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2013, man. Twenty. Thirteen.

by Mir on January 12, 2012 in My name is Grumplestiltskin

In 2010, Monkey had a seizure, and I spent about three weeks completely convinced that he had a brain tumor. Otto and I lay in bed at night, holding hands, talking quietly about the “what if”s and sometimes about nothing very important, just because neither of us could sleep and it was comforting to whisper in the dark, together. Then the flu tore through the house the next month, causing us to cancel our holiday trip, and our battle cry became “2011!” As in, “2011 is gonna be our year!”

Well, 2011 was good in that we found out that Monkey didn’t have a tumor and wasn’t dying. That was VERY good. But he did stay out of school for about a month, before/during/after surgery, and then there was the whole ZOMG WHERE IS HE GOING TO SCHOOL NEXT YEAR thing, and other stuff happened, and blah blah blah, whatever; we changed the rallying cry to “2012! That’s going to be our year!”

We were about 5 days in to the new year when Otto changed it to “2013! 2013 FOR SURE!” And Otto is the optimist in this couple, as you know, so… things are Not Good. (more…)

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The elephants on my chest

by Mir on January 7, 2012 in Health is overrated, My name is Grumplestiltskin

Oh, hello. You know what’s awesome? Being the sort of person who is prone to psychosomatic illness. Now, a lot of people think that “psychosomatic” means “faked,” but in fact it means real physical illness that just happens to be caused or aggravated by mental factors such as stress.

If they gave grades in psychosomatic maladies, I would get an A+, as well as comments like, “Really gives it her all!” and “Rarely do I see this sort of dedication.”

When I made it through our two-week-long tour of illness, stress, and family dysfunction over the holidays with nary a sniffle, I was set to declare myself champion of staying healthy. Then we came home, I did ten loads of laundry, and promptly came down with a miserable chest cold. Whoops.

Fortunately, the hits kept on coming, with several dreadful pieces of news arriving in the last week. I figure I should be on life support by February. (more…)

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Mama Bear ANGRY

by Mir on November 15, 2011 in My name is Grumplestiltskin, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Yesterday I was crazed, swamped with work I’d put off all weekend, trying to carve out a spot in the afternoon to write here. Because although I write for a living, writing HERE is what keeps me sane and grounded (despite periodic exclamation-point-riddled evidence to the contrary).

But then my work day got cut short, because Chickadee—who has been doing her very best recently to make me reconsider selling her to the circus—texted me from school. During school. Which was weird. And it got weirder. And my baby wasn’t okay, and despite weeks of clashing wills and shrill shrieking about how I am the worst mother ever, when all was said and done last night, my nearly-as-tall-as-I-am teenager curled up in my lap and hugged me hard and whispered, “Thank you,” because when push came to shove, she knew that Mama had her back. Because I do, always.

Now I’m left waiting to see what happens next, and fairly vibrating with rage in the meantime. Until we reach a conclusion here, all I feel comfortable saying is that some situations call for a righteous anger, and I will do my damndest to teach my daughter that if someone tries to shame her for someone else’s actions, she has the right to get good and pissed.

(I shared this over at Off Our Chests because I wanted to make sure other teenagers see it. But this is one I hope you’ll click through to read, especially if you have kids.)

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Which one?

by Mir on September 30, 2011 in Aspi(e)rations, My name is Grumplestiltskin

Yesterday everyone got home late and we had take-out for dinner and I was scrambling to put out everything we needed, and I opened the silverware drawer and stopped short. For some reason, the last time Otto unloaded the dishwasher, he decided that our silverware organizer was arranged incorrectly. For four and a half years it has been (left to right) knives, forks, big spoons, little spoons; what I looked in on as I was exhorting Monkey to pour milk and Chickadee to get out the napkins was big spoons, forks, little spoons, knives.

This halted the entire operation. “What did you DO?” I asked Otto, totally baffled by the drawer. He mumbled something about how he thought the new arrangement might make it easier to set the table (he and Chickie both often reverse the knives and forks). “But you can’t… just… do THAT!” I sputtered. “You can’t just CHANGE it without any WARNING! That’s not how it GOES!” By now both kids had come to marvel at the rearranged drawer, and Chickadee looked at it, then at me, and set to putting the drawer back to the way it had been. Monkey just looked horrified. I grabbed my son. “DO YOU SEE this little OCD acorn right here?” I demanded of Otto. “He didn’t fall far from THIS TREE”—indicating myself—”and that means you can’t just REARRANGE EVERYTHING I KNOW TO BE TRUE ABOUT SILVERWARE without TELLING ME.” (more…)

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St. Martyr of Stabby

by Mir on September 15, 2011 in My name is Grumplestiltskin, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

There is a list of things I carry around in my head, and I may not refer to it or think of it all that often, but it is labeled, “Things I Will Never Do As A Parent Because It Bugged The Everlovin’ CRAP Out Of Me When My Parents Did It.” (Sorry, Mom and Dad.)

I don’t think this is unusual. Most parents I know have a similar list. Its biggest hallmark, of course, is that half of the items on the list are things we’ve already done, because HELLO, a lot of the stuff we hated as kids we perpetuate as parents because it’s actually the stuff that makes sense, no matter how irritating it is to be on the receiving end. Growing up and becoming the Responsible Person In Charge has a way of obliterating certain assumptions, it turns out.

