Everything tastes better with soy sauce.

Okay, not *everything*. But that seasoned rice I posted about the other day sure does. Maybe I'm just pms-ing. I'd hate to get my sodium levels checked, or be graded by a nutritionist this week. If it tastes good, if I feel like eating it, it's going to get eaten. Viva la Hormonal Chick over here. And pay no attention to the lady behind the curtain.

Today I got cut loose from my individual therapy. The LT thinks I'm doing fine without it, and that it'll help me to meet my goals. It makes sense. I'm just not that depressed right now. It's turned into situational instead of hormonal depression, and I can deal with the whole thing when my Baby Girl comes back home. My arms are so empty right now that they hurt. When I see her I'm going to run off the plane and swoop her up in my arms and smother her in kisses.

Mine.

I have the sneaking suspicion that this is how my husband feels about me and her. Not that he'd admit it, no, cause he's a big strong Man. Still. That's just another reason why I love him so much. One more to the long list of reasons why I am thrilled every morning to wake up and remember that he's my husband and the father of my child.

Seasoned Rice is really easy to make. It's a variation on oven-baked rice which has got to be the easiest way I've found to make perfect rice. Take 2 cups of liquid (anything from water to seasoned broth) and bring to a boil on the stove. Turn the oven to 350degrees when you put the liquid on to boil. When it's boiling, dump in one cup of rice, cover the pot, and slide it in the now-preheated oven. Do not open the oven for 20 minutes. At the end, you've got perfectly cooked rice.

Last night I experimented a bit. I had some leftover french onion soup that I made last week, and used that for my liquid base. I diced up a carrot and added it to the boiling soup along with the rice. When it came out of the oven the carrot was tender, sweet, and it had a nice oniony flavor.

Soups are becoming easy for me to make. It doesn't take much, and as long as I follow the steps it should be a simple matter to make my own cream of mushroom soup for use in recipes. Or in eating. Yum. We'll see; and when I try it out I'm going to cost out the recipe and post it here.

I feel like I'm coming out of a lost weekend. Yesterday was very slow and methodical, between the crafting and the library run- I picked up an interesting book that sucked me right in. It's called There Will Be Dragons, by John Ringo. Sortof an alternative history theory, mixed with sci-fi. Some of it reads like the 1632 series by Eric Flint. I think it's safe to say that if they try to tell me that there's a sequel when I get to the last page I'm going to rip out some of my hair. Patience does not come easily or well to me.

Yesterday I tried to get my butt in gear and go out with Tam. I meant to, I really did, and then my eyes started closing and I got that wierd lethargic feeling. Naturally by the time it wore off so that I could do something, I was awake until 1 am. Now here I am, off to church, and with luck I'll get to the library again soon afterwards. Hopefully they'll have that sequel. At the least they'll have a comfy chair where I can curl up with a book and read in company for a while.

Last night I started reading the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. I found it interesting on a number of points, but I need to digest the thoughts a bit before I post them here. I'll let you know.

In other news, I bought a car yesterday. It's Blue. I'm in love with Her from the lines of her sleek roof to the firm yet supple support of her seat cushions. I've never been so in love with a car.

One of my greatest ambivalences is that I'm going to become my mother one day. I always knew that I had tendancies towards that, yet it didn't become apparant until a nice young family moved in downstairs. Before I knew what was going on we were (and I mean the females, cause that's our job) getting together with our kids for playing in the park. If the days grew too long while our husbands were at sea we were there to lend a shoulder or provide quick daycare. Then there were baked goods. Bread, mostly. Desserts are a showpiece. An elegant ending to the banquet and they can be as fancy or simple as needed. Cassaroles are less formal. The comfort food of a mother's kitchen although the recipe has changed a little each time it changes hands. Moving across the country I find that much of what I took for granted in foods and recipes are more regional than I had ever suspected. Thank God my dear mother taught me how to cook.

One thing that does not change much is the baking of bread. It is the staff of life. Every culture that ever was has bread in some form. So now when I see a woman who seems depressed and in need of cheering, I'll make her a loaf of bread.

Someday when KittyCat has grown older I won't have as much time to spend baking and punching down dough in the traditional ways. It's a shame. Somehow I must find the time to teach her this. Maybe it was instilled in me as a good Christian Thing, but it's also a caring Thing. Homemade bread is just different. Different from store bread, even bakery bread. I'd like to think that it's a blessing on all of our heads.

A Few Random Thoughts:
Change is inevitable, so take it with a sense of humor and a few slices of lemon.
Navy wife or navy widow? Doesn't really matter; either way you'll spend a lot of time alone looking out to sea.
Soft colors have their place in decorating. I prefer them in flowers, and in quiet accents. I'd rather have nice solid jewel-tone colors on my furniture. It hides the dirt better.
Cheese is good. Especially Easy Cheese, in a spray can, with a big box of crackers. Heck, in a pinch I'll even forgo the crackers.
*While cheese is good, cholesterol testing is bad. No good can come from that. Eat cheese and red meat, die young, leave this world with a lot of yummy meals. Isn't that better than a century of rabbit food?
There are a lot of morons in this world. They are the ones who tailgate, slowpoke, and otherwise annoy the drivers who understand that turn signals are standard on a car for a reason. Use them. Also, *try* to obey the posted traffic signs and signals. Even the solid red light thingie.

I know just how ludicrous I must have looked this afternoon. I have my doubts that more than two of the people who saw me understood the discrepancy, but let me just say that I'm a product of my culture and a child of my generation. Let us hope that I never have my reality check bounce for insufficient funds.

So there I was, dressed in the long green skirt and white shirt, very Plain (for those of you familiar with the term) and white net covering. Hair properly pinned underneath the covering. Sensible shoes. Driving through town in a little red car with the radio tuned to some modern rock station. I must have made certain of my foremothers turn in their graves. If anyone hears about seismic activity in the eastern part of Pennsylvania, I'm truly sorry for this.

To celebrate my newfound culture I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon knitting peacefully in front of the tv. Maybe I'll be watching Sex and the City. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll read my devotions instead. Who knows? Only the cat who sits on the windowsill of the apartment across from me, whose discretion can be counted on. And that's all I'm going to say on the matter.

When the going gets tough, the tough go back to their roots. Whether it's by eating mac'n'cheese or by snuggling under the blankets with a flashlight and a good book, we've all got something that will make us feel better somehow, no matter how life throws up in our shoes. I've been toying with a major decision for a while now. No, I'm not joining a cult or taking up recreational drug use- I'm going back to my roots in a few ways. From now on I'll likely be sporting a devotional covering while outside the house. This is not from any implication of holier-than-thouness, but because I'm trying to reconcile my independant moderness with the concept of traditional good wifeliness that I grew up with. It's by way of a personal reminder of faith and the respect that I owe to my husband. As an added bonus, it's intended to help me remember who I am and what I am, so that I don't need to try and define it in other, non-healthy ways. Oy. That's a mouthful. Anyway... catch you later.

What should I take as my ideal of the 'good wife'? Proverbs has it's points, but the rest of it is a bit too preachy and subservient for these times. I have to balance the modern and the classic. The submissive and the dominant. How do I act as an independant and free-thinking woman while respecting my husband and his wishes? There's got to be a way to make everybody happy. Most of the time I do. It's just when the shit hits the fan that it's hard to make these decisions... indecision threatens to hold me hostage to my own fears and insecurities.
Tonight this is all just pointless rambling. I don't have anything to say, I don't feel very wordy. I just wish that somewhere there was a script that I could follow to make it easier.

I'm beginning to consider the alternatives to moving. I really don't want to move. I want to stay put right here in this cozy little apartment where I'm at home and comfortable. I want to put down a few roots, and let our savings account accrue interest for a change instead of draining it in a move. Maybe there's a compromise that can be made so that I can stay put. I hope there is. I like this apartment.

What I'm reading:
The Great Mortality: by John Kelly
I've just started this one; picked it up because it's about a pandemic. As I said a while back, my history quirkiness is that I'm a Spanish Influenza Buff. The two historical events are not unrelated. So far it's pretty cool. As an added bonus, I turned the tv over to the history channel this evening, and they're repeating the series about the Little Ice Age, which occurred around the same time as the Plague years.
Why am I so fascinated with these things? Maybe it's the empath in me. These were times of horribly enhanced emotions. Grief, and loss, and pain. The guilt of survival. I know these things as they relate to another set of circumstances. I know the survivor's guilt of both childhood cancer and child abuse. It's not easy; hell- the hardest part of any lifechanging event is living through it. The easy part is giving up and dying, and I guess that I'm too stubborn to ever lay down and quit. I could have a worse fault than stubbornness.

What's wrong with me today? I should be resting, should be trying to gather emotional serenity to deal with the week ahead. I miss my Boy. I miss my Baby. The house is too empty right now, and I feel too lonely.

In the end I'll fall back on all my normal methods of coping. I'll drag out some immensely complex needlework project that I haven't touched in ages, and I'll get so involved with that that I'll give myself a migraine by bedtime. In the meantime there's leftover stew and garlic bread to munch on. Hot tea to make and drink. Books to read and drown my loneliness in.

As part of reclaiming my roots, and thriftiness, and general all-around fun, I've just made over a sundress that I first put together two years ago. It's been hanging in my closet almost that long, because I screwed up the bodice darts. Not entirely my fault, mind you. It's a mixture of my sloppiness in marking and sewing, and my Really Big Boobs. It skews the entire fall of most of the clothing I wear if it's fitted. So to fix this dress, since it really is a lovely fabric- watercolor violet bouquets, with glitter accents- I took off the bodice and sewed an elastic waistband into the skirt. I paired it with a white tshirt and maybe some silver earrings when I go out for today's round of errands.

