Raining

Mommy!  Moooooommmmmmmmyyyyy!!!

I look up from cooking, alarmed.  It is never a good thing when your children come running in from outside screeching like that.  I go over to the mud room and notice that it has just let loose, pouring down rain.  Relief enters my heart.  THAT is why they are screaming for me.  I open the door and Charlie and Alexis come in, laughing and shaking off the rain.  Charlie looks up at me, grinning.

"Mama, I was running in from the rain, did you see me Mom?  It was TOTALLY AWESOME!!!"

I couldn't help but think about how had that been me caught in the rain, the ensuing rage would have been of apocalyptic proportions.  I would have been pissed about getting wet, about the sensation of having damp clothes against my body, wet hair, and cold feet.  I would not have laughed at having to run in from playing.  I would not have had a first thought of it being totally awesome.

When was the last time that I danced in the rain?  The answer to that is probably never, though I do have a memory of playing in the puddles in the streets after heavy rains and playing in the one spot in the driveway that held water after my father washed the car.  The idea there is the same though...taking an awful situation and making the best of it.

This brings to mind the fundraiser I am running for JJ.  The number of people who are being so exceedingly generous simply astounds me.  It is amazing and I cannot think about it without getting choked up.  People who do not even know JJ are donating.  Something good out of something awful.

My challenge, then, is this.  What can you do to take a bad situation and make it better?  Not good, mind you.  Nothing good comes out of getting caught in the rain, or from having cancer, or any of the other myriad things that are awful in the world.  What can you do to make it better?  Dance in the rain.  Give to a stranger.  Pay it forward somehow.

The little things add up.  Change starts with the individual and vibrates outward.  Make some noise and stop going with the flow.  If everyone thought about someone else for just a little bit, what a difference that would make.  Will it eliminate all of the crap, the diseases, the storms?  No.  This is the world we live in and that we have been given.  All that comes with the territory.  We can only change what we do.

Dance in the rain.

Stitches

So continuing the streak of semi-annual ER visits for Charlie, we made a run out to the hospital last night.  Charlie was riding on a scooter (not a motorized one, for the record...a good old fashioned get your exercise and do your part to stay healthy one) and fell and hit her head on the handlebars and got a lovely gash.   It was one of those that was small, but deep.The stupid thing kept re-opening, plus it was in her hairline...I was really uncertain if it would need stitches but luckily my mother (a former nurse) was there and said it might not be a bad idea.  If not stitches, they might just glue it.

 Now, mind you, this was the second time she hit her head yesterday.  The first time she was running in my bedroom, tripped over some shoes, and hit her head on the door frame.  That first time it was so loud that Elizabeth heard it upstairs in her bed room.  So not only did she have the new gash plus the accompanying bump from that one, she had another one (same side, mind you...) that was about 8 hours old.

I also feel the need to mention here as well that we had had a 5K benefit for my husband's godson JJ.  Charlie had decided earlier that she wanted to run it.  She had the whole thing planned out with my sister...she was going to wear her fast Princess shoes and run it with Leesha and Mommy was going to cheer.  Well, she ended up getting a little scared by all of the people there, so Alicia took off with Alexis's friend and Charlie stayed with Daddy...but she still ran at the end.  (We won't talk about being carried by Daddy...)  Then there were Cheetos involved afterwards (yes, I am crazy about my kids' food but I do allow junk on occasion...) and her white Team JJ shirt wasn't so white anymore.  When we got home, she ate some Mexican Meatball soup and dribbled some down the shirt.  Then she went outside and probably rolled in some dirt and mud wrestled a pig after army crawling through the brush to secure the perimeter of our homestead.  Point is...she was filthy.  It was a good day for her.

