clickmom

do it myself

Last winter I bought a snowblower after we had barely 3 inches of slush which melted the next day before noon yet the plow guy I had signed on with sneakily plowed in the wee hours of the morning even though I specifically asked him not to under those specific conditions. Also, no matter how much I stress that they are not to leave giant piles of snow to freeze into solid blocks of ice on top of the drainage grates in the driveway they always do, so I fired that guy. Then, I did what millions of frustrated women before me have done throughout history and I decided that if I wanted the job done right I would have to do it myself. And .... we got a snowblower. And then it didn't snow a single time for the rest of the winter. But, as will happen, this winter is making up for it and I am so frigging happy to be doing the job myself because (no surprises here) I do a way better job than that plow! I am actually so excited that I have a nice clear snow free to the edges driveway that I want to show people how glorious it is! I should admit to the world that one time we had a crazy horizontal blowing miserable snow storm my neighbor drove his cute little miniature plow over here and plowed me out twice- but I was totally prepared to do it myself!! He thinks I am adorable with all of my outdoor maintenance. I know how he feels because I tell my friends their handy husbands are hot and they should appreciate them. I don't think this guy's wife does much grunt work. I know how lucky I am to have a neighbor who loves to help me out. Believe me, I call on this dude to rescue me more than I want to admit. 

Anyways, I was thinking about how when the husband and I bought our first house together I said to him, I guess we need to buy a lawn mower now and he said You don't mow your own lawn, you hire someone to do it. and I obnoxiously asked if he was going to hire someone to hang out in the house and be my husband too. I recall feeling rather crushed at his attitude. Why bother owning your own chunk of land if you just pay people to care for it? It was my first house experience and I wanted to experience it, you know? It still feels weird to me all of these later. It didn't help that we had a couple of neighbors who did mow their own lawns, so I knew he was just being a bit of a princess. We even had the smallest lot in the neighborhood.

So, I am happy to report that after a summer of mowing the lawn and a couple of moths of snow blowing that I am finally, 9 years in with this new town, bonding with my property. NOT!! Hahahaha. I would move out in a heart beat. I just don't know where I would move to. I do however, finally know the satisfying feeling of getting the job done and doing it well. (Or well enough in the case of lawn mowing because my mowing technique still leaves something to be desired) I am so tired I am not even sure I am making sense. I will tell you that in my next house I will be looking for the things that make landscaping easier, like a flat lot and smooth transitions between the driveway and the grass.

I bought some seeds for this year's bucket garden and I am thrilled to report that some of them are already sprouting!! These babies sprouted 2 days after planting, so I hope they can wait to get outdoors until May.  I might need to plant a second round. I'm ok with that. Last summer I planted seeds from vegetables I had in the house. This year I decided to buy seeds, though I am not so sure why, so I will probably experiment a bit. I'm really looking forward to the whole gardening thing. But you know, it's the dead of winter, so that seems like the obvious thing to look forward to.

3 weeks 1 day

I am definitely over the hump of vertigo, I barely feel it at all during the day. I still can't quickly spin around, but I can finally look at the computer screen without the room going on a spin. Things that still bother me are ... rolling over in bed (that is the biggest reaction to it that I have) and if I try to scroll quickly past something on my phone. I can not scroll fast, so I believe there is some component of this that is connected to my vision. (recalling that for the first week I could only lie in a darkened room) But in reality I am a hare in the race of this world, taking things on slow and steady and I never do much of anything, with the exception of inhaling a meal, quickly so maybe it's just me. Or maybe as soon as I get my freaking shots (I want my shots!!) I will check in with an eye doctor, just in case. 

I've been setting up a trail camera in the backyard (pretty sure I have told you this) and I had a really good results week. First, I got the rabbit that I knew was hopping around but not in view of the camera and then I got, not one, but two coyotes who frolicked in the distance and just far enough that I can't really see them but just close enough that there is a soft ghost like image of them in the background. I can not begin to tell you how happy that made me. Two nights ago the fox, that comes way more than I ever imagined having only actually seen it once or twice in the 9 1/2 years we have lived here, crossed in front of the camera with something unrecognizable in its mouth. That fox is always in such a rush! Maybe thats why I don't get to see him with my live action eyes. But I was pretty darned happy to see that my fox had his own hard earned meal and wasn't relying on the peanuts I've been bribing him with in order to get a standing still photo of him. (I know its a him because he pees like a boy dog) I want to put out a buffet to attract animals but I only put out a few peanuts every night because I don't want to make them dependent on me. Did you know that deer eat peanuts? Me neither. They eat rabbit food too, but that doesn't surprise me. 

I would actually like to stay up all night watching the backyard. I was thinking maybe I would do that during the next full moon, but then, if I recall correctly, I don't think I got anyone on my trail cam the last full moon night earlier this month. Hard to say for sure because they could have been in another part of the yard. The full moon night was during the first phase of my vertigo, so I couldn't have even looked through a view finder on that night. It is going to snow again tonight and my big mission of the day is to make something that will protect my camera so I can leave it out during bad weather and also something for the trail camera to sit in so that it doesn't fall over during high winds. As much as I enjoy those photos I get when the camera blows over of the tree tops with the passing clouds, I'm going to take a hard pass on them for the future. I'm all about the animals-for now. 

com freaking passion

Tragically the husband I live like nurse and patient. You'd never even know we once had a romantic relationship. Most of the time if you asked me how I feel I would say that the overwhelming emotion I walk around with all day is resentment. And I don't want to be a resentful person, but I also tell myself I have so much to be resentful for. Also, because he is a very sick and physically depleted person, there are smells involved,and I have a super sensitive nose, and there are smells. idk. I don't want to advertise being an asshole, but I'm being really honest here. 

