Wanted: One Life, Slightly Used

Obviously, I either have no life or am extremely addicted to the Net. Which according to a lot of people is the same thing... but there's no new Dooce today. There was no new Dooce yesterday. I feel the strangest co-dependant feeling tonight, like I've been stood up or something. Which is ridiculous, cause it's only a Webblog, and she's only a Mom just like me (only WAY cooler). It also means that Hello, She has a life, why don't I? Then that snarky part of my inner bitch comes back and says, Well She's got her husband home. If mine was here, I'd have better things to do too.

I just need a life. Some kind of social life that doesn't exist online. My life this weekend has consisted mainly of surfing various blogs. The equivalent of small talk. I don't even write about anything that interesting. I did read three books though, which I guess is impressive to some people. That I may not have a clean house but hey- I've been knitting, the Munchkin is clean and fed and happily asleep for the night, and I've read three books in two days.

Maybe it's just hormonal. Maybe it's a sign that I'm finally feeling like a person again. My brain has been asleep for so many months now that I am at a bit of a loss as to how to proceed. The week ahead of me has actual events penciled in. Things like playdates and okay, three doctor appts, but at least two of them are only a quick followup/checkin and the third one is a final wrapup. Library days, and playing in the sun with my Munchkin. Cool. Just keep telling myself that I need to be happy for what I have. Stop whining about what you're missing.

I just listed my Swiss Army Cheese for sale over on Ebay. If anyone's looking for cheesy collectible or gag-gift suitable items, take a look!

When will the rest of the world grow up and get a clue? Right now I'm tired of budgeting and scrimping and saving just to be able to do something fun in the distant future. I'm really tired of it. I'm cashing in all my survey points and doing what I can around here like recycling my bottles to get some spare change together.

Oh, I'm not dead broke right now. I just see lots of plane tickets in the future and no clue how I'm going to pay for all of them. I may have to ask the inlaws to cover one of the tickets. This is the downside to being responsible enough to want to pay the rent and car note on time the rest of the summer.

I also want to do something fun when my Boy comes home. I want to go away with him overnight to the Lodge, for at least one 24 hour period. We can lock the door and watch tv together, and hold each other so tightly it feels like we're attached. It's a stereotype. It's something you see in comic strips or in teenagers making out in public with no regard for the rest of the world. Now we're two "mature" married people, we're parents for godssakes, and we're going to be doing that.

I can't even put it into words right now how I feel at the thought that if I can just squirrel away enough pennies, I can do this. It gives me hope. It gives me some strength. It kicks me in the ass to do it again and to keep scrimping.

Size Anxiety

Would a kick in the ass come in my size, or would I have to special order it?

While my energy levels are returning to where I wanted them to be, if not quite what I wish them to be, I find that all my new free time is spent doing lazy things rather than housework things. The house is still a mess. The kitchen still gets picked up only once a day rather than as I go, which I'd prefer. While my trash is taken out on a regular basis and laundry still manages to get done every few days, I don't vacuum as much as I would like given the small mammal that insists on eating breakfast and most of her snacks directly off the carpet.

I cleaned the kitchen floor earlier this afternoon. Despite the mopping, the floor feels very tacky right now. Maybe I didn't do it right- although I thought I did. It's hard to know exactly how much I get up off that floor unless I'm scrubbing on my hands and knees. That's the way I -hate to say 'prefer'- to do it. Even though I have a very nice mop for the purpose.

So what am I doing instead of cleaning? I'm reading. And knitting. And playing on the 'Net. Now that I feel the strength to do these things instead of merely trying to prop my eyes open long enough to keep an eye on the Munchkin, I'm gleefully spending every spare moment trying to do them. I called the doc to get my Pill refilled, and found out that they're going to be mean and make me get a pap smear this year. This, despite my entire too-pelvic exam-happy medical team of the pregnancy. Sigh. I got a healthy baby at the end of it, so that's the important thing. Got to suck it up and bite my lip and count the holes in the acoustical ceiling tiles one more time. I just so don't want to do this.

Finally. Last night I got off my butt after Tiff went to sleep and put her newer, toddler-friendly carseat into the car. I brought in the old one, which is still stashed next to the desk because I haven't figured out which closet I'm going to stash it in. This means that she has found it, and has decided to climb all over it. Time to Explore Our World again.

Someday I'll get motivated again. There's a list as long as my elbow of stuff that I want to get done. There's a list at least as done of stuff that I know I should get done. I want to keep this house looking semi-respectable instead of the disaster area that it's become. I never want to see it become like a certain relative's house... and I don't have half the reasons that she did for letting her house become that way.

I'm reading a book about the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Isaac's Storm. About 2/3 of the way through right now and it's interesting. It brings to mind Isabel. Hurricane Isabel, which made the news out here about the same way as the Cedar Fires made the news back East. At least, in the affected areas.

Isabel. I'm always going to remember that one. It was the scariest hurricane I ever saw. We weren't even in the worst path of it. But we were hit by the side, and that was plenty for me. A coworker of mine didn't have part of his house when it was over. When the rain and wind stopped there were trees down everywhere. We had no power for close to two days. The fortunate thing at our apartment complex was that the trees that came down came down parallel to the buildings and lots. They fell across the yards, and the stairs. Not the cars, not the walls. When the sun came out again we heard chainsaws, and knew that it was over. Except for the cleanup.

The day Isabel came to town we had just been reunited. The Boy flew back from basic training the night before. We were going to get married. Got the license first thing in the morning. The courthouse was closing and sending everyone home at that point. The rain was beginning as we pulled back into the parking lot at home.

Next week, when the waters had mostly abated from most of the state, we were married under clear blue skies. Nothing but blue skies. All I could see, washed clean for us. That's pretty sappy... but that's what hurricanes have come to mean to me. That when it was over we called our parents to tell them that we were still alive. That we had power again. That the car was okay, and that we didn't have flooding where we were, and that it was alright.

Isaac's Storm was ten times worse, at the very least. They didn't have doppler radar or satellites. They didn't even have knowledge that it was coming before it was there. These sort of tragedies didn't only happen in the past, and they're not new things even though the media seems to think that every tsunami and typhoon and earthquake is the worst. That's one of the reasons that I'm so fascinated with the pandemic of 1918. Can we learn anything at all from the past disasters? I'm inclined to think so. I don't mean by way of planning ahead or anything like that, although we did learn an awful lot about construction techniques, and fire safety codes, and that sort of thing. I'm talking about the human spirit and how we survive these events. How do we pick up the pieces of our lives and go on? How do we rebuild?

