Jessamit!

Danny runs up to Tom: Jessamit!
Tom: What?
Danny: Jessamit!
Tom: Listen, you're cute but I just can't understand you. (Nemo reference)
Danny: Jess.  A. Min. It.  Daddy.
Tom: Oh. 'Just a minute.' Got it.

An actual conversation with Tom

Tom: You know what I learned watching Craft Wars the other day?

Me: That you're a girl?

Because my head needs to be shrunk again

I don't like being a victim; I'd much rather suffer in silence and be a martyr, I guess. The idea of being pitied is a hard one for me, which I guess is why I don't go to shrinks right away when I notice myself going downhill. I like to pretend I'm just having a bad day or a stressful time and that if I muscle through it it will all go away on its own.
I loved being pregnant. The diabetes sucked, but I loved being pregnant.  I had confidence and every day felt like the day before Christmas waiting to see what the baby was, a boy or a girl. It was great.  Looking back, I think that may have been the last time I felt happy but I could be wrong. Looking back through a fog tends to make everything look foggy. All I know is that I haven't felt happy for a long time, not truly happy and content with my life. I know it's chemical; I've been here before. But I also know it's a long and tedious and expensive struggle to get better so I just never made an appointment. There was always something better to spend the $60 copay on than me going to chat about my feelings to some shrink. And then what, I talk to the therapist 4 or 5 times before I even see the actual doctor and then they write me a script it takes 2 months to ramp up to full dosage on, so that's 4 months right there. And if that script doesn't work they start tweaking the dosage to get it right so there's a month or two more and if it doesn't work you have to taper off of that med and onto a new one and start the whole process all over again with side effects and everything, and most of the time I felt either well enough to think I didn't really need meds or so depressed that just the thought of the whole process made me want to climb in bed from exhaustion.
But now, now I've hit bottom.  There's an opportunity that I know, rationally and objectively, would be good for me and that I would be perfect for. A chance to be published, even if only online, on a comedy website, but I can't muster the motivation or courage to even try.  Most days I can't muster the motivation to even get the kids in the bath. Hell, they love the bath, it's the splashing and fighting over bath toys and struggles when it's time to get out of the tub that I'm not up for, not to mention the fight when I try to wash their hair.  And I don't take them outside because they just get messy in the sand box and throw dirt on each other and it's hot and muggy out and why even bother when I can just throw Ghostbusters in the DVD player instead?
So I called the shrink. Because I don't want to be the mom who just throws Ghostbusters in the DVD player instead of letting her kids play in the backyard, and because my kids deserve better than that.  Last week I went to see the therapist and she agreed to fast track me to the actual psychiatrist but even that means a month and a half wait. But knowing that there's an end in sight, knowing that eventually I will get on meds and they will build up in my system and things will get better, is kind of helping already. Not that I'm happy or have any motivation yet, but I can think of things I'm going to do when I get my motivation back, and I'm excited about it which is a lot for someone who hasn't been excited about anything in almost 2 years.
So I know most of you (all 5 of you?) read this for humor and one-liners and cute things my kids say spelled out phonetically, but today I wrote a little honest truth and I hope you'll forgive me for it.  I promise, I'll write something out phonetically later.

Me, a homeowner?

We're buying our house. I don't like to rush into things, and I have general commitment issues, but after living here for 15 years, I only had a small 2 week panic attack about buying the place. And now my mind is filling with things to do to my former rented home. Sadly, Tom has a say, too, so I can't just start doing things to it all willy nilly and shit.  And I can't install the built in cabinets and floor to ceiling bookshelves because right now our furniture won't allow for it.  But I really do want to refinish the living room and part of the hallway floor, and I want ceiling fans in all the bedrooms and the living room, and new flooring in the kitchen! Maybe refinish the wood floor in there. It has glue all over it so it's be a project, but I think Tom could do it in one weekend. And I'd like a playroom in the basement and a wall down the stairway instead of the open way it is now where the kids can fall off the staircase, and a baker's rack where the dishwasher is now.
Maybe if I told Tom he could rearrange the furniture any way he liked, he'd build me those shelves.