Okay, I checked with KittyCat. I called my mom this morning and we had a nice long chat. The KittyCat is fine. My mom's fine. I'm fine, knowing that they're fine. I've suddenly got an entire day in front of me without baby wrangling, and I am so tired... or is that wired? It's a case of me not feeling able to relax, and in part not remembering how to relax more than a given amount of time.

I just remember to breathe, and to have patience, and to have Faith. Serenity. Now.

Home again. I flew into Paradise this morning, and I have been a bit at loose ends ever since. The rental car is sorted out, and next week I'll be getting to deal with the rest of this mess. Luckily I've got a good friend coming over tomorrow, and I'm cooking up a big pot of Beef Burgundy for her. Yum. I've missed cooking in my own kitchen. For dinner I'm chowing down on tuna noodle cassarole, which I've also missed. Tuna noodle cassarole is something that we've found is easy to make, little need to chew, and it just hits the spot when this family goes through hard emotional spots.

KittyCat is busy playing with her Gran right now, three hours ahead of us in the East. I'm trying to be good. I will be patient. I will NOT call to check up on them. I will call tomorrow night, when they return from Gran's godson's play, at which point I expect to be fully relaxed and at ease.

My hands smell like marinade. The stew beef is soaking in the fridge in preparation for tomorrow. I'm trying my best to relax tonight, but so far it's not going too well. My mom told me about a lady who had her midlife crisis by cooking her way through Julia Child's French Cookbooks. One recipe at a time. Over a year or so she cooked every single one of the recipes, and got over her crisis. I feel for her, although I wish I could have sat in on some of those meals! I smell my hands right now, and it's a combination of rich red wine with all those aromatic herbs: basil, marjoram, rosemary... you get the idea. My hands are making my mouth water. This is a sign that I should get off the 'Net and eat my dinner.

"I'll go back to california and wake up in the middle of the night and miss her so much that I'll call and ask you to hold the phone up to her crib so that I can hear her sleeping. Don't worry, I'm almost kidding."

"It's the 'almost' that worries me." My mother said, laughing.

It seems that one of the things to change when I go back to the 'ancestral' home is that I don't mind washing dishes. I hate washing them at my house. I hate scrubbing pans and silverware and all that... but I don't mind it so much here. I don't mind taking the trash out, either, even though I can only do it during daylight hours and I have to remember to always wear my jacket.

I'm ready to go back home where it's warm, and the sun is always shining. I miss my little slice of paradise, even though my Boy isn't there to share it with me.

What makes a good mother? Is there a definition somewhere or do each of us have to learn how to define it for ourselves and our own set of unique circumstances? I'm sitting here at my mother's home in Southeastern PA, and contemplating a major adjustment to my thinking. I'm still a good mother, and part of that is not being stubbornly pigheaded when something is in my child's best interest.

My arms will be empty again soon, less than a year after she came into my life. It won't be forever, and I know that this is really for the best. KittyCat is going to extend her visit with her grandma. My mother-in-love will meet my mom for a baby-trade off about a week after I get back on the plane to Paradise by myself. When I next come East in a month's time, I'll get to take my baby home again with me.

Even though I know it's for the best, my heart is confused. I feel guilty about looking forward to the time by myself.

I first wrote this in the days right after KittyCat was born. I knew that soon the shock would wear down, and my own brain was going to shut off a lot of things to help me cope with it in the longterm. I did not want to lose the emotional weight of those times. Someday when KittyCat is old enough to know this- perhaps when she has her first child- I'll share this with her. There's a part of me that wants to share it with all new mothers facing childbirth; people have told me that this is one of my better works.

While I was trying to fall asleep tonight my mind kept returning to the words near the end of this. Where is my child? Where is my faith that life continues, and as much fear as consumed me in those weeks it was repaid with joy on the flipside. Children are more then blessings. They have a special hold on our hearts that no one else can have. They don't demand, they can't really offer much at first, just dependant on us for all their needs being met. In the process of meeting those needs we build certain bonds. They wrap our hearts around their fingers, and they become a part of the truth that tells us that only the ones we truly love are able to destroy us. A parent cannot shield themselves from that kind of anguish. To shield against it is to deny the love between them, to deny that bond of trust and love that takes an entire lifetime to build.

I was wondering about faith in transitory objects earlier while I was dealing with the car situation. This seems to be an answer. KittyCat is a transitory object. Her entry into the world was surrounded by terrible risks and complicated timing. I learned to have faith in her life, so that I could reach out and open my heart and not be afraid to love her. I was told that if she had lost her fight for life I would never regret loving her, and always regret fearing to love her. It doesn't seem that far a stretch to compare the two situations.

An offering, a post to the cyberspace gods. May these words somehow bring a comfort to one soul. Even if I reach only one heart and give comfort from this piece, I count myself blessed to be able to have it. I'm leaving on vacation tomorrow for two weeks, and I don't know how much posting I'll be able to do in the meantime.

I went down into the darkness
the doctors told me it was time
I was afraid for you
I was afraid every moment of that day, the night
dragged on and on
terror rose in my throat
choked my words
I could not hold my head up high
where are all my brave words
where is my courage
where is my child
I do not want to go down this path now
face to face with it
it’s dark and full of pain
there is no one to go with me
and only the promise that when I reach the other side
you will be waiting for me
where is my mother
I want to see her with my eyes now
to know that I can come through this
where is my child
the doctors are telling me things I can’t comprehend
machines are talking for you and every beep makes me fear
I do not dare to wonder what will happen if they stop
my husband is waiting with me
I can tell him that I’m scared
I know that he’s scared too
he’ll never admit it
your daddy loves you
in the long hours of the night through my fear
I prayed that no one would ask him to choose
they would tell me that I’m silly, if I told them
do not say so, ever, to a woman when she faces the darkness
do not tell us our fears are silly until you, too, walk this path
and still through all those long hours
where is my child
the doctors come at dawn with coffee and breakfast trays
with a rush of alarms and beeping and calm focus they tell us that it’s time
shouldn’t I be the one telling them?
I want to protest this
unready
I take my fear down into the dark with me
no one there to take my hand
no one can walk with me I have to go myself
alone
woke in a room with calm blue walls and my loved ones
and you weren’t there
I was alone in this body again
where is my child
did this happen at all or was it just a dream
I want it to end
I want to skip this part
forget the fear
my words return slowly
pushing my way from the hospital bed
stand on shaking feet
reach for the wall to steady myself
hold a picture of you in my hand
when I can walk to the door and back
they will let me see you
in a wheelchair, they will take me down the hall
my child is in a little plastic box
four portholes to reach in
hands must be scrubbed three minutes with strong soap
before I can gingerly open one window
reach in
put one fingertip to your arm
machines beep again
seeing you here I want to cry
I don’t know you yet
I fought to bring you here
to carry you and give you breath
and you’re a stranger to me
so I’ll return
day after day
week after week
to sit by your box and hold your tiny hand

How do we keep faith in life when it seems like everything is transitory? Physical things are so inconstant. They go away so quickly it seems- last spring I posted that my car had been stolen. I got it back a few days later, minus the CD player and all my music. Well, it's gone again. This afternoon I came out to take KittyCat to the doctor, and the car was missing again.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of my things going away, of my security being violated like this. It's only made a little easier by the fact that this keeps happening. At least I know the people I need to call and the things I need to do; anymore it's a dance that I wish would go out of style. Dead like disco. I'm tired of moving every year, too. I'm just tired. This was the last straw for my Boy. He says that we've got to go into housing now. So this year I get a new car and a new address one more time.

It won't be the last. I know that. I know that moving every 12 months seems to be the price I pay for loving him and being his wife. I can't complain that I wasn't warned about that going into this life; Pat and Blane told me. They made sure that I knew it before they wished us well and celebrated our marriage with us. They gave the Boy everything he needed to give him a good start in the navy. Helped me transition to being a navy wife.

Maybe next time I'll make it through more than a year without a new address.

Ah, stress. Nothing quite like it, is there? Right now my stress quotient has risen through the roof and I'm ready to take a Little Helper along with a large mug full of herbal tea to bed with me. I see another Awfully Long Night ahead... The insomnia, you know. It sucks. Worse than it sucked when I was pregnant, cause as soon as I can get myself back to sleep the KittyCat wakes up and she's ready for the party.

If I ever find out where this party she's looking for is, I'm calling the police to have it put away. Or at least cited for aggravating the peace.

My mother says I was the same way as a baby, so I really can't complain all that much. At least I have learned how to get this child to go to sleep and I've learned the warning signs for over-stimulation. That's a sure way to get no sleep at all for hours and hours and hours; after a while she's screaming and crying so hard that I'm crying along with her. I feel her pain, that's what I tell myself. My heart's just too tender. I can't stand to hear her that upset, especially not on the nights when I miss my Boy so much that I'm crying that way for my own loneliness.

There's a thing that I like to call the Black. It's a certain set of moods that settle over me through the day, can come out of nowhere and go away just as quickly. The Black sucks away my energy, motivation to get off my ass and do something, Anything just to have some feedback from other people. The Black is the form of my depression when it gangs up with my anxieties and they plan a seige of my reality. Perhaps I will not be behind this cloud for too many days this week. When those depression commercials starting coming out the other year, I turned to my Boy and said there- that's how I feel. I'm a sad little cream puff. The Black takes the little joys of life and squeezes them dry so that I can only remember the shadow of what I used to find pleasant.
I wear the emeralds that my Boy has given me. One ring he married me with. One band that he gave to celebrate our first homecoming. One band that he gave me to tell me that he loves me. I want to sit in the sunlight and shine light through these rings to trap the sparkle deep down inside. So that when the Black comes next time I'll have a light to guide me through the darkness.
Love can cure all ills, as can faith. As can hope. Hasn't failed us yet.

