Again

I have been nearly forty eight hours on a Z-pack, and I am still in a hell of having to screw up the courage to swallow water.

Strep throat, baby.... and I have no clue how people with a painful, terminal illness do it. I want to die, but the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that if this round of antibiotic doesn't work (as it appears to not be working) despite the repeated assurances from my doctors office that sometimes it just takes a little while to kick in, then I will go back to my @#$% doctor and demand something with a little kick... and some morphine.

It looks a lot more like mumps than it does strep. My neck and throat and, well, all soft tissues therein have gone hard. And rotted. And twice their original size.

I almost didn't write this post because I am so angry that I am so sick. Y'all, Dadguy took Monday and Tuesday off from work to play single-dad-nursie-maid for this family. I have not changed a diaper nor fixed a meal nor wiped a nose other than my own. I KNOW how lucky and blessed I am to have this man and this opportunity to be sick. Just sick. Sick the way that moms never get to be sick, and I am still flailing about and whining, shaking my spoiled fists.

This is why I cannot make more babies. My poor body is wide open to any bacteria or virus that mosey's down the pike, I have no immune system left. I am old.

Holycrap and I'm hungry. I am gonna go try to choke down some soup. Literally.

there is no title for this

My heart is tender, and although I know that it is not broken, right this minute it almost feels so. All for a thing that I had never thought to mourn, a thing about myself and my life that I have felt joyful, even gleeful about for well over a year.

I am done having babies. I have known well and solidly that I am done, and i won't bore anyone with the various and obvious reasons (and a few personal reasons too) why I am done; because I just felt done. Done and done, and relieved to be so. Able to set about the rest of my mortality with all of that, fertility and timing and fretting about am or am not gone by the wayside, a dance for younger or more energetic women. I have indulged in this running countdown of lasts in my mind, gleefully treasuring up Henry's baby accomplishments. His unhurried pace through his life, the happy and almost senseless whanging around of his little fists all about his little boy person. So very done even before his arrival on earth, that I agreed to a c-section a bit easier than I think I normally might, just so I could have the tubal and have done with all of it, have that door shut for good.

Only earlier this week I realised I was late after a weekend of exhaustion and queasiness, and a suspiciously familiar itchy rash that had started again on my lower stomach two weeks earlier got me feeling a little uneasy. Then a friend from the neighborhood announced she was pregnant and had gotten so on the very same IUD that one of the OB's from the doctors office had tried to talk me into, proclaiming it had the same rate of efficacy as the more final surgical procedure I was asking for. And then somehow the tales of women started in a torrent, women who are right this minute pregnant in impossible circumstance. So I checked with Dr. Google, and sure enough, tubals done in conjunction with a c-section have a higher fail rate than the usual 1%. And then there is that 1% in normal circumstances.

And I have been waiting. On the one hand quite sure that I have just been put off schedule by the past month of pneumonia and colds, and on the other hand discovering...

...discovering to my shock and dismay, that there was a familiar flutter of hope.

damn.

As it turns out, I do have to mourn the passing of this time in my life; regret, after all, that there will be no more. I know, I know... I honestly suspect that my body might break irreparably if called on to create another life. I would be forty one. I know.


There are reasons and logic and knowledge... and then there is my heart, and of course I am not pregnant. This afternoon saw the start of the end of that brief hope. There is my astonishingly fickle heart, and there, this little crack in it.

Who's Geekin' NOW, Baby!

We have been getting ready for Halloween; decorating and such. I thought I was going the extra mile for Birdie's costume, you know... the Jedi thing. But then I realized that I had stepped over the line when I started calling the brown criss-crossed thingies of her costume, the "tabards." And then I had to un-criss-cross them. With a seam ripper. Because they were not authentic.

The kid was pleased as punch with 'em, and yet I HAD to fix 'em anyway. And an "obi", I had to make her an "obi," otherwise known as a fabric under-the-belt thingummy, not because she wanted them, but because I had to. Oh yeah... and I got a "gi" or Tae Kwando tunic (five bucks at the secondhand shop) , and then I had to dye it so it was not so very stark white, so it matched the tabards and obi better. But because I am a Mormon housewife, I had no tea or coffee to dye it off-white. So yeah.... I don't know for sure if it was the baking cocoa powder or the Pero or the Orange Zest Herbal tea or the vanilla extract that did the job, but I suspect it was the cocoa. Don't try this at home y'all... it smelled like someone vomited in a large dish of potpourri and then cooked it. Dadguy still shudders.

