Fourth Of July Weekend
July 6, 2010
I learned a few things over this past fourth of July weekend spent largely with my family.
1) All it takes is a family of raccoons living in the treehouse for my family to be entertained for HOURS. Both in watching the raccoons (including two babies) and in debating the merits of letting them remain there and charging admission to this “nature refuge” vs the merits of draping their hides over the railing as a warning to future potential tenants of the treehouse. The majority of the family is for letting them stay. The homeowner is for draping the hides.
2) A full bottle of tequila does not last nearly as long as it probably should.
3) One two year old is capable of holding the attention of ten adults even when she’s sleeping.
4) If you’re picky when you order your food or drink (one shot of vanilla vodka in a martini glass that has to be chilled) in a restaurant, you will NEVER live it down.
5) Talking louder will only result in someone talking even louder over you.
I love my family. The whole crazy lot of them.
When I Think Of My Grandma
April 21, 2010
… I think about the old jelly bean dispenser always full and ready for the grandkids on the counter.
… I remember the delicious turkey sandwiches from the day after Thanksgiving.
…. I hear her laughing as her grandkids slid, bumping and giggling, down the blue carpeted stairs over and over again.
… I see books stacked all over the rainbow room - read, in progress and waiting to be cracked.
… I visualize her white hair always perfectly styled.
… her giant grin and her open arms - eager to give us hugs when we showed up for visits.
… I think of how sad I’m going to be when I get the inevitable call that she’s gone.
My grandmother is in a coma and isn’t going to make it much longer. I’m sad. I’m going to miss her.
Looking Good
January 29, 2010
So far, 2010 is working out to be a better year. My dad had his surgery to remove the tumor just this past Tuesday and it went better than they (they being the doctors) had even hoped. He’s on his way home from the hospital as I type this post and it’ll be good to see him getting back to his regular ol’ self.
Derek and I have discussed our finances and while we hate to do it, we think that putting Ana in daycare so that I can actually find a full-time job with a full-time income is the right choice for us right now. So, the hunt begins for a full-time position that makes enough money that I can quit my half-assed job.
Ana is doing amazing, as always. She runs with her arms stretched behind her like Super-Girl and she does it everywhere she goes. She’s been a joy to everybody in 6 East at my dad’s hospital. She runs around the halls and pokes her nose into other people’s rooms where she points and says, “Hi!” She has a small vocabulary and I have the feeling that when it expands, it’s going to expand exponentially. For the time being she says dada (everybody is dada), mama (mainly when she’s upset), ball, cat (always in a whisper and repeatedly while pointing excitedly at the cats), and bye bye (as she waves at everybody even when she’s not leaving). And, of course, hi. She says hi to everybody. Shy kid? Not mine.
So we’re almost one month down and eleven to go and things are looking good. Things are really looking good.
Year In Review. Sorta.
January 3, 2010
January - I had a cold. I tried to get some immigration stuff for my daughter done. (I never finished that, by the way. I should do that.) I got my heart trampled on. I got a confirmed diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.
February - I bought tickets to go to Mexico for a wedding. I reflected on my grandmother’s deterioration into dementia and alzheimer’s. Ana takes on solid foods.
March - I took on the dentist and I think I won. Maybe. Except he took my teeth so he probably actually wins. Damnit. I contemplated my weight and what I needed to do about it. I had my four-year blogiversary and my six year wedding anniversary.
April - I saw Britney Spears walk off the stage in Vancouver. I got really sick. I had more wisdom teeth pulled. I tried to name my car. No name has really stuck.
May - I had my first run-in with kidney stones. I went to Mexico and had a mostly good time and would have had a great time if my poor kid wasn’t so sick that I was scared I was going to have to take an emergency flight home the whole time. Oh, and I broke my toe in Mexico, too. The wedding in Mexico was gorgeous. A tax error was discovered and I suddenly owed the Canadian government 2K. A gas station attendant asked me if I was having a boy or a girl. Yeah. Not pregnant. May was not so fun.
June - I discovered World of Warcraft and have been hooked ever since. Wow, I think that’s all I did in June. No pun intended. (Get it? Wow. WoW. Haha. i’m so funny.)
July - The fourth with my girls! It was the best. I love spending the fourth with my friends at the lake. My girlfriend had her baby daughter and she was and is beautiful. I went back to work after my year off for maternity leave.
August - We sold our condo. I gave notice at my hated job without a new job lined up. The stress of that move! Sheesh! My daughter turned a year old. Holy bajeez, I have a one year old.