My Boy could be killed at any time. He is in a government-declared combat zone. The odds are that given his occupation and vicinity, that he'll come home safely to me. He could also be blown to kingdom come without much warning and the first I'll know of it will be a knock on the door. He could also be hit by a bus crossing the street. I wouldn't stop existing. I would want to stop existing, but I wouldn't. I have a child to care for, I have a life to continue. These are the lessons that I'm taking from history. This is how I go on. Just like every sailor's wife that ever lived. Wartime or peacetime, there are a thousand things that can go wrong out there. Instead of walking the shore looking out to sea I pace along our windows and look up to the stars. I check my email a dozen times a day. I'm online from the minute I wake up to the last second before I go to sleep at night. And I go on.

Recipe for Yumminess

Today I was a bit stumped over what to eat, but I knew I'd better figure it out before the child drove me nutty. So I defrosted a couple chicken breasts, sliced them into strips, plopped them into an oven bag, and added 1 can cream of mushroom soup, 1 can of mushrooms (pureed in the food processor), some minced onion and garlic, half a cup of white wine, and slow cooked it for two hours. Then I poured it out into a baking dish, and mixed in a cup of sour cream. Yum. Oh My God Yum.

Later on I'll bake some rice or couscous, and use it as a base since there's a lot of sauce. But oh so yummy. I could probably drink the sauce whole right now cause it's so yummy.

Sailor's Wife's Lament

Stand by my window
stars tonight shine on me
on my love so far away
cold, here, no arms hold me
when I wake I’m still alone surrounded by families
all I can see are mommies and daddies
all I can see is the babies sitting
on their father’s laps
laughing in the sun
my daughter is loved
has a mother trying to fill the gap
how do I keep smiling when my heart breaks?
how will I tell her when she learns how to ask?
when the sea is cruel and wide
it lays between me and my heart

Moo

My daughter is chewing on the handle of her umbrella stroller, having just managed to pull it out into the center of the floor. This, combined with the yarn strewn out and around the chair, almost convince me that yes indeed I have given birth to a small cat. At least a mammal. This definately goes along with the Holy Crap I'm a Mammal thoughts of last summer. Why? Moms already know this one. It's a mystical feeling that comes with lactation, even though I never managed to breastfeed. ...and yet I pumped so technically we fall into this gray area wherein she was breastfed for the first couple of months but I never nursed.

Lactation. It's not just for milk cows anymore. It's for mammals.

There are days when I don't know what the hell I was thinking, waiting as long as we did to have this child. Then there are the days I remember, oh yeah, we wanted to wait until we had insurance to pay for said child. And the job stability for the Boy so that we could afford to have me stay home with her. And the insurance so that we could afford to take care of all of us. I guess in the long run the timing was just about perfect. As I cuddled with the kidlet this morning, I nestled her baby sweet head under my chin and felt that warm rush of love through my body. Yup. I want another. I wanted to race to the computer and tell the Boy that he has to give me another baby just like this one. Twice the love. Twice the cuddle. Yes, and three times the fatigue, fights, laundry, all around workload. But for those cuddle moments I could see it happen. For the promise of that I'd do it all over again.

So, soon. I guess. Maybe. I don't know. I have to have the Boy back home again first. Watching A Baby Story on TLC is not exactly helping matters, either. The only cure for this is time. Perhaps toddlerhood. I hope. Wish I could shake this baby fever, at least for now, because it would be crazy to have another one right now.

Our playdate this morning went well. Despite the part about how she needed a nap because I'm a mean mama and won't let her sleep. This is the hard part about shifting her sleep cycle two hours- to keep her up just a little later every night so that she wakes up just a little later every morning and naps in the afternoon after lunch and not before. Is this for my convenience? Not as much as it's going to help her self-soothe. Which is going to help her learn limits. Which, in the long run, is going to give us a mother-child foundation of Who's the Mama. It'll give me self-confidence in setting the rules, and give her limits to her world and if she learns that Mama won't let her go to bed at 4 and wake up 12 hours later to play then it may just be easier to keep her from playing in traffic or running with scissors. I hold out no hope that it will convince her potatoes are not a vegetable, or that she really can put the book down before she gets to the end of the next chapter.

That's genetic. It's not teachable. But I have hope that I'll not lose the parenting struggle at this point.

Sleep and My Baby

Last night I tried the Ferber method. This, as defined by me, is subtly different than that recommended by the actual experts, and for the delight of my audience I'll let you in on the secret.

1. Put Baby to bed. After five minutes of fussing, check and console. After ten minutes of fussing, check and console. After fifteen, remove child from crib, rock gently and sing while giving her a bottle.

2. Congratulations for getting the babe to sleep by 7pm, the targeted goal.

3. 9pm. The babe awakens. She's pissed. Go in, try to check and console. After the first check, cave in and go get her, rock her gently.

4. She's not sleepy. Eyes are wide awake, and she is horribly fussy. Flip through the channels on the tv, trying to find something that will keep you awake and calm the child.

5. Meet the Fockers comes on. As soon as that little blond kid appears, she quiets. Watches the movie in fascination, and goes quietly to sleep when I lay her in the crib at the movie's end.

Give me my Daily Dooce!

I'm all relieved now, cause I just read some new dooce. I've had her site minimized in my browser all day, obsessively hitting refresh every ten minutes, jiggling with impatience while the site reloaded, crying a little every time it was the old post. But now my body sings with the rush, like a hit of meth. She's that good. Really.

Dooce has saved my sanity as a SAHM many, many times over the past year. I'm never going to meet her, I'm never going to add her to my email-pal list, or ever get any sort of acknowledgement from the Dooce. Yet her blog has saved my sanity and helped me remember why I want to save my life. On those dark nights before I was able to go into the Nursery and see the KittyCat and say, "this is the reason. This is worth it. This is why I've got to keep my shit together." I would read Dooce into the dark hours. Through the insomnia between nighttime wakings, between bottles and diapers and colicky crying, I read Dooce. And it distracted me enough to not cut myself, made me laugh so I forgot about wanting to kill myself. Cause I did think about it. A lot. Sometimes when I'm having a Black day I still do. The difference is between wanting to and doing anything about it. A lot of people don't get that. Still, there it is.

