Life is Depressing and Depression is Life

No, I guess it's not as bad as that, but it has been plenty bad lately. I have felt so overwhelmed, so alone, so utterly useless in the world.

So very depressed.

So depressed that I was once again contemplating suicide.

No, I won't do it. If anything, I'm really good at figuring out how bad "it" really is and I manage to get myself to someone who can help before something horrible happens. But mostly I think how wonderful it would be if I wasn't alive any more.

No more fears, no more worries, no more anger, no more bitterness. No more feeling useless.

Ah, sounds like a nice change.

However, I'm here and I'm stuck here for a while so I'm trying to make the best of it.

I came to an important realization last night as I was trying to drift off to sleep. Now, first you need to understand how yesterday went. Lately I've been so depressed that I haven't wanted to get out of bed. Literally. Will not get out of bed. I don't feel like eating and when I do eat, it's not good food that's good for me. So yesterday was one of those days where the world seemed to be circling around me, pulling me into its negativity vortex. I didn't get out of bed. All day. Well, most of the day. I slept something like twelve hours, before I went to bed in the evening again. I was so sad and miserable and utterly utterly alone.

So I'm trying to go to sleep because I am tired, surprisingly enough, and I don't want to warp my sleep/wake cycle again. Then I had a thought. Yesterday was 12/7. This was important, not only because it is Pearl Harbor Day (thanks all you veterans!) but because it is close to 12/10. 12/10 is the day where no happiness escapes. 12/10 is the gloomiest day of the year. And the lead up to 12/10 is almost always difficult as well.

I can't tell you how relieved I was to discover that! Sometimes it just takes knowing that there is a real reason that you're depressed, and not just having a serious brain chemical deficiency period (which is bad enough, I assure you).

In 1994, I miscarried a baby. He was due 12/10.

Even when I don't consciously remember what day it is, somehow, my body and my mind remember that little one. I get a bit sad around the day in May when I lost him, but 12/10 almost always sinks me. Whether I recall its significance or not.

Today was a better day. I graded a whole bunch of exams and papers I have to return tomorrow. It was beautiful and sunny all day. I made something yummy for supper. I kept my dying cat alive another day. It was a better day, thanks be to God!

Tomorrow may be another difficult day, but today was good enough. I'm still here.

Blah blah blog

Time for my biannual complaining blog post.

That's kind of what it feels like to me. I never blog anymore anyway (although I want to) and when I was finally able to log onto Blogger, I read what I'd written in years past. Somehow it sounds like today. Blah blah blog.

I still feel like the worst parent and wife EVER. I'm still depressed enough to not want to get out of bed some days. But on other days, I feel so much better...so full of gratitude and life I could just cry. Of course, I'd like to cry on these days in which I feel horrible as well, but for different reasons.

This morning I just did not want to get out of bed. Which was strange. The weather has turned cooler, I've finished a bunch of projects for other people (I'm doing a lot of sewing and alterations for pay now!), and it's Friday! No good. But I forced myself up out of bed and forced myself to be semi-normal. I took the twins to the library so David could get a Playaway for his campout and Keziah could print off more stuff for her report on muscles due next week at co-op. I couldn't even summon up the interest to look for a book for myself. I flat out didn't care. I ended up looking for books for Keziah's report and read some of one of them. It seems like everything around me tells me how rotten I am and how I may as well give up. The library books were reminding me of all the cool homeschooling stuff I did with the older kids when they were the twins' age and how little I care any more.

I could go on and on but I won't. This is my life at this second in time. I hope it improves soon.

So Much Pain...

Also, so much drama in my life these days. I'm going to try and fail to expunge some of the angst by writing about it.

One of my college-aged daughters has a friend. Actually, she has a lot of friends, and I am fortunate enough to hear about them on a regular basis. It makes me happy that she still talks to me! Anyway, she has a group of friend at school and one of them is having a rough time. He has a number of mental issues severe enough require medication and his girlfriend just dumped him out of the clear blue. So back down to the sewer he goes.

I've been praying for this kid for about as long as my daughter has known him. He has always seemed pretty fragile to me. I spent an hour creeping his Facebook page last night and my heart was just breaking by the end of it. Why should this seemingly bright, talented, adorable young man should be in such pain that his friends are scared for him?

But hey, I've been there. Maybe that's why it rabbit-punched me like that. I've been there. I imagine I'll be there again, although I pray not. It's such a grueling place to be.