My shrink says I need to work on COMPASSION, and I tell him bullshit things like I have plenty of compassion in situations where compassion is warranted, like when discussing kids in cages, (I can't....) or looking at videos of sweet round bellied puppies abandoned on the side the road. But, I ask, how I'm supposed to summon compassion for someone who is knowingly and intentionally dragging himself and me down? How am I supposed to feel compassion for his financial recklessness, which is about to leave me in a less than comfortable situation? He gave me a dream home on a dream spot (utopia) and I was so very grateful, it was going to be his legacy, one that could erase a lot of the bad behaviors that had accumulated over the years because it was where I wanted to be 24/7/365. I was so happy there that I believe I had to have lived other lives there, I loved the land so much I wanted lie down on it each time I arrived and breath in it's scent, and then he carelessly spent it all away. How am I supposed to feel compassion for being a forced witness to his 20+ year slow suicide by ice cream and cookies? Am I supposed to forget that for over a decade he was angry 24/7 and that medication only took the edge off? Walking on egg shells for 10 years changes a person. And don't get me started on the weird freaking things that come out of his mouth. I've spent the last almost 28 years trying to protect my kids from the bizarre ego/psyche damaging venom which spews from his mouth over the most banal behaviors, clothing choices, opinions...... All of it, it's just wore me down, and I was supposed to feel compassion to the source of my permanently elevated cortisol levels? 

And then he fell. And he was lying there on his back and he was so confused and he didn't know anything except me. He'd look at me and I'd know he felt safe looking at me, but he kept asking What happened? and Where am I? and I had to stay calm and keep just calmly and without showing my growing alarm, explaining to him where he was and what happened. Over and over and over again. And I heard myself saying, things like You're going to be okay, babe.  and These are the rescue people, babe, they're going to help you, babe. He'd say My head hurts, and I'd say, You hit it pretty hard, babe, I think you're going to get a real shiner.  And every time the word babe came out of my mouth I thought How weird! I just said babe again, because I don't use the word babe when talking to him and in general I don't even like to hear other people use the word babe (especially on my favorite trash television show 90 day finance, I'm pretty sure the people use babe because they're all playing more than one american at a time in order to up their chances of green card ownership and they use babe to avoid accidentally saying the wrong name.) and I can't tell you a real reason why, that word just grates on my last raw nerve.  

I do call my kids baby however, and as the person who held them in her arms for their entire baby-hood I feel that I have earned the privilege and also, obviously, that I am the only one who can legitimately call my babies baby. Adults shouldn't babe other adults.

Anyways, as they rolled the husband on the gurney out the front door and into the ambulance I'm calling after him Let them help you, babe! Have the ER doctors call  me, babe! You're going to be okay, babe! (I wasn't sure of that though, holy hell when he started speaking in tongues I thought for sure he was stroking out right in front of me and I imagined the worst) And then, when I shut the front door, having to let other people take command of the situation, (the control freak in me was going berserk at this) I cried. And I didn't quite know where the tears were coming from. There was a lot of fear in there, but there were other things too. 

Then, when no one from the hospital called me fast enough I called his nurse, who told me he wasn't coherent, and she was standing beside him so she said to him, in that loud voice people use for old, slow or hard of hearing people, I  AM  ON  THE  PHONE  WITH  YOUR  WIFE and she said, Well, I know he understands me because when I said  YOUR  WIFE  his eyes lit up and he looked around for you. And the tears rolled down my cheek and maybe just maybe I felt my cold dead heart just soften a little bit because here was this man, who had to be frightened, he was definitely confused and the one thing that he was clinging to after all the bullshit of our lives and this less than satisfactory relationship was the idea of me. Maybe, I told myself, he had given all he had to give and all those other infuriating things, were not by choice. Maybe he was actually doing the best he could.

I sat down and reflected on just how I was feeling and I realized that I, the newly minted babe utterer, was feeling com-freaking-passion. I did it.

2 weeks 3 days

Holy hell.  This 6-8 weeks might even feel longer than the last 6-8 weeks of my first pregnancy.  

Being this way S U C K S.

I will never take for granted not being motion sick every minute of my day again. I wish it would go away quickly just for the pleasure aspect of waking up one day and being gloriously happy because I'm better. Like how when you've had the flu and you think your time might be up for a few days because our soon sick and then you open your eyes on day 4 or 5 and you think you are BACK! And it is a totally glorious feeling!! But then you try to do a normal amount of activity and realize you're not quite back, but your head is back in the game and that is what I pray happens to me every day. Unfortunately the first thing I know every morning is that I am still not okay because rolling over in bed is the absolute worst way I feel and up until 2 weeks and 3 days ago I did not know that I wake up while in the process of rolling over pretty much every single damned day so my first thought every single morning is Ugh, I still have it.  Make the room stop swaying.

DO NOT RECOMMEND