I hate feeling helpless and far away. And I can't help but feel resentful, sometimes, that my grandparents and parents all chose to raise us HERE, and then scatter, themselves.

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Completely obsessed with this song, which makes everything better for 4 minutes and 27 seconds.

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Also, in far too much of a way for me to just not ever mention it...it is insane the degree to which really emotionally connected and intense sex fixes EVERYTHING, for me. I don't know what my deal is, if it's good or it's bad or it makes perfect sense. I am the emodiment of Theology of the Body. But geez, this has sat open for a nice long while and now I feel like a warm, safe bowl of pudding. With a hickey.

Music:
My kids are obsessed with the Newsboys cd "Go!", the Mamma Mia soundtrack, and The Nightmare Revisited, which is basically rock bands doing all the songs from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I have rediscovered Jesus Christ Superstar, am glorying in my iPod's classic rock and Linkin Park playlists, and cannot get Pink's new song "So What?" out of my head to save my life. I think I'm also buying an Enya album off iTunes, who would have seen that coming.


I had a wonderful, WONDERFUL evening to cap off an absolutely horrible day. Basically, I have been heavy with doubt and confusion about gay vs. Christianity stuff for months now. At my last therapy session, a lot of stuff about my initial conversion to Christianity came up, and I remembered how deeply I experienced God in a very, VERY liberal Christian setting. How tangible and REAL He was to me, praying with a female pastor and going to interest groups during camp about how Soddom and Gomorra's sins (sp like whoa) were not about homosexuality but lack of hospitality. I've been drifting towards an increasingly Orthodox way of thinking for the past couple of years, as I struggle to find a church I can feel like belonging to. And it's all just making me crazy. I HATE coming off biggoted to people. I HATE wondering what I'll tell my daughter if she turns out to be a lesbian raised Christian and has a serious set of questions for me. I hate being afraid to mention to my new Catholic homeschooling mom friend that my nanny is a lesbian, and I hate trying to gauge how much the kids' VBS cd of Christian songs might be grating on the nanny.

Grant, cooking tacos: What's wrong? Why do you look all miserable and grumpy?
Me: I am just ...heavy with confusion. I don't get anything. What the hell is this whole cyclical thing, like....Ok. Job from the bible didn't have a pastor, or a church, or the bible, or anything. No missionaries, no history, no 10 commandments. He had the still small voice in his heart. And he endured all that suffering, and never wavered. It says you're supposed to know God is there without anybody telling you, just by looking up at the stars at night. And so I listen to that still small voice, you know, and it doesn't feel right condemning or denying anybody anything based on SINS. And yet, then, I end up with a bunch of sinning, non-Christian friends who want to know if I think they're sinners, and so I have to say, well, yeah, and then I feel bad again, and it starts over. This cycle.
Grant: I look at it like this - the disciples asked Jesus, Jesus himself, what they were supposed to do, like what was the most important thing to do above all else, and he said love your neighbor and love God. So that's what I try to do. And I suck at it lately but that's still the goal. Everyone's relationship with God is different, for me personally, I've prayed and I read the Bible and I think that for me, to be gay, that would be a sin for me. I have no way of knowing if it's a sin for anybody else. I don't know their relationship with God. I don't know what God is saying to them or what they pray about, if they can find peace with God about being gay I think that's great for them. This works out for me since I'm not gay anyway. Your relationship with God is really personal and it's different for everybody, God tells me to love them all. I've never felt some big call towards evangelism or whatever, I mean if somebody is having a really hard time sometimes I'll want to tell them, listen, Jesus can help, Jesus helped me, but it's up to them to decide about that.
Me: ...You know...I've been saying...you know how Mother Teresa being Catholic made me feel good about Catholicism initially? Well, Mother Teresa didn't KNOW any church teaching. She didn't do theology. And when people asked her she would say, all she'd read was the gospels, all she knew was Christ. That was what she beat into her own head over nad over was Jesus, what Jesus taught. She NEVER went around preaching...she helped sick people, gave the homeless beds, taught kids without parents - the MIssionaries of Charity she started even do Hindu last rites for people dying in their place. The whole thing is supposed to be that people come up and say, "I'll have what she's having" because she's this example of faith, like "They'll know we are Christians by our love" - what the hell has happened to that?
Grant: Exactly.
Me: I think sometimes that I have a hard time because way before I was ever Christian I was initially taught ABOUT it by these Baptists full of fire and brimstone and salvation, like, how can you live with yourself if you could have helped your friend be saved? I was crying in the bathroom because my parents were going to burn in hell forever. If you're coming at it from that perspective, then you have some kind of moral obligation to warn everyone that they're sinning and they'd best repent.
Grant: I think everyone knows whether whatever they're doing is a sin or not. Everyone hears that voice in their heart. It's good for me to know that sin is bad and it keeps me from God, and to teach our kids to try not to sin so they can stay close to God, but I'm not supposed to say, "FOR INSTANCE -" and start accusing people of individual junk.
Me: So what is up with how I can't find a damned group of Christians ANYWHERE that isn't telling me little babies are going to burn in Hell if they don't get baptized or gay people are a threat to our children or that don't feed our kids oreos and coke because it's never even occured to them to take that whole "our bodies are temples" thing seriously -
Grant: Look man, Jesus said "You will be an outcast, you'll be alienated". He said people would hate you and revile you and all that. It's not always going to be easy or most popular but you're not in it for a church, and you don't have to have a church anyway, if you have Christ and you know you do, and - what? What are you grinning about?
Me: I am so ridiculously fucking blessed to have you and talk to you and hear all this out of your mouth. Seriously. It's nuts.

*much hugging and squeezing of a poor man trying to stir hot things with a spatula*

Somehow everything is seeming so much simpler. This man, I swear.

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In other (somewhat similar) news, I have had a severe gap in my faith where I can't get from nearly dying to God. It's hard to explain, and it related to the wall I put up to block out all emotions and my children while I lay in the ICU. Grant had JC Superstar playing loudly when I got back from counseling yesterday, and it'd been a long time since I'd heard that, but it was at the point when Jesus is singing all that "If there is a way, take this cup away"...I'll drink it if I have to but please don't make me have to. And it just felt exactly like it felt to not want to die; Jesus not wanting to die. And some connection was forged, and I started crying, and prayed and felt truly connected again for the first time in a long time, in my bitter "I don't want to do this, either, but will if I have to, and why do we all have to go through these horrible things?" way. It was good. Thank You, Andrew Lloyd Webber :p

Grant was Jesus for Halloween, as usual, but the people at his new job had never seen it before. He cracked them up all day long, for instance when he was making everyone hot dogs for lunch and his boss asked how many he'd made and Grant answered, you know it's weird, I just made one and somehow it turned out to be enough to feed everybody. Haha. Dork.

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Also, I LOVE my new house and how it is (still, daily) coming together. And, Ananda and Aaron started their first book reports today, by picking and beginning to read their books after getting the assignment. It was very gratifying for Ananda to eagerly burn through an extra chapter before going to sleep, and hear her excitedly tell me all about it :D