Daily living – Page 14 – My Truant Pen

Fear

My church has something called the prayer chain. This is not uncommon in medium sized churches, I think. Basically, someone has a need for prayer (sickness, accident etc.) and the Deacons spring to life. Each Deacon gets called, and they all have a list of church members they’re supposed to call and notify. Then we all commence with praying for the person in question. Prayer chain calls are often sad (although there are new babies in there!), and usually things like “person so and so has fallen on the ice and broken their hip, please pray for them”.

Today in Costco I got a call that a member of my church — and a friend of mine — is in the ICU with suspected meningitis. He’s ventilated and sedated, because he was delirious. He was on church on Sunday and feeling fine. In fact, they gave us a box of outgrown diapers on Sunday. Their daughter was at Grey’s third birthday party. Their second daughter is just a couple weeks older than Thane.

I am praying as hard as I can that he recovers quickly and well. But meningitis is terrifying. One day you’re healthy. Then you’re not. It can kill even perfectly healthy people. You can’t do much to prepare against it (other than be vaccinated — my quick research shows that there are lots of different ways you can get meningitis; some of them have vaccines available and some don’t). I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose him. But then I immediately jump to my own family. The parallels are simply too close. I am not afraid of dying for my sake. I am terrified of dying for my family’s. I am still needed here. And I cannot bear the thought of losing one of my boys – big or small. I’m nearly breathless with sympathetic fear. (And I keep turning my neck around to see if it feels stiff.)

I wish there was lots I’ve offered. I have offered to take the girls (since they’re my boys age, I’m well set up for them) but I can’t imagine that will happen since their family has made it in. I’ve offered my stored milk in case they’re having trouble feeding the youngest with the tumult (not likely, but I’m about the only person in a position to make that particular offer). I offer up my prayers.

But man. Merry Christmas.

Back with a future

In July of 2003 I woke up one morning and I couldn’t get out of bed. My back hurt. And by hurt I mean burning, screaming agony. As far as I knew I hadn’t done anything — lifted something, stretched wrong, injured it. It just hurt. In retrospect I now know that I probably bulged one of my vertebrae — the L5 to be exact.

Since then I’ve had problems with it. I can go up to a year without issues, but every 6 – 12 months I reinjure it. Then I spend a good 2 weeks really, really hurting, two months feeling ginger and the rest of the time feeling nervous. I’m becoming a physical coward. But man, when it’s out it hurts. I’ve been seeing a chiropractor pretty regularly since — almost never more rarely than once a month. (Even when everything is ok, my back is still a house of horrors according to everyone who has to touch it.)

The last time I injured it was first trimester — just before I went to Belize. (Fantastic timing, thanks for noticing. I couldn’t even take ibuprofen.)

This morning, between getting out of bed and putting on my clothes, I was put on attention that something bad has happened. I haven’t actually INJURED it yet, but it feels vulnerable. (I don’t actually know how to describe it — I’m not in trouble yet, but one wrong move and I will be.) I’ve gotten smart enough in my old age to immediately call my chiropractor and try to get it out of the vulnerable position.

But the truth of the matter is I’m sick of it. I want my back to be healthy. I want to find out what’s wrong and fix it for once and for all — even if that means physical therapy. I’d consider surgery if it was almost certain to correct the problem. I’m ready to stop this, so I can exercise and move with confidence instead of caution. What I’ve been doing just doesn’t work for me.

I just called my PCP and she’s not there on Thursdays (I’ve never actually met her). I want a doctor who will sit down with me and map out a plan of attack for making this GO AWAY. Forever.

Here I am!

So I try to be Ms. Regular about posting. Like exercising or brushing your teeth, you’re more likely to be regular doing it if you do it every day like clockwork.

I’ve been less than regular lately. Babies, boys and holidays can do that. So there was this blissful moment when both boys were asleep and I was at my keyboard and all that was between me and a great post was something to say.

Hrm.

Er.

Um.