September - I started a new job that I was offered the day before my last day at the old one. Phew. Except that three weeks later they announced lay-offs. Say what? I was hired by my sister-in-law so now I have two jobs with limited hours. My grandmother was diagnosed with late stage cancer.
October - My car got broken into. My grandmother got put into the hospital with a very limited time to live. My daughter got really sick and scared me with a high fever, but it turned out she was just fine. My daughter was the cutest little ladybug for Halloween.
November - I actually started off NaNoWriMo doing awesome. I didn’t even come close to hitting 50K words, but I still feel proud of the almost 10K that I did write and I hope to continue writing more. My grandmother died.
December - Ah, my month of no posts. We got a new iMac. My dad was diagnosed with cancer. I’m freaking out. I’m freaking THE FUCK out, people. And if you know me on Facebook, don’t say anything there, I don’t think he’s told everybody yet… he has surgery in a few weeks to remove it… it looks like it’s all early stage stuff right now, it was caught on accident, but have I mentioned that I’m freaking the fuck out? My “main” job announced a second round of lay-offs.
Overall, I’m glad that I barely blogged because I don’t know how much more depressing this blog can get. I’m tired. I’m depressed. I’m scared. I just want 2010 to be better. It has to be better, right?
Saying Goodbye
November 8, 2009
I didn’t think I’d cry.
I was wrong.
I just got the call about twenty minutes ago that my grandmother passed away. She may have been my step-grandmother and she may not have come into my life until I was fourteen years old, but I loved her just the same.
I’ll miss you, Donna.
The One In Which I Try To Wrap My Brain Around Illness
February 15, 2009
My grandmother is dying. I’m having a hard time with this. I feel like I should be some sort of expert on loss, having lost my mother as a teenager, but this… this feels so different. I feel strangely neutral about the whole thing.
It’s been a while since I saw her. Since I started this post. It’s taken me that long to process all of this information. I remember my grandmother as an alert, wiry little woman with a sense of humor. She had a loud voice and was a wonder in the kitchen. There were always fun treats at my grandparents house. They have always lived at least a state away from me so visits were scarce, but something that I looked forward to.
I feel like I need to make an effort to go try and see her again this summer, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to see her like she is. She was always well-coifed and clean. She smelled of perfume and wine. Now she smells of filth and piss. Her hair is undone and flying all over the place and her usually pristine clothes have become a tattered and dingy robe.
She speaks and she’s the grandmother that I know and love. Then ten minutes later she’s asking my sister where she lives and she wants to know where my sister grew up. Things that she KNOWS, but has now forgotten.
Instead of the usual jellybeans in the retro candy dispenser there’s now a gazillion baked goods to choose from all lined across the counter, purchased from the grocery store. Each has nibbles taken out from my grandmother scurrying into the kitchen and then taking bites with both hands, furtive glances to see who is watching her. She gets no real nutrition. She fills up on raspberry coffee cake and chocolate chip cookies and sugary scones.
My grandmother used to walk tall and proud. A bit of a rock to her stroll. Now she crouches over her walker and hobbles, slowly, each step punctuated by a horrifying moan and a plea for help for my grandfather. “Ooooooh. Paaaaaullll,” as she goes down the hall. So far she has managed to avoid the stairwell, but I fear for her. I worry about her slipping and tumbling down the stairs that my cousins and I played so many games on, so many years ago.
At night she retires to her bedroom where she thinks that people are living in her bathroom. That they’ve taken over her backyard and are hanging out downstairs. From downstairs in the spare bedroom my sister and I listen as she moans over and over and over again from her bed. Then we hear footsteps going up and down the hall, quickly, scurrying. It’s our grandma. At night she finds herself full of energy and wanders up and down the hallway, moaning, quick and tiny steps back and forth.
I’m not used to this. This trembling in fear downstairs as I worry about her tumbling down the steps. The fear as she holds my baby - that she’ll drop her. She holds Ana in her lap and I hold my camera, but can’t bring myself to take a picture. To remember her like this. I have no pictures of my daughter with her great-grandmother because it’s not the same woman that was MY grandma. It’s not her anymore.
It’s hard for me to accept.
Wait, What? Christmas?
December 27, 2008
What the hell happened? I feel like I just got home from my parents house and then suddenly it was Christmas. It was so bad that Derek and I found ourselves running to the drugstore at 11:00 PM on Christmas Eve to pick up a last minute gift that we’d very nearly forgotten completely.
These last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind of activity. Add to that the fact that Ana is very nearly mobile and no longer stays exactly where I lay her down and that leaves me with very little time to post. So be it.
