Gifts

I have been thinking about this post for a long time now. As January approaches and I start to think about my twins' second birthday, I can't help thinking about Maddie, and this post.

I've never asked Heather, but given that Maddie was born just shy of 29 weeks and I went into labor with my twins the first week of December at 31 weeks, I'm pretty sure we had close to the same due date.

I look at my boys--my running, talking, ornery, curious boys--and I think of Maddie.

And as I begin thinking about their birthday plans, exactly two months from today, and I think of Maddie's birthday today, I am reminded of how very fragile it all is. How very different it could be. How very easily their birthday could mean something entirely different.

So for a long time now, I've been thinking about this post. Thinking of what birthdays mean, thinking of experiences that were so close and now so far apart, thinking of Maddie.

I have been thinking of how to make this post positive. How to celebrate rather than mourn. And I have found it hard because three little lives that were so close are now so very far apart.

But today is a birthday, a day to celebrate. Birthdays are days to remember not what we have lost, but what we were given. Birthdays are my favorite days. My days to make sure my children know just exactly how much they are adored (knowing that they will never really grasp how much they are adored.)

Through cloud that hangs over today, I am reminded that birthdays are about celebrating. Celebrating what we have been given. Gifts like this.


And gifts should always be celebrated.

Happy birthday, Maddie. Today, we celebrate you.

Where are you going, where have you been?

This post has been a long-time coming. This I know. But I haven't had it in me--it being the words, the effort, the interest...any of it.

I have excuses. Plenty of them.

I'm busy. I know...we all are. But seriously, from 5 AM until 10 PM or later, I don't stop. When I'm not working, I'm taking care of my kids; when I'm not taking care of my kids, I'm working. Not that I'm complaining--at least not about all of it. My kids are my greatest adventure, and for the first time in years, I'm (mostly) enjoying my job. But still, can-barely-come-up-for-air, non-stop, crazy busy.

I'm reading. Like, real books. Books not written in rhyming iambic pentameter with characters named "Sam" or "Thing 1." Books for work, yes. But still...I'm (mostly) enjoying work, so I'm (mostly) enjoying what I have to read. And I have the excuse that I have to do it.

I am making myself sane again. I have been off anti-depressants for over a month without wanting to escape to Mexico under an assumed name or imbibing an unreasonable amount of alcohol. I have only thought of the "s" word once since quitting the pills. I have found a doctor who knows how to treat me, and my symptoms, and who doesn't make me diagnose my own thyroid problem (yep, add that to your PCOS and smoke it). I am figuring things out and becoming a person I like again, that maybe my family can like again. Or at least that we like some of the time.

I am doning my superhero cape and saving the world one helpless kitten at a time.

Okay, maybe not a cape or kittens. But the rest is true.

So there hasn't been room or time for posting. I've been okay with that. I'm focusing on the here, the now, the tangible. It's good for me. It's what I need now.

I also know that part of putting myself back together is writing. When I think back over the last thirty-and-then-some years, it has been my constant, the part of me that was always there lurking in the corners. The thing I could always turn to. When I'm angry I write letters that I never send, I wrote every night that I traveled through Europe, I even used to write bad poetry now and then.

But I don't know if that writing space is here anymore. I held on to this place for over a year because I desperately needed it. Good writing, bad writing, dull or interesting, comments or no comments, it was an outlet I needed, a part of me I needed to recapture. Maybe it still will be. But right now, I don't know. I don't know if it's the forum I need, if it's authentic and true and me.

I am pressing the pause button for now. Even if just for a small moment in the grand scheme of all life's moments. I am pressing pause here. Until I decided what to press next.

And I'm rejoining the circus that waits for me away from here. The carousel rides, lion-taming, and three-ring madness I have lazed my way through for too long. I am buying a ticket to experience it all.

My joy circus.

That's where I'll be until I know where I'm going next.

Fire

The last time I can remember the sky looking like that was seven years ago. I stepped out of the church, walking under the smoke-darkened skies to the waiting black limousine. Everything around me was hazed with orange; the air stank of ash and fury.

For seven years I have dispassionately waited my way through fire season. I have watched billowing smoke clouds form on the horizon, numbly hoping a generous wind keeps the skies above me blue. For six years the season favored me, didn't force me to remember.