I'm getting ready to think about planning for our next honeymoon. This is a more common thing among military marriages; the multiple honeymoon and newlywed experience. It comes from all those long separations. We learn the value of our spouses when they're not available, when they're thousands of miles away for months on end with little to no contact. I find that I get irritated with the Boy fairly quickly when he's always 'underfoot', especially when he's on leave for a week and doesn't move off the computer chair more than once a day. Once he's gone, though, I quickly remember all the positive points about him. I may not be putting him up on a pedestal, but I sure do see all the small ways in which he contributes to the household when he's not around to do them.

When he is here I tend to forget that he takes out the trash without a reminder. I forget that he wipes down the counters every morning before going to work and that he makes me cups of tea when I feel blue. Now the trash piles up, I have to clean my own kitchen, and make my own tea in the morning. Certainly I can do all these things myself, and I really don't bitch about them on an ongoing basis. It's the principle of the thing. Life is just that much nicer when he's home. Next month we're going to start getting combat pay and the family separation allowance. Once he enters the 'hazardous duty zone' his pay will no longer be taxed. This is supposed to make it easier on us, and make us feel better about putting him in harm's way, however unlikely it is that his desk is going to explode under the weight of all those duty chits. It doesn't make me tea or give me a hug when it rains. It doesn't curl up next to me and let me burrow into it's shoulder when CSI is on, and it doesn't give me a surprise hug when I'm washing dishes.

Late this summer he'll be home again. We won't see that extra money every month, and life will go into a far more hectic pace. The ship has to be gone over and fixed from stem to stern of everything that broke. My boy will be putting in 12-14 hour days, possibly even working 6 days a week for a while. He'll come home at night stiff and sore and fall into bed without eating dinner, and that's going to be our lives for another half a year. In the brief couple of weeks surrounding that return, though, he gets to take two whole weeks of leave. He's going to be All Mine for about half of that, and we're planning a honeymoon-type vacation because that's what it is. Reunion. Re-bonding. Decompressing from all the pain of the separation and learning about each other once again.

Normally I hate planning travel. This time I don't mind.

Does insomnia cause stress or does stress cause insomnia? Do I take one of those Little Helpers tonight to help me get some needed sleep, or will I be okay without it? This morning I woke up buried in a nest of pillows and blankets and didn't want to move because I was so tired. My stomach rebells at the thought of food once again, because of the anxiety. There's not even what I would consider a good reason for all of this.
My Boy is now half a world away from me. He's got the sniffles. I wish I could reach through the ethernet and pull him to me, so that I could curl up against his warm back. That was a surefire cure for the middle-of-the-night can't sleep. I would curl up against him and count his breathing. Slow, regular. Calm. He'll be a rock against anything the world throws at me if I can't handle it. One of the few people in this world that I can't shake.
It's still raining outside and I'm thinking strongly of hiding in the apartment all day. Who wants to go out, in this? I've definately been corrupted by living in such a perfect climate.

It's a quiet morning. Too quiet. Everybody's still asleep and it's nearly 7am. I know that it won't last but I'm learning to take advantage of these times. I've eaten breakfast in peace and quiet. I've checked my email. I even read the online comic strips that I like following but rarely have the time and thought to do anymore.
I keep breathing in and out. Serenity Now. It's going to be a quiet day; no appointments to keep and no places to be at any given time. Just me and my baby girl. When she wakes up to look at me with those big blue eyes I'm going to smile at her and mean it. I expect at any moment to hear a rustling from the nursery and look up to see little eyes peeking out underneath the crib bumper. How did I get so lucky? How did I come by this precious bundle of giggles, wiggles, and joy?
Who am I to argue with it?

Serenity Now.
Some days I find myself repeating that endlessly under my breath, as a reminder to try and relax. I find that when I hold onto my anxieties my shoulders get tight and my neck tightens further and further until it gives me a headache. By the time I lay down to go to sleep at night I am surprised that the bed doesn't shake from the tension humming on my nerves.
KittyCat continues to improve. Her congestion is finally gone. The breathing troubles she has are barely noticeable right now. She shrieks with joy when she sees my toes wiggling, crawling over to me immediately to grab them and giggle again. It's such a good feeling to see her so happy and doing normal things.
I miss my husband. I knew that I would, and I knew that I'd be feeling the empty space in bed next to me. I knew that I would dream of his arms around me and wake to hear his voice in my ear. I'll be strong and a wife that he can be proud of- it just takes some time. The trick is to go on going on. To keep getting up in the morning and to keep smiling even when I don't want to.

Thinking of so many things tonight.... I miss my Boy. This afternoon I made the arrangements for KittyCat and myself to fly East at the end of the month. It just makes me want to cry, not because of the trip but because it's another one without my Boy. Another one where we're returning without him. A friend told me recently to think of it in terms of pay periods. There will be ten of them between the start and end of deployment. Now there are eight (or is it nine?) either way, it's seeming a long time.

Right now KittyCat's asleep, and Mama's on the phone with her Posse, and I am getting ready to think about crawling into my pj's and curl up with my knitting. Or maybe I'll settle for a good book instead.

A while ago I posted about the women who have gone before us- sending their men off to sea and to war. Tonight I feel more like one of the whaling-ship wives, from New England. I almost wish that we'd have a real winter storm out here, because the sun shines too brightly, and how can it shine like this when my heart is so far away from me?

trachea malasia

that's the official term for it; a soft spot of the trachea. I looked it up.

It's a rare chance that I have a mostly free and uninterrupted afternoon before me. What to do? What to do? I decided to spend part of it uploading the KittyCat's pictures and finally getting around to sending prints of them to the Families back East. (Didn't that sound ominous? What is she, some sort of mafia princess?) Well, her godfather does do a pretty good impression.

As I type this she's wiggling around making some sort of strange grunting sound due to the remnants of her cold. It seems that her big plastic keys are just too tasty to chew on one at a time. These days she more or less is able to amuse herself for stretches of time when I can get online and check up on my groups- and Dooce. I spend *way* too much time reading Dooce. She's like, a role model for me or something from time to time as my depression and insomnia go to war with my anxiety. Why does this always seem to happen at 2am? Don't they realize that I have better things to do with my time? Like, say, sleep?

oops, KittyCat is determined to chew on my foot again. Or the mousepad. Let this be a lesson to potential parents everywhere: small mammels all go through a phase of chewing on things. Doesn't matter what species they are, they'll figure out a way to acquire and attack it. And if they can't put it in their mouth they'll either attach to it in a sucker-fish method or bash their small heads on it. Computer equipment is particularly yummy to them. Optical wireless mice are practically irresistable. It's a good thing we gave that away before she started crawling and reaching...

Finally back on the internet. Yay me! Was going nutty for a bit; our service had network problems since Sunday night- I woke up Monday without the 'Net, and had no access until this morning. 4 whole days. It's a miracle I didn't cut my hair or something.

KittyCat is still working on her breathing. The trachea-thing caused her congestion to land us in the doctor's office again Monday afternoon, at which point the respiratory therapist (Mr. Bob) was able to *finally* give us something other than "clear fluids and tylenol". So now she has her very own aero-chamber mask, which makes it possible for us to give an inhaler medication to a 10month old. She's actually 10 months old this week. Pretty girl. We're still doing really well medically speaking. I count us lucky that she's escaped so many preemie concerns. If all we have at this point is a coloboma, GER, and trachea-whatsis- I say that's not so bad. We could have been coming home with an O2 tank, or an apnea monitor, or something. She could have been given a diagnosis of ROP.

In the meantime the crafting proceeds. I've been forcing myself to spend an hour a night with my knitting, because the current project is both a beautifully cuddly fiber to work with as well as a soothing color. It's periwinkle, cotton, and has a soft sheen to the surface that makes the light fall into it. When it's done I'm putting it up on my Etsy.com website, so make sure to keep checking over there in case something strikes your fancy. While I'm knitting I'm not neglecting the preemie blanket project though. This morning I delivered about 20 blankies to Ms. Maria, who was thrilled to see them because they're having a new bumper crop of babies come through. And that means that somewhere in this city there's a whole bunch of new mothers and fathers on that roller-coaster... my heart goes out to them. May they all have their empty arms filled soon and with as few complications as possible.

So tell me, what exactly is love? Is it the fluttery feelings I used to get when I crushed on someone, or is it the small stillness I have come to expect whenever I think of my Boy and how proud he gets of me. You know that stillness. It's the soft glow of the candle flame burning where my soul lives, deep inside. It's the place that says to me "yes, this is hard. Nobody said it was ever going to be easy to partner a man, especially a man who's worthy of you." These days we can open that up a bit and include all types of partners- gay or straight. But I'll just speak to what I know...

I'm keeping his house while he's away, and trying to include him in all the little minute things of the day. I have to remember that he's the head of the house, even if I'm the Queen Regant for the month. Or year. Or whenever he comes back to take his place again at my board and in my bed. It takes a certain amount of inner strength, and a good deal of that comes directly from the way one perceives themselves. So I'm carefully choosing how I will perceive myself during this deployment. Today I'm one of those crusader queens. I've sent my man off into the world to do good works, to find our fortunes and to secure a place for us in the afterlife. I don't know just when he'll be back, or if he'll ever be back. I have to live as though he were still a part of our lives. Raise our children so that they love their father and remember him.

This is so much easier in the age of internet and digital photography. I may be nuts, but this is how we learn to get through times like this.

teeny-tiny diapers.

Oodles of years ago when I was a girl, the toy companies started coming out with these realistic looking and feeling dollies. They felt like a newborn, had the right weight and skin texture/resistance, etc. Some home ec classes even used them for the 'practice' babies.