At any rate, I hope that everybody had a fantastic holiday, whatever they celebrate, and that not everybody is sitting in the three feet of snow that we’re currently sitting in over here. Beautiful to look at, not so much fun to try to get around in. I would certainly imagine that the young girl who rear-ended us on Christmas Eve is wishing there wasn’t so much snow on the ground. Yes, we’re all fine. Ana included.
So now I’m scrambling to make sure that I can wrap up my end of year stuff and get settled in and ready for 2009. We took down our Christmas tree today, yup, the day after Christmas, just so we could make room for all of our regular stuff. 2009 will be a year of purging. I simply don’t have the room for all the stuff that we own and it’s time to eliminate.
That said, it’s going to be hard to eliminate when Ana pulls in the kind of loot that she did this year at her first Hanukkah and Christmas.
She looks awfully happy, doesn’t she? Now I’m off to find room for all of that… and yes, that was ALL for her. None of our stuff is in that pile. INSANITY.
I Can’t Sleep, So This Is What You Get
November 21, 2008
Ah, it’s a damn good thing I didn’t try to do NaBloPoMo because dude, seriously, I’d have failed on day one. Kinda like I’m brutally failing NaNoWriMo. I’m supposed to have 50,000 words by midnight on November 30th. I currently have 2,000. That means that I’d have to write more than 7,000 words a day between now and the 30th and that includes an entire day in plane travel (I leave on Sunday to go visit my parents in Idaho), Thanksgiving, and two days spent driving from Boise to Eugene to pick up my stepsister from college. Somehow, I don’t see me hitting 50K.
There’s a police helicopter circling my neighborhood with its spotlight on. Oh, how I love living in the ghetto. Seriously. THE GHETTO.
Christmas is starting to annoy me. I think a lot of the fun has come out of it. I’m asked every year to give out Christmas lists and I get what’s on the list, but… there’s no surprise. My MIL this year has asked for a crock-pot and has even given us the brand name that she wants. That’s great, I don’t have any other ideas for what to get her, but what’s the fun in unwrapping a gift if you already know what it is? Meh.
I have a post in my drafts, an idea stolen from another blog, of 27 things to do before I turn 28. I’m kinda thinking that maybe just writing out 27 things will be a success at this point. I have NOTHING on the list. I also have a draft full of links, half of which are now irrelevant because I’ve taken so long to add to it and haven’t published it yet.
I posted a long long time ago about Wii Fit. I never posted that I finally got it about two months ago. Love it. Love love love it. My only gripe is that the exercises are so short. I’m hoping that they put out some aerobic games to use with the board. I’d so buy an entire game of step-aerobics or rhythmic boxing or hula hooping. Because seriously? I look like a jackass when I hula hoop, but I’m a jackass that is having a blast.
I should be reading right now. I’m still reading the same books that I was reading last time I posted about books and that was, erm, a long time ago. I’m a slacker.
I’ve had a lot of random thoughts through my head lately. Like, how long can a helicopter stay up in the air before they have to come down to gas up? What is the life span of a cow? I know. Random.
Do you watch Survivor? Did you see tonight’s episode? I’m not going to put any spoilers here, but no guaranteeing that there won’t be any in the comments. Holy awesome! I haven’t laughed that hard at a TV show in a long time. Best Survivor episode EVER.
I think maybe I shall try to go back to sleep now. Just because I’m up past midnight doesn’t mean that The Ana will sleep in later. Speaking of The Ana, she rolled over for the first time on Monday! Yahoo! I’ve copied Dooce and am writing her letters for each month, but I’m not posting them here. If you’re interested, you can check them out over here.
Th-th-that’s all folks.
A Rambling Post With Nothing To Tie It All Together
October 28, 2008
Oh, internet, it’s been a while since I’ve written a real post. Mainly because I’m a whole lot of tired and a whole lot of occupied with baby and also because I’ve been a bit blah and overwhelmed.
In reading news, I’ve been reading slowly but surely. I just finished a book (Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon). I’m about 20 pages into a romance on my nightstand (Just For Kicks by Susan Anderson) and a book in progress on the coffee table (Toddlers Gone Wild by Rebecca Eckler). I have another book that I’m a few pages into on the end table (Blood Noir by Laurell K. Hamilton) and another on the bookshelf that I’m also a few pages into (When Christ And His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman). I’m also carrying a book in my purse (Pieces Of My Sister’s Life by Elizabeth Joy Arnold) that I haven’t managed to crack yet. So the reading is happening, albeit at the pace of molasses.