Anyways...So my sister and I headed off to the ER.  Alicia came with me because her husband Nick was insisting on it ("Don't you really think she might need help there?").  Since I can appreciate that kind of anxiety because it is pretty much my every day existence, Alicia came with me while Charles stayed at home with Alexis.  (Plus, then he and Nick could continue their playdate...)  I really don't think twice about Charlie's appearance until I get there.  Then I looked at her and realized that she looked really really homeless.  The bleeding wound on her forehead (since it has reopened getting out of the van...) with the dried blood on her face just added that extra touch of class needed.  She also had had her face painted at the 5K, but some of it had rubbed off so her cat's whiskers and nose now just looked like she had rubbed her had across her cheek while dropping a tranny into a Ford.

We were white trash fabulous.  I seriously expected them to call Children's Services on me.  I tried to clean her up once we walked in, but there was no saving that shirt.  It will likely never be white again.  They don't make bleach powerful enough for a white shirt to withstand a day being worn by  Char-Rambo.

We get back to the room and the doc says that the wound was just going to be glued, not stitched.  Fine by me.  The nurse comes in and puts some numbing stuff on it and says we have to wait a half an hour.  About 20 minutes in, Charlie looks at Alicia and announces, "My boo-boo's all better.  Let's go."  Apparently the numbing stuff works.  We explained to her that this was not how it worked and that the doctor still had to come back.  Charlie then choose to climb up on one of the chairs in the room.

And then fell.  And hit her head.  On the other side.  While in the fucking ER.

I kid you not.  You can't make this shit up.

So now my child has not one, not two, but three lovely goose eggs on her forehead (all from within a 12 hour period) as well as glue from the ER caked in her hair and a tiny but deep gash at her hairline.  I am going to take her to daycare tomorrow and am going to be told that I cannot have her back because look at what I did to her over the course of being responsible for her 24/7 for just two days.  I am kinda worried about the rest of today, to be honest...Charles asked me when we left the ER if they wrapped her in bubble wrap.

Might not be a bad idea.  Plus, that shit is so much fun to play with!  Keeping Charlie safe and Mama entertained...I might have to seriously consider this!

Indecision

It is a common misogynist trope that women are notoriously flighty and constantly change their minds.  I sometimes fit that bill, though it is unclear if this is due to being female or being depressed/anxious or the pressures of society or because I am just plain old of the crazy variety.  Possibly a combo of all of the above.

Most days I am perfectly content.  I am content to do things like throw elaborate birthday parties for my kids and their friends with crazy complicated homemade cakes, to bake homemade bread and grind chicken for homemade gluten free chicken tenders.  I am content to spend my time at home with my family, and just occasionally going out.  I am mostly happy in my job and sometimes confident that I can do it without causing lasting harm to people.  I am usually happy living in BFE (though if the chance came to move back to where I come from, I would probably snap it up in a second).  I am happy with my house though I realize its layout is not ideal.

But.

But there are times I question just staying at home on the weekends with the children.  There are times I think that I might want to look at a new job.  Hell, there are times I consider moving into an entirely new FIELD.  I consider working part time.  I look at other states to live in as well as other cities.  I consider cutting my hair, painting walls, rearranging furniture.  Just...a change of some sort.

Where does this restlessness with my situation come from?  When changes are forced upon me, I get pissed at the lack of control.  It causes my anxiety to skyrocket and the crazy in me to come out in ways that probably adds months if not years to my children's therapy totals.  But when things get too mundane, too routine...I start to look for ways to change it up.  I am a mass of paradox that way.

Or ODD.  Really, either/or.

Variety is the spice of life, I suppose.  I always try to strive to be something unique and not like ordinary cinnamon.  Maybe cardamon, perhaps fennel.  Certainly not savory.  That spice just sounds like it is trying too hard with its name alone.

Just as long as I can control the amount of fennel, I guess.  Cause there is nothing that ruins a dish more than an overabundance of fennel.

Enemy

There have been many articles written about the whole idea of not being a superwoman, all packed with touchy-feely bullshit about how women need to support each other and not be so goddamned competitive.  I don't know about all of you, but this just makes me feel even more like shit because I'm doing it wrong.  I am totally competitive and constantly feel inadequate.