So now both boys are awake and I’m still in the same spot.

Important stuff….

My brother is staying with us for his winter break. This is a tremendous amount of help. I am willing to pay nearly infinite amounts of Dr. Pepper, cheddar cheese and hot pockets for another adult around.

My husband did not get tested for aikido fifth queue as he was expecting to. Further updates as events warrant.

We are carolling next weekend and hosting the carollers afterwards.

The amount of laundry my family currently generates is astonishing.

Thane is regularly rolling front to back.

I bought a new cell phone. It is nifty.

Ummmm… that’s all I have. But hey. I updated!

Parenting yin and yang

Item the first: I said that it was easier having a baby than buying a house. I think it is easier to own a house than to raise a child. (Although I admit that was totally ambiguous in what I wrote.)

Item the second: Last night was one of my worst parenting nights EVER. There’s that point when you’re not sure if you’re laughing or crying and you decide to laugh because if you cry then EVERYONE in the house will be crying. Basically, Thane has a bad 3 hours every evening where he mostly cries and Grey decided to check and see if I still meant what I said and was very sad to discover that, yes, I do. Grey didn’t get to sleep until nearly 10, at which point he had lost all three of his nightlights, his music and his flashlight and I was sitting outside his door holding it closed.

Item the third: Thane woke up every two hours last night, but was a lazy eater towards morning. What’s up with that? Also, so far he’s slept pretty much all day. A growth spurt?

Item the fourth: We had a fantastic time at the Museum of Science with J. this morning. Grey was very very good and Thane slept and I got to talk to a real live adult for more than 20 seconds. Nice.

Buying a house vs. having a baby

I have been thinking the last few weeks about what I was doing this time last year. In the middle of October, on the same day, I found out I was pregnant and the offer on our house was accepted. The pregnancy didn’t work out, but the house did. This time last year was a blur of packing, stress, moving, stress, arranging mortgages, stress and stress.

I’ve finally decided: buying a house is more stressful than having a baby. I’ve done both. I know.

I think the main reason that buying a house is more stressful is because the pressure is on to do it right. For example, you should go house hunting at the right time (which, well, at least we didn’t pick the worst time?). You should find the very best house that you can afford for all your needs. You should choose the correct community. You should check the commute and the location. You should divine what sort of maintenance the house will need. (Note: we offered on the house the same day we saw it. How was this all supposed to happen?) Find a real estate agent. Find a lawyer. Find a house inspector. Find contractors to bid on the work that needs to be done. You will need to liquidate a bunch of your savings — pray you have the luck and foresight to do so on a day the market is up. Get the best possible mortgage. Be sure you read the fine print. Run a budget to make sure you can afford it. Set up a savings account for the inevitable maintenance. Check your homeowner’s insurance. Are you on a flood plane? You better get the flood insurance. Hire movers. Pack boxes.

All of that stuff is completely overwhelming, at least to me. The thing that made it so bad was that it was possible for me to choose wrong or right. It was all about my choice and my agency, and the outcome was entirely my fault. But there was too much to do in a one month period (while working full time, of course) to do it all with the rigor each decision deserved. You sort of tossed your dice and trusted to luck. It worked out for us, I think, but I can see a million ways that it could’ve gone wrong.

Let’s compare that to a baby. First, have sex. Several weeks later, discover you are pregnant. Wait 9 months, slowly and gradually planning. Have a really rough few hours there giving birth. Stay out of work for a month or two or three, granted while you don’t get much sleep. It’s entirely possible that the child you have will have flaws (unlike mine), or disabilities or problems. But unless your child has fetal alcohol syndrome, chances are good that it was just the way luck turned. Nothing you decided would’ve made it different — you just take what you are given and work with it. That can be tons of work and it can be really hard, but you’re not RESPONSIBLE for the decision of what kind of baby to have. That’s rigorous but, to me, less stressful.

