The legacy left to me

My dad delivered me. Oh, there was another plan in place but it did not happen. It was always intended for me to be born at home. My mom enlisted the help of a midwife. She felt pretty good about this decision too...until she went into labor. The midwife lived quite a ways away and, when my parents decide it was time to call her, was on the phone. This was before call waiting. Can you imagine? Sitting there with a busy signal on the other end of the line? Once they finally got through, the midwife took off to get to us. And promptly got pulled over for speeding. "Excuse me officer, I know I was going too fast but I have to deliver a baby." Yeah right. Gee, for some reason, the officer didn't believe her. Can't imagine why. So by the time she got there, I had been born. Luckily, my dad had read a book. So he delivered me. And three hours later, I was grocery shopping with them.

My memories of my dad are all mixed up. I remember always wanting to be with him. To hold his hand. To feel like he was proud of me. To feel important in his life. Unfortunately, those things were not high on his priority list. My dad was an alcoholic. His booze of choice was vodka. To this day, I cannot handle the smell. People who say that it has no scent have not been around it as much as I have. It smells so strongly. It smells of failure. Of fear. Of disappointment and regret.

My parents finally got divorced when I was 12. My dad moved out when I was 6. I can't even begin to tell you how many nights I stood in the kitchen, watching for him out the window. Waiting for him to come and whisk me away to what I was sure was going to be an amazing magic filled weekend with my daddy. More often than not, he failed to appear. I wonder now what was going through his head. Did he really not remember? How do you forget your child? I think about my mom too. How angry she must have been. Watching me hurt...seeing the excitement turn to sorrow...holding me while I cried...

As tends to happen with chronic alcoholism, my dad got sick. He developed Liver Disease. Esophageal Verasy. Hepatitis. It was horrible. I struggled so much with how to handle it. I had two options. 1. Ignore him. Ignore his disease. Ignore the fact that he had no one. Hold on to the hurts of growing up with him as a dad. Remind him of all of the heartache he caused me over the years. Or 2. Drive him to doctor appointments. Make sure he ate. Go to his house (a converted garage studio with concrete floors) and check on him. Tell him I loved him. Do my best to mean it.

I'm ashamed now to tell you how hard that decision was for me. In the end though, I felt like I needed to show him that I could take care of him. I patted his back while he vomited blood. I held his hand while he was in the I.C.U. I sat beside him when he had fluid drained off of his stomach. I told him I loved him. I meant it.

I was able to do for him what he was unable to do for me. He was transitioned to comfort care in a nursing home right after Christmas of 2004. He couldn't talk because he had been on a ventilator for 3 weeks. We (my brother, sister in law and I) made a sign for him that said, "Chocolate Milkshake, Please". He would hold it up for the nurses. We knew that he didn't have much time left. On Saturday January 15, 2005 I went to see him. I told him that Joe and I would be back to hang out with him that night. I told him I loved him. He squeezed my hand. I left. We didn't go that night. We were on a date and ran out of time. The next day I got a phone call from his nurse. He was rapidly going downhill. They had him medicated heavily with morphine and told me that we needed to get there. Joe took the boys home and I went in. My brother and his wife, myself and my dad's best friend pulled chairs up to his bed. He was unconscious but I think he knew that we were there. We started telling stories about him. Laughing and joking. Out of the blue he started to cough up blood. My brother and I went to either side of his head. Matthew grabbed the suction tube and started to suction his mouth. I wiped the blood off of his chin. We looked at each other and both knew. He was gone. The nurse came in and confirmed it. We kissed him and left.

I feel almost like, since that day, something has been broken in my head. I started having insomnia. Going through bouts of severe depression. Attempting to sabotage my life and my relationships. Acting like he did. Drinking a little too much sometimes. Being a little bit too big of a personality to have people feel comfortable around me. I know that if I'm not careful, I could turn out just like him. And sometimes, on the bad days, that seems like it would be easier than fighting the legacy left to me.

When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be -- I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry

I have to put this somewhere because I don't want to lose it. This is how I am feeling right now. Something is coming. Something big. And I am scared. I'm worried that I'm feeling the beginnings of the bad time for me. I want the waves to recede. How do I do that?

It's official, I am lame.