My baby, when I birthed her last year, didn't look anything like those realistic babies. She was a squiggly little limp Holly Hobby doll... She looked like a wrinkled spider monkey and it was several months before she wasn't considered 'floppy'. Most newborns are floppy and that's why one needs to be so careful with their necks and heads. Preemies take that floppiness to a whole new level.

When she's sick she's still my little preemie, all floppy and listless. No more wires, thank Diety, but I still creep in and check her breathing as though she were. When she falls into that deep sleep that only the very exhausted and the very young can achieve, and I have to carry her off to bed, she's floppy again. It's just that this time she's got some weight to her. Like a sack of potatoes instead of a piece of overcooked spaghetti.

One of these days I still want another baby doll to hold in my arms and rock. It's likely that will mean another roller coaster through the NICU, and teeny tiny diapers, and lots and lots of sleepless nights and hormonal depression. But it's so worth it. I wouldn't give up my Kitty for anything in the world.

I'm entering a whole new world now, and it's something that I dread almost as much as I look forward to embracing it. How to keep the balance going forward in a calm fashion. What do I want? What is going to be the best decisions for my family?
Goals for the next week: Finish downloading and burning some movies for my Boy. Send the past two months worth of baby pictures out to the families. I took an ambien two hours ago and the soft folding of wool around my brain has begun. I can still function, but I have to make an extra effort to shut out the extra 'noise' around me. As promised, when Kitty needs me, I have no problem focusing solely on her and her needs. When I sit here watching tv and writing my vision blurs and the old familiar fuzziness wraps me up like a blanket. This is what I asked for. I must not let it get out of hand as previously.

While walking through the grocery store earlier, I was mildly irritated by the people who frequent it on a Saturday afternoon. I don't know why I was so amazed. It's not like there was anything unusual about it, other than that I was able to park the car within 500 ft of the store's entrance. Of course there were only 5 checkout lanes open, and they all were crowded, and I felt the urge to hold Kitty out at arms-length. "Watch out everybody! I've got a baby, and she could go off at any moment!"

Her congestion is easing up a bit tonight. Which is good, cause she's still exhausted from being sick all week. I'm praying that the next week goes well, and that I can send my mother home to Pennsylvania before the Kitty and I are supposed to fly east on our Grand Tour.

It's 8 PM. I've taken my pills, my mother and daughter are both sound asleep in bed. They're tired, and I'm tired too. I just can't seem to settle down to sleep just yet, so I'm sitting up and surfing the Net. I'll watch some tv and let my nerves settle a bit.

Good Night, Moon...

While walking through the grocery store earlier, I was mildly irritated by the people who frequent it on a Saturday afternoon. I don't know why I was so amazed. It's not like there was anything unusual about it, other than that I was able to park the car within 500 ft of the store's entrance. Of course there were only 5 checkout lanes open, and they all were crowded, and I felt the urge to hold Kitty out at arms-length. "Watch out everybody! I've got a baby, and she could go off at any moment!"

Her congestion is easing up a bit tonight. Which is good, cause she's still exhausted from being sick all week. I'm praying that the next week goes well, and that I can send my mother home to Pennsylvania before the Kitty and I are supposed to fly east on our Grand Tour.

It's 8 PM. I've taken my pills, my mother and daughter are both sound asleep in bed. They're tired, and I'm tired too. I just can't seem to settle down to sleep just yet, so I'm sitting up and surfing the Net. I'll watch some tv and let my nerves settle a bit.

Good Night, Moon...

Another day and I seem to be as messed up as I used to be. My medication is being adjusted, but not as dramatically as I feared. This is good. I even have a little something to help me sleep. Kitty is all raspy, when she coughs she wheezes for breath. Now we know that this is from the collapsible trachea. I'm not going to fret about that. Right now both my mothers are here, and I got sent to bed for a full night's sleep. Same thing is supposed to happen today.

What am I going to do with a day off? Feeling a bit better, all on my own. I could play online. I could spend it doing the fancy handwork that I miss (Seriously complicated needlework). I could be a world-famous supermodel magician. Mommy is taking a sick day. Whoo-effing-hoo.

Alright. I've dropped the Boy pierside, I came home, and calmed the crying Kitty. Then I went and threw up. A piece of rice came out my nose, and I feel better now.

The bronchoscopy today turned out very well. Her trachea has a soft spot on one side, and that's what's causing the problems. When she asks more of her breathing, it collapses in, and makes it harder for her to breathe. This should end by the time she gets to preschool. Her stomach upsets continue, though, with puking, icky watery/mucusy stools, and other miscellaneous sick stuff that comes out of babies.

I got as flaky as I normally get when he leaves for long periods of time. But it took me less to cope this time. I feel a bit silly that I showed all of this to my mother-in-law, but she's not judging me because of it. She and I agreed that we wished we could behave like the Kitty- she weeps and wails and threw a fit tonight because she was too tired and cranky and sick. We're too old to do that, even if it would make us feel better about waving the Boy off.

This won't be for too long, in the grand scheme of things. We know that the boat has a shelf-life, it can't be extended indefinately, and that he will come home again before we know it. Even still... I'm a navy widow again for a half-year. A merry widow? Or one of those women that walk along the shores looking out to sea waiting for the waves to carry news of her love back to her?

Well, I think the worst of the sickness has passed. I spent Friday/Saturday/Sunday sick, the KittyCat was equally sick Saturday/Sunday, and my mother-in-law arrived via an emergency plane ticket last night. When she got here she sent me and the Boy to bed, and we slept hard for the rest of the night. His last night with me. He held me, and we slept, and early this morning I dropped him off pierside.

At least I've got two more chances to say goodbye before it's for the rest of this half-year.

We're still not completely over this bug, but we're much better.

Rolling with the punches is one of the hardest lessons to learn in the military. When your spouse sends you an email saying, "what do you think of this new opportunity", it's important to roll with it.

I don't take sudden news well. Never have. Since I married my husband I've learned to swallow that initial ACK and look for the bright side. This is often annoying, but vital to my sanity. No one ever said that it would be easy. The exact opposite, actually. Every military spouse I've talked to agrees: it sucks. The life is full of more uncertainty and separations than most jobs. No reliable hours. Frequent separations to the farthest corners of the earth. Although it's not heavily emphasized in the recruitment ads there's a better than average chance of getting killed.

For all that, it's still a rewarding life. There is a roof over our heads and medically speaking we're fully covered. When I've truly needed my husband here, I've had him. Without having to worry that he'd lose his job because of my difficult pregnancy, emergency birth, and serious post partum depression...

In a few short days he will leave. It will not be the end of me, although my heart will break and there will be times that I weep for the loneliness. I will continue to love him and keep his house. Tend to our child. When he returns, he will find us waiting for him.

I might be overextending again.

Had several long meltdowns over the weekend and the early part of this week. Today I'm grounding myself, but just for the morning. Munchkin is doing fine today. Her breathing is the same. We rescheduled the upper GI study, and next week she's going into the PICU -pediatric intensive care unit- for a bronchoscopy under sedation. This will look at her lungs and find out why she's having so much trouble breathing with activity. The specialist suspects that she has a soft spot in her airways- this is actually quite normal for preemies who were on ventilation. It will not lead to major problems; I just want to know why my child struggles for breath when she plays.

Her fevers are coming down and slowing. She's eating again.

I'm not having nightmares anymore.

When did this world go so wrong? At what point did we all hate each other, and when did community disappear? I'm feeling a bit disillusioned today watching the morning news.
Mama goes home today. My mama, that is. I get to stay here in paradise with my KittyCat and my Boy, who is home with me and All Mine for two more days.
I woke up this morning with a bold new idea. I'm going to try to track down die-cut purple fabric hearts, and make some of the preemie double weight receiving blankets with the Preemie Purple Heart on them. It'll be great. With luck it won't cost so much, either. This service project keeps bringing new life and purpose to my days. The time passes more quickly and I'm not feeling so aimless as I make my way through the long days of Stay-At-Home-Mothering. The news from Monday, from the Pulmonologist, has given me nightmares all week. For all that we've been incredibly lucky so far, I feel as though the other shoe has finally dropped and that re-hospitalization is inevitable before her first birthday. I don't know whether or not that's what I'm even dreading right now. It's been a long trip, and mostly smooth despite the ups and downs.

KittyCat has started a course of steroids as of this morning, and she's scheduled for an upper GI immediately, and may be sent for an airway test under sedation in another week or so. She's also developed an alarming heart murmur in the past month. That's the good news....

My Boy and I are going away for a few days. This was previously arranged and I've decided that it will be good for us not to fret- meaning, of course, that I need to stop obsessing over all this until later. Like, say, when the actual results are seen by the specialists in charge of the case.

I feel like the other shoe is about to drop on my head. Suddenly, and when my mother is on her way out of town. It's going to break loose when my Boy deploys, for sure. I'm a preemie mom. I survived the NICU. I survived coming home from the NICU. I can take whatever comes my way with a firm attitude and cope; after all, I'm a navy wife and I can handle anything. It's what my family needs from me right now. When it's all over, in the privacy of the night and in the comfort of my own bed when my family's asleep- that's when I'll cry. Not today.

Serenity. Now.

Last night I kept crawling back under the blankets and pulling them over my head. What don't I want to see, to deal with? KittyCat was well-behaved and went to bed early. My family was happy and content watching shows on the tv that I like, and yet I wanted to lay in bed and stare blankly into my pillow.