Still. There’s a list. With things on it. Things I really don’t want to do because I know they are the fast track to Sucksville, both for my kids and for me as a parent. And that is why I have spent the bulk of today biting my tongue. (more…)

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This is the fence that never ends

by Mir on May 25, 2011 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience", My name is Grumplestiltskin

The work on the fence has been going on for almost a week, which means that even Licorice is pretty much over it, not even bothering to bark at the guys anymore. That’s fine, because Otto has pretty much taken over on the barking, inbetween small head explosions as we traverse this particularly delightful path of home renovation.

When we signed the contract, by the way, we were told “one full day, or maybe one full day and half a day.” That’s all it was supposed to take. And this is not our first rodeo; we figured that meant maybe three days. Heck, I even said it to the fence guy, laughing, and he insisted NO NO, really, it’s pretty much a one day job.

AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAsob.

But, hey, look. There is some GOOD news. I am pretty sure that by the time this is all over, they’re going to be paying us to take this #*%&+$ fence, so there’s your silver lining, right there.

Let’s review, shall we? (more…)

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A brief note on the Hardship Olympics

by Mir on March 21, 2011 in My name is Grumplestiltskin

I’ve found myself talking about this in blog comments a lot, lately, and with friends, too. I think it bears a bit of probing, because I remain absolutely astounded at the number of otherwise kind and intelligent people who just Do Not Get It.

The theory is this: There are no Hardship Olympics. Nobody wins for having it worse than everybody else. There is no honor and glory in that which sucks. Any sort of one-up-manship that happens in the discussion of difficulty is a dick move, because no one wins and it’s not a competition.

Furthermore, the fact that the world is full of tragedy—always, actually, though seemingly moreso right now—does not mean that if you personally didn’t lose your home, family, and pet chinchilla in a tsunami that your struggles don’t matter or somehow aren’t hard. I mean, sure, if someone is sitting there moaning about their hangnail, I get how that might be kind of trying. But I really think Plato said it best: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. (more…)

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Paging Dr. House

by Mir on March 18, 2011 in Health is overrated, My name is Grumplestiltskin, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Yesterday was a no good, terrible, horrible, very bad day, and every time I think about it I get mad all over again. It was the sort of thing where I couldn’t help just stepping outside of myself, mentally, even WHILE it was happening, and thinking, “If I wrote this up as a fiction story people would be all, ‘Yeah, it’s just not believable, I’m sorry.’”

Like that.

So I am too lazy to find the old posts and link back, but for anyone who’s new ’round these parts, my darling daughter has some sort of chronic skin condition that she developed when we moved to Georgia which has been steadily worsening ever since. We are about to begin The Four Summer Of Mystery Rash, only this year as a SPECIAL ADDED BONUS, Chickadee busted out the rash in December (the earliest yet!) when she had the flu, and though we sort of contained it for a while there, she came home from her band trip with a full-blown rash, as well.

We see a team of dermatology specialists at Big Atlanta Medical Center who supposedly Know Things, so we’d called to let them know what was going on, and yesterday morning they called and said “Can you be here in two hours?” (more…)

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Our kingdom for a therapist

by Mir on March 4, 2011 in Aspi(e)rations, Health is overrated, My name is Grumplestiltskin, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

It’s true that our “kingdom” at present doesn’t amount to much, and as many odd things as I’ve encountered thus far, I really haven’t gotten the impression from anyone involved that the offer of a deck badly in need of refinishing or a falling-down fence or even the pond full of peep-peep-peeping frogs would significantly improve our odds of being helped, but whatever we do have, I would happily offer it in exchange for the ability to:

1) Locate an appropriate child psychologist,
2) discover said professional takes our insurance,
3) admire said professional’s extensive experience in dealing with kids on the spectrum,
and
4) celebrate at the news that this doctor would be DELIGHTED to take Monkey on as a patient.

You know, Monkey? Cute, adorable, charming, Monkey? Who WOULDN’T want to spend a couple of hours a week with this kid? I’ll tell you who: Every damn therapist in this town, THAT’S WHO. I am trying not to take it personally. (more…)

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You can’t put a price on this kind of aggravation

by Mir on February 25, 2011 in My name is Grumplestiltskin

On the whole, life right now is pretty darn good. Honest and for true, the most likely answer these days when you ask me how I am is, “I’m really good.” I may even sound a little surprised, when I say it, because… it’s still a little unexpected. But yeah, in the big picture? Not only am I feeling grateful and appreciative of all the recent improvements and little victories, I’m feeling all HOPEFUL and CHEERFUL and crap.

It’s weird.

At one point while I was kind of down in the pit during operation Gather Up The Shattered Pieces Of Monkey And For God’s Sake, Someone Get Some More Glue Over Here, Joshilyn wrote me an email which included the following:

But I have thought to myself, in a way that was hard to articulate, that you have moved over the last year or so from regular old Mir worldview of “A lot of the time, the glass feels half empty, but hey, I will go lick dew. Because, that’s moist!” person to a place where the glass is 2/3rds empty and rats are rubbing their diseased little tongues on the place you have to drink from, and there is no pitcher and we are all fucked and about to get plague.

At the time, that was accurate. Nowadays, I’m a hundred million times better. However, I need to vent about three recent things. (more…)

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