I make my kids homemade bread?  Someone else is growing their own organic, GMO free wheat.  I researched area daycares to find the best fit for our family?  Someone else is homeschooling their child and teaching them Mandarin, Spanish, and how to make macrame.  (Does anyone ever actually use macrame?  What IS it?  See, I am even more inadequate because not only do my children not make macrame, I don't even fucking know what it is.)  I started running again?  Someone else just completed their sixth marathon.  I helped a client verbalize their feelings about a trauma?  Someone else helped theirs function well enough with schizophrenia to hold a full time job.

It goes on and on.  This has nothing to do with societal pressures, the mommy wars, being catty or bitchy.  This is strictly from within.  This is all from the voices in my head.  I am my own worst enemy.  I am the one who tears myself down.  I am never good enough for myself.

I have been this way  since God was a boy.  I would hold myself up to unrealistic expectations and beat the shit out of myself when I did not meet them.  The problem was, I usually could meet them so that just reinforced my unrealistic expectations for myself.  The cost, though...well, just my sanity (or what little I do possess...)

I have felt myself recently slipping into beating myself up.  I work full time.  I have three children.  I have way too much debt.  I have three dogs and a cat.  I have a house to care for.  I'm helping to organize a benefit for a friend's son.  I'm going to run in a 5K.  I'm a little busy, maybe.

But.

But I still mentally harangue myself when my house is not clean.  Hell, I still compare my house to that of people who probably make triple what I do.  I compare myself to other men's wives regardless of whether she is someone my husband would even find attractive anyways.  I beat myself up because I am not feminist enough (a REAL feminist would not have these concerns!), because I am not trained enough as a therapist, because my children aren't in enough activities, because we are not as financially sound as I would like us to be, because I don't coupon, because my family sometimes does not eat dinner together, because I don't have the energy to start a small business, because the dogs are overdue for going to the vet, because I require coffee to make it through the morning, because I hate mornings, because sometimes I want to leave work to get home to my family, because sometimes I don't want to leave work BECAUSE OF my family,  because I must be a horrible human being if I have the very real experience of my family driving me crazy, because I get depressed when I think about all of the evil in the world, because I don't have time to do all of my hobbies, because I have not picked up my violin in over a year, because I don't take my children to the library enough, or the movies, and we have never been to Disney, and, and...

It is me.  My thoughts might be fueled by society and flamed by mental illness.  But I am my own worst enemy and I sometimes feel helpless to stop it.

Moon

Driving in the car with Charlie with the sun roof open at night:

Charlie: Mama, Mama!  The Moon!  It's so big! It's following us!

Me: (Trying not to laugh)  OK,  Charlie.  I see it.

Charlie:  Don't worry, Mama.  It won't come in the window.  It can't get us.


I laugh at this exchange because I distinctly remember being very annoyed as a small child that the moon followed us everywhere.  I mean, seriously MOON, don't you have anything better to do than to follow me like some kind of deranged psychopathic stalker?  They make movies about people doing that kind of shit...what makes you so special that you can just get away with it and follow me and be all SHINY IN THE SKY?

I of course grew up and realized why the moon "follows you" (just last week...KIDDING!) and now can kind of chuckle at the sweet innocence of thinking that the satellite that orbits the earth had it out for me and was deliberately fucking with me by following me home.  (Looking back, it shows that my derangement runs real deep if I was thinking like that before Kindergarden...)  That was back before I grew up and realized that babies don't always get born; that people die or are killed, and not just strangers but people I know; that people get sick; that people aren't going to be what you hoped or imagined they would.

Before I had to explain to my children that a little boy that they have known all their lives got suddenly critically ill. That he is in the hospital. That he has cancer.  Just typing those words out makes me want to shake.

No parent should have to go through what his are right now.  No parent should have to tell their children that another child is ill, and critically so.

