Life's been good to me so far

I had a good and productive day. I did just about everything I set out to do.

Got up early, took a shower, stuck to my eating plan. Did two math lessons with Ananda and Aaron - we're doing double math and little else for a short while because they have some holes in their math knowledge and I'm trying to get them up to speed there. I baked a couple of pumpkins and made pumpkin bread with the resulting puree, for tea. We went and got our produce in the morning, deposited checks in the bank, and Aaron got to his evening dance class on time. Also I finally remembered to get our toothpaste, which is only really at Whole Foods, while we were up there today.

Robby came over for tea. He had planned it with me last night over AIM. He showed up, almost 15, with his big hair with it's growing-out-highlights, extremely skinny jeans, 2 layered tops, and what for all the world appeared to be Ugg boots. Yes, yes, it is in the upper 80s here again - ah to be young, gay, and going to the redneck highschool. He was texting me from school today.

(for background, the other day he updated his facebook to say he just heard a teacher tell a kid who had his phone under the desk messing with it, "Either you're playing with your penis, or you're texting - either way, put it away son")
Robby's text: Ugh, they're doing FCAT reviews and I'm stuck in the same class all day, craving your cooking.
Me: Aren't you worried your teacher is going to accuse you of something embarassing in class for texting right now?
Robby: I've got it out, it's ok with him.
Me: WHOA.
Robby: lol, wow.

Most of our conversations are not nearly so ridiculous.

I pulled out all the stops for tea, with sugar cubes and honey in our silly honeycomb and coconut milk to pour into ginger peach tea in the little creamer. And the pumpkin bread, a big fancy bundt cake. We had it all on a huge red quilt in the sideyard with the rabbits hopping around in a pen nearby and chickens pecking crumbs off our plates and drinking from our teacups. The kids made him watch them do a ton of tricks and stunts and view an assortment of lego creations, and he helped me hang a Fisher Price swing I got for Elise off of freecycle the other day (as in, he climbed the tree to hang knots). He told us he was telling everyone at school today, in a British accent, that he was "having afternoon tea with the chickens later" and nobody believed it.

I invited him back for Friday, to come to game night at the bookstore with us. It's really, REALLY weird how Ananda and Aaron are at the super annoying tween age he used to be when he irritated me half to death. THEY are irritating me like that now. I really don't care for this stage of false bravado and general distain for everything. Give me infant-to-preschoolers or teens any day.

I talked to my friend Michelle...one of my friends Michelle, I actually have 3 Michelles in my phone now counting my aunt...and she got me all excited about planning Nancy's Birthgirlz event and selling books of my own and things like that.

I talked to my Dad for awhile and he told me this INSANE theory he has about how the Catholic Church doesn't allow priests to marry because that way the church can have all their stuff when they die, since they don't have any heirs to inherit it all. "Think about it, multiplied over all the priests - that's a lot of money, Tina". SO CRAZY.

He also told me less crazy and much more intense things, like about how his dad - my Pa - called him up and said he was going to kick the bucket and he had to teach him to cook some things first, so he went down there and cooked things with Pa's directions and really, he is glad he knows how to now. Pa always took care of all of us with food. I'm doing my annual "Scramble to get my paternal family together for Thanksgiving" thing. It's worked 3 times in my adult life, but none of those were last year or the year before...I wish it was easier to get everyone HERE from Key West, because I have room to put people up and to serve a huge meal. Everyone is down there, though, where there's no room for anything.

Having a reeeeeeeeeeaaally hard time not buying stuff. My birthday is 4 days away and I keep putting things in my Amazon cart, searching eBay auctions...I had an original birthday budget I was looking forward to spending, but since then some changes have occured that make that budget not such a good idea :/ I think that because I'm not eating constantly like normal, and also because I'm giving up a lot lately (my office for Bob to move in, pretty much all my normal time and attention from Grant because of his work schedule), I want more STUFF.

Also because a lot of this stuff is either Catholic/Orthodox books, art, or prayer aids, it is hard to feel like it could really be so "wrong" to get them. Blah. And I find such good DEEEEEEEAAALLS!!