Even at the nadir of my parenting (Alone! For a week! With two kids! And one of them not even 6 weeks old!) I’d much rather do this than buy another house. I’ve always been completely gobsmacked by the people who casually mention, “Oh, we bought a house recently.” To me that’s like saying, “Oh, yes. I climbed Everest last week.”

I’m thinking I’m done with both. As far as children go, I have had as many as I plan to have. (At least now — I know this is the sort of statement that comes back to haunt you later.) As far as homes go, I have purchased the house I would like to inhabit until my children are through college. We probably will buy another house at some point, but heaven help me, that point better be far enough in the distant future to be misty.

Heck, kids are even cheaper than the house at this point!

Thane in his newly renovated room in our new house

The view from Thanes window — The view from Thane's window

On my own, pretending he’s beside me

So I have a secret for you. I actually really love my husband. Shhh… I know it’s not kosher to be madly in love with the father of my sons, but there you have it. The truth is out.

This morning I woke up without complaint at 7. (This is how you know it’s really love.) I got myself and my boys ready to go. We drove to the airport, where I spent half an hour saying goodbye to my husband. From the drama, you’d think he was being deployed to Iraq and I wouldn’t see him for another year and he stood a good chance of being killed. In reality, his company runs a big conference every year and every salaried employee is expected to be present and help out. My highly trained, brilliant engineer of a husband is spending 7 days in Nashville doing coat-check. I haven’t decided whether this is a brilliant team building technique, a misguided attempt at cost savings (sorry, engineer salary + travel expenses = much cheaper to hire a local), or some combination thereof.

Regardless, he is gone until Friday and I am missing him sorely already. Let me say first that I really, really don’t know how single parents do it. I don’t have to show up to work. (Actually I had this giddy moment of freedom when I realized that I could be gone as long and as far as the contents of my diaper bag could get me. For a split second I tried to figure out how far I could get and come back. Then I remembered I didn’t have my cell charger….) I don’t have huge monetary constraints. (Hello takeout!) Heck, Grey’s daycare will take him as a drop in which is very likely what I’ll do once the week returns. But man, it’s hard to wrangle two kids by myself. Walking somewhere and not carrying anything or anyone is a huge luxury. You should’ve seen me wrestling it all at IKEA. I couldn’t buy the tasty carbonated beverages due to a tragic lack of hands. The meatballs were purchased with a VISA and at the cost of future feeling in my right thumb. And Grey and Thane were actually being really, really good!

When I was doing my anticipatory dreading of this, I worried about how I would handle the boys when they’re doing their tandem weeping/screaming routine. Granted, entertaining and tending to my sons is definitely a challenge. But I think the hard part will be the loneliness. I was already feeling pretty lonely, spending my days in the company of two people younger than most of my jeans and Spongebob Squarepants. But at least my husband would come home at night and I would deluge him with all the thoughts that had piled up in my head during the day. But I don’t actually have to talk to another adult in person until my brother arrives sometime on the Thursday/Friday border. Of course I will. Tomorrow is church. Monday a friend is going with me to the Museum of Science with the boys. I’m quite sure other things will appear on my schedule.

But mostly, I miss my husband. I really like him. I like doing things with him. My sons are also his sons, and I can lean on him as much as is needed to do those things which need doing.

May my husband return to me soon.

Verizon vs Comcast

While my brother was here, two Comcast guys came to my door. I let them in because I’d actually seen them working on the phone poles lately, so I knew they were legitimate. I pretty much never buy or pay attention to solicitations. That serves me well in some ways (I’m hard to scam) but it makes it difficult for me to find out about legitimate opportunities.

We currently have Verizon FIOS for tv and internet. I’ve been relatively satisfied with it. We have the super duper upload speeds, and a standard tv package and two receivers, which cost us about $111 a month. The Comcast guys were offering better download/upload speeds (likely over the same wires), a land line phone with voice mail, caller ID, call waiting and unlimited long distance (which I wanted and was thwarted getting with Verizon), Starz, Encore, more free On Demand, the first month free, free installation and activation, a one year price guarantee and no contract. The kicker was the free DVR. Oh, and the cost per month would be $95.