What do you write about when your life never seems like it changes? We spent so much time in the woods this summer, so much time on the lake, so much time just hanging out. Now winter is here. Or fall anyway. Really not much of a difference up here. Autumn still means that it's in the low 30's. Autumn still means that it's stupid hunting season. Autumn still means that there is snow. On my car. Right now.

Little Boy is in kindergarten and doing awesome. We've had some "issues" with his teacher so far. She didn't think that his celiac was a big enough of a deal to tell the lunchroom staff. So the kids were sharing food, as kids do, and he shared some chips. He does not have the maturity to know which chips he can have. He ate Doritos. He got very sick. We also had an issue with some of the kids. He brought his lunch of PB & J on rice cakes. They made fun of him. He cried. I threw a fit. Quite simple really.

Teenage Boy is in high school. He's playing soccer. He's got straight A's. Who is this child? What happened to the problem student? He is quite mouthy with me so I know that he hasn't been replaced by a pod person at least.

Joe and I celebrated our 10th anniversary in September. We had an awesome time. We went to Canada and watched a hockey game. And this could not be more mundane or boring.

Cell phone pictures

The sun is a very intense red color right now.

This fire will be going over the mountaintop within the next 2 days.

On the right is normal clouds. On the left is smoke.

Driving into the smoke. Can you imagine how AWESOME it makes me feel to know that my kids are breathing that in?

I haven't had time to upload the pictures from my camera yet. I took these yesterday of the smoke clouds. Air quality is horrible up here right now. The difference between the blue sky and the black smoke blows me away. It makes me so sad to see...

A whole month later

Well, it didn't sell. And that is the only showing we have had on it. I'm just pretty done with the whole thing, I think. There's just too much else going on right now to be too concerned about it. I'm just annoyed. I'm weepy. Best Friend made a really stupid comment to me last night about Little Boy. She says she was only kidding but it was just one of those comments that make me want to snatch my kids tighter to me and run away from everyone with them. Really dumb. But I'm still reeling from it. I just thought that I could trust that she loved my boys as much as I love her girls. It just sucks.

Not helping is that I'm hormonal. Yeah! (and...sorry to any men that might still be reading this...Hi Slinger!) so I'm way more whiny and sensitive than normal. Gotta love being a girl.

Montana burns. Have you seen that? Where I live is literally surrounded by fires that are all moving very quickly towards my town. Towns have been evacuated as close as 40 miles from us. It seems like a lot but really, it's not. One fire started at 10 acres burned on Friday night and by last night, there were over 18,000 acres burned. It's insane. The air is so smoky up here that you can't see the mountains. I took some pictures last weekend that I'll upload later. It's like watching snow fall with the ash. Air quality stinks. They are getting ready to shut down the woods completely. We were supposed to go camping this weekend but it doesn't look like it's going to happen. We couldn't have a fire but we were still going to go out. We'll see what happens.

So tell me...what do you do when you get sensitive about your kids? Do you avoid the person that made you feel that way? Do you look at your child and start to see them as the other person does? Do you wrap your arms around them and take them far, far away? I need some advice here, people. Unfortunately, this isn't just some random person. This is one of the people that I spend most of my time with.

It only takes One, right???

We've got our first showing this morning! Woot! The market up here has just been very very odd. Summertime is when real estate is supposed to just move in Montana but it hasn't been. And to make it worse, people are listing their houses for way under market because they want to sell quickly. So they're driving the market down.

Could you blame someone if they daydreamed of fire bombing those houses? Not that I have or anything. Nope, not me.

The people that are looking at our house today are from out of state. They are looking at 10 houses today and we are first on the list. I'm hoping that that is good for us. "They" say that you really only remember the first and the last and that by the middle of the day, minds are usually made up. Plus, we are experiencing a freaky heat wave and most homes up do not have central air. Why would they? It's Montana! Right now (at 7:50 am) it's only 68 degrees so by 9:00, I'm hoping our house will still be cool from last night. I made cookies this morning and so the house smells really good. It's clean. I left the cookies on the counter with a sign asking them to please help themselves.

Really good chocolate chip cookies are worth $239,500, right?

Right?

