Finding Zen

Nothing Of Substance

Okay folks.  I'm literally scraping resin from the bowl at this point (which reminds me of a friend in high school, his name was Joe - I have a vision of Joe scrouched down in the corner of a dark room at a party scraping resin from multiple bowls to amount to one small toke - and finally resorting to an entire bottle of Robitussin just to get high.  We then called him Joebitussin.)  This was the same Joe who dressed like Robert Smith (THE ORIGINAL GOTH thank you very much), and made me WEEP with his rendition of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the piano.  Yes, those were 'my people'.

I haven't anything to say these days.  I'm pretty happy.  And happy doesn't make for good writing - at least for me.  I got a bill for 10k from the hospital yesterday.  That's 10 plus 3 zeros - and I didn't even get a baby with that!  I told Vern that when I do deliver my babies I'm going to have Zack wait in the car outside the ER while I run in carrying the baby between my legs.  I'll ask them to 'cut 'er loose!' and tell them to do it quickly because 'the meter is running'.  I can't be bothered.  There is a new rule in our house these days.  As long as spinal fluid and brain matter are where they're supposed to be - you're fine.

So anyway, I have two questions that have been bugging me lately.  Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

Why is it that older men wear their baseball caps (with the bill completely FLAT) on the very top of their heads?

Why do people ride their bikes in the street when there are sidewalks for that purpose?

I've also been thinking of baby names.  BORING.  I know.  And I'm still not pregnant, but I think about it ALL THE TIME. 

Boys:

Maxwell (Max has been axed now thanks to the likes of Christina Skankulera AND J-Lo and all the other Hollywood Hussy's using it.  Assholes.)

Reese

Jack

Ben

Mason

***OOPS I FORGOT THIS ONE.  The current frontrunner!  I knew I was missing something...

OLIVER (So very british.  and I love me some brits.  which is why we love BEN too.  shut up.  you know you love the Geico Gecko!!)

Girls:

Mallory

Jane

Olivia

Amalee (I LOVED the movie Amelie - but worry if I used the French spelling, the poor kid would get 'ah-meelee?' all the time.)

Madeline (pronounced Mad-elin, not Mad-eline.)

Charley (currently the frontrunner- and absolutely inspired by High Fidelity.  It was the first time I'd ever heard Charley used for a girl..and I loved Catherine Zeta Jones' character!)

AUDREY!

Feel free to trash my names, or offer ones of your own.  I'm down.  We can play pretend NAME THAT BABY, can't we?  It's perfectly normal to have baby names figured out before your pregnant.  One of my oldest dearest friends Rhia (known here as PBM) had her flatware picked out when we were 12.  I didn't even know what flatware was.  Besides, if it turns out I can't get pregnant, Zack said I could have cats.  So then we'll have like 12 cats with the names of our would-have-been children.  Now there's an uplifting thought.

***Update.  Okay so we played this game in a very long line waiting to order food at our favorite Taqueria del Sol last night.  Over a pitcher of margaritas.  It was going great.  He bawked at Sabine.  Made a few DECENT suggestions of his own - we even agreed on a new contender - AUDREY (because we love amelie...but ain't french, and then we thought of Audrey Tatou (sp?) and bingo...Audrey was born!).  Then he started rattling off all his friends names.  I was like DUDE, we aren't naming our children after all your friends.  He's all "But my friends are all COOL!"...I'm like...whatever.  So then we are almost through drink number two and just about to the counter to order...and with entirely too much enthusiasm, he looks at me and says..."ooo ooo, I have a good one!"  - I can't WAIT to hear it! -

"How about ASS FACE?" 

Do you see what I have to deal with?  Just like his mother.  All 'SHOW ME THE BABY!'.  BORING.

Happy Mothers' Day - by Anna Quinlan

By way of Vern - This is beautiful.  Hope you all had a wonderful Mothers' Day.

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow, but in disbelief.

I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults,
two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the
same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me
in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me
laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and
privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like.

Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move
food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought
for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried
deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze
of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now.
Penelope Leach, T. Berry Brazelton, Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling
rivalr y and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education -
all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things
Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you
flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught
me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the
well-meaning relations - what they taught me, was that they couldn't
really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then
becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it
is an endless essay.  No one knows anything. One child responds well to
positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice
and a timeout.

One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.
When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on
his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my
l ast arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on
sudden infant death syndrome.  To a new parent, this ever-shifting
certainty is terrifying, and then soothing.

Eventually you must learn to trust yourself.  Eventually the research
will follow.  I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's
wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three
different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active.  I was looking
for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk.  Was there
something wrong with his fat little legs?  Was there something wrong
with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically
challenged?  Was I insane? Last year he went to China.  Next year he
goes to college.  He can talk just fine.  He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling.  Believe me, mistakes were
made.  They have all been enshrined in the 'Remember-When-Mom-Did' Hall of
Fame.  The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language - mine, not theirs.
The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for
preschool pickup.  The nightmare sleepover.  The horrible summer camp.
The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98
on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?"  (She
insisted I include that here.)  The time I ordered food at the
McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it
up from the window.  (They all insisted I include that.)  I did not
allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons.  What was I
thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while
doing this.  I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly
clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There
is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in
the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4  and 1.  And I
wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how
they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.  I wish I
had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath,
book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the
getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and
what was simply life.  When they were very small, I suppose I thought
someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done.  Now I
suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in
a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be
relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over
the top.  And look how it all turned out.  I wound up with the three
people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to
excavate my essential humanity.
That's what the books never told me.  I was bound and determined to
learn from the experts.

It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

When Daughters Become Mothers

I ponder often these days what kind of mother I will be to my children.   Scares the crap out of me.  I'm not the most nurturing, I am horribly impatient, and I am extremely sensitive to sounds, smell, and all things potentially repetitive and annoying.  Shitting, crying, whining, fussing, needy babies...ANYONE?  And the thought of something needing to suck milk out of my nipple (like (such as) multiple times a DAY) kind of freaks me out.  Sounds about as enjoyable as having blood drawn.  Can you nurse AND take xanex?

I know this is nothing unique to me and my life...but it still feels huge.  I sometimes wish that I could access live moments from my childhood for review.  So that I could understand with more clarity - my sensitivities - and ultimately how I arrived from 'there' to 'here'.  Because the older I get the less certain I am of how it actually was.  I wonder if I haven't just relied on theories along the way that offered some mental recess when I've needed to feel less responsible for the more unattractive, insecure qualities in the woman I have become.  The obtrusive ones.  The ones that burden your relationships with the people you love the most.  The ones that hurt, that don't reason, that make you feel like Mt. Everest stands between you and having grace and compassion.

I believe everything we think we know about parenting, and the choices we make that feel important to us - starts with our own childhood.  It seems the most relevant point of reference - when we have none of our own.  What we liked.  What we didn't like.  What hurt.  What we missed.  What felt 'unfair'.  What we felt we needed or wanted.  What we admired about our parents, and what embarrassed us.  Mainly, what parts of us evolved from nurture and not nature. 

We fear becoming the worst parts of our mothers and fathers - predisposed for their vices, their attitudes, their inadequacies.  We fear the potential we have to over-compensate for all those things by injecting too much of our own egos into our children's development.    That no matter how hard we try to sort and separate and compartmentalize all those things in an attempt to at the very least be a little more intentional in our behavior as 'friend', 'teacher', 'sister', 'mother', 'whatever'...we will fuck it up somehow.

I love knowing, however, that I might have the chance to try.  That I will probably fuck it up, but that maybe I can fuck it up one year of therapy less.   To a degree, I imagine I will be winging it as I have always done.  And the rest - will reveal itself through careful and deliberate discussion of how our family - progresses towards whatever it is we have agreed to value most.  I suppose thats what everyone does.  It just feels so special, and complicated and scary when you are doing it for the first time - and when you know that while it can be the most rewarding and gratifying of human experiences, it is certain to be the most challenging.

Here's to hoping I'm up for it!

No.  I'm not pregnant. 

Bedside Notes From The E.R.

