Lm at the Dr's office after his staples taken out

My poor baby! A month ago, he hit his head on the corner of the living room wall that leads to the hallway while running with his Ironman toy. I took him to the ER, where they said staples are better than stitches for the head. I'd not heard of that before, but gave my OK. A few days later we went to the doctor where he had his staples taken out. It didn't hurt at all to have them removed! In fact when they said he could have a toy from the box, he got all excited:

God broke the mold after making this little guy!

Cheese!

My poor little guy got a fever a couple days ago and he was just starting to get sick when I took this pic of him on our front porch. He slays me! If I say I'm going to take a picture of him, he goes "cheese!" and puts on this forced false smile. My cutie!

He got stung by a bee a couple of months ago when he was sitting on the bench under his swingset, not knowing there was a small hive there. I got him all soothed, but a couple of days later, he goes, "Mommy, where is that bee?"

"He's gone, honey. We got that hive out of there."

"But that bee stinged me! He's going to go into Time Out!"

Ah, he's starting to learn the lack of justice in the world at a young age.

Duct Tape is the Answer & Once Upon A Time...

This weekend was a scorcher so I brought out the pool. I got wise last summer and chucked the bigger expensive pool, and bought this $15 one that is easy to transport and fill. We used it all of twice before a crack appeared toward the bottom (where else?) of one side.

My dad's answer to every problem like this is duct tape, and you know what, call me a redneck but I've come to see the wisdom behind that. When my tail light broke in 1995, instead of paying the approx $125 to fix it, he slapped some duct tape on that puppy and it was as right as rain. Ever since then, I've been a convert! New screen door have a hole? Duct tape that spot. My broken car passenger side mirror--pay the dealer to fix it or wind a roll of duct tape around it? Yup, the duct tape wins out every time. Hence, the "patch" for the pool. It's worked so far, actually my uncle brought some really really hefty black tape and 2 pieces of that has held the water!

So all weekend L&L played in their pool with their gray shark and watering cans. At night now when I put them to bed, they want a couple of "real" books to be read but now I've starting telling them a "once upon a time" story after that. One of the real books is a series about these 2 twins who like to discover new things like painting, planting, baking, etc. One story is about planting a big sunflower that grew very tall just from a small seed. So this is the one I made up last night:

"Once upon a time, there were two little boys and they had a swimming pool. It was so hot that they had to wear hats to get into the pool so they wouldn't get burned. Well, one day they decided to bring their watering cans into the pool! They started filling these watering cans and pouring water on themselves AND each other! So you know what happened? They kept watering and watering. Then they started to grow really tall just like a sunflower. And then they were so tall from all the watering they were higher than the ceiling. The end."

Considering Returning & Why

Lots of catch up, but thinking about it.

I guess I can't stand the fakey, smiley family pictures with little blurbs about such and such gathering. Fine for a scrapbook but really it gives a disingenuous picture (of my life, at least) and while those are real and treasured moments, and pics of the kids are great to look at and reflect on, I save my "real" writing, my "real" self for my personal journal and maybe a small bit on my single moms board. Or even emails to friends. Wish I could do more here but within the context of protecting my identity and of those close to me, one can only say so much. So I closed up shop and set this to Private for a few months.

But a couple of things recently have had me thinking of making it public and making it more real. If I don't get published (I have an agent but the market is nearly impossible right now and I don't want to exert energy into pursuing publication--only to write and read), well, I still want to share stuff. Not to close friends and family even as much as just the general public, to touch someone in a meaningful way if I can.

So one of two things that has me reconsidering starting up again is this blog that one of the single moms I know referenced recently. It has really touched me deeply:

http://www.kellehampton.com/2010/01/nella-cordelia-birth-story.html

Though I haven't read the blog in its entirety, I have read a few posts, and by and large, this is not a blog I would ever have followed, mostly due to the fact that this woman, prior to the entry I referenced, had a "charmed" and perfect life, a ton of friends, wealth, a supportive husband, lives in a warm climate, is a photographer I believe from what I've read, and had a beautiful daughter. An entry like "It rained today so I went to Barnes & Noble" coupled with gorgeous photos of her child and family was sort of the usual fare until the link I reference above.