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My last few days have been full of:

-Isaac's croup. This is awful. I'm trying to keep the humidifier filled and supplemented with Vicks liquid at night, and his chest smeared with Vicks, and we're letting him sleep in the tv room propped up nearly to a sitting position. Taking turns being out there with him. We were absolutely freaked a couple of nights ago, he was coughing himself purple, vomiting from coughing...the doctor thinks it's the weather. We had the first cold front of the season the other day and it was the first major drop in humidity in like 8 months, which is huge for kids predisposed to this kind of stuff. I'm trying to keep him full of liquids. He actually wants cuddles, which is rare for him - and is enjoying the ripple blanket I made him, that just got done last week.

-that weather was awesome...aside from the croup :/ Isaac enjoyed going out with hot cocoa, popcorn, and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on the projector, in the backyard. It was 58 that night, which is A Big Deal here. We've been spending a lot of time outside. A and A have been taking nighttime bike rides with me to see peoples' lit Halloween decorations.

-I'm just losing more and more weight. I'm down 19 pounds now, from 233 to 214. In ONE MONTH. And right now, at 214, I'm due to start my period tomorrow..so by all rights I should be bloated and up a few pounds by my normal patterns. I think it just appeared to slow my rate of loss, this time. This is great because, you know, it's just great. It's also starting to suck a lot though, because it's really messing up my belly bigtime to have all the fat melting away. Just...yuck. The hanging and sagging, the protruding and freakiness, also I have new and previously unexperienced sorts of back pain almost every day now. But none of the accute hernia pain I used to have semi-regularly? So...I dunno.

-This also makes my impending surgery seem more and more immediate and terrifyingly real. I'm having trouble sleeping again. Then today I saw this great article about how much more likely people with PTSD are to die after major surgery because of how the stress and triggers impede their healing and even blood flow. Really, it was so awesome. *this is me stabbing myself in the eye*


I miss Grant so much. Even when he's here, he's not usually here. On the way home from church, or laying in bed cuddling, ANYTIME I ask him my standard, "What are you thinking about?" ...it's something about work. Always. I can't tell to what degree he has to work as much as he is, and to what degree he is a workaholic. He can't either. It's kind of making me nuts, when he's here. When he's gone, I have a fair amount of peace about doing the best I can with my day to day life regardless. Sleeping separately to care for Isaac is not helping our strain any. We sat on the deck watching stuff on the laptop tonight, and layed together for just a few minutes after he had to go to bed. He is supposed to be meeting me around Dance Empire tomorrow afternoon to trade vehicles, take the little kids, and allow me to go write for the 3 hour block of A and A's classes. It's like a partnership between people with separate lives. I'll take my deeply entwined and codependent constant intimacy back now, please.

The thing is I can try to give him all the space he needs to try to get promoted and try to make more money for us. I really can, I was doing that for a couple of weeks. We talked about it just a little, though, and he adamantly doesn't want me to NOT tell him about my day or when he's being kind of an asshole or when I'm thinking something he's not equipped to deal with at the moment. He says we've been making this work really well for a long long time because we are completely open and share every tiniest detail. He's right. But - ? How do I maintain that when he gets home for the first time all day at nearly 9 pm, in a bad mood and needing to be in bed by 10:30, having not even had dinner yet? *sigh*


I am mostly content and grateful.

I am constantly reminded of others' around me who have much larger problems to deal with than I do. And grateful for my ability to give my kids this life and to reach out and help some extras, as well.