I haven’t heard great things about Comcast’s customer service, but that was too good to pass up. So we took it.

The Comcast installation dude was here exactly on time the day he was supposed to be. (Don’t get me started on the rigmarole that was adding the second Verizon receiver, which resulted in me having to take an extra vacation day.) He was professional and thorough. He added phone lines to all the floors of my house. He paid attention to the aesthetics of the installation. He was very polite and quite nice to Grey (who was very sad when he was gone when Grey woke up!) He was here for like 4 hours, but did very nice work. He even set up our wireless router.

The upshot? The internet is working pretty much the same. And I’m very excited about the DVR! I feel like I’m finally entering the 21st century! I can pause! Record! Rewind! Fast forward! SO EXCITING!

Apparently our entire neighborhood is converting. My next door neighbor has the trucks out in front today.

Check that out — an entire post that wasn’t about parenting!

(Waves to the people who are responsible for surfing the web to find out what “the blogosphere” is saying about their company. Well, I kind of hope my blog is sufficiently visible for those folks to find me.)

Wow, this goes faster when you use TWO hands!

When last we left our heroine, she was tired. Shockingly, she is still tired.

Let us contemplate the news of the last few days:

I hate malls. I forget that I hate malls, though. I went to the mall last night and was totally skunked. I don’t get it… apparently gazillions of people are delighted to pay loads of cash for 25 different designer versions of what is basically the same sweater. But no one else in the entire world wants a decent selection of high quality (silver or crystal) Christmas ornaments. No. Everyone else wants plastic or that glass stuff which I personally loathe. And if they don’t want plastic or blown glass, they want ugly. Hrmph.
Thane really, truly manages to know when his brother is either asleep or not present and adjusts his sleep schedule accordingly.
We downloaded Super Mario Bros 3 to the Wii. Newsflash: I suck at it.
My brother. Oh, my poor brother. He reappeared late on Saturday night and joined us for church. After church, lunch and nap we bid him a fond farewell for a fortnight. Bye bye! Then last night, as I settled into the bath, the phone rang. (ring ring!) His clutch gave out on the Mass Pike at Sturbridge. Woes. Fortunately my parents had signed up for the Super Ooper Duper AAA package with 100 miles of free towing, so the car and the boy got here. At 4 am. I sent him off on the T this afternoon, not fully gruntled.
Grey went to daycare today. (I am short on patience — that’s good for none of us.) I had this huge list of things I was going to get done. I did do some good present shopping at Target and online. And I picked up the house and put away clothes. And started tonight’s dinner. And did the whole “console brother” thing. But Thane just wouldn’t sleep today, so the ordering of pictures and Christmas cardage have so far not happened, and I must pick up the eldest in an hour. I also had these fond dreams of going grocery shopping. Yeah… no.
“All the Werys of Pern” is clearly NOT the next book after “The White Dragon”. Does anyone know which one is? Is it “The Renegades of Pern”?
My husband is going to be in Nashville for a full week starting Saturday morning. I’m getting a head start on the dreading. Anyone who’s been wondering when I’ll need their support and love, pencil in that week. (I think Grey may go to daycare the whole week. Seriously, I have NO CLUE how single parents do it!)

The living room is complete

The new carpets have arrived and the makeover of the living room is now complete. I’d originally thought of adding color to the room by painting the walls a fairly saturated color (originally blue, but green in this scheme). With all the color we’ve introduced with the carpet and curtains, however, I suspect that would be too much and that if I repaint that blasted paneling, it should be a white or a cream. I wonder if I could paint the ceiling tiles too….

Internet skills… getting rusty….

When you’re not making a post a day, you don’t feel like you can just update folks on the last 20 minutes of your life (not that I, uh, ever do that…) but you don’t feel really ready to tackle the last 20 days, either. It’s been a definite withdrawal for me to have so much less computer time, and even more importantly very little computer time with both my hands free. Writing a post with one hand is time consuming. (An element to my prolific writing is doubtless the 80 wpm I type. You can say more in less time when you type quickly.)

