clickmom

grateful

So. Yesterday afternoon I got a text from Josh telling me there was an early dismissal and could I pick him up at 1:15. If you think I did not immediately panic, then you don't know me, so feel free to introduce yourself. I jumped up, headed for the door, got another text from the school announcing the surprise early dismal with instructions to see the email. I paused for a moment to see the email, but it wasn't coming through so I jumped into the car and zipped the entire .3 miles to the school. (That's 3/10 of a mile incase you're reading this on a tiny little screen and missed the decimal point) Since we live to geographically convenient to the school I was one of the first parents (ok, technically, I was the 3rd) to get there. It was me and two other cars on the side of the school. There was not a school bus in sight when I pulled in. Once parked outside the side door of the school I checked my email again and the vaguely worded email from the school came through, which did not say why they were dismissing the students. It did however say something about "abundance of caution due to some information."

Seriously. SOME INFORMATION.

It also said that parents should not disrupt their dismissal by coming to the school. Oops. I was already there. 1:15 came and went and finally I heard a PA announcement that the students would remain in a "shelter in place" until further notice. I texted Josh that I would wait however long it took. What I wanted to text Josh; Don't let them shoot you, baby. I love you baby. I can't live without you. I love you.  I will put myself in the line of fire for you. I love you. Anything or anyone but you. I love you. Don't let anyone hurt you. I love you. Hide. I love you. Be smart. I love you. Be safe. I love you. Find the safest spot. I love you.  

I sat in the car and cried and texted my friends. I took a call from a friend who had been through her own daughter's "shelter in place" last week. She talked me down. She convinced me it was probably a false alarm. The longest 15 minutes went by, some of the school busses showed up and then some students were dismissed. Josh came out the side door right where I was waiting for him, slipped into the car, and I took off. I needed to get away from the school as fast as possible. Josh assured me he wasn't ever in danger, there had been no danger. I knew that he was repeating what had been relayed to him over the school's loud speakers. I began to tremble.  Josh, in an attempt to reassure me, told me he knew all the best hiding places, and I realized that he had already, before this day even happened, been planning for his own survival. It hit me hard. My kid has a strategy for survival when he's in school. That's so wrong.  So wrong. I feel sick.

In the end there was a kid who was planning something. Another kid turned him in after hearing part of his plan. Some kid from Josh's school is a hero. I wish I could tell that kid how grateful I am. 

not

The other day I wore one of my more comfortable pairs of jeans, even though I know they are not flattering due to being a bit baggy in the legs, but like I said, more comfortable, and when I pulled them off at the end of the day I saw the most dreaded sight a pants wearer can see, the ray of light which means an inner thigh total rub out, no more cloth left, hole.

So, I had this idea of writing an ode to my faithful old pair of jeans, and telling you how great they were, just enough elastic incase of a big meal, roomy legs, classy dark blue color and no phony faded areas that are somehow never quite where they would be in jeans that fit to your own normally proportioned body, etc.... 

But I'm having trouble bringing the creative. I have ideas, just not enough juice for the follow through.

The husband told me the other day that his childhood friend is coming for a visit. I have a month to make this house look like I'm not on my way to full fledged hoarder status. Except, in my own defense, we watched that hoarding show and I can happily report that I am comfortably safe from the mentality of a hoarder. I just live amongst way too much clutter. So, number one plan of attack is the kitchen, then the family room and then the formal living room, where (this is embarrassing) I unpacked some cartons after the move and just piles sitting all over the couch where we never sit anyway because a formal living room is a total waste of space, so it's all basically dusty piles of stuff that can mostly get tossed once I pull the maybe 10% of worthwhile stuff out that I want to keep. But, you know, not a hoarder.

 

Terror

 Please recall that last spring sweet pea managed to get herself skunked on four separate occasions. You should also know that on one of those occasions the husband brought her up to my bedroom let her roll on the carpet before jumping on the bed. It took six months for the stench of skunk to be indetectable in my room. 

 I noticed sweet pea going after something in the wooded area that is next to my backyard so I started to worry. And then tonight around 830 as I was driving to my house from the street I reached the corner of my property and I smelled it. One of those godforsaken creatures crawled out of its boro, fooled by this warm weather that we’re having into  thinking spring was here and it was squirting butt juice on the border of my property. Let the late night/early morning leash walking in the backyard commence. 