The baby is an amazing little girl. She’s just over eleven pounds now and babbles away at nothing. She kicks up a storm and loves to watch hockey. She had her first shots last week and was quite angry (understandably so), but forgot it all by the same evening. She sleeps like a champ through the night, but hardly at all during the day. Which brings me to a plea for advice - the baby has been sleeping with us in bed since she was eight days old. She refuses to sleep by herself. She’ll sleep great in my arms, she’ll sleep alright in her swing, but she will not sleep in her crib or bassinet. Just won’t do it. We’ve tried using a stuffed animal with a heartbeat sound to soothe her, we’ve tried rolling up a blanket next to her so it feels like she’s curled up next to someone. We’ve tried putting her in there when she’s already asleep, but she wakes as soon as she hits the mattress and won’t resettle. So tell me. How do I get her to sleep on her own? I’m not ready to let her cry it out yet, but I just have the feeling that it’s going to come down to that. Advice is welcome.
I took on a new mission recently to start commenting on the blogs that I read. I’m usually a lurker and then I thought about it some more and realized that if I love to receive comments, other people probably do, too. I mean, us bloggers tend to be a vain bunch and we want feedback. So now I comment. It means it takes me a hell of a lot longer to get through all my blogs, though, so if I’m commenting three or four days after you post, well, that’s the soonest I could get to it. I subscribe to so many sites that if I don’t read for three days I wind up with well over a hundred new posts to read and catch up on.
I’ve also been looking for some good new recipes. I’m not a really great cook and I’m a really picky eater which means that I make my five or six tried and true meals and not much else. It’s getting old. I need some variety. If you have anything good and yummy that I should try you should send it my way. Just remember that onions are from the devil. The devil, I say!
I’m going out on the town on Thursday and I’m getting really amped for it. A group of us (the same group that I went to see Gwen Stefani with) got a limo again and we’re heading to see Madonna. It’s going to be AWESOME. I’m a little nervous about leaving Derek with Ana for that length of time as he’s never had her by himself for more than an hour, but I’m sure he’ll be fine. My bigger crisis is that I have nothing to wear. Zero clothes. Nada. Nilch. I own two pairs of jeans that fit me (you can hate me, but I’m actually smaller than I was pre-pregnancy so everything is too big) and well, none of my shirts fit right. I’m also on the broke side until the day AFTER the concert so a new outfit is out of the question. I’m really not sure what the hell I’m going to wear.
My poor friends. I feel like I’ve really been neglecting my friendships as of late. It goes back to that feeling blah and overwhelmed thing I mentioned. I don’t like talking to other people when I’m feeling a bit down and so I haven’t been talking. Or posting. Or doing anything. I am amazingly in love with my daughter, but lord, she sucks the life out of me (no pun intended).
Lastly, I’m getting excited (and nervous) for an upcoming trip. I’m taking Ana to go see her grandparents in Idaho for two weeks. It’ll be great to get away and it will only be the second time my parents have met their granddaughter. She’s changed SO much since they met her last at just 2 weeks old. I’m just nervous about the airport and getting through security with the stroller and then wondering if she’ll nurse good enough to stop the ear popping and will she sleep on the flight or will she be a pill and cry the whole time… oh goodness, I’m going to give myself a panic attack just thinking about it.
So that’s that. That’s what is going on with me. How about you? How’s life out there in the world of the internet?
My Husband, The Animal Rights Activist
October 14, 2008
A short (very short) play.
Scene: A male (Derek) is driving the car with a female passenger (Yours Truly). The car is traveling through the boondocks where farmland and big open spaces abound.
Derek points to someone waving their arms frantically at a group of sheep. The sheep are now frantic as well as they race away from the arm-waver.
Derek: Look! Sheep herding!
Yours Truly merely raises an eyebrow.
Derek: You know, that’s got to be the cruelest thing that you can do to an animal.
Yours Truly: Herding sheep?
Derek: It’s cruel! They work allll year at growing that nice warm coat, then in you go, bzzzzzzzz, and send them out into the cold to do it all over again.
Yours Truly: Say what?
Derek: “But it’s cold,” they say. And you go, “Out! Do it again!” And that’s when they say “Baaaaa means noooooo.”
Yours Truly reaches down into her purse and pulls out a piece of paper and a pen. She begins writing.
Derek: What are you doing?
Yours Truly: I’m writing this down so I can remember to blog it.
Derek: You should title it, like, your husband, the animal rights activist.
Yours Truly: You got it, babe.