Then the pain gets generalized. How many people do I know that are hurting? I've met this kid once. Yes, I've prayed for him, which denotes a relationship of sorts, but I really don't know him that well. How many people I do know are crumpled up inside, losing ground in their struggle, or feeling weighed down? And what can I do about it? In the end, what can I really do to help? Because it doesn't take much for me to go plummeting too, and there I am, back on the bottom again, struggling up the long hill, pushing a millstone ahead of me.

Why am I writing all of this? Who knows? Part of it is concern for my daughter and her friends and the daughters and sons of my friends as they grow up and move away from us. How easy it is to listen to the siren song of the world and feel ourselves unequal to the cares of life.

Part of it is my own continuing attempts to make something of myself. Outwardly, I look like your average American housewife. I am grateful to be here, looking that good, believe me. But inside I'm still fighting to get back to where I was ten or eleven years ago when my fabulous, thriving life took an abrupt tumble.

I'm so tired of fighting.

Maybe that's part of what scares me for Andrew. Maybe that's why I reacted to the news of Robin Williams' suicide with a surge of fear. Because I am tired. Of fighting. So very tired. It would be so easy to just let the tides of my mind take me along until they submerge and drown me. No more fighting. No more pain.

I don't want that for Andrew. I don't want that for myself. But some days it just costs so much to fight. And I have to wonder: is it really worth the struggle?

The Scarlet F

How to even begin this little missive? I do not know. Here we go: I am no longer a perfectionist. I was one in high school and it made me very ill. It was still there in college, but gradually went away after I married and realized that my husband loved me no matter what. Some days I wonder if he wishes he'd done otherwise.

Like today.

Today is D-Day for getting my 19-year-old's high school transcript done so that she can apply to the college of her choice. Why am I not finished? Many reasons: procrastination, busyness, laziness, depression, not caring...on and on and on. Nevertheless, I am going to make the deadline, much to the utter disbelief of my husband.

Except for one class, which the child has not finished.

She took this class a year and a half ago and failed it. Which bothered her not at all. Until she had to have the science class for college, at which point she started to do it all over. She worked diligently on it, studying and taking tests. I was so proud.

I texted her yesterday to remind her to find the notebook in which her tests resided. She didn't text me back. I asked her this morning about the text and she said her phone was dead but she'd find the notebook so we could grade the tests and have the grade for her transcript. Which needs to go to the college tomorrow. Did I mention that? Tomorrow is the ultimate deadline.

She could not find the notebook. It was not where she remembered having put it. Chaos, tears, railings ensued. The whole family plus two of the neighbor kids looked for the lost notebook. While we were looking, I told her she needed to start retaking tests. She was not a happy camper.

Here we are, about sixteen hours before I need to leave for work, having completed the transcript and having had it notarized. There are so many ways that this is due to my ultimate status as the Queen of the Losers. I wear the Scarlet F (for failure).

If I were better organized, more caring, more on top of things, more insistent,etc., etc., etc. this wouldn't have happened. Yes, it is not totally my fault. But I am the one with the F on my forehead.

Into the Woods We Go Again

I am blogging for you from the commodious spotlight room of the Anderson Center where I am currently pursuing my night job as spot operator for my daughter's show. Which is "Into the Woods".

As always, I'm blogging way too late because last week I was full of the milk of human kindness and goodness and happy with the whole world. Naturally, this is not the case tonight. It was a horrid night & day and I'm CRANKY. Surprise!

Anyway, this is my second-to-last day doing this gig and I believe I will miss it. It has been great fun to be a part of such a wonderful show filled with talented actors and awesomely cool crew. I realized last week that it makes me much happier to be a part of something creative. Creating makes me happy. Even if it's just running the spot, it's been a blast and I'll be sorry to have to move on to my usual humdrum experience. Although it will be nice to linger over the dinner table again!

Into the woods!

Up and Down Like a Roller Coaster

It seems this blog is mostly about my mental state. Ah well, it is what it is. This week has been hard. Rachel is in a production of Into The Woods which starts 2/21. Rachel doesn't drive. So I drive her to rehearsal every night. Which is four hours in length. And then do the rest of my business during the rest of the day.

All this is to say that I am getting to the giddy point of exhaustion. And that is quickly followed by the grumpy and insomniac points of exhaustion. It is true for me and very very odd that when I am really tired, I have trouble resting adequately.

So I'm tired which, of course, affects my mood negatively.

