ez_mo

A few days ago, kiddos and I went to the local thrift store whereupon Anton found himself a like-new Tractor with a haycart, and animals that make the appropriate animal sounds. The farmer (Old MacDonald) drives the truck and sings. Even better, when you press the horn, it beeps and the headlights blink. For under a buck and nearly new, I thought, "What the heck?" Evil, you say? Well, the boy is on a farmer kick (must. wear. overalls!) and it kept him sufficiently occupied while I was busy with an ugly day.

I woke up yesterday to a Category 4 migraine. (yes, I must insert hurricane terminology; it's the latest thing, you know.) Evil, ugly migraine that was only downgraded by copious amounts of pharmaceuticals. And I mean LOTS of little pills of various sizes and colors. Still, I was yarking constantly all morning. The house is a wreck: the kids were allowed to do anything they wanted so long as they didn't hurt each other, burn the house down, and were quiet.

By afternoon, I was feeling human enough to meet hubby for a lovely supper. (any thanks to Solieri!) I went home with the kids and we were all out by 9pm. Except that I was still very much migrainey and I was up every hour, on the hour, to yark some more. oh joy. I think I actually approached REM by 1am and somewhere in there, jason came home. NOW I can rest easy.

At 3 am, I am awakened by

HEY! I'M OLD MCDONALD! WANNA HAVE SOME FUN? E-I-E-I-O!

Oh gosh! It's by the foot of the bed! Quick, put it in the hallway so the kids don't hear it!

2 minutes after I have discreetly curled back into bed without waking the sleeping darlings...

HEY! I'M OLD MCDONALD! WANNA HAVE SOME FUN? E-I-E-I-O! BEEP! BEEP!

Jump out of bed with my Axim (yes, it sleeps with me and makes for a lovely flashlight in a pinch). Look for the on/off switch. AAAGH! There IS NO power switch on the blasted thing! Quickly, I dump our basket of dirty laundry on it, including a sodden towel (ew!). Maybe that will work. Stealth back into bed. Close eyes.

{{muffled}} HEY! I'M OLD MCDONALD! WANNA HAVE SOME FUN? E-I-E-I-O!

Fuck.

I unearth the bastard and take it downstairs as it screams about where the damn duck-ducks are and kick it into the livingroom.

I trod back to bed. At 4am I swear I can still hear the blasted thing singly faintly into the night.

Needless to say, I'm not feeling so hot today. I really want a nap.

Sp there *was* a reason why that cute, nearly-new toy was so cheap...

{{YAWN}}

i found out today that a friend -- the man who married us -- is gone. tom ringrose died sunday of an asthma attack.

 

i'm still in shock. i dreamt of him 2 weeks ago and in my dream he looked so much younger than i'd ever known him. i felt so real. i sent him an e-mail the next morning to tell him that i was thinking of him and missed seeing him. i'm glad i took the time to do that one simple thing.

tom was such an extraordinary individual and he touched so many lives. that sounds trite, but it's true. he moved i so many circles in this town. he hobnobbed with the richy-richs of the town and was just as comfortable to befriend the baristas at his favorite coffee joints. he was down-to-earth and yet he was way out there: he was a psychic, channelling, UFO-seeing Anglican priest. as i recall, he managed the cardiac care unit at UVA. mostly, though, he was an incredibly spiritual Good Guy. You could feel the calm and peace radiate off of him.

He's gone and it's fucking wrong.

i was recently reading Patricia Cornwell's "Trace" and here was a paragraph that accurately summarized my feelings of late:

 

This is one of those moments of awareness that passes over Eise's thoughts like the shadow of the Dark Bird. That's what he cals it. If he looks up, nothing is there, just an awareness. He won't go any further with the truths of this sort because...it's best not to look too hard for the Dark Bird. The bird's shadow is awful enough.

 

i have had that feeling the shadow of the dark bird for many weeks. a sense of.... 'impending doom' is so fucking melodramatic. i suppose a sense of Something Awful that could happen or was narrowly missed and that feeling is like a shadow briefly passing over and then it's gone.

maybe this is a sign that i need to go back onto the meds again. (however, i don't feel any of the other usual signs of depression or that i'm hitting a trough.) that jason and i had a discussion last week about 'Accidents Happen' probably fueled/validated my feelings even more (nevertheless, i'm glad we had that discussion).

so that's where i am. i've had lots of things to say, so much on my mind. but what i cannot rid my mind of is the shadow.