I cant live through a repeat last spring 

cough puking

I'm still cough puking. I came close almost daily this week, but then tonight I went all the way. 

It's so strange to cough puke. I mean, I cough, I can predict it when it's about to happen (there is a definite rhythm to the whole upper torso muscle spasms which precede the event)  so I go to a "safe" place (tonight-kitchen sink), it happens, it's not even nasty because it's fresh food and I rinse my mouth off (as well the sink and it's other contents) and I am completely fine. As opposed to the times when I puked because I was sick or had a migraine and I end up panting and gasping over the bowl praying for relief and recoiling from the scent of what satan just sent out of my mouth.

But anyway, I am pretty sure it's been three whole weeks since I ended up in the ER, and I am ready to be a non coughing person again- for real. This is bullshit.

after

 It’s been just about a year that since we found out my brother-in-law was going to die of pancreatic cancer.  That long month between when we found out what it was and my poor sweet brother-in-law actually dying changed me. I think it changed the husband too. You know, in life I remember things by markers those markers are little momentous events of my own life. Usually the markers are  The birth of my children or I don’t know maybe the year I did that first triathlon or something like that. Lately my markers are the time that the husband stopped working, the time that I found out there was something wrong with the husband’s brain, the time my brother-in-law is dying, and the summer that I found out that the husband has stage four heart failure. In some ways my life is divided into that before when things were normal when the husband went  to work every day and I didn’t have to worry about everything. I had the luxury of worrying about a lot of little things. And now I’m in the after. In the after husband doesn’t work he doesn’t do anything except sit around and be fragile and not understand how delicate he is health wise.  You mean after I am holding my breath. I’ve been holding my breath for almost 2 1/2 years now. It doesn’t get easier 

 Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and I had to bring the husband to see his kidney specialist. Everyone at the hospital told my husband he was lucky to have such a caring valentine looking out for him. Not once did the husband smile, not once did the husband agree. Husband Simply did not react. This is my after 

tiger day

I'm having a caged tiger kind of day.

I'm finally feeling more human than sick (luckily that one single vomiting from coughing incident was the only one- after the initial few days) and I had a plethora of plans to choose from for today. I could go to utopia with my false hopes (I'm just cheap) and look for Josh's long lost winter coat which he will need next week, I could have gone to costco for some stuff we are out of, I could have gone to the fancy schmancy lumber store for the ply wood with which to carve my future wood block. But then Josh started saying he felt sick last night and sure enough he was legit sick this morning.  I did make it out with sweet pea, before the rain which is coming down now, and I had a nice walk in the woods with a sweet young man who owns one of my favorite of sweet pea's playmates, but now I am feeling tied to the house, due to sick Josh, who requires nothing more than liquids and fever monitoring, and the husband, who would not be capable of fever monitoring and liquid providing, and has his own special needs, as in fall prevention and won't feed himself unless there is a box of something that does not require any preparation already sitting out on the kitchen island. Seriously, folks, when I don't want him to snarf something down all I have to do is put it into a cabinet. It's like it doesn't even exist when there is a door in front of it.

Don't worry  No one starves round here. Guess who has a messy kitchen island!! 

Anyways, The other day there was a story going around about a scam in NY where someone was "buying" used photo equipment from people and said they would venmo them the money but cancel the transaction once they had made off with the equipment, which they would then pawn at one of the famous camera stores. This is not an issue for me, since I hold onto everything I own until it is thoroughly used up, broken and worthless and I don't buy used equipment either, but at the end of the story they managed to catch the thief and he had the same name as one of my students from my first year of teaching- you know the kind of student who, 30 years later, I still sit around wondering if he managed to have a decent life because the odds were so stacked against him. And then I realized this little jewel of a beautiful boy with the bad luck would be 38 or 39 now!! The criminal could have been my ex-student's kid! I feel old.

It makes me wonder if any teachers I ever had sat around wondering what kind of adult I would turn out to be. I wonder of any of them missed me. I've been thinking a lot about teachers the past day because lil sis told me that a teacher of one of her kids has been saying hateful things to him. That kind of nonsense makes me so angry. When I was a teacher I felt that teaching was such an immense responsibility and that every word out of my mouth had to be instructional or beneficial in some way. I was trained to understand/know/live and breathe that responsibility when I got my master's in education. Doesn't everyone learn the same stuff? I guess it's just disillusioning. Living with this corrupt administration is making the normal stresses of every day life harder to bear. In a situation where the world froze and I had a couple of minutes alone with the frozen body of that teacher, I'd punch her quite a bit and then I'd staple her mouth together from one end to the other. She'd reanimate and figure out she might want to change the way she talks to kids. 