Today the KittyCat and I were at the park before the library opened, and we had a Learning Experience. On one of the other benches were sitting two special needs adults and their caregiver, as well as another special needs adult in a wheelchair. From looking, and I realize that's a lousy way to label a person, they had down's syndrome. I know from my mother and her friends that one thing that such people really love are small children. I could hear them excitedly point it out to each other as we walked up and sat there. So I carefully took my daughter's hands and when we took our practice walk I walked her over to them to say hello. They were thrilled. Tiffany was thrilled. My mother, when I told her about this over the phone later, was thrilled. She told me how proud she was of me.

I'm more proud of my baby girl. She's so loving and open and accepting at this point. I want to nurture this. I want to keep her this way forever. I never want her to know about prejudice or the fear that many people have towards those with special needs. It's not contagious. It's really not. They're as much people as she is. They just don't have the capacity to process as easily as she'll be able to some day.

Give me my girl, and give me a daily shot of Dooce, and I know that we'll cruise through the next couple of years just fine.

I've got to sleeptrain this child, before it gets any harder. She's a real gem. Real stubborn. Cute as a button and twice as cuddly as a kitten. And she's got a set of lungs that really work well... sigh. Maybe this phase won't last long and I'll be able to teach her to self-soothe pretty quickly. Like, say, in a week. I don't have much hope of that, though. I take some comfort in that she's just like I was as a baby this age- which means that what worked on me will likely work on her fairly effectively. It's saved me oodles of fussing already. I miss my Boy, and I want to stop time while he's gone so that he won't miss any of this. The joy I get out of watching her stand up, the thrill of cruising the furniture, it's just making my heart sing every day.

Product of the Day

Banana Flavored Crunchy Baby Bits. Formally known as Gerber Fruit Puffs. Baby loves them. Mommy loves them. It's a good thing.

Snack of the Day

Item: One single-serve packet of cream cheese, from Costco
Item: One handful of wheat thins
Item not currently available, but which would set this off perfectly: grapes, strawberries, or any finger-fruit.

I'm eating this for breakfast today. It's portable, munchable, and I absolutely adore those little cream cheese packets. Since they're single serving, I don't have to guesstimate how much I'm eating. I can indulge my love for this item without trying to use it all up before the container grows a science project. And since my cream cheese cravings seem to come and go without much warning, I feel that's the best "Cents" of all.

I must have been extra good this week. My daughter not only allowed me to sit through an entire church service, but she happily went back into the nursery so that I could attend Rector's Forum afterwards. The topic was the Anglican Communion. I did learn several things:

the major problems affecting us today seem to have started 40 years ago, when heresy was permitted in the American Episcopal Church. Homosexuality, despite the media frenzy, is really a minor point in the entire issue. And in America, it seems, you don't actually have to follow the accepted doctrine of the Anglican Church or preach the gospel, as long as your Bishop looks the other way.

I'm not sure about my own personal views of these things. It's complicated. And highly personal. And although this blog is, by nature, a personal forum, I don't feel that I should share my views just yet. This is the sort of thing that has to be considered carefully before I decide anything out loud. This is the sort of thing that causes heresy and schisms and religious wars and Hallmark Holidays which are the only thing a community can agree to hold sacred. But as soon as I figure this out, and maybe sleep on it, I'll be sure to post all about it.

Springtime is just about over. Or it already is. This is the first weekend of the summer, Memorial Day weekend, and I'm going to spend it alone with 1/3 of my family unit. Or is that 2/3? Either way, the Boy won't be here. I miss him. Do not mistake me, I am glad that he is doing something worthwhile, but some days I wish that he were here instead. Tucked up next to me at night. Greeting our daughter in the morning with a "Helloooooo! Good Morning, Baby Girl!" And that would be great.

Soon, no more than another 2 and a half months. 9 weeks. Give or take. And I'm looking forward to that first day back together as a family with him. I want him HOME.

I feel so dirty this morning, as I sit here basking in a little downtime while my daughter rolls around on the floor babbling and giggling while watching Barney. I always said that I'd never resort to Barney. Well, that didn't take into account the difficulty of loading a dishwasher without a small toddler trying to climb into said dishwasher. I rest my case. Barney is definately the lesser of two evils when it comes to not having a screaming child clinging to my legs, climbing into the dishwasher, pulling out all the dirty silverware, and then losing her grip and falling down to hit her head on the cabinet doors and go BOOM.

The groceries will come this morning because last night they had some sort of issue with the delivery van and/or the PM shift. Which in real terms probably means that the delivery guy never showed up, or the truck broke down, or something similar. The customer service manager called me at the end of my delivery window, and apologized for the inconvenience, and they'll come by this morning. I get a credit to my account for being so understanding. I could almost hear a giant wave of relief in his voice when he realized that there was still a smile in my voice and that I wasn't going to give them a hard time or demand explanations or cancel the order or any of the usual asshat things that irate customers often do. He was very happy about it. I can only imagine the yelling that occurred before he called me, because most of the people expecting deliveries last night probably called ten minutes before the close of the window. And I got the call at quarter after. So.

As a mother I have resigned myself to being a jungle gym. I'm some sort of baby furniture, that does tricks, and exists solely for her amusement. And to change poopy diapers. This isn't going to change today. My mission- to wear this child out enough that she both takes her nap and goes to bed on time without a complaint. I don't know if I'm going to be up to it.

This morning I was talking to my mother about birthdays, and my birthday which is coming up in two weeks, and I mentioned that I just can't believe I'm going to turn 29. Because I've been 29 this whole past year. And then I reminded her that every time I need to put down my age for something I either have to do math or call her to ask. I can't be the only person in the world like this.

Age used to be so important to me. Once I hit 22, though, I stopped paying attention. There were always more important things to deal with, to do, and I was finally old enough to be legal to do all of them. So. I'm going to turn 29 again this year. I can deal with that. I just don't know if I can deal with having it come up so quickly.

Since Tiffany came home from the NICU, life has been surreal around here. Days blur together. Holidays are only noted by the commercials I see on tv. Weekends? Who knows about weekends? I only could keep track of the days of the week because of my appointment book. Now that's calmed down a bit I have so much more motivation to get off my ass and really be a Mommy. There was only one appointment in my book all this past week. And she came to the house. I love it. I love it so much that I changed the sheets on my bed and made it. I love it so much that I'm having groceries delivered tonight for the entire next month, minus milk and bread. This is going to be wonderful. When I wake up tomorrow all I have to do is play with my daughter in the sunshine. Same for Sunday. Same for Monday. I could cry, I'm so happy about that.

I have a theory that babies are an intermediary stage between pets and people. If not, then why is the baby section of the supermarket usually right across from the pet food? Why else do they make a special “baby food” that resembles something between the two? Maybe they’re really like chia pets. Chia Baby! Sprinkle with water, and wait a few weeks, and it’ll turn into a toddler.