And then there's homeschooling, which is like herding cats with regard to the twins and the aforementioned Rachel. And then there's the house, which is a complete disaster because we're living in it all day long and have too much stuff that we don't return to where it belongs. That's the sword of Damocles hanging over my head ever since my in-laws decided to make it know that they hate the way we (read: I) keep (or don't keep) house. It's definitely the pain that keeps aching and aching.

Occasionally something positive happens but it's been a bummer of a week. Yesterday was one of those bummer days. Really a bummer day. I spent the last couple of hours in bed, trying to get past my pain and irritation from the day and fall into blissful slumber. I ended up having nightmares, which sort of botched that idea. But then today dawned.

Saturdays at least hold the promise of being good because I get to go out and do whatever I want. Presumably, I'm supposed to do homeschool prep but the underlying theme has always been, "Go out there and enjoy yourself a little." So I do. In my own strange way. I often go to the library and do my 3 hours of volunteer work there. I read a lot. I usually take a good nap. I go out to lunch. It's quiet, I'm not in charge of the kids, and I get to feel like someone who is not beaten down into the mud all the time.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a letter in the mail from the branch manager of our library. She was inviting me to attend an initiative to make plans for the betterment of the county in which we live. I was baffled. Why on earth would she invite me to do this? Nevertheless, I was tickled and I agreed to do so. The meeting was this morning.

It snowed about 4 inches last night. When I went out, ten minutes before the meeting was to start, to get the car, it was covered in fluffy, beautiful, cold snow and a bit of ice. Needless to say, I was a bit late. No worries. I got coffee (huzzah!) and sat down with six other women. One man showed up a few minutes earlier and there was a facilitator there as well.

The exercise was strange in that we were supposed to be having "conversations" about what we wanted our county to be doing in the next several years. Sounds like psycho-babble to me and my tolerance for psycho-babble was used up long ago. The facilitator was, likewise, one of those Toastmaster-type guys. I'm sure he was a nice fellow but I amused myself by counting up the number of times he did one of those hale-fellow-well-met things. And I didn't look him in the eye because I didn't want him to know that I thought his technique was a little...what? Forward maybe? I don't know. I dislike it when I think anyone is cajoling me along to do anything.

The "conversations" themselves were interesting, though. A couple of the ladies were retired, the rest were still employed, I was the only person not gainfully employed. But we got to talking about a lot of things, individually and in group settings. I was still kinda zonked (no sleep) but I was able to force myself to think and come up with some intelligent things to share. It was nice.

Afterwards, I did a little shelving seeing as I hadn't been into the library in a month, because of Rachel's intense rehearsal schedule. I was flying, I was so happy! I had ideas coming out and zinging around while I was shelving. I felt invincible. I wrote beautiful words and had amazing ideas. Why? Because I had been taken seriously, not only by other people but by myself. Scary and sad and lovely.

The buzz is largely gone, but it was pleasant while it lasted. And I don't feel like I have to crawl into bed to recover from a difficult day. I'm even planning to get up and use the last hour my family is out to the movies to clean the house. How's that? It's a pleasing thing. So, while I'm no longer at the top of the big hill, I haven't zoomed down to the bottom either. And the view from up here is marvelous!

Baby steps

Well, here we are...I'm basically putting one foot in front of the other and walking straight ahead. I don't think it's all Cherylyn's passing. I have a wretched cold right now that laid me flat for a couple of days. Now I'm trying to play catch-up and get ahead and everything else.

But some of it is Cherylyn's passing.

While I was talking to David yesterday, I spotted a birthday card she'd sent him last year, complete with handwritten message. I must have had a weird look on my face because David said, "What? What's wrong?" Then he saw the card and asked me if I was sad. Yes, son, I'm sad. But it hits me at random times, unpredictably. I try not to shove it down because I know it'll come back and not better for the break, but I also don't want to fall apart at the library or in front of my son. So I guess there are times when I do try to cram it down at least until I can get to a place where I can grieve in private.

And then there are the other lovely bits of depressive behavior that I continue to have: sleeping too much, lack of interest in things previously of interest, lack of appropriate affect. I'm trying, I really am, but I don't want to do anything but sleep. I don't even want to read all that much and that is amazing. I'm just not going full force right now. I guess it's not crucial that I do. Obviously, life goes on without my processing totally, but I hate being so dazed and confused all the time.

One positive thing of note: I retaught myself to knit and have been working on that sporadically. It doesn't get my other projects finished or started, but it's quick and soothing. So far, I've just done a couple of lime green (happy color!) dishcloths but maybe I'll get back to, and finally finish, Doug's sweater. I've only been working on it for 5 years or so...

