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Hold that thought

by Mir on May 22, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!

I have many, many things to tell you about yesterday. The whole family has been getting in on the action, too—suggesting post titles, pointing out this thing or that which I simply must remember to include in the details—but it will have to wait one more day. I’m sorry to be a tease; circumstances beyond my control, and all that. Tomorrow! All the gory details!

Today, however, I have to go tend to some other things… like buying some Vaseline to stick in my nose. (Thanks for that suggestion. How had that not occurred to me before?)

While I’m gone, you can go check out my post over at Off Our Chests about our visit to the Grand Canyon. Did I mention that that place is really, really big? Because it is.

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Comments { 6 }

Mir just became the Mayor of Meansville!

by Mir on April 17, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

It’s Tuesday, so I’m going to redirect you to Off Our Chests, this time to confirm what you already knew—I’m a jerk. I’m mean! All of the other parents are cooler than I am!

[Aside: Chickadee has one friend who thinks I'm awesome. I have no idea where she got this idea, but I'm not about to disabuse her of it. Every time I give her a ride somewhere or she comes over or I see her at a school function or whatever, she laughs at my lame jokes and tells Chickie I'm the coolest mom ever. I've started calling her My Favorite Daughter and I'm SURE that's helping the already-strained relations 'round here, right? Because the only thing better than one of your friends thinking your terrible mom is actually a human being is your mom making it clear that she's lapping it up. Heh.]

Anyway. Tomorrow my darling daughter turns 14 (related: HOW DID THIS HAPPEN??), and I have many presents I need to go wrap for her. But the thing she wants the most—and still isn’t getting—is Facebook. Because I’m a monster, obviously. C’mon over and weigh in. (I give it about an hour before someone with a creative name like “Anonymous” tells me how wrongishly wrong and stupid I am.)

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Comments { 28 }

Just like Jesus

by Mir on April 9, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Oh look! Something furry!!

Easter was a relatively low-key event ’round here. Thanks to my last-minute grocery store run, we had enough food to feed a small army. This isn’t my fault; given our plans to just have a quiet dinner of the four of us, and given that one of us doesn’t eat meat, my intention was to buy a few ham steaks and we’d just cook them out on the grill. But it turns out that the day before Easter, giant hunks of pig are actually cheaper than smaller, more manageable hunks of pig. Naturally, I opted for a small ham because it was more food for less money (and that’s my particular mental illness, that I am IN MY MIND always just one grocery selection away from not being able to feed my family).

And as long as we were having a bona fide ham, well, then we needed stuff to go with it to make it all official, of course. So somehow we ended up with a giant meal. Because if there’s ham, there must also be a mountain of mashed potatoes! And veggies! And a whole pineapple, which we totally forgot about and never even cut up. Whoops. We did not, however, forget about the pie. Mmmmmm… pie.

Anyway. What? Oh, right. Low-key Easter. (more…)

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Comments { 19 }

Christ is risen, and my foot is delicious

by Mir on April 7, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!

Today we are carefully preparing for this holiest of weekends in the standard way: You know, getting up early, cajoling the children into doing yard work with us while they complain bitterly (“I hit my leg on the wheelbarrow!” “These sticks are hurting my hands!”), then realizing that tomorrow is Easter and we have no food and I have to go grocery shopping.

The usual.

Anyway, as I wandered through the supermarket, comparing prices on various hunks of delicious pig meats (Jesus probably kept kosher, which makes the Easter fixation on giant hams rather odd), I felt almost peaceful. We got a lot done this morning. And I was shopping alone, in blessed, whine-free silence.

All of this is preface to telling you that I have no idea WHY—when the cashier held up a little donation slip and asked me if I wanted to “Donate a dollar to save a baby”—the thing that fell out of my mouth was, “No thanks, I hate babies!”

I was joking. She was horrified.

I’m an ass. (Sorry, Jesus. Please accept this pie by way of apology.)

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Comments { 33 }

Regrouping, and searching

by Mir on April 4, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, It's not a regret, it's an "experience"

I’ve reached the segment of our program where I’m finding it difficult say much, to anyone. Never mind writing about my delicate feeeeelings, Otto’s customary “How was your day?” query as we’re getting settled in bed at night is enough to render me speechless. How was my day? Ummm, Chickadee remains medically fragile and I think Monkey has another sinus infection (which you understand to mean “He says he feels fine, but he’s being a complete butthead at school and has a nasty cough, so that probably means he’s sick”), so my days mostly feel like a mad dash from here to there, cradling a dozen raw eggs in my arms, hoping that none of them drop and go splat. If everyone got everywhere they were supposed to go and no one had to go to the hospital, I guess it was an okay day.

Inbetween driving children to more doctors’ appointments than I ever realized were even possible, arguing with our insurance company, and filling out paperwork for everything from summer camp to next year’s high school schedule, I choose to focus on the things I actually have some power over. Because that’s HEALTHY, sort of.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the suckage I cannot change, the courage to find a decent hairstyle, and the wisdom not to schedule that stylist appointment while the kids need a ride somewhere. Amen. (more…)

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Comments { 46 }

Well, here you go

by Mir on March 19, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Health is overrated

In the continuing saga of My Oh My What Exactly IS Wrong With This Chickadee Kid, Anyway… a while back one of her doctors sent us to another doctor who sent us to a third doctor. And she told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on, and… oh, wait. That’s a shampoo commercial, not what happened to us with the doctor. My mistake. (But your hair really DOES smell terrific.)