And yet I really want to know

I'm bipolar so sometimes I can't sleep and my mind races for an hour or so while I lay in bed. And while I was trying to fall asleep last night my mind was racing through all of the things I need to buy before school starts this year and one of them was tennis shoes for Ryan. She had 2 pairs but one got thrown away after a particularly muddy cave-exploration field trip and she's detasseling in the other so it's coated with mud, too. But then I remembered buying her another pair last fall, and therein lies my dilemma. I want to ask her, "Hey, whatever happened to the purple shoes we bought before school last year?" And I really really want the answer to be, "Oh my god, I forgot all about those! They're in the bottom of my closet; I'll just wear them again this year!"  But the answer would more likely be something I don't want to know like, "I loaned them to my irresponsible friend and she went swimming in them," or, "I stepped in gum so I threw them in the dumpster behind the school."  So the dilemma is, do I even ask her where they are? Is there any good reason for asking?

Braaaaaiiiiiiins..... Part Two

See where the mouse arrow is on that screenshot? That's a tumor that is outside of the spinal cord but inside the dura. It is very close to where the whole brain radiation (WBR) from last fall stopped, and the radiologist's fear is that the spinal cord it is pressing against may have received some radiation before and that hitting it with more radiation now could cause some sort of damage. Like paralysis from the neck down damage. So they're going to dose her with another round of chemo again, which they couldn't do for her brain tumors because chemo can't go through the dura. Am I the only one who hears that and thinks that the chemo won't affect this spinal tumor because it's inside the dura? Well apparently none of the medical people nor my mom think it means that so I suppose I'll defer to the oncologist if I must. But either way, remission is over.

Pelican hickeys

 

Awesome band name, Pelican Hickeys. That is all.

Am I The Only One Who Sees It?

I am the mother of Keith Partridge. Just sayin.

I really hope that tonight, when I wander half-asleep into the tiny hotel bathroom to pee in the dark, that I don't trip over the side of the bathtub and fall into it, cracking my head against the soap dish on my way down. I don't know how long I was out, but I woke up in the tub and plan to use my head injury as a defense should it ever be necessary.
Also, say what you may about "flyover country", but the zoo in Omaha is AWESOME. Just the look on my kids' faces when they saw a bat attacking Mom was worth the 5+ hour drive.

Just call me Anastasia Beaverhausen

Her death was a tragedy, but ever since they found cocaine in Whitney Houston's system I feel a little safer mixing Xanax with alcohol.

spoooooky

Sometimes Tom doesn't get home until after dark. I wonder how bad it would fuck with him if I painted a handful of rocks from the gravel driveway with glow in the dark paint and then tossed them out there some day for no reason.

Braaaaaiiiiiiins.....

This is my mother's brain, or at least it was last fall. See that weird little truffle-shaped glob in the lower right corner-ish part of her brain? That is a giant brain tumor. But they took it out.

See this? This is my mother's current brain, truffle-free, but with a white blur. See the blur up there slightly left of center? That's bad, and it's too deep to operate on. But the good news is that it was there last fall, just tinier, and they irradiated it last fall. So they're thinking that the chemo that fixed the rest of her body is still effective and she's probably clear from the neck down, and they base this on the fact that this little blur was there before and there are no new blurs that weren't there before, so obviously the cancer isn't spreading. 
So anyway, on Monday my brother will drive her to Iowa City so they can do a new MRI and a CT scan, and then Tuesday I will drive her out for the one day radiation where they will zap her deep in her frontal lobe with what I secretly envision is a cross between a giant laser pointer and the laser Val Kilmer spent the entire Real Genius movie building.

Iowa City

I am awake and showered before 7:00 am so that I can accompany my mother and brother to Iowa City to see what the doctors want to do about Mom's latest MRI, which shows a new/returning tumor in her brain. Remission is over and this horrid dance is starting all over again. There was a time when I thought I might attend the University of Iowa and Iowa City represented hope and independence and adulthood to me, but now it's just surgery and radiation and dumbed down medical jargon and the gag-inducing scent of iodine. When all of this is over, however it is over, I hope to never set foot in that town again.

Wherefor art thou, Jooey-et?

You know those green plastic things that sit under the downspout to direct the water away from the foundation of the house?  Well we have one in our driveway under the gutter off the back of the house, which is kind of dumb because the downspout goes about ten feet away from the house as it is and an 18" plastic tray isn't going to save anything.  But I have no better place to put the tray so I leave it in the driveway.
And under that tray is a hole in the gravel. It's about big enough that I could set a golf ball in it and the tray would still sit flat.
And in that hole lives a toad. A toad Tommy has named Juliet, except it's pronounced Jooey-et. A toad Danny has named Frog. Except it's pronounced Fwock. It's a very important toad, to have so many exotic aliases.