I feel helpless.  I have avoided blogging for a while because I tend to write out some pretty raw things.  Facing the idea that a child I have known since age 3 months, with the big grin and the deep belly laugh, who has questionable tastes in professional football teams but is spot on with college teams, that he has cancer...the ultimate betrayal of one's own body, IMHO...I couldn't do it.  It is still hard.  Writing out that he has a life-threatening illness...I don't want to admit it.  If I feel this way, I can only imagine how his parents feel.

So I participate in fundraisers for them.  Hell, I am helping to organize one.  I re-post updates and wheedle donations.  The community response has been fabulous.  I do what I can sitting here.

But I still wish that I could go  back to a time when the moon following me was upsetting.  When I never knew what it was like to have to explain adult things to a child.  When these kinds of things happened to someone else.

He is your child.  Your neighbor.  Your son.  Your best friend.  Just because he does not live with you, next to you, go to your school; it does not mean that he and his struggles impact you any less.  This disease has an impact on you; just because it is not directly does not make it any less of an impact.

The same moon that stalks me is the same moon that shines down on him where he is getting treated for his lymphoma in a hospital room.  The same moon that shines on you where ever you are right now.

Be cognizant of this.   People matter.  They all have their stories; their journeys.  Perhaps if we weren't so quick to judge, the world would be better.  After all, the moon is equally obsessed with each and every one of us.

Directions

For a variety of reasons that I still do not understand fully myself, my position at work has suddenly changed and I don't do exclusively emergencies anymore.  This is good and bad.  Good because I don't work solely with the acutely suicidal and/or homicidal and/or psychotic anymore. Bad because it involves me twice a week travelling to a different office.  This adds an additional half an hour to my commute, one way.

Those of you who know me in real life know that according to my sleep habits and patterns, I am an adolescent at heart.  If I could stay up until 2 or 3 AM and sleep till noon-ish, I would be super content.  I am not a morning person, to the point where Elizabeth used to tentatively approach me when she would younger and ask, "Mommy, have you had your coffee yet?"  I told Charles the first night I spent the night that I was not a morning person.  He just laughed the way he did the time I told him about my aversion to laundry.  The next morning he got out of bed to let his dog out, and I bit his head off:  "Why are you getting up?"  "To let the dog out."  "Oh...zzzzzz".

I mention the above because part of the reason I left my previous employer was due to the commute.  And also because it explains what I am about to reveal next.  It at least gives some kind of rationale for my actions.

I decided today to attempt to find a different way to this particular office.  I have to go through two small speed-traps towns and I was thinking that if I could find a back road to avoid this it might be quicker.

Now.  Let's just talk for a minute about what real-world talents I have.  I can open a screw top beer on a picnic table or counter edge.  I can tie shoes so they are less likely to come untied.   I can soften brown sugar once it has gone hard.

I cannot find my way out of a paper bag.  I have the navigational capabilities of a deaf drunk bat.  People like me are why GPS were invented.  To me, directions are similar to making gravy (another real world talent I lack.)  Why bother when I can open a can or make my older sister do it?  It is not like I do this that often.  Same with directions.  Why bother when I seldom go anyplace new and I can have a little nifty machine tell me in a pleasant female voice exactly what to do and when.

I have been to the city that this office is located in exactly four times.  Three were to the exact same place (my children's pediatrician's other office.).  I am not exactly familiar, is what I am trying to establish here.   Even typing this out, I am questioning what kind of logic made me think that it would be a good idea to try to find this alternative route with nothing but my iphone to lead me.  And since I still have not figured out the whole map app on my phone, it may as well have been paper directions.

I am that person who would drive around with the mapquest directions and accidentally hit the hobo on the side of the road as well as your dog too, all because I am trying to read and drive at the same time. I tend to multitask (five open...) and when you are going 55 MPH, eating yogurt is one thing but trying to read directions is another.  Figure in the GPS.  I am saving the hobo, and your little dog too. 