Like this theory you can safely assume that my brains are a little scrambled at the moment. Lulled into a false sense of security by the full night's sleep I got yesterday, and the now worn out sleepy toddler in her crib. I should be sewing on the machine, finishing some blankies and a sundress I cut out yesterday, or cleaning the kitchen. I'm not. I'm sitting here watching a movie and knitting instead.

Who knows? I don't. Tomorrow the Early Intervention team is coming back out to work with us, and I have to get ready for that. I have a bundle of questions to ask about nutrition, feeding, parenting in general... And I should vacuum so that the house looks a bit neater before they get here. I also need to clean my fridge again. It looks like the Blob That Swallowed Hoboken is ready to muster forces and take over the entire bottom shelf.

post-it notes are where it's at. I really mean it. Without them I'd be so screwed, and not in that fun way. Right now I've got about five of them scattered over and under my laptop. All in various stages of coherency, and all but one I don't really need anymore. Plus, my computer's thinking things over a bit too hard, and at the moment I can only see about five words of what I'm typing at a time. Which makes the touch typing that I learned in grade school oh, so, appropriate now.

My cousin and his wife are having a baby. I'm so happy for them. Even though she's made it further than I ever got, I'm really glad for them. And ok, just a bit jealous at times. This is not helping the baby fever that I've got this week. Did it ever really end? I want to do it again. Soon. And this time I want to look pregnant, dammit. If I'm going to be sick, I want visible proof other than the pea-soup green face. But regardless of that, good luck you two! I wish you all the luck in the world. Be safe. To take somebody else's words, "don't be scared. I know you can do this." It's a scary and wonderful feeling to see that new parent bracelet on your arm. You'll never forget it.

A Shocking Experience

Who knew that motherhood was so dangerous? Some sort of freak power surge just happened in one of the living room lamps. The bulb exploded. And the lamp base was all tingly. Which was odd, since it was wood. Clean up! Clean up by the couch! Fortunately, this sort of thing was covered in home ec during my senior year in high school as well as in elementary chemistry. Pity they didn't cover what to do with wiggly hypercurious toddlers.

Who knows the stubbornness that lays in the heart of Toddlers?

TIFFANY!

She knows. God, does she know. In the past ten minutes she has undergone contortions that would make a circus performer or a stripper blush, in an attempt to go around the desk, behind the chair, behind the other chair, and back to the side of the recliner where she started. And then we go BOOM again.

There was glory in the BOOM. There was blood, there was sweat, there were even tears. Oh, and she was upset too. I thought at first she had just done the fall like most of the others she's done in the past week. I picked her up, cuddled her, and then I saw the blood. Oy, the blood. It should not be possible for my heart to stop like that. I've lost track of the times I've seen blood. Myself, other people's. And I can cope just fine. But this is my BABY. Bleeding. Like any mother of the animal kingdom I put my nose about two inches from her body, examining every inch of her with a forensic scrutiny that CSI would be proud of. What happened is, she bit her lip. And it bled. Not much, not badly, but yet- my baby got hurt.

Not that she knows it now. She's on a determined exploration of the linen cupboard. I'm so thankful that I stacked the linens all on the bottom. Because that's one cupboard that I don't get afraid that she's going to get into mischief with, what with the opening and closing of the door. This might be more fun than standing up.

I need to grow up. I just lost it. I'm extremely PISSED at the Boy right now, and I can't even put it into words. All I can do is blither on about nothing. It's possible that it's not even him that I'm mad at- he's just the most convenient target.

This morning I found that I can't hold a conversation without bringing up the KittyCat. I can't go for more than five minutes without bringing her prematurity or my false teeth into the spotlight. I proudly declare that she was 9 weeks early. That she weighed 2 and a half pounds. That I have false teeth on both the top and the bottom, and that the dentist who did it was a genius. So I guess that I'm mad at myself for turning into this person. I used to read the news obsessively, and I could discuss most things with the Boy. I could talk about intelligent, grownup type things. Now I can't talk about anything but the baby. I'm not his wife anymore, I'm the nanny. Just a glorified executive assistant, sending him reports and pictures every day. And I'm tired of it. I'm just wishing that I was still more than that.

someday. I'll figure everything out, and then there's going to be no stopping me. Today went really well. I got my bloodwork done. I got to play with the kid, the Light of my Life. I had the strength to do some housework afterwards, and I'm actually working some more on the blankie for Simi's baby. Which will be a girl. Who will be about as cute as my Munchkin, and hopefully more patient about getting here.

I'm definately going to bed with a good book tonight. I just hope that I can slow down my thoughts enough to go to sleep.

This afternoon has been, I'm afraid, a wash. We've spent most of it in bed, and now she's awake and groggy, crawling around with her Spoon. I'm awake and groggy and aware of what time it is, playing on the 'Net. This is alright, so far. While I was laying in bed feeding her a bottle for naptime I had this long post composed in the back of my brain. It was very effective, very well-done. And I'm a bit upset that I've forgotten most of it now. Hopefully it'll come back soon, and then I'll post it. In the meantime, the child is still the light of my life. Even though she just spit up on the rug. Somehow I know that I'll never see our security deposit again. I'm okay with that.

It's hard to wonder why I'm so eager for another baby. That baby-head smell. That chubby little pink body wriggling away from the diaper as fast as she can move. Those cute little dimples on the backs of her knees. I remember the wrinkled spider monkey that I delivered a year ago, who was hooked up to tubes and wires and PICC lines and IVs and all of that... and I wonder, why do I want to do this again?
Why would I inflict the sickness of pregnancy on my body again? Why would I want to do the depression, that awful PPD, those long nights that scared the everliving shit out of my friends? Why do I want to see my husband have to suffer through that again?
I wish I had an answer. I really do. But I don't. I keep telling myself to be patient and grateful for what I've got. There's no telling how complicated the next child would be, or what we'd end up with, and I do have a painful awareness of exactly how lucky we were to have a 31weeker with no complications or developmental delays. Fetal distress, brachys, and my seizure risks at the end non-withstanding. There has been one very painful moment when the Boy was a bit intoxicated when he clutched me close, buried his head in my shoulder, and said that he was afraid that he'd lose both me and the baby that last night, and he couldn't see how he could go on without us. That without me he'd be dead in a ditch downtown, with no reason to go on. That's harsh. I feel the same way about him, sometimes. I know, though, that he'd manage to go on if I passed on and he had the KittyCat to care for. Not that I'm about to let him risk that. So I guess I'm not goin

One more hour before I can pack us in the car and go off to the doctors. One more hour before I can leave, which will allow me to park the car and not feel ungodly early. Where the definition of ungodly early is two and a half hours before the appointment. Maybe that would get them to agree that I'm serious about this whole thing? To be candidly painfully honest, I don't really expect them to find anything wrong with me this time either. I've just about given up, in my deepest heart, on ever feeling stronger and ever having the strength to get up off the floor and do housework or play with my baby girl in the sunshine. It's the hope that maybe this time they'll find out what's wrong with me that keeps me going back. Hope, that one day I won't be exhausted. That I'll have some of my old pep back.