 

don't know

So, this cough/puking thing has really been somewhat traumatizing. Every single cough strikes a fear in me, when I can feel it coming on I know my eyes open up wide as I ask myself which direction to face should whatever I ate last make for the exit. When I don't feel it coming on, its because I am coughing due to the inability to inhale because what is happening feels like there is some loose phlegm floating around my lungs- right in the breast bone area and then I get to add in the panic which comes from also not being able to inhale. Everything I put in my mouth is carefully considered for it's level of discomfort on a possible projectile vomit. That means, no chips or nuts or anything I might not chew properly. I did eat some raw carrots last night, but I chewed them like I never chewed raw carrots before. That made them less enjoyable, by the way.

Despite sounding like a 3 pack a day smoker for 50 years, I did manage to give sweet pea a full 2 hour walk this morning. I had only worked my walk up to 1 hour this week, but after my first hour this morning the shining sun warmed the air up enough that I figured I would push it a bit. And then, as if walking a 2 hour walk wasn't fantastic enough, I didn't even require a nap today! I'm pretty tired now, though.

Lil sis called me, and she has been doing some genealogy wrk. When your family had to flee for the lives from assorted Eastern Europe countries, you don't get too much information beyond the generation which showed up here. But, I did find out that my great grandmother, who I am named after, was not actually named Augusta, like everyone always thought (or told me) she was named, but actually had some other name, which I can't seem to recall and lil sis isn't answering my texts. I think it started with Genu-- and got less recognizable from there. I could have had a G name! I could have been a Gwen, so artsy. It's a little strange to think about. It's a little crazy to think that back in the old days of not all that long ago, one could just go by a different name and not have to jump through hoops, go to court and swear to a judge you aren't running away from legal action or debtors by changing your name. Nope, back then you just had to announce your intentions to go by a different name, and boom, all your documentation was changed. 

The other thing that seemed strange to me is that somehow there are a lot of family members out there that I never knew existed. I mean, in fairness, I don't even know my actual biological father's family, at all...don't really want to if they're anything like him....  aside from one half sister who was born when I was about 16 and found me on line so we are Facebook friends now but that's it. The guy died a couple of years ago (whew! Less evil in the world) and for a long time I said I wasn't interested in the half sister because she was tied to him and he did not deserve to know me or my kids or even any details about our lives, but now he's in hell, with all of the other child molesting, wife beating, kiddie porn dealing scum so I'm not sure why I just can't seem to reach out to the half sister. Maybe it's because she looks an awful lot like him? I don't know. Maybe I just don't want to complicate my life. Yeah, I don't need any drama. Not sure what she brings to the table. 

But, I know there are blood relatives on my mom's side that I don't know. It was a money thing, as in my grandmother's brother stole all of her money. My grandfather had relatives too but they all moved to the west coast so I never knew any of them growing up. 

I finally finished working on an image preparing it so that I can transfer it to a big block of wood and make a wood block carving for printing out of it and I went to staples for them to blow it up two days ago and there were no actual print center people in the store. So I went back today and they were out of super large paper. Tomorrow I'll go to another staples store which my local store told me would absolutely be able to print my super large image and see if they can indeed. If they can, and if I look at it and think this plan is still doable I will then go to a different store for the wood. I'm  getting kind of psyched.

An old high school acquaintance made a Facebook post today. It said something about the oldest sibling being better behaved and other people were chiming in, with other things like the oldest being smarter, so I said the oldest was infinitely more captivating. I chose the word captivating carefully because I wanted to express some depth other than prettier or wealthier , etc... I figured captivating was a great word which encompassed a lot. Then the classmate who is a total attention seeking - look how deep and sensitive I am- kind of Facebook presence chimed in with something like "women over 40 don't care about their looks" which is convenient for her, since she looks like a witch, so I had to gently school her on the meaning of captivating. I kind of want to start something, since I'm just plain angry about being sick/injured for over a month now, and also because she annoys me to no end with her attention seeking posts, so I am interested in seeing how this goes down. Also, the attention seeker, goes by her middle name these days instead of her first name, like she did in high school and that gets under my skin for some reason too. I have no idea why. 