Saving hobos and dogs.  It's what your GPS can do for you.  Why am I not in advertising?

Vacation

We just got back from vacation today.  We spent a week on Hilton Head Island.  Yes, you read that right...the woman who hates water spent a week on the beach and in the pool.  Yes, I swam.  Yes, I allowed my children to do so.  I will admit that I had a much better time at the beginning of the week when Charlie freaked every time we tried to go into the ocean (or the river, as she kept insisting on calling it) or into the pool.  By the end of the week she was a pro and I accumulated no less than 5 additional gray hairs.

Further exacerbating my dis-inclination towards water was the fact that something fucked up started to go on with my ears.  At first it just felt like they had water in them.  Then it progressed to sharp pains.  It sucked.  Swimmer's ear, maybe?  Who the fuck knows.  It was just awful and more ammunition in my fight against the dark force that is recreational swimming.  My husband got me some drops that helped somewhat, but not until I missed spending time with a friend who had dropped by on her way to Myrtle Beach with her boys.  AGAIN...SEE?  Another reason why water is the devil!

Someone (actually, a couple of someones...) had suggested a decongestant.  That sounded like a mighty fine idea until I remembered that most decongestants make me want to crawl out of my skin.  I would make a poor meth addict, I think.  Taking a decongestant and then being confined 14 hours to a minivan with my children, husband, sister, and brother in law?  When taking a decongestant makes me want to scratch my insides out from the imaginary crank bugs that I swear to God are crawling on my arteries?  No thanks.  I'll suck it up, buttercup. Going through the mountains was fun, as well as trying to hear anyone speak below the decibel level of a freight train.

The ear situation aside, it was quite fun.  This was actually our first significant vacation with all of the children.   Charles and I had gone down last year but left the kids, much to Elizabeth's chagrin.  Tack on another three months of therapy there... The kids did great on the ride down...not so much on the ride back but it turns out Charlie's eczema flared up in her butt crack so I imagine that was not so fun for her, poor thing.  We swam, we shopped, Elizabeth got to zip-line due to my brother in law and sister sitting through a time share presentation.  The little girls built (and destroyed) many a sand castle with me and I got more sun (and sand in my vagina) than I should.  We will definitely be returning again, with ear drops this time!

Five

It is hard to believe sometimes that it has been five years.

Five years since my world was turned upside down.

Five years since I learned things I never wanted to know.

Five years.  Half a decade. Kindergarden age.  The Wood anniversary. 

It has not gotten easier.  I dread the days leading up to July 2 like no other.  No matter how much time passes, I don't think that it will ever get to the point where I can work that day.  Where I can think of the events of that day without a panic attack.

Where I wonder how the hell I carried on and functioned and why the world did not stop when mine was falling apart.

Five years.  Both so short, and yet so long.

RIP and happy birthday, Gabe.  Mama misses you every day.  And Mama will never allow you to be forgotten.

MHPMHD

A few months ago, a group of co-workers and I got together for some one's birthday outside of work.  A pretty small thing, considering that hundreds of people probably do it on any given day...but it was revolutionary for us.  We talked, laughed, drank margaritas, and had such a good time that I made the executive decision that we would have a monthly Mental Health Professionals Mental Health Day, otherwise known as the MHPMHD.

Most people don't realize this, but therapists are people too.  The work we do is very important, but we are severely underpaid, overworked, and under-appreciated.  Hearing stories of abuse, terror, pain, misery, and just humans being the very worst they can really wears on a person.  Hence, the importance of caring for one's self.  Most mental health agencies will not do it for you.  They want to wring every last drop out work out of you they can and then will still tell you that you are not doing enough.  It is disheartening.  Much like parenting, in fact.

Right now Charlie is in the midst of a knock down, drag out fit.  She is pissed at me because I am making her play with her toys.  (Call Children's Services, y'all. I am so abusive.)  Not only do I have a toddler to contend with, I have a teenager as well.  Teenagers are really more like toddlers than they are adults, but they have more words and really aren't quite as portable.  Then I have the 6 year old who is totally focused on rules and all of the perceived injustices that are wrought upon her at the hands of others.  Shit gets crazy all up in here, yo.

