Life's been good to me so far

I was irritable all day and depressed all evening. I cried my eyes out all over Grant at the end of it all. This sort of thing is really not at all uncommon anymore.

I remember not eating any white flour or refined sugar for a year and a half - I lost 30 pounds and then had a glowingly healthy pregnancy and a big old baby.

I remember baking every afternoon and having tea outside under the trampoline or in the front yard, on a blanket, all throughout Jake's infancy. Coming up with a new question for each day that we could all go around and answer. Just spending hours outside with a tray.

I remember loading up a bike, a scooter, a big wheel, the double stroller, 4 small kids and my giant PATH notebooks, every Tuesday, for an entire schoolyear. Getting to the park, unloading it all, tying Jake on, and leading a meeting. Getting them all back in. All four of them in the shower with me afterwards, one especially gritty, sandy, sweaty day when PATH had drug on for almost 6 hours. I was so big and pregnant that I couldn't see Jake under my belly. We were just laughing and laughing.

I don't know where I got the strength for any of this. I don't know how to find it again. I can't even imagine getting up and making oatmeal banana pancakes, or sitting around the table with a craft caddy making things.

My children are louder, more argumentative, less patient and generally more annoying, and I know that this is at least partially because I am annoyed with them, now. I want to be left alone.



One thing I never experienced or understood before, was bitterness. I actually thought it was funny, whenever I saw or heard anyone acting bitter, because it just seemed ...theatrical. Like, oh, COME ON. I'm bitter, now. Not like a completely bitter person, but there are a lot of things I'm bitter about. I am theatrical enough that I was telling my wonderful husband tonight that sometimes I think I SHOULD have died, because I am just a shadow of who I used to be before. I can imagine all this as the surreal lull between when I should have died, and when I actually die getting my belly fixed.

Sometimes I hate the nanny when she shows up, or when she's coming, because as we are all running around together cleaning the house, I suddenly, desperately want to have a good day with my kids by myself again. I want to do schoolwork and take a long walk and get a blanket on the ground in the yard, all in our own house with no intrusion. But I can't just turn her back around at the door when she gets there that day; and there are a lot of days when I'm raring to head out the door as soon as she arrives, or NEED help because I can't get to counseling or the chiropractor or another doctor's appt without her help, or whatever. There isn't really a solution. There never seems to be a solution anymore - to organizational challenges, to time management, to weight loss, to my mood swings.

For instance, writing makes me feel good, and excited, in spurts. I still feel truly confident and secure in my abilities there. And also, I was feeling self-motivated and eager about my sewing machine - I took it up to Jo-Ann's and it's being fixed and cleaned out inside and this woman who works there is going to give me lessons on it.

But I feel guilty as hell for those things. Taking up my time and pulling me away from kids I'm already not giving enough to. Kids who are not just dealing with me now, but have also been through the past year and a half right along with us. Kids who will only be young once.

I know...I really, truly know...that this is one of those times when I have to take care of myself so I can get back to the point where I can take care of them. It's just hard to deal with that sometimes, my standards and my abilities don't mesh much anymore.

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I hand over seasons of my life?

...Time makes you bolder, even children get older -
And I'm getting older, too.



And don't get me wrong...I make dinner (unless Grant does). I nurse Elise a lot and Jake a little, change her, dress them and Isaac and keep the laundry moving through. I still give A and A school assignments and cart them around to their activities and read to them before bed (almost) every night.

But there is no joy or fulfillment in domestic tasks for me anymore. It's not filling me up inside just to have a conversation with one of my kids, I don't run for the camera. And they're all getting clingier because I just really want to push them away and have my own space whenever possible. Rather than getting someone's attention individually or finding a way to distract rowdy little people - or even being happy that they're playing on their own - I yell over all the noise to be heard and ask everyone, over and over, to quiet down. I can't even remember the last time I had someone sitting up on the counter or standing on a chair helping me cook, and that used to be a daily affair.

Grant asked me what it is specifically that I think has changed to make things so different for me.

