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Underwater ballet

by Mir on October 3, 2012 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Ottomatic For the People

I am 41 years old, and my experience with death of loved ones is remarkably scant. My parents are still alive. My grandparents’ deaths were long ago and I was mostly shielded from whatever rituals were executed after their passing. I have a relatively small family and a small group of friends, and the fortune of not having lost anyone from those circles in adulthood. Until my ex’s father died, I had never been to a funeral. (I tell people that and they think I’m exaggerating or joking. No, really. The first funeral I ever attended was for my then-father-in-law, and I had no idea what was going on, and being forced to spend several hours in a room at the wake with an open casket about did me in, because DUDE THAT IS CREEPY.)

In a sense this week is easier, because this time I know what to expect, and also because Otto’s family holds both “alcohol” and “inappropriate humor” in their arsenal of grief-coping mechanisms (neither were acceptable in my former marriage), and these are methods I can get behind. Although there have been tears, of course, there are also toasts and a lot of laughter (both of which are frequently followed by someone adding “cue the lightning bolt!”) and I think Otto’s mom would mostly approve. Even if she didn’t, I think she would shake her head and chuckle.

Still, it all feels fairly surreal. (more…)

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Comments { 115 }

And so here we are

by Mir on September 24, 2012 in Health is overrated, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Left to my own devices, I don’t often find it hard to write. My head is always full of STUFF—some of it important, plenty not—and the STUFF gets tangled up with pesky FEELINGS and then there is something about the act of extracting those things from my skull and committing them to letters and punctuation and letting other people see it that helps me make sense of things. It helps me to make sense of ME.

That’s inherently selfish, and I know it. Then again, a lot of things are. I’m not convinced the way I’m compelled to write is any worse than anything else, but I know this about it. I do pay a lot of attention to how I involve others—my family, my friends, random people—when I write, and I am all-too-often aware that the human penchant for personalization means there is no avoiding pissing people off. That, too, is part of the territory. Most of the time I don’t mind; I am careful, and if you read something I didn’t actually write (or construct something I didn’t intend), that’s on you, not me.

During the last however many months of feeling like life would never, could never, be normal again, my normally crunchy exterior shattered and left me exposed to pretty much everything right when I most wished to be impervious to others. It would probably be a good time to shut up. (more…)

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Comments { 278 }

Weekendishly

by Mir on September 17, 2012 in Aspi(e)rations, Offspring: ecstasy and agony, What do I do all day?

I always find myself looking forward to the weekend with a fervor that borders on religious, particularly by Thursday or Friday. It’s going to be SO NICE, I think, and I will SLEEP LATE and RELAX and RECHARGE. And then Monday rolls around and I am just as exhausted and cranky as usual. It seems unfair.

[Side note: I did finally make an appointment to see my doctor, on account of recent life stressors do seem to be taking a slight toll on my health, possibly. Weird, right? I mean, who knew that constant months of high stress might make you less than perfectly healthy or something? So I called my doctor in August to mention that hey, um, my hair is falling out, among other things. (Good thing I have a LOT of hair, even in its currently shorn state.) They gave me an appointment in October. I'm hoping to not be completely bald or, you know, DEAD by then.]

Anyway. The weekend. We spent most of Saturday with Chickie, which was lovely, and involved a lot of eating, seems like. (Hey, that Buy One Blizzard Get One For $.99 special at Dairy Queen is not going to EAT ITSELF, man.) (I know; when we take her out of the hospital for the day I always want to feed her something healthy, but then ice cream is the language of love, right? So healthy lunch, ice cream later. It’s a compromise. Sort of.) (more…)

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Lord of the Flies meets feminism

by Mir on September 14, 2012 in Aspi(e)rations, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

One of the things I love most about Hippie School is that it exists just about a step and a half to the left of flat-out Lord of the Flies when the kids are playing outside. (And of course they play outside for hours each day, unlike those good ol’ fifteen-minute-long recesses at public school; and come to think of it, as a middle schooler, there’s no recess at all, of course.) The kids have gardens and forts and sometimes they go fishing and for a while they were big into catching turtles and building habitats for them. (I confess I found this slightly confusing. “Weren’t they ALREADY in a habitat? Like, where they lived?” I am such a killjoy.)

Part of my delight here is doubtless because—prior to Hippie School—Monkey was not so much an outdoorsy kid. When you have a host of sensory issues and poor coordination, it turns out that the notion of just running around outside is maybe not so appealing. So we all watched with great delight, last year, as Monkey inched along in progressing from “It’s too hot/the bugs are bothering me/everyone is too loud/I hate this” all the way to “Can we go outside now? I have things to do.” It was an awesome transformation to witness on a philosophical level, but also on a physical one—he’s now stronger and more coordinated. (Take THAT, years of occupational therapy!)

Of course, none of us knew this would launch Monkey’s career in diplomacy. (more…)

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Comments { 62 }

Virtual school makes me virtually crazy

by Mir on August 30, 2012 in Haven't been hit by lightning yet!, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

I think I mentioned that Monkey is taking a couple of virtual school classes this semester, and as part of filling out the hospital/homebound paperwork for Chickadee it was suggested that she do so, as well. (Translation: Oh, we are legally obligated to send a teacher out to tutor your kid, but she’s too far away for us to feel like doing that, and we are too lazy to coordinate with the district where she’s currently residing, so instead how about we pay for her to take virtual school courses and you don’t sue us? OKAY!)