Hope you all are doing well. Make sure the people you love know it. That was one saving grace with Cherylyn and me...we always always said we loved each other. Sometimes it felt excessive but now it feels comforting.

Stuff & things

What to say? I scarcely know what to say or do these days. My friend did die, as she and everyone else expected. She passed late in the evening of 8/19. She was at home and had at least one person with her all the time. I was blessed to be able to go out there the Saturday before. Her family was very gracious and allowed me much time to be with her during the day. She was more or less non-communicative the whole time. Apparently her last fully lucid day was the day before I got there, and I had talked to her on the phone a couple of days prior to that.

It was a strange thing. I didn't have anything I needed to say to her or to "work out" with her. We said everything to each other when we talked. Maybe that's why we could talk for four hours straight and still be going strong when our families were begging us to stop already. I just felt I had to be there with her, and I was. I talked to her about the new days and the old days. I sang to her, beautiful old hymns that we loved and a few new ones that I loved and felt she'd like. I held her hand and stroked her arm and shoulders, trying to be soothing.

There were a few times that it seemed she was trying to talk to me and when I'd sing, she'd make sounds that I took to be her singing along. It made me smile and tear up, all at the same time. It was a special time, but different from the other times that we'd had, when she just wore me out with her energy and extrovertedness. It was a quiet time, it seemed endless. It wasn't.

I was able to stay for the funeral, then had to rush home because the two people who could drive were sick. I can't really talk about the funeral. Too much there that could be misconstrued. A key point is that I did not even consider crying until we all got up to file past the casket. That's when they started playing a slide show of photos of Cherylyn. One popped up of the two of us, the time I'd come to visit in April. That one almost made me lose it. At the same time, when it would come up, I would just hungrily scan it, hoping to make sense of the realization that this vital piece of humanity was gone, leaving us all behind. It still doesn't make sense to me. I think that is part of the problem I am having.

Or maybe I'm not having a problem at all. I think it's rather normal to feel down when a dear one dies. I didn't see or even talk to her every day, but she was always in the back of my mind. We wrote letters back and forth and just enjoyed our friendship so very much. But now she's gone and we and I have to learn to go on without her.

I am so grateful that we had the years that we had. Her very life was a gift and a prod to be a better person. Her family will survive and even flourish because of the determination and work she put into them. I miss her but I'm so so glad that she is no longer suffering from the pain she carried for so long.

A good friend read the following at her memorial service and it still makes me smile.

Gone From My Sight
by Henry Van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone"

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

Further tales from the dark side

As was obvious, I'm sure, I was in a very bad place last night when I blogged and then turned everything off and tried to go to bed. Unfortunately, I had quite the difficult time getting to and staying asleep. Fortunately, it didn't seem to bother me overly much today.

Because today is Saturday!

For the uninitiated, Saturday is the day that my blessed husband is responsible for the kiddles and their needs and I am responsible for myself. I'm supposed to do homeschool prep as well but I rarely do. Yes, part of the problem, I'm sure. Anyway, on a typical Saturday, I go do volunteer work at the library, then retire to Panera for the afternoon. This has been a typical day in that regard.

It has been atypical in that I was blown away by comments that friends left on my blog posts and at Facebook. I was so touched, y'all, I can't tell you. Whenever you feel the prompting to do something for someone else, do it. It could make such a difference to the person to whom you're reaching out.

I also received a phone call from a dear friend who had read the post and had many wise words and much commiseration for me. This friend has been going through the wringer herself and I was beyond touched that she felt compelled to reach out and comfort me. I was even able to concentrate on what she was saying and absorb some of it. What a blessing to this Wonder Woman! (That is what Friend Husband calls me. He says I have WW bracelets that deflect any compliments or anything positive that comes my way.)

Thus it has been a much better day for me. I did, however, remember one other thing I meant to say yesterday about depression and people who have it. It is not at all useful for me to focus on other people and their various struggles and needs in order to make myself shake my depressive moods. Perhaps an example would be useful. I had a friend in high school who always said, "You need to think about those people in Russia or South Africa who are suffering under horrible governments. Or, perhaps, the starving people in Africa. That will put your suffering in perspective."

Really?