The deed is done, but there will be no costume preview this time. I may have sucked the fun out of the Jedi. All Birdie cares about is the robe, the lightsaber and a hook to hang it on. She will wear the whole she-bang for the festivities, and I'll get pictures then, but I am not gonna chivvy the poor girl back into the whole get-up one more extra time... not even for posterity. Unless she wants to! And then WHEEEEE! I am so proud and yet so ashamed all at the same time.

As a consolation prize to the two younger girls I made them each a new skirt from the fabric of their choosing. This is Lilac's. Those are little kittens wearing scarves on her skirt. Unfortunately I didn't catch Pearl's skirt as it went through the wash though.... the fabric had millions of little sequin sparkly things all over that apparently were stuck on with some sort of adhesive that lets go in the heat of the dryer cycle. I will be both picking wee magenta sparkles out of the laundry from here to eternity and making a new skirt for the kid. Sorry Pearl.

What do ya think? Shall I whip together an "Uncle Fester" robe for the guy?

Interior Design: Three Year Old Version

Saaaaay, thanks Pearl, I needed a Q-Tip right there. Brilliant move sticking it on with BubbleMint Toothpaste!

Henry

So the kid is hitting his milestones more or less. Not exactly winning the old "developmental derby" I guess you could say, but he's been crawling and pincer grasping and all that sort of stuff.

Except for eating. He's really good at eating.

Advanced even!

Sunday Pic: Halloween Preview

I finished Birdie's costume this weekend. I must admit to being excessively proud of that which I have wrought. Bird is pretty thrilled too, although you'd have a bit of a time telling from her expression on most of the shots I took to document the final product.

She already had the pants, shoes, and the brown t-shirt, so I used an old bedsheet to make up the criss-crossed portions. Technically this whole thing would be much more accurate if we had a karate gi (the shirt part of the uniform) to go over the t-shirt but under the criss-crossed parts. If I happen to find a used gi at a second hand shop, then "yay!" but I am not holding my breath, and I am not putting much more $$ toward this outfit than the thirty odd bucks that we already have. In any case, she is in love with it already.

I made the boot toppers and the belt out of some pleather sort of stuff that I got at Wallyworld for about five bucks. The robe fabric was the big score though; I got three yards for a grand total of seven dollars. The fabric is very thick and soft.
A couple of bucks for some hooks that I used for the robe clasp, and on the belt to hold the saber, little bit of velcro for the backs of the boot toppers and "cha-CHING!" there ya go. It is amazing what can be done via the awesome advice and how-to Youtube videos that are available on the Internets.

...and yes, yes I am aware that her light saber is the wrong color for a Jedi. Just ask yourself how big of a geek you must be to point that detail out to a happy little seven year old girl.

Really.
Geek.

List

1. I am changing LaLa's blog name at her request. She will further more, and henceforth be known as Lilac.

2. Lilac, Pearl and the next-door-neighbor-girl made some glittery dance-contest award ribbons for the All-Girl-Super-Fun-Dance-Party and there seems to be no end to the stray flecks of glitter. Henry seems to always be sporting at least on bit of glitter on his head at any given time. The girl's refer to it as his "Pet Sparkle." I have know idea why.

3. I no-longer feel like hot buckets of raw sewage. I merely feel like poo. YAY!

4. We had a bumper crop of grapes this year, and since my mama moved into a town just a 45 minute drive away, I thought I'd con her into teaching me how to can grape juice. She came and we put away approximately two dozen quarts of grayish greenish juice. I am veeeery proud and pleased, and very put-out with the dough-heads that I live with who have declared they don't like it.

5. Am up for suggestions and recipes to slide this stuff past the picky palettes of my kids.

6. My chest no longer sounds wheezy and gurgly. The sound that is makes is now describable only when I liken it to the sound of Pop Rocks. Dadguy does not find this sound to be a turn on. Whatever.