Mount WashMore has exploded in a giant lava flow of dirty underwear. I don't even have the heart to wash it out by hand and iron it dry this week, and so I took advantage of the fluff n fold service at the laundromat. This marks the second occassion in my life that I've given in to this exhaustion in such a manner. I know that realistically, there's nothing wrong with it, that it's a smart move, but my thrifty ancestors are turning over in their graves. What has the bloodline come to, that a daughter of the line is Sending Out the Washing? Willing to pay a premium to make it go away. Willing to cough up the cash, so that the energy I have can be spent doing better things. Worthier things. Like taking care of my daughter.

And that's another thing I'm struggling with a lot lately. She's growing up. Really, truly, growing up. She's not my preemie anymore. She's a big girl, with a personality, and yesterday we had the first real experience of Why Don't I Just Weld You To My Hip And Be Done With It? For a few hours in the morning every time I set her down it felt like the world would end, with the screaming and wailing and gnashing of her tiny little teeth.

I'm just praying that maybe today I'll have an answer. Maybe today I'll have some more hope.

Several months ago I found that a full night's uninterrupted sleep was better than mindblowing orgasms. Today I discovered that a sandwich can feel almost the same way, when it's eaten after a two hour nap and when the blood sugar headache goes away.

still tired. I can't believe that I'm still tired. I've done nothing but rest all night, and now I've been awake all of an hour and I'm still tired; if I could I'd lay down flat on the floor and pull a blanket over me and stare at the ceiling trying to get some rest.

I can't believe that this is all just depression. I can't believe the docs don't believe there's anything wrong with me. I need something else. I need an answer. I need to feel better soon.

Another day, another screaming fit, another call from social workers who want to help me. There are worse things. I could be having nobody call wanting to help. I could be sitting here with a screaming feverish baby all alone and depressed.

Oh, and I've got no strength today either. Zilch. Nada. It finally got me off my ass to make that followup appt about my blood sugar. Hey, this could be good news? Whatever. I'm just not feeling very perky today. Wish I could hear from the Boy. That would make me feel better.
... and Hi Simi!!!!.... glad to know you've been following along! Hope your bun continues growing on schedule!

'kay

Okay. I'm calm again. My composure has been returned, slightly the worse for wear. KittyCat is asleep in her crib, completely worn out by today's Events. Actually, 'Events' seems far too tame a word. Let's call it, oh, I don't know, GREAT HONKING FLIPPING INSANITY CIRCUS?

Perspective is a good thing. A lot of preemies don't do this well at their one year checkup. I need to stay focused on the good stuff and not the bad. I sure as hell don't need to think about why I was a soggy heap of Mommy-Puddle when the pediatrician walked into the examining room. My only explanation to her? I'm just tired today.

Tired also doesn't quite describe the feeling. Tired is something you feel after PRT. Tired is something that covers the morning after the night before. Tired is for wimps. I've been tired now for just about eighteen months. I sleep, and it does do me some good, but never enough. I rest, and that also never does enough. Exercise doesn't help. Nutrition changes don't help. I have tried everything the docs tell me, I've upped my antidepressant. It doesn't help. And when KittyCat decides to throw her weight around, I get strung even tighter.

It's hard to believe that a person that small can have this big an impact. She's just now figuring out how to whimper and wail to express her Royal Displeasure over not getting her way. Add to that her natural distaste for medical procedures, and that was how my morning was going. Plus the crying. Then we get to the actual part of the exam where she had the blood tests and the vaccinations. Turns out that she has her Mommy's veins. Hard to find, buried deep, and when the needle gets there the vein isn't where it's supposed to be. Then we have to find the vein. Then we have to keep the needle in the vein. Then we have to not blow out the vein. She's got little bruises all over her elbow and legs from this- big bruise from the bloodwork and little bruised vampire bites where the shots went in. After that, a nap just wasn't happening. I finally got her to bed about an hour ago. Now I have a nice cup of vanilla tea.

I wish it were stronger. With a little paper umbrella in it, and chunks of fruit. On toothpicks.

I guess I have some stuff to be proud of though. She's not anemic, despite no iron supplements. The doc says she doesn't have to go back on the prilosec. Even though her weight is still falling behind the curve, her length is at 50%. She's bright, and normally happy, and very active. Not shabby for a 31weeker. Not shabby for a mostly-single-due-to-the-military mommy.

I try to be patient, and understanding, and embrace the myth of the Super Mommy. For all the trying, there are still days when I want to stamp my foot up and down and scream at the top of my lungs.

I guess I was expecting a Hallmark Moment today. I didn't get one. I feel like crap, my head hurts, I feel guilty for expecting an email message from my husband telling me happy mother's day. I feel guiltier because there's a cute little girl asleep in the next room who reminds me of her daddy and I should just be happy that she's alive and doing so well. Why can't I be happy with the reality of it? Why do I want some sort of mushy sentiment? A hug?

Most of the other women I know would be extremely pissed right now. Not me. I wonder what I did to deserve being forgotten.

how stupid is this? I'm getting all ready to wake up in a snit because I didn't get a Happy Mother's Day well-wishing from the boy. Maybe he fell down the p-way and broke a leg or something, thus preventing him from giving me an email. My whole life I laughed at the women who seemed to revolve their entire lives around such hallmark holidays. The ones who got depressed and pissed without a card or a box of candy, or some other special mark of the day.

This Mother's Day is our second since becoming parents. Last year it was bittersweet, and my girl was still so fragile that she could only come out of her warming bed for five minutes at most. But my first mother's day seemed special like the day I was a bride. I was slightly off center stage, the supporting actress, and everybody was wishing me well. Especially given the circumstances.

He's not going to remember mother's day. I won't get any acknowledgement of it from him. Because it's just not going to occur to him to do anything about it.