Really. He said that. As y'all are probably guessing, it was not the most effective suggestion ever. Thinking about such things either deepens my despair or makes me very angry. Neither of these things is beneficial to banishing the dark clouds of depression, at least around my head. So, if you are so blessed as to have no idea how to comfort or sustain your friend or loved one who is depressed, take a page from my book and avoid having them contemplate people who are in even worse situations. You are very welcome.

For today, I am so thankful for my friends and family who keep me going even when I'm deep in the pit of despair. You are lifesavers, every one of you.

To celebrate, I'm actually going to work on some homeschool planning. How about that? I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks, for at least a day at a time.

Tales from the dark side

Depression has been my constant companion through life. Or at least through the part of my life when I had hormones. I don't recall being depressed when I was a child, but I was as a teen. Some times I do better than others. This is not one of those times.

I really don't know what my deal is these days. Or perhaps I do, but I don't know why the negativity is striking now. I've had two good days this week. On both days, I got a lot of physical exercise and I did work for other people. These things seem to work for me, at least in tandem, to improve my mood. But I cannot work/volunteer for others every day of the world. I've got way too much to do for myself and my family. And I really hate exercise. I mean, hate it. The exercise I was doing on those two days was gardening and throwing hay bales on a hay wagon. I was doing it with other people and we were having a good time. And I felt like I was actually useful for a change.

In a lot of my life I feel useless. I don't think my kids really need me; they certainly don't listen to me any more. I hate homeschooling a lot of the time, usually because the kids are constantly bitching at me about it and generally endeavoring to make it more difficult than it has to be. My husband loves me. God bless him, he is an amazing man. And he deserves better. I am quite possibly the worst housekeeper I know. I hate cleaning house. I hate organizing things. I hate the mess that we're in because of the prior two opinions. There it is. I don't feel like I'm really good at anything that I'm doing right now and so all I want to do is read, eat, and sleep.

When I first envisioned this blog post, I thought about how depression feels. I wondered if I could describe it. It is like having smoked glass over your eyes all the time. Nothing looks good, nothing looks bright. Everything feels like I'm submerged in some sort of cold, oxygen-deprived liquid. I'm living, but only just. Everything EVERYthing EVERYTHING is ruined. I hate it when the kids ruin something of mine. I hate it more when my emotions ruin everything in my life. But it doesn't seem like I can get past it. It doesn't feel like I can ever fully be free of the "black dog" or the "black clouds" that constantly follow and envelop me.

And now I am going to go to bed and hope I am seeing things brighter in the morning.

December 10th

So, I've been wanting to post something about my adventures with my cats and dog lately but I have not had the time. This week seems to have been full of appointments and other nuttiness. And today is December 10th so I need to talk about Asher.

When Sarah was a wee babe, I found myself pregnant again, unexpectedly. I was a bit astounded, seeing as Sarah was so young but there it was. About the time I started getting excited about it, I miscarried.

Thud. There's that word that just ends all sorts of sentences and makes people wonder what they should be doing in the situation. I've addressed that in the past and won't linger on it now.

I think it's necessary to this post to mention that the miscarriage precipitated a whole huge and horrible reaction on my part. It took quite some time to get to the point where I didn't dissolve into tears at the thought of it. It's taken me 16 years to get to the point where other babies don't make me cry over what I lost then.

Generally, I have two periods of time when my body remembers the baby that went to Heaven before I could meet it (I refer to him as Asher). One is May 10th, the day I actually miscarried. The other is December 10th, the day the baby was due. My body remembers Asher by becoming very vague. I spend a lot of time sleeping or being generally fuzzy-brained, even more than usual. It's different enough from how I normally am that I think, "What in the world is going on?" Then I remember. Oh, it's the 10th. Got it. It's almost as though my body or my subconscious or something remembers even when I don't, consciously. It doesn't make me sad to remember. It's sort of special. I was a special vessel meant to carry this tiny soul that didn't make it to live with us here. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who remembers (and I probably am).

This year, a few weeks ago, I was thinking about Asher and how things might have been different had he survived. (I'm, of course, assuming it was a boy, for various reasons I won't elaborate on now.) For one, Rachel would not have been born. And I got to thinking about that.

Now, I love my children, fiercely, deeply, fully. And they drive me completely batty at times. Rachel has been trying my patience for a good long while now. In my sordid little mind, I tried to think about the wonderful, Mother-loving boy my Asher surely would have been and compare it with the real-life young woman who Rachel is. And I found that I was not interested in entertaining that thought. It wasn't that I shied away from it, I just wasn't interested. I found then that I have finally let loose of "what might have been" with regard to Asher and have embraced the reality of the life I have now.