Most days I am perfectly content to stay at home and referee.  Most days I don't mind the crazy that is both my house and my job.  I thrive on it, in fact.  I chose this and I love it.

But...I need a break.  I need to see my coworkers outside of work where we can laugh and let loose.  I need to NOT be with my family for a few hours.  I need it for my sanity.  I am crazy enough on my own; I certainly don't need their help.

It has gotten to the point now where every once in a while, I can feel the depression starting to creep in.  Like an ominous storm cloud encroaching, it slowly sneaks up with the intention of wreaking havoc on my mood and my ability to cope.  This tells me it is time to engage in some self care (mind out of the gutter, pervs!) and to remove myself.  To go and do something for me.

Does it always work?  No.  Sometimes the depression stays.  Sometimes the storm does not blow over, and it stays and is destructive to my soul and mind and it sucks monkey balls.  Sometimes the storm is able to blow over, like all those times when the hypervigilant peeps at the National Weather Service tell you there is a tornado coming and issue a warning and then are all like, "Oh!  Just kidding!  My bad!"  But you still have hunkered down and prepared yourself because you just never know.  Maybe this is the time that the golf ball sized hail will materialize and destroy your carefully cultivated garden and dent your vehicle and leave you with a huge mess to clean up.

The MHPMHD is designed to be the basement, the storm lanterns, the battery powered radio in the storm.  Sometimes it materializes, sometimes it does not.  Sometimes there is clean up, sometimes not.  It is preventative.  Hell, if I thought it would fly with the IRS, I would totally deduct whatever amount I spend on those days as a job or a medical expense.

Necessary for my mental health, and for yours too.  In fact, I am going to challenge all of my 7 readers to do this.  Once a month, to take a few hours out of a day and do something for yourself.  It can be getting together with friends and having lunch; going for a serene walk by yourself, or going window shopping with your mother.  Just something.  Slow it down, and care for your mental health.  Care for your soul.  See what a difference it makes.

Rainbows II

I recently had to do an assessment that sent me to my knees for a variety of reasons that I cannot go into (HIPPA, yo!).  This was the kind of thing where I really struggled to maintain my composure and in fact, lost it during the session.  Luckily it was clinically appropriate.  I got back to my office, shut the door, and sobbed for about 10 minutes.

It was a rough day, to say the least.  It really did not get any better after that.  Thank God for 5 PM.  I went to pick Charlie up from the daycare.  She jumped up and down, she was so happy to see me.  That helped.

I take her to the Jeep and strapped her into her car seat.  There, across her cheek, was a small rainbow. I have hanging in my rear view mirror a prism that was my grandmother's.  I vividly remember it hanging in her dining room window, above her cart of houseplants.  She always had the most beautiful plants, and her  violets were always so vibrant and a deep purple.  Obviously I did not get the talent for growing house plants as they enter my house and just kill themselves instead of waiting for me to do it for them.  Anyways, this prism always shone rainbows all over her dining room and I always was fascinated by them.  This prism has always been in my car, and at various times does shine rainbows.  However, it had never done so at this time of day as it just did not catch the sun where I park.

Until this day.  There it sat, a small rainbow with no explanation for how it got there.  Never saw one there before, and have not seen one since.  A rainbow, just when I needed it.

I am not going to comment on beliefs about God, heaven, and the afterlife.  Mostly because I know that my  whole 7 readers run the gamut from the extremely devout to outright atheists, with everything in between.  And quite frankly, what I believe is what I believe and none of your business. Could the rainbows be a coincidence?  Absolutely.  Humans do look for meaning in the mundane.  I am incredibly comforted by the idea that my son is looking out for me in some way.  Whether it is true or just me grasping at straws, it was comforting.