The one where my heart explodes

Hey! How are you? No, not you...You...Yes, you. How have things been? Anything exciting happening lately in your life? Say...you wouldn't happen to want to buy a house would you? It's a nice house in a great neighborhood. No? Oh well. You and nobody else either.

We have had NO showings on our house yet. I'm not quite sure why that is. I'm thinking that it might have something to do with the fact that our realtor is an idiot. A brand new idiot. He's so green that if he were an avocado he would be used as a projectile. He wasn't my pick. I want to fire him. I've wanted to fire him. A month on the market and no showings tells me that he's doing something wrong. But he works for Joe's best friend and so it's Joe's baby. When I decide that I'm going to do something, I want it done right away. I have no patience.

ANYWAY.

It's reached the time of the year where we are spending every weekend out in the woods. We broke down this spring and bought a used camper. It's perfect for us and it is very very nice to have. Now we feel like we have to make it worth our money by using it. All the time. I love to camp and don't mind getting dirty so that's ok. The boys love it too. Little Boy runs free with his friends and Teenage Boy (now AKA Mancub) explores. He's the coolest 14 year old. It's hard to gauge what he's thinking a lot of the time because he doesn't show much emotion. But he gets this twinkle in his green eyes that show how happy he is when things go his way. He's going to be deserting me for a few weeks this summer. He's going to San Diego for 3 weeks with Joe's oldest brother. It's going to be a great experience for him. I'm a little nervous about him flying by himself though. He just doesn't have much common sense it seems. He has an hour and a half layover in Seattle on his way home. I think he'll be smart. I hope.

*Recorded for posterity (and because the baby book is packed away)*
While camping last weekend

Little Boy: Here Mommy (handing me a wildflower), I picked this for you.
Me: Thank you sweetie
Little Boy: A beautiful flower for a beautiful mommy.

And then my heart exploded.

The hair...the song...the clothes (especially the jeans up to his nipples) and the dancing.

I spit water at my monitor. This? This is what I listened to when I was younger?

Where has the time gone?

Wow. It's been over a month since I posted? How did that happen? Where did the time go? All we've been doing is camping, cleaning, de-cluttering our house, landscaping, working, cleaning some more, de-cluttering some more, dealing with family tragedy, playing way too hard with our friends and listing our house to sell.

Oh yeah. So that's where the time has gone! So guess what! You get bullets! Woo-hoo!!

• The house is listed. The sign is going in the ground today. We have de-cluttered, touch up painted and landscaped. Our realtor thinks that it will sell very quickly. We stand to make $75,000.00 profit off of it. In 2 years. Amazing to me.
• We bought a little camper for ourselves. It's old (1986) and 19 foot but it's in great shape, can sleep all 4 of us very comfortably and everything works! We got a killer deal on it. And best of all? When it's raining in Montana and we're camping? Now we're dry! AND I don't have to pee in the woods anymore!
  
• My Uncle Al tragically lost a battle with cancer last Friday. He was my surrogate dad growing up. Since my bio-dad was nowhere around for most of my formative years, if I needed a daddy talk, my mom would call Uncle Al. Even though they lived 1000 miles away, I always knew that he (and my Aunt Gwen (my mom's sister and Al's wife)) would be there in a hearbeat if I needed them. I always knew how proud they were of me. That's a great feeling to have. He was diagnosed at the end of March and went very quickly. Teenage Boy and I leave tomorrow morning and are driving to South Dakota for the funeral. We come home on Monday. It's going to be horribly sad but, through it all, I know there will be lots of laughter. That's just the way my family is. We make sure it's all about the good memories intermingled with the tragedy. And one thing my family knows well is tragedy. My cousin lost her husband 2 years ago. This is her dad. It sucks.
  
• Last but definitely not least, Teenage Boy graduates from 8th grade today. I can't believe it! I just keep remembering him in his little frog shorts and t-shirt on his first day of kindergarten. He was so stinkin' cute and still is. I'm very proud of him! He turns 14 on Saturday and I'll be 31 on Sunday. Amazing how time flies.
  

OK, I've got a ton of stuff to do before I leave. I'll update more from the road, I'm sure.

Hey guess what?

They have worn me down. Joe & Roy have won. The positives outweigh the negatives. It's the right time of year, right market, right everything.