Deep down, I'm already detaching from them. Deep down, I'm already preparing for the separations. My mother goes home on Friday. My husband leaves my side in 16 or so days. Not that I'm counting, mind you. Pretty soon it's just going to be me again, against the world and caring for my baby girl. I know that I can handle it, a part of me is looking forward to being the great big supermommy again. The rest of me, that frightened little part that wants to cling to my husband and whisper "don't go", the same part that wants to burrow deep into my mommy's armpit and whimper, that part still needs a bit of consolation. That's what I'm going to do over the next few days. Console that little girl.

We just won't think about what will happen to us in one more pay period's time. Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof, or something like that. Take care, my friends. Hug your loved ones and know how blessed you are if they are coming home to sleep beside you tonight.

Domestic tranquility has struck once again. My Boy is home. Where he belongs. KittyCat's curled up on his lap right now, cuddling. I'm sitting at the computer thinking about all the fun stuff to do over the next week with them home, and I'm thinking seriously about tucking up under the blankies in a bit with some cold medicine and nap. Especially since I was awake way too early this morning.
Dinner tonight is brewing and bubbling away in the crockpot. Paprika Chicken and rice and carrots. I need to go back out and get some sour cream, but that will come later. The important thing is that it's under control and I don't have to think about any of it until much, much later. Lovely.

We have one edge of a front tooth! It's poking out gingerly from the gum right now, and I am so proud of her! It seems like such a little thing, people, until it's your own child who's throwing fevers and having that miserable little whimper, burrowing their hot heads against your chin. It adds a whole new dimension to motherhood that I never dreamed of even a year ago.

To switch topics to something totally different, I've been thinking about gender roles lately. When did men stop being Men, and women stop being Women? Really. I'm not advocating a return to the olden days of prejudice/sexist thinking where one gender is the chattel of another, but I'm coming to think that when we had the Sex Wars and Feminist Revolution a lot of the good stuff got thrown out with the bad. For one example, a lot of men and women that I've known spent a lot of time in their young adulthood trying to figure out where they belonged -as they were learning who they were, what the rules of society currently dictated for that role, and how they were going to incorporate all of that with what they had been raised to believe. Our own parents suffered from this; mothers teaching their girls to reach for the stars and letting their sons play with girlie things. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm concerned about the opposite being true- that girls don't get to play with dolls enough and dream of being homemakers. Boys don't get to grow up with the assumptions of one day having a family and supporting them, being the Man of the House. We have learned a mishmash of the way things should be now and the way things were in our grandparents' time. I know that I struggled for a couple of years with the thought that my true dream in life was to be a good wife and mother, a frugal and thrify housekeeper, in the ways of my foremothers... There's no career in that. There's very little glory and a lot of criticism in that, these days. The choice to have me stay home involves a lot of careful planning and budgeting, and we've agreed that this will mean that we're going to pass up a lot of expensive things. We're also not going to live on revolving credit cards. As much as my husband complains from time to time about always being broke, we're not in debt, and we're living in one of the most expensive economies in the country on one income (his) and with a child. There *is* a certain status in that which we can be proud of. I'm a lot less emotionally fragile than I used to be, believe it or not. I know where I am now is where I truly want to be. My husband can feel a real pride in being the sole breadwinner, knowing that he is providing for his family. There may be a lot of things he can't provide- he never went to college, he never learned to drive, and he is in an occupation that makes him leave us for a lot of the year. All those things are nothing compared to knowing that he is providing the roof over our heads, the food on our table, and that he's living up to the role that (for good or ill) he found instilled in his own subconscious mind as a boy.

The past couple of days have been a big blur to me. I know that stuff has happened. There's a new heat/ac unit in my wall. There's a more or less clean kitchen, and formula keeps getting mixed up to Her Ladyship's exacting requirements, and medicine gets poured down her throat. She's even getting better about swallowing the tylenol when I give it to her. So that's good. I think she's finally made a connection between that taste and feeling better.
Cherry koolaid will never be safe in this house again.
This is not just because I, myself, am fond of it. Or that I bought buffalo chicken strips at the store this afternoon just to provide emotional support through the next 24 hours of teething. Her Ladyship sleeps now, and has for the past hour and a half, and I'm cautiously beginning to relax. I wish I could talk to my Boy tonight. I don't even have the faintest clue as to what I'd say, but I just want to have the option of talking to him.

I've been having odd dreams again. Vivid, strange, dreams that involve the 'true-selves' of people that I know, and some people I don't know. It's hard to interpret them just at the moment, cause I'm still dragged out from the night spent coaxing my baby back to sleep and through her discomfort from the teeth trying to come through. I don't know when, but it's got to be soon.

With luck I can get a nap this morning and try to go back to some of those dreams and sort out what is going on. I hope that all is well with them; it's selfish of me that I don't want to get involved deeply in a dream-healing right now. I feel so drained. Maybe that's the point.

It still looks as though KittyCat's going to sprout all her teeth at one shot. The ridges are there, we can see individual teeth through her gums and those gums are stretched as tight as can be over the teeth. She's in awful pain from it, and fussy, and when the motrin takes the pain away she's all smiles and giggles and sweetness'n'light. The cutest thing I've ever seen or ever hope to see.

I'm also getting better at getting her down for bed. She's asleep now; rocked to sleep with L&O Criminal Intent and a smattering of the Antiques Roadshow. But PBS was starting to overstimulate her, so I had to switch back to the cops and crimes... who knew? Who could have possibly predicted that she is equally fascinated and lulled to sleep by criminal dramas? It couldn't have been all the times I fell asleep to these things while pregnant, right?

Another day in Paradise.

My little girl and I ran out to do some errands on our own this afternoon, and had a lot of fun. Diaper Genie refills are on sale at Target this week, so I stocked up. I bought some more receiving blankets to cut down for pump kit bags- and if anyone knows preemie moms, let me know if they think it would be a good thought to offer a few up on my ETSY.com site. The theory behind this is that it's hard enough to want to pump, and schlep the tubing and horns back and forth from the NICU all the time, but if you've got a nice flannel bag to carry it all in then not everybody knows that you're doing it. Plus, when you get done pumping and discover that you forgot something to wipe up the drips with, the bag can be used to help out. It's also machine washable...

The weather today is glorious. I heard a brief short one-liner message from my Boy this morning when I woke up that really made my day. Even though I've still got the weepies at odd times, it's not so bad right now. I know that he loves us. I know that eventually he'll be home with us again and all will be well.

Tonight's dinner is going to be deviled meat-loaf patties and butter-simmered carrots. I've been drooling over the prospects of this for a couple of days now, and can't wait for tonight. Is it dinner time yet?

Thank you also to everybody who has sent me Virtual Hugs in the past days. I feel better for them. It's nice to hear that somebody else can 'hear' me, and that I still have a voice.

How do we cope with deployments and the long absences of our partners? There's as many ways through it as there are people. Some find that they need to keep busy with every waking moment, exhausting themselves so that they don't have to think about the loneliness. Others find the opposite is true. Some people pack up and move back home with their parents, in a sort of 'reverse' childhood. Others stay on in the marital home, piling the empty side of their bed with all sorts of stuff so that in the middle of the night when they wake up there's still a comforting weight on the covers...

It's okay to grieve the separation. It's okay to cry, and to sob and beat your hands against the pillows. That's part of what makes us human. The anniversaries that we spend alone. The birthdays we spend apart, and holidays, and all the other times when everybody else we know is celebrating with their family- those days we spend with a Partner-Shaped hole in our lives. We can't replace them, and we can't pretend that they don't exist. We've just got to do it without the luxury of having that person in the room.

I don't know that there's a universal solution to this. Every couple has to manage it on their own. I know that my Boy and I send emails back and forth, as often as we can manage, and we always take a moment to acknowledge these days. Even if he's so busy that all he can do is a two-sentence message. Even if all I can do is send a paragraph into cyberspace that has become one-way due to internet restrictions and Operational Security measures. I haven't heard from my Boy in several days now. It is a physical pain, a tightness in my chest to endure. I just have to suck it up and get through it.

Serenity Now. Breathe. That's all I can do.

Yesterday we went out to Balboa, as per the original plan. I'm happy to say that I made it through three whole exhibits before my stamina gave out and we had to head for home. That one of those three places was a gift shop is totally besides the point.

KittyCat has been getting lots of exercise today. She's been happily rolling around on the floor and inchworming herself around corners and into several odd places. It's fun to watch. As for her Mommy, well- I'm on the lookout for Mother's Little Helpers. Next week I'm seeing somebody to further this search, and hopefully he'll be able to give me something that will help. It's taken me several months to reach this point, and it feels like I'm failing to ask for chemical assistance. But it will help me be a better Mommy. That's the end goal, and how I get there is no longer that important to me.

If you own beautiful things, is there a point to saving them 'for Best'? That's the theory. Save it for a special Occassion, and use the plain stuff for everyday. Only trouble is, there are times when you may never see a Special Occassion for months on end. The Good Stuff gets left up in a cupboard collecting dust and when those special times do come around you may not even remember that they're there.

This morning I pulled out the good china. Painted in wildflowers with a gold rim. It wasn't new when we got it; handed down from a friend who was replacing her Everyday China... this lady (she's a Lady, if ever there was one) doesn't even have plain old everday dishes. She had everyday China. Anyway, I ate my breakfast off a dainty salad plate, and am drinking my tea out of a teacup and saucer. I didn't make anything special, just a hunk of bread and butter, and some herbal tea. But it does taste better, and I feel special this morning even though it's just another Monday. Later on I'm going to paint my toenails, even though no one will ever see them beneath my thick white socks and sensible shoes. The person I usually paint them for isn't here now. I'll still know that they're there, and I also got out a little travel bottle of scented shower gel to put in by the bathroom sink to wash my hands with. Soap is soap. My hands smell fruity and I feel perfectly decadent doing this. It's transformed my attitude from a boring Monday into something else. I am treating myself as though I'm as special as my guests. It's different, it's unusual for me, and I feel slightly naughty for doing it.