The morning we came home from the hospital I remember the uncharacteristic stillness of the June skies. No wind, no bird song, no passing cars. Just stillness and quiet.

I don't remember what day the fire started. But the smoke gradually crept over the mountain tops, and on the day we buried him, an expanse of smoke stretched from horizon to horizon, obscuring bright blue with a coat of ashy brown.

But more than the thick wisps of grey, I remember the sun. The distinctness of its edges. The orange cast it shed on everything around me. Its angry scarlet color.

This fire season has not been so generous. On Saturday, we wound our way up the freeway toward home, driving into the darkness of a sunny late-summer evening blanketed in smoke.

And there it was. The perfect sphere of fiery orange in the sky. So calmly and so distinctly coloring the world with wrath.

The stillness of the morning my father died stands starkly in my memory against the fury of the day we put him in the ground. As the earth pressed down on him, the skies pressed down on us. The world out of joint, the wrath of the fire in the hills mirroring the wrath of some unknown force against his untimely death. The arbitrary viciousness of those fires something I felt so keenly, reviled so completely. Understood so deeply.

I silently wept as we finished the drive home last weekend, the sun falling close enough to the western horizon to again become an indistinct yellow mass against the whitening blue. I wept for the sadness of these days, for the smell of the air and the oppression of the skies. I wept for the empty wrath I learned to understand seven years ago. I wept for the cruelty of this season--for angry skies and hopeless families and loss.

Depression redux

I let myself forget to take my pills every day. Maybe I'd take them every 36 hours. Maybe every other day. I was still taking them, but I let myself slide. And I did it because I want to believe that I don't need them.

I was wrong.

It started small--there would be days that I found myself getting frustrated more easily, snapping a little more. But it wasn't that bad. It was still better.

I meant to call and get the refill, but I got busy. I couldn't get five minutes on the phone. Then the weekend came and the doctor was no longer in.

I did call. Monday, just before lunch. But it was too late.

I don't know if it was the confluence of events on a particularly bad day or if I just saw it as bad because I was no longer viewing it through the filter of anti-depressants. But I found myself going down that road again.

Frustrated, hopeless, angry.

I yelled a Noah for something so minor. And while I was yelling the sane person in my head asked me what the hell I was doing.

That's how I know that things have gone to far. When the voice of reason is powerless to control my actions. When my boys look at me while I lash out, the depth of the wounds I am creating showing on their tender faces.

J.R. came home, and I left--to give myself a break, to give my children a break, and to break the seal on a new bottle of pills.

I opened them as I pulled away from the pharmacy, my hand shaking like an addict desperate for a fix. Comical in my frenzy.

I couldn't get all the damn cotton out as I tried to leave the parking lot. At the first stop light, I returned the bottle, laboriously fished out the wad cotton, and while trying to extract a pill so I could face my family knowing I was medicated, managed to almost drop three.

I may as well have been trying to chase down my winning lottery ticket as it blew away the way I scrambled after those three pills.

I don't like things this way.

I don't like waiting over an hour in the doctor's office each month for her to spend 30 seconds giving me permission to keep taking the pills.

I don't like thinking that my world view is altered by a filter of prescription medication.

I don't like believing that the only way I can be a bearable wife and mother is to take pills that alter my brain chemistry.

I let myself believe that this is just one symptom among many of my PCOS, though I have yet to find a doctor near me who knows as much as the books I read on the subject and can tell me for sure. But believing that lets me believe that someday I'll find the doctor who can help me deal with this properly. And that lets me believe that someday, things won't be this way.

This isn't to say I'm not doing better. That the last six months haven't brought vast improvement to our life. I am. They have.

I no longer think about getting in the car and driving until I won't be found. I don't scour Google for information on how to adopt a false identity, how my husband and boys can escape this life. I read bedtime stories again and play games after bathtime instead of wondering how I will make it through another day of the same thing.

So many things are different, better. But they are different because of a pill, not because of me.

That part is hard to accept. It is hard to reconcile who I am, who the pills make me, and who I want to be.

For now, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I find peace in the things that have changed for the better. And I find hope in the thought that eventually the steps that I take won't be illuminated by something I find in a bottle.

I married a con man

I am a lousy decision maker. J.R. knows this about me. And yet, whenever there is a decision to be made I often get the response, "Whatever makes you happy."