What am I talking about, you ask yourself?

We are selling our house.

We are buying land.

We are moving back into the house we moved out of 2 years ago and going to rent it from my parents.

We are building next spring.

We are completely insane.

We are going to be investing in whiskey very soon.

Ways to pass the time

This is baby crack. The boys and I have been sucked on there for the last few days. We start to play and all of the sudden, it's been 3 hours.

Baby crack, I tell ya. Consider yourselves warned.

FIVE YEARS OLD!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY SWEET, SWEET BOY.

I AM SO INCREDIBLY LUCKY TO BE YOUR MOM.

No words

Such tragedy. Such heartbreak. Such a waste.

Do you know how hard it is to be taken seriously in a meeting while you're wearing a Scooby Doo bandaid on your finger?

I'm just sayin.

Note to self: Buy grown up bandaids at the store.

Ugh

Too many jelly beans.

Too much egg salad.

Too much ham left over.

But most of all, too many darn jelly beans.

Ugh.

My weekend. IN PICTURES!

Can I get a woo-hoo? This weekend has been interesting, to say the least.

Let's see...how do I begin...I guess Friday is a good enough place to start, huh?





It has been an amazingly beautiful weekend weather wise. We went to the park on Friday afternoon and the boys hung out.

We were with Andrea and the girls (but of course) and then we went to their house for BBQ and bonfire. Spring in Montana!

Can anyone tell me what the heck this is? Roy's mom swears it's a dog but I'm just not too sure.

We got a little bit bored after marshmallows so Roy pulled some fun out of the closet. Oooh, that sounded dirty...

Yesterday was sunny and warm again and off we went to a giant easter egg hunt at some friend's house.


There were 3000 eggs hidden on their land. There were about 200 kids. You do the math. Each kid had an overabundance of eggs. Nothing like spoiling them rotten!



It kind of went downhill from there. Little Boy has been sick off and on for the last 5 weeks. He's had tonsillitis and ear infections two times and two rounds of antibiotics. He started acting a little bit off on Wednesday. Not wanting to play with his friends, whiny, clingy, etc. He seemed to be warm occasionally but I had never actually checked his temperature. After the hunt, he got super tired and really hot. He wouldn't turn his neck and was saying his eyes hurt. When we got home, we took his temp and it was 102.4. We gave him tylenol and put him down for a nap. 45 minutes later Joe checked it again. He was sleeping so Joe used it under his arm (remember, you have to add a degree to the temp you get). He was at 104.9. 106 degrees for a 4 year old is really not a good thing. Joe called his mom (a retired nurse) and, after talking to her, off we went to the E.R. By the time we got there, the tylenol had kicked in and it was down to 103.8.


His eyes still were hurting and they were worried about meningitis because he wouldn't move his neck. Flu test, strep test and a chest x-ray were where we started.


He was perking up little by little. Joe did a great job entertaining him. He's a good dad.


He thought the x-ray machine was fun. This picture cracks me up. After much time and a now very perky boy, we found out he has strep. So this is 3 times in 5 weeks that he's on antibiotic. We have an appointment with his pediatrician on Tuesday. I am thinking we'll be getting tonsils out soon. Poor kid.

We still had a bunch of people over to watch UFC last night.


This is a horrible picture but it shows our evening. Our very very buzzed evening.

Today started early with me singing at church. We had Roy and Andrea over for dinner and did egg hunts in the back yard.

Now I'm sleepy. And you're bored with reading. So I'm done.

Where I've been lately

Impromptu dinner dates with the guy who makes me giggle kinda rock a little bit.

And so did that GIANT bottle of Chimas Ale. Oh so yummy.

I have a post brewing about my bio-dad and how my relationship with him and who he was has affected my entire life. We'll see if I can ever get it down on paper. More ale will help with that, I'm sure.

Stupid Howard Stern

Freak boy isn't in the bottom three.

Voting public of American Idol, I am serving you notice.

The hell? Part two

What happened to Sanjaya's hair??????????????

Now I hate him more.

And Gina rocked again.

And yes, Robin, you were right. Sometimes it takes really bad tv to bring me out of seclusion.

The hell?

Sanjaya is still there? Is America tone deaf?