I also feel sweet and feminine and like a Lady. Not a bad way to start the week. Not a bad way to feel, either. It makes me feel like anything else that will happen today is survivable and livable. Nothing will be awful after a start like this.

If you own beautiful things, is there a point to saving them 'for Best'? That's the theory. Save it for a special Occassion, and use the plain stuff for everyday. Only trouble is, there are times when you may never see a Special Occassion for months on end. The Good Stuff gets left up in a cupboard collecting dust and when those special times do come around you may not even remember that they're there.

This morning I pulled out the good china. Painted in wildflowers with a gold rim. It wasn't new when we got it; handed down from a friend who was replacing her Everyday China... this lady (she's a Lady, if ever there was one) doesn't even have plain old everday dishes. She had everyday China. Anyway, I ate my breakfast off a dainty salad plate, and am drinking my tea out of a teacup and saucer. I didn't make anything special, just a hunk of bread and butter, and some herbal tea. But it does taste better, and I feel special this morning even though it's just another Monday. Later on I'm going to paint my toenails, even though no one will ever see them beneath my thick white socks and sensible shoes. The person I usually paint them for isn't here now. I'll still know that they're there, and I also got out a little travel bottle of scented shower gel to put in by the bathroom sink to wash my hands with. Soap is soap. My hands smell fruity and I feel perfectly decadent doing this. It's transformed my attitude from a boring Monday into something else. I am treating myself as though I'm as special as my guests. It's different, it's unusual for me, and I feel slightly naughty for doing it.

I also feel sweet and feminine and like a Lady. Not a bad way to start the week. Not a bad way to feel, either. It makes me feel like anything else that will happen today is survivable and livable. Nothing will be awful after a start like this.

I'm not feeling so profound today. Maybe it's the restless night I spent, tossing and turning. Maybe it's the early wakeup call from KittyCat, who giggled and wiggled her way all around the crib before the sun was up.

We're going to early church this morning. Then I'm coming home and resting the remainder of the day. Bake some more bread- thanks for the compliment, Tam! I'm glad you like my bread. Don't forget to come back next week and grab some more to take home for your Boy! And remember- since it's seriously lacking in preservatives and chemical additives, it does tend to go Green rather quickly. The flip side to this, of course, is that it's better for you than a lot of other foods...

It's baking day once again; the smell of bread is filling my house and making me feel oddly relaxed. It takes me back to childhood serenity and a time of no worries. Mama's here, knitting on the sofa. I'm here, sitting by the window. The KittyCat is napping in her crib. All is well in Paradise this morning. But...

That's the real problem, isn't it? This afternoon I'm not going to get a call from my Sailor to pick him up at the pier. Tonight we're not going to order a pizza and sit together watching DVDs. He's not going to drink a 6pack of beer and get silly and tell me how much he loves The Mary. Tonight I'm going to comb out my hair and crawl between cold blankets and sleep alone again. I'm used to it. Many times I even look forward to it. This afternoon it's making me a bit morose.

Three Doors Down: Away from the Sun; "Dangerous Games"

And what do I care to get me through these sleepless nights
And what do I have to hold when no one’s there to hold me tight
And what do I see the only thing that gets me through this is

I feel and I feel you


He's still here. For one more night before the last underway before the Long One. He's sleeping. In a few minutes I'm going to go in and lay down next to him and lay awake all night, listening to him breathe. I love him. That's the only thing that matters. I breathe through my pain tonight, and in all the days to come. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and hold our baby, and she's going to laugh with joy to see the sun. She doesn't know that my heart breaks.

Getting ready for deployments is hard, on both sides of the pier. I can only imagine what goes on past the quarterdeck. To be honest, I don't want to imagine it. I know what goes on here and that's enough for me. There's paperwork to get in order: ID cards, Power of attorney, financial arrangements- how much spending money to transfer on a regular basis to the Boy's accounts, and that way he can leave the joint accounts alone except for emergencies. This is especially important to us when the world separates us. This way his spending in a liberty port does not adversely affect my management of the household by accident. There's the unspoken current running through everything I say to him. Sometimes I can feel that current running both ways underneath our words.

Don't forget me.
I love you.
Don't leave me.

The last is spoken only in my tears when he is gone. I know better than to say it to him. He doesn't want to leave me. It's his duty to go, his job to go, this is what we pay for all the 'perks' of military life. Sometimes it helps, more often it doesn't. It's the bandage wrapped tightly around my sprained heart to keep the swelling manageable. I can feel the throbbing of the damage through the bandage, keeping time with my heartbeats. Breathe through the pain. Just like all other wounds.

Then there's the last days before he leaves. Laundry to be done every other day so that all his stuff is clean and ready to go. Shaving cream and razor refills to be set out so that he doesn't forget them. Double and triple checking, paperwork and random things around the house. The unspoken words that rise in my throat, choking my voice. I want to bury my face in his armpit and grab his shirt until my knuckles spasm. I keep having to remind myself to let go before I rip his clothing, before I hurt him. It doesn't do any good, because a minute later my hands are knotted in his shirt again. Don't leave me. Life goes on regardless. I can see empty days stretching out before me. My baby's first steps, her first words. He's not going to be here to see them. As much as that breaks my heart it's worse for him.

So I'm going to give my girl a hug and tuck her into bed tonight, and tomorrow when I see my husband I'm going to hold his hand and tell him that I love him. Because very soon I'm not going to be able to say it to his face.

Deployments suck. The briefing for families was tonight. I went, sat through about half of it. I think. We left early, because I was tired and starting to get weepy. There is just so much to do, so much to think about. So much to get depressed over.

It feels like there's already a Sailor-shaped hole in my life. I'm already starting to think like a single parent, a navy widow, and it frightens me that I'm not more upset over it. I tell myself that he'll be back, and that the time will fly. That's part of what scares me. If I do okay, if I can handle everything that life throws at me, I am the wife that he needs and wants. If I do okay and can handle everything life throws at me I feel as though I am saying to the world that I don't need him. That I don't need him at all, except for the money and benefits that he provides. It's not true- I need him for so much more than that. I need him in my life, in my thoughts. When faced with hard times I need his presence in the back of my mind telling me that he loves me, that he knows I can come through this.

His body has left a giant hole in my life. His spirit remains with me. There's a song by Stevie Nicks called "Desert Angel". I'm including the text here, with appropriate credits to the artist and album. The melody is haunting and mournful, and in the end words of this song I can feel the longing. This is what I feel when I saw the Sailor-shaped Hole. This is the resolution I feel when I think of the endless miles of ocean between us, and the months before he will hold me in his arms again. I feel a part of all those other wives, living their own personal dramas and heartache while wondering if their husbands, fathers, and sons will ever come walking back to fill that hole again.

From the album "Enchanted"
Written by Stevie Nicks and M. Campbell.
I was born in the desert
So I know how it feels there
Well look up it's a shooting star
But it's as black as night no stars
Well this is the first thing,
That I've written
Since I wrote about freedom
And then the wall came down
Well we thought it was a great beginning
People were free to cross the line
But then something happened in the desert
Something broke the stars into pieces
Well I live below a great red mountain
In the shape of a great huge beast
In a place the indians call Paradice Valley
Well this has always been my sanctuary
I send that to you too
There on the other side of the world
In the desert
And we are the guardians
No black clouds just the faces of you
So where is my father,
Where has he gone
Where is my husband
Where is my son
Where is my father
Where has he gone
What is it that happened here
Is it real
This war
This can't be happening
Ooh well I need to see you
In your far away war
And you should know how much we love you
They call us here, Operation Desert Angel
They call us here, Operation Desert Angel
In waiting
Operation Desert Shield
Operation Desert Storm
Operation Desert Angel

Today was a sucess! KittyCat has slept, and slept well. We've got her napping again and back on a good bedtime schedule. Tonight for dinner I made homemade mac n cheese cassarole, and it was well-received.

On a sober note, the Boy's deployment may be moved up significantly. This is causing no small worry on my part, mostly a vague anxiety. While I don't have the concerns that I had last time he was gone for a long time- there are some new ones. It's going to be an awfully long time on one hand, and not that long on the other hand. I'll write more on this later. I don't want to get all choked up on it tonight.

Tomorrow I get to go and get new contacts~ I am all excited about it. My baby girl won't be trying to pull my glasses off my face with her drooly little hands (as much) after tomorrow. Plus, my peripheral vision is really a lot better when I'm wearing contacts, and I'll be able to wear sunglasses when outside and driving. Now that the days are going to get longer again and I'm driving in the sunshine, this is of great importance.

Went to the quilt shop today, and it brought back so many good memories of childhood. There was a 50% off sale on flannel, and I bought a bunch for the preemies. Tonight I think I'll be able to cut out and sew up a bunch of blankies. The three of us -Grammy, Mommy, and KittyCat- had a lot of fun wandering all over the downtown area. As Grammy pointed out, it's a lot like the town she grew up in. If that town had palm trees and was flat.

It's a very nice area, overall. I'm so glad she's finally here. I took a nap yesterday afternoon and again this morning, and it was AMAZING. I closed my eyes and burrowed under the pillows and quilts, and every muscle I have as well as some I didn't know I had relaxed at once. An hour later I woke up, feeling as though I'd slept for three hours. What's the difference? Mama's here. She fixes everything.

I guess we're ready. One giggly baby- check.
One guest bed, inflated and made up with clean sheets and a Sunbonnet Sue quilt- check
One sink, bleached- check.
Hair? Brushed.
Face? Clean.
Clothes? On body.

Off to the airport. To pick up a grandma. I'm going to have so much fun!