I thought for awhile. There are two things that I think have been/are at work. Both (until now, at least) unconsciously:
1. I felt last year like however much I did for my kids, could be undone, and whatever I planned for, could go awry, and in the end, I had no control. Elise's birth was a big giant mess that left her hurt, I was hospitalized and away from them for 6 days once and then 10 days another time, I spent a total of 12 weeks recovering from abdominal surgeries without being able to lift people, hug hard, be climbed on, or even deal with much stress period. Not counting the month I was actually dying. My parenting power and autonomy were taken away over and over again - I can't count the number of times I listened to Grant on the other side of a closed door, explaining to someone that mommy needed to lay down, or watched him strap some screaming someone into the stroller again or lead some crying person with feet planted to the floor out of a hotel room. So much for taking advantage of the last of wearing Jake. So much for ever slinging Elise. So much for their secure attachments - Ananda can't even sleep and sulks around miserable and unable to tell me why! She lies in bed in the morning afraid to get up and find me gone again. And, of course, I could just die, leaving them all to go into some kind of frantic shuffle between Oma, Aunt Laura, Opa, Grandma? and Daddy trying to work and grieve and take care of them all himself? It left me feeling decidedly overwhelmed with the burden of protecting them, or guiding them. Frozen and powerless.
2. I am still afraid of dying all the time. Right now I have a new HARD, solid thing protruding from my weird, mishappen abdomen. I had Grant confirm for me that it is in fact new and bizarre. All day every day, I am either uncomfortably shoved into a complex, compressing girdle thing that it hurts to bend in, or my back is absolutely KILLING me and I'm nauseus. I have wack ass periods that my doctor has been sending me for ultrasounds about, she's mentioned hysterectomies. Blah blah blah, etc. I realized that I have spent most of my time - the vast majority of my time - since last Fall, worrying. Lying awake in bed worrying, asleep but having worrisome dreams, making worried LJ posts, talking worriedly to Grant or Laura or a doctor, going to an appt or other because there's something to be worried about. It's just what I do, now. And I think it leaves me feeling too vulnerable to resume life as usual lest I be caught unawares. I have to stand guard every minute against death so it can't sneak up on me.

I'm not saying that makes sense, only that it is how I feel.

There's not exactly a clear answer to any of these dilemmas. Keep going to counseling, keep praying, get tested for whatever I should be, as I am, get my abs fixed when I can - that is quite a subject. Sometimes I want to just do it right now. But I know it's safer and more effective if I lose weight first, I want to let Elise get bigger and Ananda get through some more counseling, first, and I want G to have the vacation time to take off during my recovery.

Not to mention the enormous matter of my hopefully having worked through some of my sheer terror of more surgery in my own counseling by then.

*I* am sick of the redundancy of all this, I cannot imagine how sick of hearing about it other people are.


Speaking of redundant. I am considering going cold turkey off of white/refined/processed again. Grant thinks all the sugar and takeout and crap may be effecting my moods, which is definitely possible. And I would definitely lose weight if I did, even if I continued to eat as much and often as I wanted to within the parameters.

*sigh*

Today I:
Had a 2 hour therapy appt
nursed, diapers, nursed
Moved 5 loads of dirty laundry through the washer and dryer to baskets
re-sent our Christmas list to my grandparents, as they requested
orchestrated a massive clean-up
spent far too long in line at Jo-Ann Fabrics
loaded the dishwasher
had a ptsd episode along with my transvaginal ultrasound at Homestead Hospital
ate a grilled t-bone steak
browsed red combat boots online
read a chapter of Harry Potter and a couple of manners board books aloud
watched Dan in Real Life with Grant (it was good)

To Whom It May Concern:
1. Tim Burton is doing Alice in Wonderland with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter and Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen.
2. My mother is reading The Dark Tower. It is bizARRE to have these conversations with her. I confessed to her tonight that, yeah, all of my boys have biblical names, but with Jake there was also...well..........

Jake's 3rd birthday went well.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DAMA!!! I'm so glad it sounds like it was a good one.

( Here's the stuff I've been trying to avoid talking about )

ETA: I'm thinking about faith a lot. For whatever reason, I had a serious faith crisis that I have still not fully recovered from while I was in the hospital last Fall. I don't doubt the simple facts in my life - that I was led to Boston, that Elise is a miracle, that God was so close I could almost touch Him for months. But I put up such a wall, in the hospital in the Fall, because I couldn't deal with being away from my kids or knowing I might die and Elise being 5 months old without me...and it really felt like if I died, there would be nothing. Just, nothing. I felt like I was fading, and like I could go out, and like that was it. It was miserably sad, and I haven't been able to conjure any real confidence in an afterlife - let alone Heaven in particular - since....I still pray. I've cried in a couple of worship services, in a good way. But I am so bitter about how widely removed God's will can be from what I want, and so aware of how little our own desires even matter...I'm a jaded Christian. A humble, self-centered, grateful, ungrateful, hypocritical, steadfast and fair weather Christian. Trying to find my way back to church and devotions and more sincere, not-with-the-kids praying. I think I am on the right track, although it's hard to tell because I am so deeply cynical about how it takes very bad stuff to get me to or keep me on the path.