This is big, people. This is very big. It's a giant step forward for me, in my continuing quest to have a decent and more fulfilling life. It makes me feel more whole. Moreover, I realized how, deep deep down, I truly adore Rachel, with all her faults and follies. She's my baby and I'm thrilled that she's here, no matter what torture she perpetrates upon me daily. I would have loved the baby who was due in 1994 as well, I'm sure. But he is not here and I have finally come to terms with that, I think.

Happy birthday in Heaven, Solomon Benjamin Asher! Sleep tight in the arms of our Father until I can see you in our life to come.

Blah

So I had a fun conversation with my sil last night. Then I dreamed about chickens all night. If you'll recall, she was the one who introduced me to the cuteness of baby chicks last month. She said that they are all alive and doing well.

Which is more than I can say about myself.

I'm alive, of course, but not doing well. Amber said she'd been here a few times to check on me but I hadn't updated so she didn't know what was going on. (I keep telling her to join Facebook and she'd know...)

Part of it is that we've got so much going on these days that I don't have time to sit and think, much less to write. I haven't been journal writing either. No time, no impetus. Part of it is that I've been so depressed that it's a good day when I get out of bed and get a few things done, much less attempt to say something interesting on Xanga. And then, there's the desire to not always come across as a whiny moper here.

This morning I went to Curves for the first time in weeks. I feel like a fat, ugly slob (well, I am a fat, ugly slob) and I really didn't want to go out there and have to be "up" for anyone. But the only way to get away from being a fat, ugly slob is to go work out. So I did. I don't feel all "pumped up" or whatever but I feel like I've at least done something right today.

Now I'm going to take a shower (another something right), eat some breakfast, and sew costumes for the fast-approaching play.

This week is the Cincinnati Homeschool Convention, which I'm supposed to attend. I always hesitate signing up for things like this because they end up coming at the craziest times but the last time there was one, Friend Gina went and listened to Susan Wise Bauer and I was very envious. So Susan is back this time and I am going to the convention with Friend Daneille. And I get to go to a birthday tea in Xenia, OH on Saturday, which will be fun but I need to buy birthday pressies for my pals. And next weekend is Sarah's much-delayed Sweet Sixteen party which requires major mucking-out of the house.

Anyway, I feel weighted down and wish I could just sleep until July, but then that would probably not be very pleasant either.

Ok, Sarah needs to use the computer for her math. When did you start using scientific and graphing calculators? She's in the 10th grade and she's using them for math. I managed to get through graduate school without ever using a graphing calculator. Thank goodness for free stuff online!

I hope y'all're doing well! Please pray for Friend Cherylyn, who is undergoing cancer treatment. See you soon, I hope.

Here comes the sun...

Here comes the sun...

Here comes the sun...and I say...it's all right!

Yay for the sun and some warmer temps this weekend! Plus it's getting lighter earlier in the day, which is also nice. The only down side of it is that I could usually get through half of my workout without really being awake when it was so dark outside in the morning. Ah well, there are always trade offs.

I was going to say a little about our fun with Project Linus. This morning I read that my daughter Sarah had already blogged about it and her post is so much more poignant than mine, I'll just refer you there.

So today we need to go to the grocery and I need to do a lot of laundry. And a lot of cleaning. Well, just a lot of everything that I normally do. Sarah and Abby are sick and Keziah is cranky. I think she's developing the teen 'tude long before she needs to.

What else? Had a good day yesterday. Exhausting but good. I still don't have my computer fixed so I can't upload pictures (or show them to anyone) and I still don't have sound or word processing, so I guess I need to work on that a little bit.

But hey, it's a new day, right? I hope y'all have a good one!

Weirdness

Ok, I can already tell that this is going to be a muddled weirdness of random thoughts, so know that in advance.  I'm all about informed consent.

Yesterday, on List of the Day, they featured the video of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"  Here it is, if you don't remember it yourself.  (Don't even turn it on if you don't want the sound of bells clanging in your head all day.  Informed consent, you know.)