One year perspective

I found my child
At the end of a long cold sleep
I woke to a polaroid picture
my husband, grinning from ear to ear
as he says-
"She's perfect"
"She could fit in my hand"
At the end of a long weekend I managed to go down the hall
to find my daughter in an isolette
You couldn't even breathe on your own
I found my child
spent weeks learning you
what you looked like, what you sounded like
how you held my finger with your fist
I found you
pumping milk day after day
no more milk but the child grows
Our daughter thrives
as the baby fat swelled your skin and made dimples rise
we brought you home
loved you
cuddled you
held you in the darkness of the night
those first nights, when none of us slept
we found you
where you had always been
in our hearts

Today I started to notice that she really has a mind of her own. With desires, wants, and objectives that may have nothing to do with what mommy wants. Case in point, I was at the market with her earlier today and she tried her best to touch every piece of produce she could. She couldn't. Mommy was mean. And every time her will was thwarted, she started to fuss and whimper. This evening that has grown to full-out protest. She does not want to do what mama wants her to do. And I'm tired. At least her sniffles seem to be clearing up.

twitch. Twitch. I feel like the little squirrel on Ice Age, twitching from nerves and stress while unable to relax enough to sleep. My guts are twisted up in knots, my stomach hurts. I wish that the kidlet would take her nap so that I can take a nap of my own. Maybe later. I hope.

Bread is baking. I realize that bread won't cure all my problems, but it'll make me feel better. And with luck, it'll provide spiritual nourishment as well as feeding my body.

Nothing compares to the feeling that suctioning half an ounce of yellow chunky snot out of your toddler's nose gives a person. This, truly, is motherhood. And why, I ask myself, do I never think about suctioning my own nose when I'm that painfully congested? It's certainly faster than trying to blow, blow, blow it out.

huh. so I guess by now everyone's heard that I lost the baby and gained a toddler?

The past two days have been a real test of my nerves in this respect. And my stamina. I've never felt so tired. Not this month, anyway. And I'm thinking longingly of my bed even at this ungodly hour of the morning. Later on I'll get ambitious. Later on, I'll do stuff, like get dressed and put my contacts in and go to the park. Just let me enjoy this morning while I've got it, and my toddler while she's still a heavy armful of warm sweet-smelling baby in my arms when she sucks back on a morning smoothie.

According to my site statistics, either my readership has tripled in the past couple of days, or simi's very bored... Honestly, I have no clue which it is.

I recently picked up a copy of the No Cry Sleep Solution. We'll see if it works, I'm hoping mainly to get some tips from it to help me with the KittyCat and her lack of desire for bedtime. Or the I'm Not Sleepy stage... We had a lot of fun at the library this afternoon. After we picked out some books, we sat on the grass in the little park outside and I spent a fascinating few minutes watching her watch bugs. Then she needed to individually pick up stalks of grass. Then we had a discussion about the things that Mommy wants her to put into her mouth. I have the feeling that 'nutritive value' is a phrase that's going to come back and haunt me in later years.

Sitting here in a pretty pink cami, and I'm thrilled beyond belief that I managed to take a shower today. Who knew? I must be some sort of motherly miracle in the flesh, cause I managed to take a shower, wash my hair, and rinse out a week's worth of underwear in the sink so I can avoid a trip to the laundromat before Friday. Yes, I occasionally get desparate enough to hand-launder my underwear. The sucky thing is that I don't have a drying rack anymore, and the bathroom in our apartment has no windows. If I expect the stuff to dry before Thursday I'm going to have to move ahead to my next trick- which is almost as bad as hand-laundering underwear. Heat will dry most wet clothing. An old trick is to iron it. My mother used to tell me about hanging out the laundry to dry in the winter, and while this might at first seem like just another walking through the snow for five miles barefoot to get to school story, it also smacks of good old practicality. You need to launder. You need to get the wet stuff dry. It's going to drip and mostly dry in the cold air outside over the course of the day, but come nightfall the residual moisture is going to freeze. It's still getting the wet out of the clothing. The trick is to smack it sharply against your knee, bring it in, and iron it all right away. On the bright side, that way doesn't require starch.

Well, off to iron my panties. Then I'm going to curl up and go to sleep. My Sister-in-law arrives tomorrow afternoon, so that's going to be a real treat.

I finally got around to getting a decent picture of the beaded necklaces I've made and posting them over on Etsy. More to follow, if these are successful!

another bedtime has been achieved, Momma has another anxiety attack, and needs to stop singing patriotic songs from the era of the Civil War. Even though they're sad and slow and perfect for lullabies. They make her cry, and that's not good when she's putting the baby to bed.

Curling up in bed now with tea and Blue Collar Comedy. Maybe I'll read during the commercials. Maybe I'll try to get some sleep myself. Tomorrow will be brighter, tomorrow the sun will shine just a little bit more in a bluer sky. That's what I tell myself. Someday it'll come true.

Things to Do with Pork

It's the other white meat. No, not *that*. I mean a real pork roast. I had one stashed away in the freezer and I finally cooked it up last night. Today we're running some more wierd science/cooking experiments in my kitchen and I thought I'd share the results with y'all.

For starters, the pork roast was easy-peasy to make. Take one roast, remove the plastic wrap and butcher's packaging. Place in crockpot. Take one bottle barbecue sauce, any type. Pour the entire bottle over the roast, put on the lid, and leave it alone for the rest of the day.

I whipped up some bread to go with the meal. It occurred to me that adding some herbs to it would make one of those cool deli-like breads, that are usually way too yummy not to spend the money on. To my basic Milk Bread recipe (from the Joy of Cooking) I added two tsp Mrs Dash. An instant herb/garlic blend with no added salt or yuckiness. That was also a resounding success. One loaf on the table, one loaf put aside for a drive-by breading. I just got a call from the victims of my drive-by; it seems that the loaf is now completely gone. Cool.

And for lunch today, I diced up some of that pork, put in a can of drained carrots, a can of chicken noodle soup, some steamed celery... and it's one of the more delicious things I've eaten this week. With the advantage of knowing that it's healthy for me! Now, there's a success if ever I saw one.

Before this morning, I never really considered the amusement factor of a silicon nipple. I should have payed more attention when the Boy was trying to teach me about p0rn, I guess, cause it just didn't occur to me that any person could be fascinated by one. The Munchkin's been playing with this object for the past two hours. Crawl around, suck, chew thoughtfully, crawl around some more, bang her chubby knees against the carpet, remove the nipple to eat a veggie puff, and then chew thoughtfully on the nipple some more.

Why is this?