I've been reading this book, American Daughter: Discovering my Mother, by Elizabeth Kendall, and it's been disturbing me, angering me, making me cry...it's very readable, very well written, by what could be a grown version of Ananda; an adult who looks back on how she pretended to believe in her mother's God, did what she thought her mother wanted her to do in general while feeling trapped into it by a lot of unspoken convention. The author talks about how she was lost in "the flood of babies" and wonders why her mother would want to turn a tidy pair of two children into "an unruly mob of five", and describes in a deadpan way the hospital emergencies surrounding the births. She recalls being the chubbiest one in a leotard at ballet class. There are a lot of differences, too, Grant and I really love each other and he's an involved father, which is not how it was for this woman, and this is certainly a different time and place but ...I don't know. The author was a quiet, observant, pinched and complex sort of child that really just feels so much like my oldest child does, never just *doing*, not knowing how to exist in the moment. And the mother dies, when she's 23. That's not a spoiler: it's plainly stated in the first chapter of the book and on the back cover. But still I just got to it chronologically within the story, near the end, and that's where the crying came in. My mother has a 50% blockage in her cerebral artery, she's had at least one small stroke and at least one TIA (temporary ischemic attack), I'm not ready for her to die. I'm not ready to die and leave my children, not at all, no Sir. I wasn't ready last fall and I will never be. Mothers dying at all...it's a little too close for me to deal with right now. I've been bonding with my mother in law, who had a minor heart attack in January, and has a similar blockage to my mother's, but with Teresa it's in the heart rather than the brain. Our mothers (Grant's and mine) are in their forties. They both still have THEIR mothers. People need their mothers. I wish I could read the memoir my oldest daughter would write in the future, about now. I wish I could know what's in her intense, frustratingly inarticulate head. The author of this book spends decades numb, dreaming of her mother, feeling homeless and lost, and it makes every page I turn have this terrible, terrible weight that somehow frightens me senseless.

This author, Elizabeth Kendall, is also acutely aware as a college student at Harvard in the 60s of how some women were choosing to write rather than to get married, and how some poets of the past had described marriage as a prison that held women back, and she wonders how held back her own mother was, and what she is going to do, herself. Frequently I feel nothing but ecstatic gratitude about my own marriage. And my children. Other times I feel very trapped in chosen, loved circumstances that nevertheless keep me from being able to do things I want to do that have nothing to do with my family. It's a paradox that gives me a horrible headache, to know simultaneously that there is no room for me in my own life, and that I wouldn't change anything that makes it that way. Some of the bonding with my mother in law has had to do with her talking to me about the 2 or 3 years she got to spend at home with Grant, when he was born, and how special they were for her. It's very clear listening to her that she thinks of it as an idyllic time, possibly the best time of her life. Even though she cried and yelled to her husband, "How are people supposed to live like this?!" over the sleep deprivation and lack of adult companionship. And I understand. And she reminds me to be grateful, for so many hugs, for lying on the carpet with Isaac talking about what Heaven would be like.

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Dinner tonight was awesome: I made risotto, steamed brocoli, sliced tomatoes, a big pan of bite sized chicken pieces and sliced mushrooms in olive oil with seasoned salt, and some from-a-frozen-bag whole wheat rolls with smart balance and honey. We also had a jug of icy cold Welche's White Grape Pomegranate juice to go with it (so good).

Food in general is still really out of control with me, and I'm horrified by my weight, and really eager to devote some therapy time to that. My next appointment is Thursday, a regular one hour one since Grant won't be here and Laura is babysitting. It's like I seem to be doing well, with this whole ptsd thing, but that's within the context of eating almost constantly, often when I'm very uncomfortably full and/or wishing very much that I could stop eating. I'm also shopping victoriously extravagantly, collecting every piece of Paul Cardew's Alice in Wonderland collection bit by bit on eBay as the auctions come and go. So I'm not sure how a day would go with those coping mechanisms removed, and am not sure I'm interested in experimenting to find out.

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I bought some zinnias for the new house that are deeply satisfying me. I'm going to have to get a whole lot more of them, and more soil, and more of the little flowers I don't know the name of to go in between them and fill the space, but so far I've got 6 of them, with spacers in between, all in a row of cleared land filled with rich black dirt. We're going back tomorrow to do more, while Grant is working. Ananda and Aaron can carry bags of soil if they work together, and they're good at pulling up weeds and moving rocks while I shovel away old mulch and more rocks, and then Jake loves to put the seedlings down in the little holes we make. Elise trying to pick everything is the only obstacle, and that's easy enough to get around...my fingernails are going to be outlined black for a long time, I think. We're lining the whole deck with them, outside, and that's a lot of zinnias.