Temptation.
Dove chocolate. Chai Latte. Citrus-based body products.
Anything claimed as 'educational'.
If it's educational, I'll consider it. Especially if it promises to make my life easier. There's just not enough energy to keep up with the demands of adulthood and toddler-hood. If I can distract the KittyCat for a certain crucial period of the day I'm happy. This morning the child got way too over-tired. She was wired. In the happy giggly place that precedes total sleep.

There's a very slight chance that having now gone to la-la-land, she'll actually stay there for the rest of the night. I can cope with that. Tomorrow Grammy descends upon us with the force of a natural Event. Let's all pray that it's not a disaster.

I Heart Costco.

In my entire week, it seems that I've been looking forward to today's trip. So much so that my heart leaped for joy when I found that the Boy had run out of deoderant this morning. Or maybe that was just the lingering stomach flu? I digress. There I was, not an hour ago, gleefully steering the oversized shopping bin around the aisles, trying not to run over any of the spanish-jibbering families who were blocking my way, and feeling an insane desire to run really fast behind the cart, and then jump up on the back axle and ride it down the aisle going WHEEEEEE at the top of my lungs.

I mean it. Where else can I satisfy my cheese lust? A 5lb bag of shredded cheese for 10 bucks. That's like, a sale price on shredded cheese! And it's a 5lb bag! Let's see, that's going to last me about 3 weeks. 4, if I behave myself. The scary thing is, that was not a joke.

In the end I walked away with only the essentials. Cheese, freezer bags, deoderant. There are so many things I could have gotten, that would have broken my budget this month and seriously put a crimp in my plans for the next quarter- but that would also mean that I wouldn't have an excuse to go in every other week. That would break my heart.

wild woman
i'm a maiden no more
turned in my garland for a barley sheaf
motherhood in word and deed
i'm dancing up on the hill in the middle night
starless
my child asleep in the leaves
blanketed by the moss
watched over by the spirits
i'm talking to my god in the darkness
strangers no more
buying my answers
if only i could remember my questions
they all change
don't want to know the whys
i want to know the future
i want to know that my babe will grow
i want stars to shine in her blue eyes
eyes that will not fracture as my own
i want her hair to shine
redgold curls that fall over her shoulders...
i'll buy my answers
in blood or gold
in faith held in the silence
hold her close to my heart

do not come to the hill tonight
it's not safe

Another day that I wish I had Mother's Little Helpers. Don't know why, it's not like anything out of the ordinary is happening today. I am even on top of things around the house for once. I just want to feel some sort of warm rush through my skin and not worry about anything. I don't want to worry about the KittyCat, or my body giving out early, or the pain in my hips and back... I don't want to worry that I will get too dizzy carrying the trash to the dumpster. I don't want to get heart palpitations just by doing a simple load of laundry.

Maybe someday this will pass. Maybe someday I'm going to be the mother I want to be and can stop worrying that I won't make the cut- that my daughter isn't going to think that I'm a worn-out broken-down old lady before she's even halfway grown. In the meantime I should just enjoy what I have while it's here. The grass outside, the sun streaming down on the courtyard under my window. The orange and blue Birds of Paradise blooming at every corner of this complex. It's a marvelous place to live, where there are always flowers blooming. I'm going to count my blessings today. Live in the moment. Stop borrowing trouble.

Hi everybody! I'm back. There was a *ton* of computer issues around here for the past week, and then we had to wipe my harddrive last night. But cross my fingers everything is fixed now.

The Child Sleeps, once again, and Mama is loosed upon the world and the internet in general. We've both been under the weather the past couple of days- which did not aid in the computer issues at all. I'm eating scrambled eggs by myself for dinner tonight, as the Boy has duty on the big tin box that we laughingly call his Other Home. At the end of the week my own Mama will be visiting our fair city for a whole month. Yippee! I'm eager for her to arrive. I'm eager once again to throw my own arms around my mama's neck and wish hard that she'll fix everything. Just like when I was a little girl, I'm back to the place where I believe that she can fix all my anxieties in this area. She'll wave a magic wand and by virtue of her believing in me, I'll be able to do it. It had been years, and then one day during the pregnancy I was talking to her and blurted out "Tell me I can do this."

She told me I could. She told me that she believed in me, and that I would be a good mother. I believed her. It was as simple as that. For the first time in years and years, I believed her with the simple trust I had when I was five, and she kissed the boo-boo and made it better. As adults there are so many boo-boos out there. Most of the time we have to deal with them ourselves. Bad bosses, credit card debt, unexpected emergencies that drain the wallet and worse- leave us with barely enough emotional energy to take care of ourselves. As adults, we're expected to not run home to our parents to fix these things, barring their loving advice. Even so, there's still a time when all we really need is for someone else to believe in us. We find that in our lovers and partners, and in our friends, and when those needs touch the deepest and rawest insecurities of our hearts we turn back to where it all begins.

Mama. Daddy. Who are still the gods of our small worlds, who have unlimited powers and abilities. Who make it better.

whew! That's over. Back to normal now, at least as normal as it ever gets around here. The Boy is back at work today. KittyCat is back asleep after getting up way too early this morning. I'm awake after getting to go back to sleep for a heavenly half-hour. It would have been longer, but I had a very Strange Dream about frozen chicken...

I think this is a sign that I need to quick cook up all the chicken out of the freezer. I'm almost out of chicken stock in any case. Also, it smells really Yummy when it cooks down, and I haven't been able to play in the kitchen for a while.

Today is slated for laundry. There's a small mountain of it that threatens to topple and start an assault on the bedroom floor. If that happens, there's going to be no way to contain any of it. So, off to the laundromat! This may take a large part of my morning. At least I can get a good start on it while KittyCat's napping.

Blessings Be. Whether you and yours be christian, jewish, anything or anyone at all. Blessings be with you and your house today and in the coming year. Rejoice, the darkness of winter is beginning to end. Today the days will start to get longer again. Winter solstice, holy day, whatever you care to call it- it's still the same.

Today we come together as a family. We'll have a good time watching DVD's and eating popcorn. KittyCat will continue laughing and growing. I'm going to shelter in my husband's embrace, storing up warm memories for the long absence ahead of us in the coming year.

I've listed a preemie blanket for sale on my etsy site: www.maryelisabeth.etsy.com. Check it out, and don't forget to click one of the ads found on this page. Remember: it only takes a moment, and it would really help us out.

It's Christmas Eve. A year ago I was pregnant and waiting for my husband to come home and spend Christmas Day with us; a new family. A year ago I wasn't even supposed to be able to get pregnant. I very nearly lost my baby, both in pregnancy and after in those first stunning weeks in the NICU.

Miracles happen at Christmas. I was sitting in church this afternoon holding my wiggly little girl on my lap and I started crying. She's so happy and healthy and perfect, and her warm little head tucked up under my chin made me grateful and aware what a miracle she really is.

All the odds stacked against us- one functioning ovary, a stunted uterus that was drastically although not obviously affected by radiation treatments decades ago, malfunctioning hormones that misfired over and over again. The whatever it is that made my mother's and her sister's pregnancies so risky and nearly cost their lives and sanities. Offset that with my husband's military career that made medical treatment available to me. That ensured proper and above-average prenatal care. Which led to them finding my pre-eclampsia before I had a seizure and the fetal distress before we lost the baby. The level 3 NICU where my baby was nurtured to term.

I shouldn't be alive, and neither should she, and tonight I am counting all of my blessings that we have many years ahead of us.

It's been a long, long, week for us here in Paradise. My husband got a new computer. We're in the middle of setting up a lot of new stuff- both baby oriented and family oriented. Also trying to settle things for the upcoming deployment. As a result I haven't spent much time online, even to update this page.

KittyCat is getting more and more mobile. It takes more of my day to follow around after her. A good thing. I love watching how happy she is when she discovers something new. Exploring her world... I told the Boy last night that this is becoming less National Geographic and more Wild Kingdom.

I love her so much. She's smooshably cute.

meh.

I'm too tired to sleep, and I've got that tingly restless-stretchy feeling in my shoulder. You know that one, where you want to stretch one specific muscle/nerve bundle constantly. Do they even acknowledge restless shoulder syndrome? I don't care, as long as I get to go to bed at some point.

This is especially critical since my husband's got duty tomorrow, and I've got to do the baby-wrangling solo. But then comes Monday, and the rest of the week, and most of it he has off with me.

I woke up this morning in my husband's arms, warm and safe. I woke up with his hand over mine. I felt his heartbeat in the night. When I moved to get up, there was a sleepy protest as he tried to pull my hands back down under his chin.

Our daughter is sound asleep in her crib, curled against the side of the crib bumper and I can clearly recall the way her face lit up when her Daddy came home and lifted her up. It's a gray and foggy morning here just like it's been the past several weeks. Winter in Paradise. When the sun comes up it'll burn off the fog to shine brilliant sunlight through the house.

Except this morning we're not waiting anymore. My family is safely sleeping and under my roof. I am content. I want to bask in this peace for a long, long time.

My husband comes home today. Outside I feel all demure and proud of the way KittyCat has grown since he's been away. It hasn't even been that long, really. Two and a half weeks. One pay period. Half a month. And yet it still seems like a longer time than that.