Let’s see. The defining element of my last few days has been OMG SO MANY GUESTS. Last weekend was a wonderful Mocksgiving. Then on Thursday my beloved Aunt and Uncle arrived in Boston for a big Bible conference thingy, and they stayed the night. This would be the Aunt who can cook amazingly, so of course I felt the need to prepare a decent meal. And of course all my free time was spent chatting with them, attempting to catch up on the last 7 years in one evening. Then last night my brother Gospel came. (I asked why he got off for Thanksgiving break so early. He reminded me that there happened to be a big Bible conference thingy going on and he was at seminary. Huh. Go figure.) Granted, Gospel is much more helpful than guestful. He even raked our lawn this afternoon in the bitter, bitter cold! But still… he’s here much of the week and my Aunt and Uncle reemerge from their conference on Monday night (another dinner). I don’t have much spare time, and that’s taken up what I have. Still, it’s entirely worthwhile.

It got cold here in New England. I’m not a fan of this. I feel like I can’t walk nearly as far; not because Grey can’t handle it but because it’s hard to properly bundle a wee baby. I’m also still struggling with walking with both boys. Problem one is that I have much less recourse if Grey decides to be recalcitrant, which definitely happens with a 3 year old. If I carry Thane in a sling, it’s just too much to also carry the diaper bag and with a potty training preschooler, that’s dangerous. (I can carry one or two baby diapers in the sling, but the diapers and a change of pants for Grey… well, that seems like a bit much.) I don’t like strollers, but I tried that and I discovered that it’s really hard to steer with one hand, making it hard to hold Grey’s hand when we cross streets, etc. And here’s the kicker — I can just about manage Grey and the stroller, but the coffee is too much. (Heck it’s also an extra hand I lack getting into the car.) Parenting is threatening my coffee supply. This is dire, people.

In boy news, Thane has already lost the newborn look and started in on the young baby look. His neck is unbelievably strong — he now holds it steady for quite a while. He still swims in his 0 – 3 month outfits, but has outgrown newborn diapers. I had actually remembered this, how in the course of a day a diaper size goes from ok to way too small. And if you try to make do with the too small diapers to use up the rest of them, you find yourself changing a lot of outfits. Thane really, really likes to be held and wants to be held almost all day. This seems entirely appropriate for a new baby, but it a bit hard to manage sometimes. When he’s feeling fussy, he really likes to be on his belly. In the big Thane-news, he rolled over twice this week. Both times it was from front to back, but still. Rolling over at 3 weeks? I would be more excited about this if I didn’t realize that physically precocious children are a lot of work.

Grey is wonderful. He has been telling us stories lately. “Once upon a time there was a boy named Grey.” He will do nearly anything if you apply pretend reverse psychology. “Grey, I do not want you peeing in that potty!” On the one hand, it’s nice to have something that works so reliably. On the other hand, I’m worried that I’m making trouble for myself. I try to use a very silly voice when I do this, but perhaps it’s not smart of us. Speaking of peeing in the potty training, it’s going slowly. The length of time between when he goes seems to have lengthened, but he still won’t initiate going to the potty and it’s often like pulling teeth to get him to go. I confess to feeling disheartened. On the other hand, he’s been wonderfully affectionate and cuddly with the cold weather. He has grown increasingly sensitive to the emotions of others. “Mommy, are you sad, happy or angry?” he’ll ask. What he’s really asking is “Am I all right with you?” He is also attuned to his brother’s emotions. He’ll come find me if Thane is crying. Sometimes he tries to make faces to cheer up the weeping babe. Sometimes, annoyed, he’ll tell Thane to “Be quiet!” In the amusing anecdote department, Grey calls letters emails. I wonder if they’ll still have letters when he’s my age. Generally, though, he’s been pretty fantastic.

The smallest one stirs. I go.