Here are the Flickr sets; I can only have 3 sets listed at a time so here is my chance to bookmark my old sets for posterity:

March 2005 (Ana falls asleep at the dinner table!)

Dorothee's Visit

Mother's Day 2005

May/June 2005

Mama's Birthday (today!)

I just realized that the time between my first spinal i njection and my second injection will be nearly a month. Ouch! I am supposed to undergo a series of 4 injections at two weeks apart, but the specialist -- who has an incredible reputation -- was booked up through mid-July. I'm wondering how this will affect the outcome of this procedure. The first 4 days after the injection were sheer hell. I ached so bad 24/7 that by the 4th day I was fighting off tears. I was also up to 3 Happy Pills (percocet) per day. A few days after that really bay, my back started to calm down to the regular level of daily pain. By 10 days after the injection, my back was actually feeling pretty good! I was down to 1/2 HP per day! (RELEIF! I don't want to get addicted to the damn things!). Now, I'm back up to my regular pain levels and I still have 2 weeks until my 2nd injection. For added fun, I'm supposed to be doing physical therapy again, but due to the insurance company's predilection for 'adjusting' our accaount in their favor, I now have a balance due at the therapy hut and must wait until next paycheck goes through before I can consider resuming therapy. It doesn't help that I am consumed with fatigue. My bones feel too fatigued to move: heavy and aching. My brain is in overdrive while my body slumps and begs not to move. The HPs help quite a bit; if I can't feel the ache then I'm better able to get up and do my daily work of laundry and dishes and shopping and cooking and playing with the babies and completing project requets and checking my mail and.... I'd be tired even without the back issues!

My mom's birthday is Sunday. I was hoping to complete an embroidery project as a gift, but I overestimated my ability to complete it. Sadness, as I have no idea what to possibly give my mother. I might have to suck up and go for a cheesy bouquet of flowers. She'd love flowers, but I think she'd enjoy them more as an accompanyment to a 'real' present. I'm flummoxed as to a gift and I feel terribly guilty for it.

I'm still trying to finish composing a long letter to my dear friend, Chris. I haven't written to her in months and I'm sure she thinks I have forgotten her; I think of her every day. I mentally compose snippets of letters to her on a nearlt daily basis. Getting to a quiet space where I can write is wholly different matter! The children are asleep at the moment and here I am updating my stupid little blog instead of writing to her! Believe me, these quiet moments come along very seldom. I have several more letters to write, as well. My friend David is halfway through his hike and is expected to stop at his next checkpoint on Saturday. I have a letter (and cookies!) to send to him and I just realized that I will not be able to get the package there in time for him to get it. This is my life.

Now on to letter-writing....!

Hell, I've probably read a h dozen books since my last post. I can't even think of all of them to put them into the damned list. What I finally put down --in the middle of the book, no less! -- was Richard Lewis' The OTHER Great Depression. Ack! I know he's doing his 12 Steps, but Goshdarnit, this is one area where he should give up the personal apologies and hire the ghostwriter. He'a a terrible writer. I started the book feeling sorry for the poor lad; I'm thinking, "Quit yer bitchin'!" I was so annoyed I gave up the book in the middle and started on Fall on Your Knees. OMG, her writing is beautiful! Try this:

A war changed people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating in dampness, darkness, and tightly wrapped putters. Then, providing you don't take flight from your khaki cocoon so changed from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone who, through a bizarre conincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but who must have died in the war. And you have no choice but to live as an imposter because you can't remember who you were before the war. There's a simple but hrrible explanation for this: you were born in the war. You slid, slick, bloody, and fully formed out of a trench.

Richard Lewis: STFU.

So the new stuff is this: Ana learned to walk about three weeka ago and now she's lurching everywhere (preferably traffic) ant breakneck speed. She has added "Kitty", "Here ya go," and "I did it!" to her verbal reportiore. She's also very kissy. kisses everyone on the mouth witrh a big "Mwah!" to top it off. Oh, and she's learned (mostly) "Bye-Bye" with limp-wristed movement. I say "almost" learned because she has the full 1-minute delayed reaction. People coo over her and say "Bye-Bye!" Long after they're gone, she cranes her head looking for the person while saying herself, "baa-baaa."