Last night I went shopping with a friend and we bought special homecoming presents for our husbands. She has a pretty new outfit. I bought something slinky and pretty- one piece that I can wear often in regular life and one piece that I'll save just for him in intimate moments. The sun hasn't come out to burn off the fog here yet; I wish it would. In a way it's like how I've felt these past weeks. Without his presence here, my world is foggy and gray and just a little overcast. When I go to the pier to bring him home this afternoon, the sun will come out and I'm going to stretch my arms to the sky to try and hold the warmth just that little bit closer. Over the past couple of years, I've learned that this is the way a lot of navy wives feel. I'll expand that to encompass all military wives, though I can only speak for navy... we don't wither away and die without their presence in our homes, because we never really let them go. Our Husbands (and Wives) are still here; in our memories, in the ghosts that roam the house in the middle of the afternoon when the babies are napping and we remember how it felt to have our Loves holding us. Once I related it to a giant Him-shaped hole in my life. If we had broken up, it would have been a simpler matter of filling it with something or someone else. Since we hadn't broken up, and since we still loved each other LOTS, I had to hold that place ready for him to step back into when he returned.

Emotions are tricky things. When people ask me what I'm going to do during the next Long Deployment, now that I've got a baby, I tell them the truth. "I'm going to love him, and keep his house, and raise our child." That's really not that far off from what most women do.

My day off. Wow. It was incredible. It was fantastic. I didn't have to leave the house once, to get in the car and drive anywhere. I did do two loads of laundry, but I don't count that. So now we're doing the dance of the Sleepy Baby, where I spend time alternately feeding her, burping her, and tucking her into bed. Then I will get into my jammies and climb into bed, and get some much-needed sleep.

I keep thinking this week is going faster than it is. It's been Thursday for two days now. Maybe tomorrow it's actually going to be Thursday, because my Boy comes home Friday. I'm looking forward to seeing him again. I'm looking forward to a hug and a kiss and the strong shoulder that will share these burdens.

I'm still struggling with depression today. I would have thought that it would lift a bit for the holidays. There's so much going right, right now. My husband is home. My daughter's first Christmas. We're together as a family this first year, and we'll always have that to warm our hearts.

Maybe I should go back to the doctor and get my antidepressants changed. Maybe I should take up a new hobby, or do something more physical with my life. The plant that I bought nearly a year ago is almost dead for good this time; I can't seem to ever keep a houseplant alive. What does that say about my ability to parent? I can't even nurture a potted plant...

My friends think that I'm too hard on myself. I don't think I'm hard enough on myself. Here I sit, whining about things that I could control if I'd just expend an effort. It's just so hard to keep getting out of bed in the morning. Easier, now that KittyCat has begun waking me up with happy laughter and smiles. My depression moves to the long evenings when she's gone to sleep and I'm left alone in this apartment with the chores and the internet to help me pass time. It becomes a struggle to stay out of bed at 6 o'clock. I just want to crawl under the covers and hide. Please, God, let me sleep and not know any of this until the baby wakes me again to sunshine and laughter.

I'm in a Black mood tonight. Don't look at me. I don't want them to know how bad I feel right now.

So no glider was bought yesterday. I meant to, but I just ran out of steam and motivation, and the KittyCat was sleepy. And okay, I was sleepy too. The past two days I've alternated between sleepy and wired, and maybe soon that will pass and I'll either get some real sleep or learn how to maximize the sleep I do get.

Not to imply that I didn't enjoy the reason why I had lack of sleep. Definately not. She's cute and giggly and having so much fun playing with her toys and laughing that I start laughing just to see her. It makes the depression this weekend easier to handle, because when the Black set in I could remember the joy in her. I was able to keep in mind that this is temporary, this will pass, and that all I have to do is to wait it out.

Still waiting. Lather, rinse, repeat until the desired level of anti-depression has been reached.

because you love me I can move mountains
your faith in me gives me strength in the dark times
when I cannot seem to move for the pain
my heart bleeds and I do not know why
but I remember that you love me
it gives me the strength to lift my arms
to finish my chores and to rest
at the day's end
I remember that you love me
it makes me pretty
seen through your eyes I'm not ugly
not stupid for this stubborness
without you I would never know the joy
that I've known
that does not fade with time
only grows stronger

Going shopping for a glider rocker today. It seems that every time my Boy's been away recently I move furniture around. This time at least I have help.

I'm also considering picking up a bunch of individual formula bottles. Yes, they cost a lot, but I'll be able to tuck one in her diaper bag when we're out and for those unexpected emergencies she'll have something to eat. Also, when we're next traveling I'm probably going to get them for the plane. Very convenient, no mixing of bottles while schlepping through airports.

Yesterday I set up an Etsy.com shop to start selling some of my crafts. So far I only put up some scrunchies to sell, but I'm planning on listing more soon. Take a look, and help support crafters!

http://maryelisabeth.etsy.com

Motherhood really does change everything, you know. A year ago I wouldn't have been up half the night and still eager to see the sun come up or hear that little giggle from the nursery. Even two months ago, I don't think that I'd be this happy to be awake now after waking up every two and a half hours all night long.

It's that little giggle that makes all the difference. When I go in to see her in the morning, and she's so happy to see me. Always happy to see me, so full of joy. Better than anything else I could imagine. As good as seeing my husband again after several weeks or months apart, and burrowing my face in his shoulder as his arms wrap around me.

With this in my life, who has time to be depressed?

There's a tree in the courtyard
Reaching up arms to the sky
Prayers I can't say
Stand in the dark by the window
I watch the tree
Pray for serenity to fill me
Give me time enough and peace enough
Strength to be the mother they need
If I close my eyes I'll come up
Dream that one day I climbed the tree
Sat breathing apple blossoms
Tuck white petals in my hair
Reach up my own arms to pray
Serenity, I whisper
Let it be
Peace, tonight, and my family safe in bed
Only this matters

KittyCat has bronchitis. This involved a very long trip to the hospital yesterday, and x-rays to rule out pneumonia. I could have done without that little scare, but am pleased to report that all is well. She's well hydrated, which helps, and doesn't have a fever. She is right now happily playing on the floor while I'm sipping hot chocolate and wishing that I could crawl back under the blankets for another couple of hours. Such is a mother's lot in life; the child is the main reason that I get out of bed in the morning. Especially before the sun comes up. Even more especially when I'm still feeling the aftereffects of yesterday's little adventure.

I've got a list of things that I want to get done today. I somehow feel that half that list is going to be ignored. Hopefully it won't be; if I can get all that done today than I can probably take most of tomorrow off to sit around and play with the KittyCat.

Oh well. That's life. Excuse me while I go and live it!

KittyCat is curled up on my lap right now, one little hand playing with my fingers on the keyboard and the other tucked comfortingly under my breast. She's all warm and cozy, with a full belly and heavy eyelids. A short while ago we were sitting in the rocking chair after her breakfast and her head was tucked up under my chin. She was fine where she was, and definately did not want to move.

It's the new baby smell. The soft little downy head snuggled up to my chin. The warm body pressed against mine and manuevering her way into my oversized sweater. It's the chubby little hands and the bright wide eyes that tell me: "This is Right."

I never dreamed that I'd be so happy being a mother. I never dreamed that this level of peace and happiness could be so sustainable. Despite the depression that's come into my life with a new intensity over the past year, I've been blessed with an equal level of joy to overcome it. The highs balance the lows, and all is well with my universe.

I want another one. I want another little blessing in my life. I want this feeling of love and trust to last forever. How could anyone not want this joy? It's incomprehensible to me.

Today is going to be a List Day. Maybe I'm running out of ideas this weekend, maybe I'm just bored this morning. But really, what it probably is, is that I'm using most of my writing energy to edit a few ideas down for my current Project. The working title is "Through the Night", and it's a collection of poems and essays that I've written in the months since KittyCat was born. Some of these have appeared on this blog, some have never before appeared anywhere. I'm trying to make it about two-thirds (or more!) new content, so when it becomes available for purchase I'm hoping my faithful readers will pick up a copy.

Hell, pick up two copies, and give one to a friend! Help me keep the KittyCat in diapers and cute onesies.

What I'm reading:
Flag in Exile, by David Weber
Field of Dishonor, by David Weber
Alexandra: the Last Tsarina, by Carrolly Erickson

What I'm making (currently working on, not the pile of UFOs in the cupboard):
preemie blankets -for the NICU
embroidered pillowcases, in 'Butterfly and Ivy' pattern
socks
flannel bags for breastpump kits -to donate to the NICU

Five things that I need to throw out of my fridge:
half a cup of chopped onion, 1 month old
two slices of low-sodium spam, 3 weeks old
mostly empty tub of ranch dip, 1 week old
little bit of milk, spoiled, don't remember how old but it doesn't smell anymore...
barbecue sauce bottle, expired 11 months ago

...who says that being a housewife is dull? I could be creating my old mutant army in the fridge, if I just put off cleaning it for another couple months.

Motherhood: The New Frontier...

Our intrepid heroine once again tackles fussy baby, the evil archnemesis of KittyCat. Her evil twin, Skippy, as it were. Having brought my car into the service center to get fixed, I had arranged that she spend the day with the downstairs neighbor, who is preparing to move out soon. All was well when I left the house. A blissful two hours followed, in which I ate doughnuts on a cushy chair in a nicely appointed waiting room. Then came the call. The neighbor needed me to come and get the KittyCat, because Skippy had decided to take over.

So I let the service people know, and arranged that they should come back to pick me up after the repairs. The neighbor lady picked me up, and KittyCat was reunited with her Mommy. Back home she slept the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon. Skippy was vanquished. Yay!

Onto the sadder news: my 4-wheeled baby will require some major repairs and certain parts that have to be special ordered from Tennessee. Hopefully they'll be here tomorrow, otherwise I'll have to wait until Monday to get my babies back together again.

Sigh. At least my thrifty ways these past weeks have ensured that we have enough diapers, wipes, and various accoutrement to survive the weekend without the car. I just feel so naked without it sitting in the parking lot.

Advise me!

I'm once again shopping for a digital camera. What's your favorite? Which model is easy to use and durable (likely to survive a small child)? There will be prizes for good answers.