I really love the way the house is coming together. It makes me happy just to be there. Aside from the zinnias, it's also extremely satisfying to organize the library. I keep thinking of Dama and wishing she was there to see; kids' chapter books here, story books here, collections of stories or poems here, then Christian books there, neurology on this shelf, new fiction by the door, cookbooks near the kitchen - I think all the time about this possible Johnson Family Florida vacation bringing her to my library.

I've ALWAYS wanted to have a library in my house. And at this point, as ridicuously spoiled as this sounds, we really kind of need one: I keep taking over laundry baskets and drawers filled with books, and then bringing them back to refill: more and more and more of them from kitchen cabinets (cooking) and the dining room (educational) and just EVERYWHERE, and I keep having the feeling that I'm just denting it. Grant has at least 10 books on CHESS from years ago, for crying out loud.

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I spent an hour or more at a local shop earlier today: The Paradise Tree. Custom framing place with some art for sale. I told the owner, who helped me, that Grant used to be a member of the Homestead Art Club and had been a part of a gallery showing there in the store that they did, and then he wanted to know who I was and other ways we surely knew each other. This is a small town, it's like that old Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. We came up with:
-He had a studio at ArtSouth when I was going there often
-He was fairly close friends with Memo for a year or more in between times I was close to Memo
-Both of us know Alex, and Melissa and Sara
-My mother in law puts his ads in the Newsleader
-both of us wonder if the artist with the last name Vallejo with things for sale in his store is related to the artist with the last name Vallejo who's paintings we've seen at ArtSouth
-we both do all of our book purchasing through Spellbound Books
Other than all that, yeah, total strangers.

I also learned a lot about the care and keeping of oil paintings, types of matts and how incredibly expensive custom framing is. I mean, damn. We laughed and joked about haggling with the prices. It was really good to be out by myself having an adult conversation in an interesting place. I really want to go back and buy this one original thing A LOT, but it's so much, and we're still deciding on a lender and amount for the Home Equity Loan, and at some point we have to stop spending money on everything in the world...right? It's really easy for me to justify supporting a local artist to have original art in my new house, though. I told him I might be back.

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( I'm back to this old Robbie tug-o-war inside myself, that I used to deal with all the time )

This has been a huge week for us. Jake looked big to me the other day, and so I measured him. He's 28 1/2 inches long! He's grown 7 inches since he was born! That blows my mind. If Ananda grew 7 inches in 5 months I would think she had a disorder or imbalance or something.

The same day that I measured him, I noticed back teeth growing in on both sides, top and bottom, in his mouth. He has 9 teeth either poking out or making visible swelling with clear white underneath.

And then he started doing this regularly;




Then we have Aaron. First of all, he is being especially Aaron this week. Like on a walk one afternoon I told them, "I wish we could live on a farm. We could have a huge vegetable garden and a big herb garden and fruit trees, and chickens for fresh eggs, and a sheep for wool..." Aaron grabbed a stalk of wheat-ish stuff from the side of the road, put the end in the corner of his mouth and said "Yeah, and then Daddy could do this!" o_O

Another afternoon he and Ananda were on chairs as I cooked and I switched on the garbge disposal for a second to get the sink to drain. He asked "What was that?!" and when I said "The garbage disposal", he got all wide eyed and said "THE GARBAGE EXPLODED?!" and jumped off his chair to look at the trash can.

There are countless things like this, he cracks me up. But the News is that after days and days of grueling practice, a skinned elbow and a scabbed ankle, the boy can now ride a bike with no training wheels.
See the video here, it's short.

This was actually a Big Deal for me. It seems like I was just holding his hands and teaching him to walk Not That Long Ago. And just last year it was this huge deal to get him to dress himself or brush his teeth or what have you. He makes me so proud, he seriously fell three dozen times yesterday, but he never even thinks of giving up.

I also ( drew him with chalk, badly )

I actually got the camera out that day because my Tyrant was so cute I was going to DIE, when he got up from his nap and joined us outside for tea.
( +2 of Isaac, then several more and the rest of the entry ;) )