But that link was a whopper. She gave birth and found out the minute her 2nd daughter was handed to her, that the baby has Down Syndrome. There were lots of people in the room, and no one else knew but her. The photo above says it all: her friends cheering with champagne as she sat there with her world turned upside down. Later, her sister came to visit; she writes: "My sister arrived the next day.... She told me I swallowed the blue pill. She told me I could never go back. But that I held a key to a door that no one else does." Just. Wow.

It made me cry because, although Liam did not have it, I was told at my 11 week ultrasound that "Baby B" was "not normal" and had an omphalocele, plus a fatal chromosome problem, many markers for a trisomy 13 or 18--at the time I didn't know those terms but my world was falling to pieces. None of my family even knew I was pregnant, and I had to go through all of this on my own, 100%. What could I do but go home to my apartment and grieve and run the shower and lay down in the bathtub with the sliding door shut to avoid the neighbors hearing, and scream over and over, "My son! My son!" as I sobbed my heart out.

Regardless of the fact that Lm was born with perfect health and the surgery for the omphalocele was actually less serious than my c-section, that moment was real, and the worry continued up to the day he was born. One could say my problem was the very OPPOSITE of this woman's--she had friends there, I had no visitors in the hospital other than my mom and a priest a couple of times to administer Last Rites to me as my toxemia grew worse by the day. Mom was the only one with me when I gave birth. No husband, no photographer friends, no champagne. I didn't get to see the twins for 2 days. Unlike this woman, I expected to give birth to a child with many medical problems, and didn't. While she expected a healthy baby, and her child has a trisomy 13. And yet--reading that story, I felt her pain upon finding out the news, felt it viscerally in fact. No wonder she has about 4,000 Followers to her blog--amazing stuff.

The 2nd thing making me reconsider is that my aunt in Colorado is dying of cancer. And I found out just 3 wks ago that my cousin who lives in Kansas and has twins, divorced about 3 years ago. I come from a family where nothing is shared or talked about between the extended group, or even the immediate group. I don't understand why the news was kept from me, but then I realize that only my mom and a couple of friends (plus my single moms board, of course) know the full story of how I came to be a single mom; I certainly wouldn't share that with cousins or relatives--though it begs the question why not. Why not since I'm not the only "black sheep" in my conservative Catholic family anymore, with 3 cousins now divorced. So why not tell the world about things like that.

Anyway it's long past my bedtime. I'll end this with one of my favorite quotes ever, from author Eudora Welty:

“My wish, indeed my continuing passion, would be not to point the finger in judgment but to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other’s presence, each other’s wonder, each other’s human plight.”

Last Post For Awhile

I decided to quit my blog for awhile, not forever maybe, but to take a break from it. I'll let y'all know if/when I resume it. But I just don't feel inspired to keep up w/ it anymore and the original reason I started it doesn't seem to be working out. I started it to keep up with people/friends/relatives so that I could cut down on email and share my boys' growth/our lives with others. But it seems like the main people who read it are (yes, a few friends), but mostly stalker ex-boyfriends and their stalker ex-girlfriends and some women that were on my old single mom's board. None of my relatives read it other than my sister.

For this reason I am also setting it back to Private for friends only since no one will be reading it much more anyway, and the reason I kept it public was so people wouldn't have to log in.

That time that it takes, about 2 hrs/week, I could be putting into my ebay biz or just plain old email. Plus then with all the blogs I get on, that takes time to read those posts and comment on those, which is about another hour per week. So I'm thinking it hasn't really saved time in the end.

Actually (GASP!) I am thinking that I will join Facebook after Christmas. I have a few people on there that I would like to keep in touch with and it seems like people get on there more than they do on this blog. It's also less personal. I just hope I'm not privy to what everyone ate for breakfast and crap like that. But, with the suit out of the way for some time, I feel "safer" getting on there. The only thing that worries me is I don't want to offend anyone if I don't want to "friend" them and have like 400 friends who I barely know, but I will go ahead and take the plunge.