I've become really ambivalent about livejournal and fantasized about deleting my lj without a backwards glance. I was writing about this in a letter to rainingkisses when I realized that it's because I don't feel like I can be honest here anymore.

I don't lie. But I don't give the whole story, either; I don't have the same time or energy to give to blogging that I used to and so it usually seems like a lot to get into to tell the rest.

( the rest )

I have a horrible deep inner ear infection. It is in the same ear that was infected for months when I was pregnant with Isaac - I went from probiotics and patience to 3 successive courses of progressively stronger antibiotics, and it just kept getting worse. At one point I was so desperate and the surreal, stuffy headed, dizzy feeling and pain from jaw to forehead was so bad, I tried all kinds of ridiculous crap - I bought "Ear candles" from the health food store and tried some random no-brand drops of Grant Sr's for swimmers ear. Eventually, my ear drum ruptured from the pressure. And although I have had permanent, noticeable hearing loss in that ear, the sudden release of all that pressure and end of all that pain, after so long, and being able to lay down on a pillow or hold a phone over there or whatever...it was awesome. I am one of those gross people who want to pop any pimple in sight, too, so that made it extra satisfying in my warped brain ;)

Anyway, it's only been two days so far, this time...but it's getting worse and worse. I don't have the golf ball sized lump on the side of my face (yet?) but I cried earlier when Jake leaned his head on my face in a way he does all the time. I am already fantasizing about forcing pressure on my ear drum from the outside and making it pop just to get all the crap out and stop feeling this way. I won't do it - I'm too afraid of being totally deaf on that side, for one thing (and I would probably be screaming from it hurting so badly) - but the point is just...this sucks. A lot.

And the worst part is, I SHOULD KNOW BETTER BY NOW. Last week I had a bowl of cereal 4 days in a row. I know what milk does to me. It happens every time, so why do I drop my guard if it's been awhile? Damn that Honey Nut Clusters with Chocolate Clusters, DAMN IT TO HELL. Yes, I realize that sounds ridiculous. But honestly, I realized it was behind my non-stop allergy and sinus problems right before my ear started to swell shut inside. So far I've tried breastmilk in the ear (which works for the kids and is pediatrician approved) and drinking heinously sour lemon water (which does the opposite of what milk does and thins all my muccous membrane gunk and usually helps clear my ears, nose and throat).

The last time I had a significant amount of soft dairy was on the way home from Boston last year. I had ice cream at Dama's house, twice, in the same week that I had like 4 frappuccinos "because it's a road trip!!" (usually I get one like once a month). I got home with tonsilitis, kicking myself.

---

Although chewing hurts on that side, it is a good food day. Laura was over here, she made this incredible warm-or-cold pasta salad...it was that "Healthy Harvest" macaroni that is ultra nutritious, and had a ton of red peppers, artichoke, grape tomatoes, mushrooms, peas, asparagus, olive oil, and...bacon. My sister cannot resist bacon when it comes to vegetables. Ah well. Freaking delicious. She also made my banana bread while she was here, one loaf for her to take home and one loaf to leave here for us. I made 32 bean soup from a dry mix they sell at Wild Oats, in the bulk bins, and bruchetta, for dinner, and brownies for dessert, and it was all super yummy. When I can make a bean soup that Aaron scarfs down a whole bowl of in 2 minutes, I feel good.

---

It hasn't been easy for me to update lately, because there is a lot of HUGE stuff going on in our lives and I'm not sure how much of it I want to share publically. The gist is, we've accepted a settlement offer from the hospital that left the sponge in me. We are not exactly being lowered into our piles of gold coins via private helicopter, like Scrooge McDuck, but we definitely have a lot of options opening up to us that might not have ever been options, before. So, of course, we're looking at the best ways to spend/save it every waking hour and in our dreams. Some options we've been pouring over tirelessly include:

-An overpriced house down here where we really want to be, vs a bigger and better house for the same price in Jacksonville where we also like it but lose Laura and our larger social network...vs putting money for a house in a CD and waiting for the housing market to drop lower like it's expected to by early next year.
-Getting a big passenger van like we've wanted to forever, so that we can carry along Laura and Brian, or Annie and Aaron's friends, or Shaun, or whoever, and have more cargo room on trips, vs getting a zippy little car for Grant to just use for the commute, leaving me the minivan, vs getting a hybrid minivan because we'd feel better about that, even though they are in their infancy and there's no variety and bad pricing so far
-how much we want to set ourselves up for the long-long term (savings accounts for the kids, retirement funds, paying off all debt, being mortgage and car payment free), vs how much we want to use this once in a lifetime opportunity for once in a lifetime experiences, like traveling to places we've never been and allowing the kids to have a large fund for extracurriculars during their formative years
-whether it's worthwhile and something we can deal with for Grant to take a year off work to let me Write For Real; it was his idea, and I've been in a near-anxiety state of clenched, goosebumpy anticipation since he mentioned it. What an opportunity, and what an amazing affirmation that he believes in me.
-whether or not he still feels a call to ministry and would like to explore ways to persue going to college, which I'm totally ready to support
-how to spend our small amounts of personally allotted "Money for Whatever We Want"

We're also TREMENDOUSLY excited about tything 10% in various charitable ways we believe in and giving certain predetermined amounts to a few people we really feel we owe a lot to.

Basically we're over the moon grateful to have such an opporunity, but TOTALLY overwhelmed with the pressure to not blow it, or have regrets. Prioritizing seems very complex for us right now. We have a meeting with a financial advisor on Monday that I hope is productive and helps us glean some clarity, along with seeing some properties in person and just generally talking this out. Even though that mainly means emailing things out, or using the phone on his way home...because Grant is ALWAYS at work. He's been doing the 76-hour-with-commute weeks for about 2 months now. Although he has given notice at the part time job, so will "only" be a full time employee for one company soon.

---

( kid updates )

I love life. I love reading good books I've read before, I love weather of all kinds, I love naps, and drives, and showers. I love food. I love breathing and it not being short and difficult, I love swallowing my own spit without any tubes making my throat feel swollen. I love dusk, and afternoon, and evening. I love going to the bathroom and things just freaking working. I love my new dining table and that holidays are upcoming.

The kids' new sleeping song is Kansas' "Dust in the Wind" (this happened while I was away, I didn't extend my melodrama that far :p). Ananda loves it. She says, "I listen to it and just imagine this one drop of perfectly clear water, like, falling and falling towards the ocean, and the ocean, like, opening up to swallow it and then, like, closing up all around it as it joins the rest of the water." She is me as a kid ALL OVER AGAIN. Aaron on the other hand thought it was "Dust in the Wii", as in, can't play the video games because it got left open and dust got in, so everyone is sad O_o My kids.

You want to see something cute? You want to see some haircuts? I got something cute, and I got some haircuts.

( +9 )

My father gave me $100 for my birthday, while I was in the hospital. I think I'll use it, of all things, for extra grocery money for copious, extraneous amounts of holiday baking.

Shaun is in film school and has been working with a film crew of about 8 others on their thesis sort of final exam film, for awhile. Aaron is in it (pre-mohawk). He has several different scenes. These people have boom mikes and ten thousand dollar cameras and shoot a single scene 15 times. It's going to be shown to all of FIU. Anyway, not exactly Hollywood, but Aaron is LOVING IT, and the whole film crew is way impressed...they keep telling me I need to put him in acting classes immediately. He wanted to cut his hair awhile back and these people were willing to wait it out until his hair grew back, to have him instead of another kid because they think he's such an amazing actor. I'm not sure what to make of it, really...he's done things like lay in bed pretending to fall asleep as someone reads to him from a bedside chair, and walk around on train tracks as if he's in someone's dream (with a couple of lines), and throw a bucket of colored water over somebody dressed all in white. He's talking about being an actor now. He's attractive enough to be an actor, but I wonder if that would really be a good life for him, you know? I'm weird like that. Like, wouldn't you rather work with animals like you used to say than develop a cocaine addiction? Marry a nice vet's assistant who'll take care of him when he's sick, not some crazy gold digger...Yes, yes I am jumping the gun. CONSTANT VIGILENCE!!

That's kind of a joke.


I'm knitting Brian a sweater for his first birthday, which is coming up. And I realized today that I have another Christmas stocking to make this year (Elise's). And I've been novel planning. And mostly I sit around and have a really hard time not picking up my baby or my bigger baby and wondering how to keep not doing that for weeks to come, and feeling grateful for everything.