After spending the last 2 days in a an E.R observation room, my Pain Scale has been completely re-defined.  Here is a pictorial to guide you through my story of survival.

   

Friday morning I woke up with some odd abdominal pain.  The kind that finds you sweaty, dizzy and naked on a toilet.  I made a few attempts to leave for work and couldn't, so I finally called to ask Vern what she thought I should do.

I will never call Vern if I am sweaty, dizzy and naked on a toilet.  Ever again.

Vern rushed over and picked me up and took me to the E.R.  We thought it was possible I could be having appendicitis - which would not be something to sit around and think about.  I was so anxious the whole way over that I'd fart or something and all my pain would go away before we got there.  That would be my luck.

I arrived at 11am Friday and wasn't released until 3:30pm on Saturday.  I hadn't had anything to eat since 8pm on Thursday.  They don't let you EAT OR DRINK anything if they think they may have to take you in for surgery - so that basically meant that come 2pm on Saturday when they were still trying to come up with more tests to run on me - I was on my 43rd HOUR of NOTHING TO EAT.  Do you have any idea what kind of headache you get when you don't get food for 43HOURS?  Pissy doesn't even come close. 

So for my first pain threshold marker...I give you STARVATION.  It is an 8.

Drinking barium for a CT scan?  Not nearly as bad as I expected.  Had I known how the next 24 hours were going to go, I might have actually ENJOYED IT.  It is a 1.

CT Scan?  Easy peasy.  0.

Starting an IV line?  Well, if you have deep rolling veins this can be a most unpleasant experience.  I had a rookie give two attempts at this after which he nearly had me come off the bed.  Nurse #2 got it on her first try and Vern was actually SWEATING watching this.  I cried.  I yelled.  Bloodwork revealed my white cell count was way up.  I had a temperature of 100.5. Not a happy camper.  I give this a 7.

Dilaudid + Tordal?  Have you ever been on the GRAVITRON at the fair?  I don't like the sensation of my face melting into my pillow.  I give this a 3.

It is almost midnight, I have been at the hospital for 13hours and they aren't sure if it is appendicitis.  They say because I don't have a lot of fat surrounding my appendix, they can't tell if there is any inflammation.  My lower abdomen is tight, sensitive to the touch. 

2 pelvic exams?  Awful.  I swear the ER doctor reached all the way up into my rib cage looking for my ovaries.  Horrible pain up in my parts.  I give this a 6.

The surgeon doesn't want to call the surgery - thinks its gynecological, the Gyno they call in at 11pm is clearly annoyed she's been called in, and thinks I'm fine.  No one has answers.  They decide to keep me overnight for observation - thinking if its appendicitis it will get worse.  It stayed the same.

I hardly slept all night, I wanted to go home.  I was ready to be either cut on, or let go so I could binge on Taco Bell Gorditas.

Day 2 sucked so bad, I can't even really talk about it.  Still.  And its been 3 days now since I left the hospital - and that long that I have been working on publishing this post.  But who are we kidding?  I'm going to go for it anyway...

2 things happened that have earned the new top records for my worst pain ever.  Hateful, horrible, things that you wouldn't wish on nobody.  Which is why I have decided I can't ever get pregnant for I live now in the fear that someone, someday will request a FULL BLADDER SONOGRAM 10 minutes after I have just had my IV LINE removed thinking I am done with TORTURE for the day.

On day 2 they wheel me down for a sonogram - lay me out and lady starts rolling on my belly.  "Your bladder's not full.  I need a full bladder."  They send me back.  I am crying.  I am STARVING.  I have a headache like you wouldn't believe and people EVERYWHERE are drinking COFFEE.   I am tired.  I want to go home.  I FEEL like I have a full bladder, but the hateful sonogram woman says she needs it fuller.  Which in my mind means I am going to be bumped out of line and there for another 4 hours before I can get back in for my test.  Which means another 4 hours I have to wait for results, so they can tell me I can FREAKING HAVE A CHULUPA.