Actually—now that I think of it—the craziness started really early with this. Back in the late spring/early summer we went through a whole thing where Monkey was registered for classes as a homeschooler, and that’s supposed to be paid for by the state, but then good ol’ Georgia passed a bill about something else entirely that had a wee little line in it about counties taking on the expense for homeschoolers, so we then received a tuition bill, and Otto spent an entertaining week calling around to the school district, county offices, and state legislature until someone finally paid for it. That should’ve been my first clue that this was going to be entertaining.

And then, of course, Monkey has already tried to school one of his teachers without success. Heh. (more…)

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Comments { 45 }

What goes up, must come down

by Mir on August 23, 2012 in Health is overrated, Offspring: ecstasy and agony

It’s been just over a month since I finally dared to say it out loud, that we believed Chickadee was getting better, that our long nightmare of a year might—finally!—be headed somewhere more hopeful. Meds were changed, improvements took hold, and I felt like we could hope without holding our collective breath.

Since then, life here on the “outside” has marched on without my daughter. Monkey started school; Otto started back to work; when I drive past the high school in the late afternoon and see the cross country team out running, I quietly count to myself how many of the kids we know, and find myself predicting where in the long line of jostling teenagers my Chickie would be, if she was there with them as she’d originally planned.

When friends ask, I smile and tell them we’re hanging in there. But after the first couple of times, yeah, I changed up my schedule so that I no longer pass the high school when the kids are out. It hurts to look at them. The little stabs of tangled up longing-and-fear they inspire make it hard for me to breathe.

We are hanging in there. But it’s gonna be a long hang. (more…)

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Comments { 93 }

Unrelated random things

by Mir on August 16, 2012 in It's not a regret, it's an "experience", Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Ottomatic For the People

I was thinking this morning—after I managed to stick my foot deep into my own mouth in front of a bunch of people, YAY!—about various cliches. Like, there should be something to describe the feeling of entering the third month of your kid’s hospitalization and still not knowing 1) when she might be coming home, 2) if she’s truly getting better, 3) if the #*&%^ Medicaid approval is ever coming, 4) if life will ever feel normal again. That’s far too long and messy, and you know what? 90% of people do not want to hear about it, anyway.

In the end (of the foot-in-mouth scenario) I had to settle for meekly apologizing, citing my current status as “a big ball of hurtiness” thanks to recent events. It felt inadequate, but saying “every time I think I’ve reached some sort of acceptance about all of this, a great big wave of THIS SUCKS I HATE IT hits me again” feels whiney.

Somehow the phrase “wearing my heart on my sleeve” popped up in my head. And then I thought that the meaning isn’t quite right for what I’m going through. This, this is more like having my intestines pinned to my shirt. And then I thought Intestines On My Shirt would be a good band name. And it’s really hard to imagine how I manage to continually say the wrong thing in social situations, isn’t it? It’s a puzzle, truly. (more…)

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Comments { 48 }

Of shoes and sundaes

by Mir on August 13, 2012 in Offspring: ecstasy and agony, Oh look! Something furry!!

This morning we set alarms (and got woken up early, anyway, by our trusty I-saw-you-breathe-it-must-be-kibble-o’clock prancing canine alarm) and got up early and the boys went back to school.

Monkey’s first day back to Hippie School, and Otto’s first day back to teaching. Of course I made them pose.

(Please disregard the fact that Otto really needs to polish his shoes and instead focus on the fact that Monkey’s feet suddenly do not seem all that much smaller than a full grown man’s. ACK.) (more…)

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Comments { 38 }

By request

by Mir on August 9, 2012 in Offspring: ecstasy and agony


Portrait of the artist at the computer in the kitchen, completing a unit on Scientific Method while still in his pajamas. Not the first day of school, but still. (Pictured: One foot resting on the drawer where I keep my muffin tins. Not pictured: Me exhorting him for the umpteenth time to take his foot out of the drawer, or does he enjoy delicious banana-foot-funk muffins?)

Yesterday was hard, and you made it less so. Thank you. Today is a little better.

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Comments { 34 }

This is not a picture of shoes

by Mir on August 8, 2012 in Offspring: ecstasy and agony

Those of you who’ve been around here for years know that it’s been my tradition ever since we moved to Georgia to post a picture of my kids’ shoes on the first day of school. It not only works well with that whole Witness Protection Program thing my kids have going on, to me it’s always felt like the most iconic representation of the new school year. Even once it became “uncool” to sport new kicks on the first day.

If I’d bothered to think about it, I guess I would’ve imagined that the first day of high school would’ve been the same way—a picture of shoes, an excited but nervous launch into the next chapter, and maybe even the realization that my days of shoe pictures have only a few more years to go. (Unless Chickie wanted to send me a picture of her shoes from college, which actually seems like something she might do, come to think of it. Or would’ve done, prior to… you know. All of this.)

Instead, today is supposed to be Chickadee’s first day of high school and it isn’t. Despite the hard work I’m doing every day on acceptance and living in the moment and staying positive, last night this kind of hit me like a ton of bricks, and this morning isn’t much better. It’s supposed to be today. Today is supposed to be a day full of promise for her, and I’m sad it’s not. I don’t know how not to grieve this. (more…)

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