I feel very small, and humble. I've never actually thought I could die, before. I mean of course we all know we're mortal and I've even had some really paranoid terror about upcoming c-sections in the past, but I've never really had rational reasons to sit and think, well, this may be it, until these past weeks. When the doctor came in to the ER and told me they were going to have to remove a dead portion of my intestines and resection them - immediately, as there was no time to lose - he said it was very serious, but he couldn't look me in the eye.

So I sat there and I waited, and I called Grant, and he didn't want to get off the phone because what if it was the last time he talked to me? The surgeon was very honest about how it was going to be partially exploratory and he didn't know how long it would take - he showed me where it was going to start and the two directions things were most likely to proceed in.

It really almost makes you a different person, to realize you're mortal and really understand in a realistic way that this could be it, right here. That nobody's promising you otherwise. No assuming you're turning 26, after all. I stopped desperately missing Elise and felt overwhelming gratitude for my sister. I felt glad that if I died, Grant could sue the pants off somebody and not have to work constantly, at least for a couple of years of the kids' lives. My prayers felt different and my faith felt stripped raw.

There were a couple of days in the ICU when I was praying that if I was going to live, I would suffer through whatever I had to on my way there, but if I was going to die, could it please just be now, because I can't deal with this pain and incoherency from one minute to the next anymore.

I swear I was the only person in that ICU who wasn't a senior citizen.

And I really believed before this experience that since becoming a mother my focus on dying is all about leaving the kids behind - that terror of my chilren growing up without me. And that's there, and it's sharp and awful, but now I realize I also have a whole lot of totally unrelated, selfish fear of dying. I want to live for reasons that have nothing to do with them. I don't feel done. I wonder if anyone ever does. I hope so.

I've realized I have very lofty expectations for my life. Most people in this world live to be 40 or 50 at the outside, right? Think of people in parts of Africa, and most of India, and soldiers in Iraq. Heck, most people throughout history have died in their 20s or 30s. But not Tina, the modern American. I feel entitled not just to see my kids grow up, but to have life on the other side of that - for Grant and I, for a writing career, for school and all kinds of things. I expect to see and love and watch grandchildren grow up. I feel owed a lot of time, when most people have not gotten a lot of time, and I understand in a new way that it's a lot to ask and may not be in the cards. I have some relatives that have lived into their 90s and even beyond, and I've seen very little death. But the truth is that what I want - what I've always basically assumed - is a rare, rare thing for any human to have.

Anyway, yeah. 26 sure does feel different than 25, and I don't think it has one thing to do with the birthday. I don't care at all that my belly is big and swollen. I don't mind looking at this (extremely gruesome) incision. I feel comfortable in my skin and like some really hard things - getting the drainage tube yanked out of stomach and yelling out loud at the doctor, daily heparin shots in the belly, nurses digging around trying to place IVs unsuccessfully...are small stuff and don't really matter. I'm still alive. My face looks strange in the mirror, probably because I lost weight when I didn't eat anything but ice chips for 9 days. Everytime I glance in the mirror I think of a deer in the headlights because my eyes seem so much bigger.


It was almost surreal to be home at first, still all covered in adhesive from tape and leads, like "This is how this went. It could have went the other way." And then existing outside of systems others have implemented to care for everyone and keep things running, is surreal, too.



! One thing I can't get over, is what we learn to live with...I've traditionally been embarassed and repressed about bodily functions. I've certainly never thought one should rush to the hospital over constipation or bloating. Especially with kids to take care of and long ER lines, and let alone when you're seeing your own doctor on an appt basis (even if it is taking weeks...) So as a result of all that, Grant and I got so used to me being in pain and being run down over the course of a month. It got to the point, the last day - the night I finally went in - that I hadn't been able to eat all day. I was nauseus and just laying there on the couch, miserable. It hurt to even move. And even still I said, I'm going to make myself a bowl of soup - if I can keep it down, I'm staying here. I was irritated and tired when I started throwing up after 2 bites. I mean...how in the world do you get to the point where that level of upset seems ANYTHING like normal? He and Laura keep apologizing to me, for not taking my complaints seriously enough or for not forcing me to the hospital sooner. But I knew better than anyone how hard everything was, and how I felt...I knew I had ultrasound results pending. I knew I'd seen a surgeon and a GP. I just don't know.


Just some things I've been thinking. I'm sure there'll be more sooner or later. I've done a lot of thinking.