Dammit

 Until about 10 minutes ago I would have told you that it had been a week since I coughed so hard that I puked up whatever was in my stomach. Luckily I ate a leight dinner tonight and when it happened again I had only just eaten a handful of really delicious grapes while letting sweet pea out for her last Pee of the day. So I don’t know why I have taken a turn for the worse. My one and only guess is that I somehow irritated my lungs this morning when I finally went back to the dog park/woods  for sweet pea’s first real walk since I got sick. I did not walk her for the 2 to 3 hours that I would normally walk her. I only walked her for a little over an hour because by the end of that hour I could feel some unsettling rattling going on in my chest. I have run out of patience with this illness. I have moved to the anger stage. I want to punch hit and scream because I really need to get on with my life in a non-sick way.  

track

Today was the first day in 9 days (possibly as more like over 2 weeks because I was sneaking naps on the couch before being completely bedridden)  that I didn't nap. It's not that I didn't want to nap, it's that I woke up this morning feeling something that reminded me of normal and with that little tiny shining sliver of hope that the worst of this dreadful illness is safely behind me I decided that not spending the entire day propped up in bed thanking the good lord for tissues with lotion was the right thing to do. I mean, I have to get back to normal eventually, don't I? I'm sure that sweet pea would like me to get back to normal. My baby needs her outings! 

And then Josh told me he discovered that the local theater was showing classic movies on the first Sunday of each month and we all went to see Rear Window. By "all" I mean Josh, me and the husband. Evan did come home from university this weekend, and was supposed to fly back this morning but his flight was cancelled and they only offered him another flight for tomorrow- so he was in town, but so was his girlfriend. I know we can't compete with her. Evan spent the day at her house "getting ahead on his homework." My kind of helicopter parenting is pretty much saying "great idea!" and not nagging him. I figure there won't be someone to nag him down the line, he's got to figure this out for himself. I really hope he did do the homework, though.

But, anyway, seeing Rear Window was a great thing to do because I need some inspiration to relight my fire and get me working on the novel I started last winter and never finished because I lost my drive when my BIL was diagnosed with cancer and died 5 weeks later. Totally understandable, on one level, but I thought maybe I'd push myself to start writing again this summer, and then the entire summer (every freaking minute of it) was too depressing between the whole stage 4 heart failure diagnosis on top of everything else for the husband and not being able to enjoy utopia because I have to let it go.

Speaking of utopia, it's off the market for now because the idiot we listed it with last didn't sell it. The idiot didn't even bring any legit clients to the house. idiot. Now his contract is up. I have to find the right realtor- someone who has clients with a ton of cash. Now that my voice is partway back to normal and I sound less like Kathleen Turner with laryngitis I should probably force myself to make those calls. 

And circling back to Rear Window, my novel is also about a peeping tom, so that's why I thought it was the perfect film to see to get me back on track. Also, I watched the whole movie just thinking how beautiful Grace Kelly was. It was colorized, or color enhanced or something much to my great dismay. It was really mind boggling to be looking at such fake colors. Major distraction. 

 

this sucks

 Yesterday I woke up, brushed my teeth and my hair and then on my way out of the bathroom suddenly struck with the realization that I had not been horrified at my own reflection in the mirror. The good news is that I no longer look I have been bobbing for apples in a bucket of zinc oxide. I got my color back. So glad that this aspect of this virus from hell has passed. 

 I am hoping that the next side effect of RSV/bronchiolitis that leaves me is my smoky Kathleen Turner with laryngitis voice.  Today while downstairs I needed help while attempting to sign Josh up for a college tour online so I phoned him from downstairs and when I turn off the phone the husband asked me if I had phoned Josh from the very same house and in my loudest whisper voice I told him “don’t you understand that this is my scream ?”  

 Concerned friends have been calling and texting. Pretty much they can’t believe they’ve gone in entire week in the woods without seeing me. They can’t believe I’m still sick. I can’t believe I’m still sick. I’m not as sick as I was last Saturday when I went to the emergency room but I still feel like crap and I still need to sleep all day and it’s still hard to breathe if I’m pretty much doing anything other than lying in bed. 

This sucks.