So anyway, Sarah, my 15-year-old inexplicably loves all things 80's.  I don't say anything about it because there's not necessarily anything wrong with it, but it's a wonder to me.  After all, I lived them.  But I'll have to say that they were better than the 70's, which I also lived through.  <Shudder>

I was playing that song this morning, hoping to get it out of my head (fat chance) and Sarah came to watch it and comment on the musicians we saw.  We both agreed that Boy George applies makeup creepily well and that Simon LeBon was easy on the eyes.  Then I was trying to tell her what the whole thing was about and realized that they were raising money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

By that point, the twins had picked up the song and were running around singing it, which totally weirded me out.  I'm not necessarily someone who spends a lot of time contemplating irony (I do spend a lot of time laughing at it, which is something totally different) so I didn't want to spend time thinking about this but now I will.  I don't know if the twins' birth parents were even alive when Band Aid recorded that song.  I was 17.  Surely their grandparents were alive.  And here are the twins, with more than enough food, shelter, entertainment, etc., running around the house singing a song that was intended to raise money for famine relief in their native country.  And they have absolutely no idea.  I tried to explain it to them but they're four years old and living here.  They don't understand.  I'm happy about that, don't get me wrong.  But there's something very poignant about the thought.

Anyway, since I didn't know all of the musicians and wanted to figure out who some of the main ones were, I looked up Band Aid on Wikipedia and followed links to my heart's content.  In the process, I learned something about pop icons of the 80's as well as the recent history of Ethiopia.  Of course, I had already known some of the history but when you're especially interested in something, it sticks better.  It is sad to me that the opinion of some "famine scholars" (what a title!~) that Band Aid's efforts merely prolonged the war that was ongoing at that time as well as the human suffering.  Yow.

So now I'm all kurfluffled, trying to get my job done and thinking about Ethiopia.  Thinking about the things that I have to get done here in my life in the States and how utterly meaningless they are in the scheme of things.  But I guess you have to do the job that is in front of you and try to do it well.  To that end, I guess I'll enter more grades.

Funny

I was going to post a picture for Wordless Wednesday but I'm too lazy to go upstairs, get the camera, process & edit the picture, etc. So I'm going to post this thing I got from Becky, who got it from here.

So basically what I'm saying is that, although I am too lazy to get a picture of my daughter off my camera, I am not too lazy to play on the computer. As long as we're all clear on that. Here is my bus picture. And it made me laugh too, Becky, but I don't think this is what the guy created this for.



So thank you all very much for your comments on my dethronement from Mother of the Year. Needless to say, I was saying that with tongue firmly in cheek. The only way I'd become MOTY is if every other mother on the planet were deceased. Monday was a very bad day. Yesterday was marginally better. Today? Hard to say, but so far it's been ok.

I wasn't going to mention this today because at one point today I did have the desire to put that picture up here and I thought I'd talk about it tomorrow. But since I'm not putting Keziah's picture up (it's sounding like a really cool picture, which it's not, it's just the picture I wanted to download today), I figure I'll talk about it now.

Fourteen years ago, I was due to have a baby on or around this day. Unfortunately, the pregnancy didn't progress and I miscarried earlier in the year. Losing that baby really rocked my world. It still does. Around this time every year, I have a sort of a fugue, where I'm even more absent than usual and my mood is just atrocious. Perhaps that contributed to my issues on Monday (but I think that a certain child also bears responsibility for that).

It's weird to think about a baby that never was born. If I had had that baby, we wouldn't now have Rachel. I think that I'm the only person who really remembers the baby that wasn't (plus the other baby that wasn't) and sometimes the hope of seeing them in Heaven has been one of the ways that I've been able to stay on the straight and narrow. The thing that I can't get people to believe is that losing that baby still affects me.

I don't know if other people are the same in this, although I have read in the miscarriage literature that it is not uncommon for this fugue thing to happen. It's as though your body or your unconscious is remembering even if you are not consciously remembering yourself. And although that is a yearly issue (well, actually, a thrice yearly issue, but that's another story) that I have to deal with, once I realize what is happening, I don't mind so much. I'm not falling down a dark hole of depression, I'm remembering that I'm a mom with a baby I've never seen and will not see this side of Heaven. I'm cool with remembering that.

Nothin' sexier than a man who cleans...

It's not too hard to imagine that I've been in a funk this week. As I reminded myself, sometimes that happens and it's no reason to panic that the funk will deepen and last for years. Still, it's a bummer, in more ways than one.

One of the bummerations of my recent life is the fact that, as soon as I bulldoze one area of the house, another is in chaos and entropy. This is generally due to the tender ministrations of Entropy Boy (aka, my son David) who lives to mess things up. So I've pretty much given up on certain areas of the house, like the family room. Unfortunately for me, there were a fair number of strangers traipsing through our family room this week, in preparation for drilling a hole in the house through which to run our new gas line. I half-heartedly tried to pick up but I'm strange in that I feel no motivation to pick up what will be tossed again in a matter of hours.