And, why is my mind so thoroughly in the gutter this morning? I heard from the Boy. He said that his mouse just died. Immediately I decided to take the dirtiest possible conotation of this- mind you, my mind isn't really that dirty compared to some of the other people I know. Maybe it's just hormones. Hormone Terrorists. With little tampon-shaped dart guns.

One of my good friends is getting to be very pregnant. This is opposed to being only Slightly Pregnant, which is like saying that she's a little knocked up. Another three months and she will graduate to the realm of Very Pregnant, which is also commonly referred to as the Beached Whale Phenomenom. I say this out of love, hon. It's not a slam on you, it's just a Female Thing. Even those women lucky enough not to bloat on a lunar cycle have discovered that there is a day when you feel so big and bloated and fat and icky that you honestly expect a knock on the door from Greenpeace to drag you back to the ocean. This is obviously a disadvantage of living so near SeaWorld.

I've really been able to commiserate with my inner hormonal terrorist, since this week I'm doing the Fake Morning Sickness thing. For those of you lucky enough to have never heard of it, it's a thing I do a couple times a year. It's all the fun and excitement of morning sickness without the baby. Lucky for me it only lasts a week, and this was once a source of some consternation when I was first dating the Boy. "Are you *sure*?" some people would ask me. Uh, yeah. I'm sure. As I found out a while back, the fake stuff really did make it easier for me to have the real thing. Kinda like training for the Olympics of Nausea. Certainly easier than watching Martha Stewart Living nonstop for three weeks. However, one of the neat things I discovered at that PARADISE is ginger tea. Which I'd heard about before, only I'd never done anything about it. I'm here to report that I've only puked once this morning, and I haven't tossed up my breakfast yet. Or my pill cocktail. Which is making my emotional side extremely happy.

This morning was so neat. I tucked Kitty up in her highchair, and I scrambled some eggs with cream cheese and a tad of minced onion. She had two wagon wheel cookies and a scrambled egg, all mixed up on her tray, and fed herself most of it. I didn't want to push her, though. Already this is amazing. I know, a lot of other babies are doing this by now. But this is *my* baby. This is the only one that counts to me.

Once again I gotta say that I Heart Online Grocery Shopping. It arrives at my door, with a smile, and is carried into my kitchen. All I have to do is put it away after that. With a squirmy little girl, this is really the way to do it. Especially since I'm on my own with her right now. And even more especially because I've got little girly arms and absolutely zilch by way of upper body strength.

I also Heart my sister-in-law Debbie. She turned me onto a tea store, which is kinda like a little slice of paradise. It takes me back to my youth and a little hole in the wall shop called the Spice Smuggler. They sold loose teas and spices by the ounce, and other odds and ends that dealt with hard-to-find specialty items. Like clotted cream. Like Cream Tea. Like every kind of tea strainer imaginable. I probably spent too much money on that stuff while I was visiting the inlaws, and I don't care because of that. It's just that good. You can visit this awesome place HERE. With luck I'll make the money back on earrings, which I'm working on tonight. Will let everybody know when I get to posting the pics on my Etsy site, and why don't you settle down for the evening with a good book and a cup of tea?

Wierd Science

Heating carrots in the microwave is good.

Superheating carrots in the microwave is bad, and will make chicken noodle dinner go in interesting directions, as well as the Big Orange Thing That Swallowed Hoboken.

rain

Entering the third straight day of grey skies and rain here in NY, and I'm fighting the Blackness again. Just moods, y'know. I tell myself that it's just the chemical imbalancing in my brain, and that the Boy's so far away, and sometimes it helps. My dreams are haunted this week for no good reason that I can tell.

On the plus side of the equation (you knew there had to be one) my Boy called today and left a message on my MILs answering machine. And I might get to talk to him tomorrow. Tiffy's laughing and giggling and dancing on my feet when I hold her hands, and she's the cutest baby on the planet (still). She's nearly a year old; it's not possible cause it sure hasn't been that long since she was born. A year ago. Doesn't time play tricks on a person?

I'm still tired. Still waiting. The sun will come out tomorrow.
Or else I'm going to go quite noisily mad with a large crochet hook and several pounds of beige yarn...

Soon. I'm going to get on a plane tonight and see my BABY again. Can barely contain my glee. This tempers out the other point of not being able to talk to my Boy for the next two weeks. It's going to be hard. But I shall persevere. I must. I will. And then I'll be home again and we'll burn up the 'Net with tons of messages.

At some point today I'm going to get motivated. I will finish putting away the clean dishes, I will sew the stack of flannel NICU blankies that I cut out this afternoon, and I will get around to painting my nails. Tomorrow I'm going to stop at Long's and possibly Ralph's on the way home from therapy. Then I'm going to get around to getting ready to leave town for another two weeks. I won't have 'Net access at all during that time, and I'm going to have to live with that somehow.

It's going to be easier because I'll see my Baby again. I'm looking forward to it. A lot.

I don't know if it's the rain or the company that I'm expecting tonight, but I'm cleaning up. Making this place look presentable again. I'm trying not to look at the crib, because if I do then I'll go into the nursery and look down at the empty place where my baby girl likes to snuggle. And then I'll get all sad and depressed again. She'll be back in my arms soon, and then I'm never going to let her go again.

It rained. At the moment I'm sitting in a darkened room, with just the light of my desklamp to fight back the shadows. Wet, damp, shadows. With a murky quality to them. I don't like the rain much at the moment, can you tell? The depression has been enough of a bitch to fight off this week, I don't need this.

I started the pot roast just before I sat back down at the computer. The reasoning: because the way I'm cooking it, with seasonings, marinade, and method of slow-cooking, I have no idea how this is going to turn out in the end. And if I need to consign it to the Great Trash Can in the Sky, then I'll still have time to make something else yummy for Simi.

Last night I curled up in bed and ended up reading the three books of the Bromeliad by Terry Pratchett. Truckers, Diggers, and Wings. It was better than I expected, given the cover. A good example of Pratchett's work. After thus distracting my waking mind, I managed to get a lot of the crap out of it. Today we received the Ram Rebellion, recently released in the 1632 series by Eric Flint. This bodes well for the rest of this rainy, miserable evening. And maybe I'll make something really bad for me but good for my soul... real soul food doesn't have cholesterol, fat, sugar, or any other nasty stuff.

Costco Day

Today he gets paid. Today we have fundage, and today is the Day of Doom and Traffic at most base exchanges, commissaries, and Wal-Mart. Knowing all of this, I decided to go to Costco anyway.