Problem is - I have asked them to remove THE IV LINE because they put it in the crack of my arm and I couldn't bend it all night.  It hurt bad (a 2 - in hindsight) and I requested they remove it since it didn't look like I'd be going in for surgery.  They did.  Since I can no longer get fluids from my IV, and you know whose not allowed to eat OR DRINK? - two nurses come into my room with their heads down and say "Sorry Mrs. Pitts, we have to set you up with a Foley".  They are carrying a box and some equipment...and I burst into tears thinking Foley is their term for another IV LINE.  I respond wailing "You better just go get your expert person now, because I'm not going through this again!!!".  They look at me like I am jacked.

Vern shoots me a look like "oh, poor child...she has know idea...".  The nurses ask Zack and Vern to leave and through my tears I can see that I am getting a FLAMING CATHETER. 

Having a McDonald's sized straw shoved in a hole half its size with a BALLOON to be expanded in your bladder so it doesn't come out?  I called for Vern to come back in...it took them forever, I was freaking sweating all over.  Crying.  Legs trembling like Elvis (I had had this done once in college but it was just to get urine sample..it sucked.  But it was only in there for like 10 mins) I was miserable.  I wanted to die.  They get it in there and I yelled out louder than the woman a few rooms down who had somehow gotten her finger stuck in a blender.  In this moment - it is a 10.  Little do I know, the 10 is in another room waiting for me.  Vern knows about the 10 in that room.  Vern also knows that its not really a 10 - its just a 5 - and I might aught to reconsider having 3 children.

The 10 is something I don't even know if I can talk about.  It is pure evil.  It trumps every other painful experience in my life.  It lasted for about 10 minutes - and it felt like an eternity.  It kind makes me tear up just thinking about it.

They have put the catheter in - I am so uncomfortable.  I am a sweaty mess.  I can't get any pain meds because I have no FRIGGIN IV!  They wheel me back to the sonogram room on my hospital bed.  I am IN HELL. 

So here is the deal.  I have figured that they've already somehow filled my bladder with all that tube mess down there and I'm good to go.  But not.  The tech has to fill it.  And she tells me 'This is going to feel VERY UNCOMFORTABLE...and I'm thinking I have NO ENERGY for things uncomfortable at this point.  Just kill me now.

This big ol' mamma says to me...straight up..."now, I'm just gonna tell you right now...this is going to hurt - it ain't natural for fluid to go up like this, and its going to feel like you have to go real bad".  And I seriously just start crying.  Again.

And people - let me tell you.  There are no words.  There is no comparison.  All I can tell you is that what that feels like is something that you just - cannot - bear.  That you might explode in pain.  I have never sweat so much in my life while she was bearing down on my abdomen while it felt as though 10,000 leagues was being drained into my little bladder.  It was wrong.  And that is my 10.

If childbirth is an 11 - I'm fuct.

What I have learned from this experience is:

1.  A ruptured cyst can mimic the symptoms of appendicitis.  And it sucks.

2.  IV's are for drugs and filling bladders the natural way.  The ER is full of DRUG INDUCING experiences.  THE IV IS YOUR FRIEND.  It must not be removed until you are paying your parking fee and driving OUT.  I traded a 2 on my pain scale for a 10 - and I will never make that mistake again.

3.  The FOLEY is the Antichrist.

 

 

 

Busy Knittin' STUFF

Here.  Is what I've been up to lately.

I'm hormonal.  Shut up.

 

Remember I asked for TEACAKES?  I called out unto the universe, and the universe gaveth teacakes to me.  The universe is Nanjeeka - my new Scottish friend and Tunnocks Distributor.  I got chocolate covered marshmellow and graham cracker, she got these little doodads.  Neato eh?  I love this pattern.  It's a quick knit...and perfect for long hair lassies who don't like stuffing all that bidness up into a regular cap.  Not to mention, I can't stand the patterns with a little hole in the hat for the ponytail.  It just looks weird.  If you ask me.

And finally...my latest project!!!  I dream of this one.  I roll over in the middle of the night and contemplate knitting a few rows at 3am. 

Here is what the final should look like:

Here is the backside of mine almost complete.  I am using pima cotton instead of linen. 

  How friggin awesome is that?