I hope everyone had a happy turkey day. My long weekend was half good and half bad. I'm in serious pain on my right side for 2 days and feel some kind of mass there when I press down, making me wonder if it's not a hernia. What scares me far more than pain or a possible surgery though is the thought of paying my deductible and copay which ads up to around $2500 if I have to have anything done!

Wed I took the kids to a place in Omaha called BounceU. It has all these bouncy houses and a huge slide. They were a little scared at first but as you can see below, they had a blast!

HAPPY TRAILS EVERYONE!!!!

Got Called In To My Boss's Office

The worst hour of my week I am sure I have mentioned before, is the hour long staff meeting every Monday. It used to be at 9:15 which meant that we could get it over with first thing and I could pour a superstrong cup of coffee and there was no problem other than I hated being in it.

Now though with the merger of that new company, to accommodate another employee on a different time zone, we have these at 4pm which means dreading it all day and then I do tend to get sleepy in the afternoon if there is a meeting.

I have TRIED and TRIED not to fall asleep in meetings in the afternoon but I just cannot help it. I'm fine in the morning but the duller and longer my boss pontificates about subjects like new carts to hold machines in and passwords to unlock them which has nothing to do with my job, I just cannot help it. He's apparently noticed it before. I would say in this one my eyes twitched a bit but it's not like I was full-on snoring with my head on the table or anything.

At any rate, he called me into his office afterward and said "You need to stay awake during our meetings." I tried to explain that my kids wouldn't go to bed last night and Liam was up from 3-5am, they've been sick with fevers, etc but he said "I understand," which is bullshit as his wife likely did all his child rearing. I said D, another writer, always falls asleep too and that's b/c he's up half the night w/ a small child as well but he said "I know I know but I want you to stop. Take a shot of espresso or something."

Cripes. I felt like saying if he would stop going on and on about so much dull BS I would be awake as I was with my last boss's meetings, where in Staff we talked about what we did over the weekend and my boss's most recent bad date (always entertaining) and S's poor luck with women and the meds J was on and Susan's dilemma over having 2 kids going to college for 8 years apiece to get their Bachelor's degrees only to discover her daughter wants to be a plumber or else join the peace corps and her son wants to be a professional snowboarder. Instead now I have to hear about these manufacturing problems and details which would put me to sleep even if I took a bottle of No Doz and drank triple shots of espresso with 10 hours of sleep the night before.

I want to leave here in the worst way. It's like I'm in prison though and have to fulfill my sentence until my kids are out of daycare.

WWJD?

For the entertainment of my blog readers I must post the hilarious email battle of wills going ‘round regarding my home parish’s annual Baby Jesus Breakfast following the midnight mass at Christmas Eve.

This event has been held every year since 1986, begun by a bubbly, energetic, gregarious and friendly priest who loved going the extra mile for his parishioners and even spent Christmas Eve with our family the years he was with the parish. Fast forward 20 years, and our current priest, in my opinion, cares more about forcing Latin into the service than events that would bring parishioners together. Combined with this, the woman who used to head up the event stopped 3 years ago when her grandson was born and decided not to take it on anymore. These factors added up to The Perfect Storm of problems surrounding the event.

So 2 yrs ago the priest said let’s cancel the event. Or have the mass at 10pm instead of 11pm (which I was totally FOR) instead of 11pm, then the brunch which is a long night for everyone especially those whose kids are up at the crack of dawn to open presents regardless of what time we get to bed the night before! But the new coordinator can stick to her opinion as strongly as the priest on some things, and really wants the event as do a lot of us but insists on the 11pm mass getting us out of there at midnight to eat and celebrate, and the priest doesn’t want the event held so late due to his acid reflux, his temptation to eat if he comes to the event, and thinks the smell of the egg casseroles from the downstairs oven may clash with the scent of the incense at the mass. (This had me in stitches reading these emails over my mom's shoulder on her PC).

At any rate, we're having it. I volunteered to assist. The other option was to have it held on World Marriage Day which really sucks for us single people--it divides rather than unites. Let them have their own event and plan it if they want to do something more than the big to-do the single people are subjected to each year.