Then Friend Husband stepped in.

This is where you hear the heroic groundswell of music.

Sometime early in the week, he decided that he, personally, had had enough. So he picked Thursday as the day when we would clean up the downstairs. You see, when I tell the girls to pick up the living room and dining room, they do it, but the family room was a mess of epic proportions. It was not something I could honestly look them in the eye and tell them to fix. And it clearly was not something I was willing to fix. But all of us working together were able to fix it up, although it took more than a few hours. That should tell you something right there about how messed up it was. I was told to go off at the end of it, feed the twins, and get them to bed, so I did not see how it looked at the end. When I walked downstairs, it was a lovely surprise. I almost got all teary.

The room was picked up, the trash was hauled out, the books and videos were put away. There was nothing on the floor but things that needed to be vacuumed. It was beautiful. It was peaceful. I thwacked myself upside the head for not realizing how overwhelmed I feel when my surroundings are so very messed up.

Seeing as I had also shoveled out the schoolroom, I anticipate being able to actually do school downstairs, all together, as I have always intended. Perhaps we can even keep on schedule better. All because of a clean room that was due to the wonderful and very talented Friend Husband. And being overwhelmed also meant that I could actually take a good look at him and realize how handsome he is and what a cute little hind end he has. And that, children, is how a man who cleans all of a sudden becomes majorly sexy. Who needs candy and flowers? Bring me some pretty yarn and clean my family room and I'm all yours. If your name is Friend Husband.

So Friday was a better day. Not better enough that I felt like blogging or doing anything beyond what I absolutely had to do but it just seemed cheerier all around. I had the energy to make blog comments for the first time in ages. I also had the wherewithall to call our local newspaper and place a found ad for Elof. It starts running tomorrow, so perhaps his people will find it and come get him. He's a sweet boy but we just don't need another dog who escapes.

I finally got hold of David's nephrologist yesterday as well. He must have been working overtime because he called me way after business hours. David's having another relapse of his nephrotic syndrome due to the cold that we're all passing around right now. Poor little man, his face is all swollen again and he looks like the Micheline Man. Anyway, now he's back on more than double the amount of steroid that we had just gotten him weaned down to. Once he gets down to a normal protein level, we get to go back downtown to Children's and figure out what next to do, since the steroid doesn't seem to help so much when he's in the throes of a virus. The things you don't know about children that you learn when you start parenting!

Today, Friend Husband and I were talking about Lucy and Elof and what to do with these jumping dogs that we've got in our back yard. I think he'd really like to be relieved of the responsibility for Lucy because we don't get too much enjoyment out of her. I can understand that but I'm not going to take her anywhere else. It just thrashed me when I had to take Sam and Frodo back to the pound and there was even good justification for that.

So anyway, I got to thinking about Lucy and remembered the place we took Sam & Frodo to obedience classes. After perusing their website, I noticed that they now teach a remote collar obedience class, which is something we had discussed doing with Lucy. While looking at the site, I saw that they were having a volunteer orientation this morning at 11:30. I have wanted to volunteer there for years but with the twins and all the inherent adjustment when you add new people to your family, I had shelved that idea. Today it was unshelved and dusted off, with a vengeance. I went through orientation and am now a volunteer out there! Woohoo! I stayed longer than the other volunteers today, did some filing, and then got to play with a couple of the puppies. It was nice to get a puppy fix without having to commit to dealing with them 24/7. The puppies I got to play with and walk were here. I know the one that I walked was Coastal (scroll down to the buff-colored puppies whose mother was Vella) but the name of the other one I don't know. It was one of Coastal's siblings. It was a lovely time and I'm so glad that I managed to get myself up and out of the house to do that.

After Circle Tail, I met Friend Gina at Starbucks for a little knitting and a lot of yakking, which was also a boost. By the time I got home, I was flying pretty high. And that's when I decided that the funk must be a temporary setback, which made me feel even better.

So, after all this business, there's not much to say. Not one of my more inspired blogs, to be sure, but there it is. My life is not all that inspiring, but it is my life and so I write about it. I wonder what my children and grandchildren will think about this in years to come? I wonder what I will think about it in years to come.

I leave you with well wishes for a beautiful new week. We're supposed to get some sort of arctic blast (wind chills to zero) and perhaps some snow. Time to break out my lined cloak for church tomorrow. Toodles!