Anyway, we met with this new doctor—we’ll call him Dr. Zebra, for reasons which will make no sense to anyone but me and Chickie, who leaned over to me the moment we left his office that first time and said, “IF YOU BLOG ABOUT HIM YOU MUST CALL HIM DR. ZEBRA”—about a month ago and sat in his office and Talked About The Situation while he took copious notes. I find that all good doctors start out with taking a lot of notes which you never end up getting to see, and I strongly suspect them to be a combination of “Kilroy was here” doodles and phrases like “Holy crap this kid is a medical mess but darned if I have any idea why.” He asked both of us a lot of questions about everything that had happened so far, and her symptoms, and her medications, and then he started asking all of the standard “history” questions, like if her birth was normal and such.

“And what do you do, Mom?” he finally asked, pen poised over his clipboard, while I briefly fantasized about answering “I’m a hooker,” just to see if it would break his easy composure. (more…)

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Comments { 46 }

My big girl panties look like running shorts

by Mir on March 15, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, It's not a regret, it's an "experience"

This week is Operation Rejoin The Human Race.

Oh, I know, you weren’t aware that I left. But I did! Every now and then my natural tendencies towards hermit-tude intersect with massive life suckage and then I go underground (metaphorically—the clay in Georgia is far too hard for actual tunneling) and the extent of what I say in public is limited to things like, “The sunlight! IT BURNS!”

At a certain point, my darling husband starts looking at me with a gaze tinged with equal parts pity and fear, and then I know it’s time to pull myself up by my bootstraps. Or shave my legs again. Whatever.

This week has been highly cooperative in that the weather has been gorgeous. So, step one of my plan: Licorice and I have gone for a long walk every day. This is especially exciting because there’s a dead squirrel along our regular route. I KNOW. (more…)

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Comments { 35 }

What happens when you pray for boring

by Mir on March 8, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Health is overrated, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I used to pray for patience, you know, because I figured that was what I needed. But it turns out that if you pray for patience you get a whole lot of “character building” experiences wherein your patience is “tested” and you want to say “lots of blasphemous and profane things” to whoever’s in charge. Go figure. (I swear to you I just typed “Fo gigure,” and almost left it like that, but after admitting to such poor behavior, I reasoned it was best not to further tempt fate just now.)

But hey, sometimes I learn things! Slowly, sure—always pretty slowly—but I am capable of learning and changing. So now I pray for boring. Boring is good. Boring is AWESOME. At least, I think it probably is. I don’t really remember. The first time Chickie was in the hospital, I prayed for her to come home. And then she came home and things were still scary and drama-filled and she ended up BACK in the hospital, so I started praying for boring. Now that she’s home again, any moment in which I am not actively caring for her or being screamed at by her (these two events coincide more often than you might imagine, incidentally) is one which is boring and therefore GOOD.

We’re still a long way from boring, but getting closer. (more…)

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Comments { 50 }

Worth it

by Mir on February 18, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Woohoo!

I’ve been to hours of rehearsals and have missed hours of rehearsals. I’ve driven to rehearsal and wiped tears off my cheeks the whole way there because it was my only time alone to vent the frustration and sadness I was feeling over my oldest being sick and scared and beyond the fixing I used to be able to do with band-aids and boo-boo kisses.

I’ve laid awake at night while Otto gently snored next to me, my prayers for strength and patience and grace all tangled up with mental repetitions of my lines for the show—lines I could’ve easily learned in an afternoon back when I was in college, but which now eluded me or got twisted up on my tongue as my older, slower brain darted from one worry to the next. I stared at the ceiling in the dark and hoped I wouldn’t make a fool of myself; hoped I hadn’t made the wrong choice, staying with the show, even in the midst of everything else.

I apologized to my girl for leaving her so much, especially this last week. “I would’ve been mad at you if you dropped out,” she said, simply. “It’s okay. I’m glad you’re doing it.” (more…)

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Comments { 63 }

The secret ice cream society

by Mir on February 16, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Health is overrated, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Chickadee’s been home for a week and a half, has successfully managed two half-days at school (and is attempting the whole day today), and while life stubbornly refuses to stop or even slow down while we find our new normal, over here, I am rediscovering the healing power of frozen dairy confections.

The list of things I can control at this point would probably fit on a post-it, with room to spare. The list of things I CAN’T control (but desperately wish I could) is a lot longer. Go figure! On any given day, I sandwich small stints of actual work between doctors’ appointments and carpool and play rehearsal and just plain sitting down with the kids a lot more often than I did B.C. (that would be: Before Crisis), just because my priorities have shifted.

My sanity has remained loosely tethered on getting Chickadee to eat and gain weight. The doctors have to go do their thing, I get that; but I’m her Mama, and I can fatten her up. Right? Maybe? Looking at her will hurt less when she no longer looks like a strong wind might snap her in two? (more…)

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Comments { 86 }
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