Ana and Anton are starting to really play well with each other. Anton cracks her up. They crack each other up with zerbert contests and hand-grabbing in the back of car, all to the accompianment of squeals of laughter. Anton realizes that she can sometimes be a lot of fun. In a few years, this may not be so idyllic: they are both born pranksters. Ana, however, has a specail love for trying to get Anton in trouble. Lordy, they're going to be a pair!

Have I mentioned that Anton is pretty much potty-trained? Oh, sweet releif! Now it takes only a few days for the bedroom to small like a pissatorium as oppsed to every bloody day!

I really don't mention Anton enough. He's an exceedingly cool kid. With manners! Every day, he gives me a new reason to be really proud of him.

And now I'm fucking tired. I'm going to bed.

After being suckled all night by the vampire that is my baby -- thereby getting approximately 4 hours less sleep than you -- you were annoyed that I waved away the loud noises Anton was making at 9:30 this morning.

Maybe I should have been annoyed last week, when I took the kids out of the house at 8:30am (so you wouldn't be disturbed by the loud noises Anton likes to make early in the morning) and came into find you still asleep at 2pm.

I make sure you are allowed sleep and I don't rag you about it; you let the kids make noise all around me and give me crap that I'm tired. That's as close as I can come to putting my finger on what is pissing me off at the moment. What it comes down to is that I don't feel like I get any real credit for my contributions; many of those contributions being things that allow you to have your freeedom and fun and allow you to exercise your hobbies.

I get crap for having stayed 2 whole hours at my knitting group when it's the first time I've been in a month. But it's taken for granted that I will keep the kids out of your hair onthe day of your DJ night so t hat you can practice, that I will assume your traditional nighttime rituals with the boy, and that I will again keep the kids away from you the following morning so that you can catch up on your sleep since you didn't get home until 4am. That I do this is expected. That you watch the kids for a day while I catch up on 6 months of backlogged work is a big deal.

So pardon me if I don't jump off the roof in happiness that you watch the children now and then. My hobbies and creative/mental needs are not important enough in this household to really get much more than lip-service. Your hobbies and desires are owed to you because you work full-time. No fucking wonder that I want to go to work -- maybe that way I'll get some credit: real credit -- for having done something for the family and will be allowed to occasionally have fun without spousely punishment.

After recovering (?) from Round II of The Sick, we decided to go out to the last day of the Dogwood Festival.

Anton enjoyed his first ride, the motorcycles! Actually, the first time on the ride he kept crying for Mama and looked ready to cray at any second, but he said he enjoyed it once it was over. The second time, he smiled and really enjoyed himself.

Unlike Anton, Ana is adventurous. I took Ana on the carousel and she loved it! She held onto the pole with one hand and clutched myshirt with other. She looked at the horsies, she cooed, and she even looked out to see Daddy and Bro out in the crowd. Afterward, she wanted to look at the horsies again. She cooed and pointed at the Ferris Wwhich was nicely lit up when we left.

It was a nice evening, and well-deserved after our days of misery.

In other news, I found this interesting:
Tom Tomorrow regarding the US' attack on Iraq

I finally got to see Goose yesterday! It was the first time in years that we've seen each other in a quiet enough setting to actually chat and enjoy each others' company. It didn't hurt that my son is in love with her son. It was a beautiful and we enjoyed it fully, playing outside with the kiddies. This will make it's own photo album.

So Anton is officially sick with the stomach flu. He's been unable to keep anything down for the last two days. He drinks, retches violently and proclaims with the righteous indignation of the male of the species, "I'm NOT sick!" Great. Ana should be yakking like hell for her birthday onn Sunday.

I found something very scary on this April Fool's Day that isn't a joke. It makes me cringe: Bernat has come up with an exciting new yarn that they call Bling Bling. Oh, the humanity!

I'm terribly saddened by the health ofthe Pope. I like JPII. I'm praying for him. Not praying for him to live, precisely; just praying good thoughts for the poor man.

For extra fun, today would have been my cousin's 31st birthday. He never made it to the drinking age. He was in a vegetative state. His folks pulled the plug pretty quickly. The president didn't give lickety-shit, either. Then again, he was po' white trash; it wouldn't have made a compelling story even to this administration. I'm glad he didn't linger in limbo for ages like Teri Schaivo. But, my God, I miss that boy. He was, by far, my closest cousin. I can't describe the loss. And losing him was like losing my entire extended family. I miss him. Happy birthday, Eddie.