Tomorrow Simi and her Mom-in-Love are coming over for dinner. I'm making pot roast. This is going to be Yummy, I promise. Tonight I get to look up all my beef recipes and figure out which marinade I'm going to soak the beef in. I also want to bake some bread later.

It's raining. Something should be Wrong about rain in Paradise, especially at this time of year. But I guess I can't complain that much- I don't have to go out in it. And I bought more of the Yummy Alfredo sauce that tastes so good on ramen. My special treat for being a good girl? I bought a big jar of Red Vines. Sortof like twizzlers, only better.

I was depressed today, so I did what I always do when I'm so depressed that I'm wandering around the apartment like a zombie. I fiddled with my computer. I cleaned up adware, spyware, checked for trojans and updated my virus settings. PC Scanned my hard drive, ran windows updates, and otherwise killed time. Spent a lot of time staring at walls and my shins, not necessarily in that order.
I did two loads of laundry. The effort of this made me stumble back to the apartment and fall face-forward across the bed. Somewhere I found the strength to pull the blankets over my head, and there I stayed until half-way through the afternoon. Then I figured that I'd better make something to eat, and since the leftovers from last night's dinner didn't really appeal to me, I rummaged through the cupboard and pulled some stuff out, threw it in a pot, and cooked it. Two bowls later, I was very sick. The combination I came up with evidently is not a good one. I've dumped it in the Great Burial Ground in the dumpster, and we will never speak of it again. I'm now cooking a pot of rice, salted and buttered, which is bland and nutritious and will sit much easier on my tummy. I still haven't put the laundry away. It's sitting in a clean heap in the hamper where I set it down before my face-plant.
Maybe I'll get the motivation to do something productive later. The day started with all these good intentions of Stuff to Do. Watch me be Productive! Betty Crocker ain't got nothing on me. Or is that Martha Stewart? Whichever, I was going to embrace my Domestic Goddess Self and let the crinolines poof around my shins. Speaking of which, I'm dreading going back to my oncologist in June. Of the many things wrong with me at this point in my life, one of them is thrombocytosis. High Platelets. Not dangerously high, or anything where they'd have to act, but I've definately got high platelets. One of the things I have to be aware of are blood clots, and another is if I suddenly start bruising more easily. So here we are. Since KittyCat came home I've been getting lots of mystery bruises on my shins- mostly from whacking the baby carrier into them walking back and forth from the car. The mystery bruises on my thigh are from either my knitting needles or, again, my Wiggly Squirmy Baby Girl. Whichever, I'm fine with. Doesn't bother me at all, except there's got to be a screening somewhere for mothers who get beat up by their babies in the process of perfectly normal playing. So tell me, how did I achieve my latest spectacular mark? On the shin, when Baby is across the country, that was so bruised it was literally dark purple at first and is only now a week later approaching "normal" yellow-green tones of a healing bruise. It wasn't small like most of my mystery bruises, either.

This Space For Rent

Today marks the start of the Great Baby Stuff Hunt. My mission: to obtain a highchair of the better quality for the least money. My first stops: the two thrift stores on Broadway between E and H streets. Unfortunately, nada. While the second one had an excellant baby and kid section, including several recent model car seats, no highchairs. I saw a tray-like object on a top shelf, and contorted my body into a position that revealed how long it's been since I shaved under my arms, but alas. It was only a Johnny-Jump-Up. Not a high chair.

I want to get my butt in gear and get this done before the KittyCat comes back home. It would be a hell of a lot easier to do this now, instead of later. Especially since she's more nosy and mobile than ever.

Last night I gave in to temptation and ordered a pizza. Not just for the garlic sauce tub, but in part because I have a Plan. A New Plan. One that will prevent me from eating nothing but pizza and aggravating my stomach into a bout of horrible gut-wrenching pains that make natural childbirth seem laughable. Uh, there's a reason that I had a c-section, folks. There's another reason, besides the breech presentation and the fact that my cervix was tighter than a nun's chastity belt, why they cut me open. And why they gave me lots and lots of Nice Drugs to help with the pain afterwards. Um, right. The Plan. I'm going to pack up about half of the pizza to freeze in nice snack-size portions. This way I'll only eat half of the pizza with it's yummy pepperoni and spicy sausage. mmmm. sausage.

I need to go and take some more prilosec now.

crouton update:
Yummy. I'm having trouble *not* eating them, since I put them in a big bowl on the table. Crunchy garlic toast bites.

Went out for lunch with Julie today. We went to the little chinese place down the road, and I indulged in honey walnut shrimp, which has got to be the closest thing to pure ambrosia since, well, since buffalo chicken strips with ranch dressing. I like the chicken strips for a little spice, I like the honey walnut shrimp because they're sweet and succulent, offset damn near perfectly by the steamed white rice. Fluffy goodness. I just can't eat it all at once or I'll make myself sick.

I've got a little bit of a headache, because I was up most of last night and did not take my no-doz this morning. This is just like a coffee addict going cold turkey for a day. My body protests, but I'm absolutely exhausted and tired of the insomnia kick that my head's been on this week. I Will Sleep Again. This is not an option. If I could only figure out how to make my body listen.

Also on the list of things I need to do: figure out why I want another baby so much. Is it me, is it my wierdness, is my husband right when he tells me that we're done reproducing or is he acting from a deeper and more deniable reason? I did some research on the long term effects of preemie parenthood this morning. I think that part of it is guilt, part of it is that mixture of insane emotions that get all shook up riding the NICU rollercoaster. Somebody stop the ride so I can get off, before I'm sick in my shoes.

Today I'm trying a new way of making garlic toasted croutons. I'll let you know how it turns out: lightly toast several slices of bread, spread with the contents of a papa-john's garlic sauce tub (readily available with any pizza, and if you're anything like me you start feeling bad about always throwing those out), cube the bread, retoast in the oven until crispy.

This costs pennies, maybe 10 cents total, as opposed to the $1.50 that a lot of stores charge for croutons. And this way you *know* what's in them, oil-wise, preservative-wise, etc.

I seem to be entering the world of the functioning depressive again.

While this is vaguely disturbing, it's nice to be able to function normally in society at the moment. I can pass for "normal". It's just when I'm alone, when the sun goes down, when the walls close in again that I find myself staring at the walls and wandering through the apartment. I have lots to do. Just no energy or desire to do any of it.

Sometimes I feel like such a big fake.

I simply must refer everyone who sees this to read today's Dooce. It makes one ponder the many unponderables of life. Can you really buy ammo with a gift card?

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.