So tonight, when I took the boys to bed, they wanted to sleep in frog-holes rather than beds. So I piled the quilts up in a circle in Tommy's bed to make the walls for a frog-hole, and I turned to do the same in the crib, but Tommy was in the crib. And Danny climbed up into the bed. And it might have worked all night except that I took a shower and the boys yelled because the cat was in their room and when Ryan went to get the cat she switched the boys back to their own beds because 14 year old girls value nothing more than strict adherence to tradition.
Tomorrow I will see if Juliet/Frog has returned to its bed in the driveway and try to take pictures of it. But I have to face the sad possibility that being discovered and renamed by my sons has chased it away for good. It's like white flight but slimier. Fwock flight.

I love my family

I love that Danny is perfectly willing to go outside in nothing but a diaper, but he always grabs shoes and a hat on his way to the door. It might me my bunny slippers and a toy hard hat, but he feels he needs shoes and a hat more than he needs pants. He's like a 1950s sitcom dad, but with bare legs.

I love that Tommy thinks he has more money if he counts the same bills twice. Like currency depends entirely on the numbers you say as you count. I'm confident he will grow up to be a very successful economist some day. He'll probably run Wall Street.

I love that Ryan, with her teenage girl body and her Malibu Barbie looks, is still a 9 year old tomboy sometimes. The other day she came home from a walk and said she found a dead thing by the creek. When I asked her what it was she said it's lower jaw was just bone but the rest of it was "kinda there" but she couldn't get close enough to see what it was because the smell was too bad.  Just when I worry that she's growing up too fast she reminds me that she's not quite at the date nights and curfew extensions age yet.

I love that Tom lets Tommy help him in the kitchen even though it involves spilled flour and an eggy floor.

My son the capitalist

Tommy wants a toy. It's a really cool toy, by 3 1/2 year old standards. A Dinosaur Train motorized train set, complete with time tunnel!  It costs $45 at Paul's Discount Store, and I'm not going to pay $45 on a toy just because. So I told him he could earn the money himself. We wrote his name on an empty coffee can and every time he finds a coin on the floor he puts it in his can. So far he has one dollar, two dimes, and a penny in there. This Saturday is the city wide yard sale and our street is notoriously busy on city-wide day. Ryan has had some stellar Kool-Aid stands on city-wide day, and this year Tommy will, to the best of his 3 1/2 year old ability and attention span, attempt to replicate her success. Right now Tom is mixing up banana bread, cookie dough, and brownies for Tommy to sell, and Ashley the babysitter helped bake cookies the other day to sell as well. I will make muffins tomorrow evening. I really hope Tommy earns a fair amount of money, maybe even enough to buy his toy. I hope he learns that work = reward. I hope I'm not left with 6 gallons of Kool-Aid and 8 loaves of banana bread.

**EDIT.  He earned the money, I was still left with 6 gallons of Kool-Aid, he bought the toy that very night, and when I asked him how he got the money (to try and reinforce the memory that he had worked for it) he said, "People gave it to me." He totally doesn't get that they gave it to him in exchange for something, just that they gave him money and he got a toy.  Remember this, parents, there is a fine line between selling sugar-water and panhandling, and kids don't grasp nuance.

Danny hijacked this blog post. A film review.

Dowie, way aw you?
Jess keep simming. Jess keep simming.
Da oh-sen! Dey simming da oh-sen!
Whale!!
Mommy, I watching Meemo!

When they do, I do differently

When some feel blessed, I feel lucky.
When some thank God for good friends, I thank the friends for being good.
When some lean on God to get them through, I find strength within myself to get through.
When some leave it up to God to decide, I make a difficult decision myself.
When some ask a pastor what God says is right, I follow my heart to what I know is right.
And when some wait for an eternity of reward, I try to live my own rewards now.

Conversation between me and Tom

Me: I'm having memory problems.  I forget things all the time, even when I'm not drinking.

Tom: It's a brain cloud!

Me: It's not a brain cloud!

Tom: You have to jump into a volcano!

Baby names I didn't get to use

Insomnia post part II

Twin girls:
Ivy and Evie (short for Evelyn)

Twin boys:
Joseph (Joey) and Henry (Joey Ramone and Henry Rollins)

Intersex baby:
Casey Lee

boy:
Russell
Donny Lee

girl:

Shane Ellen

I have no names for twins with mismatched junk.  :(