What would make me happy is not having to make the decision.

I once got really pissed off at him after that response. Wouldn't you know, the bastard responded with true sincerity about how my happiness is the most important thing to him and he's okay with whatever will make me most happy.

I have heard this many times since then. Always sincere. Always frustrating.

Fast forward to today.

We are going to finally (read: three years later) put rubber mulch in the kids' play area. However, doing so requires digging out the rock-hard clay dirt we have here...3 inches deep over a 500 sq. ft. area. It has not dropped below 100 degrees here in nearly two weeks. We got about 1/4 of it done in three hours before we were withered beyond recognition.

We were having dinner with family, so we had to get all showered and primped (okay, so I was the only one primping). While I dried my hair, he laid on our bed under the ceiling fan, cool for the first time today.

One of J.R.'s jobs is to be ready with a pair of tweezers any time I am drying my hair and find a grey. The first time I turned off the hair dryer, screeched "Honey, I need you now!" and pointed to my head as he came hurrying in, I think he damn near divorced me (apparently grey hair is not a life-shattering crisis in his world...whatever).

Now it's routine.

So today, when I turned of the dryer...

"Honey...?"
"Do you have a grey hair?"
"Um, yeah. Can you come here?"
"Really?" He's exasperated. I can tell. But I don't care. It's a grey hair, and I'm not getting colored for two more weeks.

I fumbled through my hair trying not to lose sight of it, seeing if it was long enough to pluck myself.

"Why don't you just blend it in and forget it was ever there?"
"Yeah, because that's gonna happen. Oh wait, I think I've got it...yep, gone. Nevermind."
"Good. Because I wasn't getting up for you anyway. I'm comfortable."
"What? But I thought my happiness was the most important thing to you. Having grey hair does not make me happy."
"It is about your happiness. How can you ever be happy if your husband doesn't accept you just as you are--grey hair and all."

And now I know, in all sincerity, that my husband is full of shit.

My sentiments exactly

I hate shopping for greeting cards.

Don't get me wrong--I love sending a kind, heartfelt sentiment as much as the next person. But finding that one succinct and meaningful card in a store full of poorly written, wannabe poetic sap is often tests the limits of my tolerance.

So while catching up on my reader today (figuring it's the perfect time as no one will be posting for a while since they will be busy in Chicago drinking and wishing I were there), I read a post at Slice of Pink about the Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco.

Trust me when I say that when Janet tells you to check out artists, you really should. So I did.

And I discovered 16 Sparrows. Any place that has the slogan "Sarcasm folded in half" has to be checked out.

I found my next moving announcements...

My kind of "romantic" card...

A to-do list I really need...

And the perfect congratulatory card for that person who got the promotion you've been working for all these years (or whatever other occasion strikes your bitter fancy)...

You can check out other artists--many of them quite lovely and unsarcastic--at the Renegade Craft Fair website.

Capitalism gone wrong

When I moved into J.R.'s house six years ago he had Dish Network. Four months after our wedding when we moved into our first house together, we just moved the service with us.

I hated it. When it would rain, we'd lose TV. If the wind blew to hard, we'd lose TV. If the receiver thought you looked at it funny...you get the idea.

So two years later when we moved into our "forever home" (and by forever, I mean our "we'll live here for ten years until we can move out of this godforsaken plot of hell" home), I refused to keep Dish Network.

Being the sucker for a price lowering bundle that I am, and not having access to DSL in our godforsaken plot of hell neighborhood, we chose to get regular cable TV with our cable internet.

It was fine for a while. Until J.R. started playing fantasy football. And we only had the regular channels for football. We waited two years for cable to catch up and at least get NFL Network.

No dice.

So last year, for J.R.'s birthday, not only did I give up my lovely money-saving bundle, but I coughed up an obscene amount of money to DirecTV, the only company that not only has NFL Network, but that also carries all the games each weekend.

Yep, I love him thaaaaaat much.

This year, we saw that DirecTV was offering a 10% off offer for early orders. So last month, I ordered our football package.

Only to find out a couple weeks ago that several families we know not only got 10% off, but got Sunday Ticket and Super Fan for half of what we paid for just Sunday Ticket.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I called DirecTV yesterday.

Here's roughly how the first conversation went:

Me: "Hi, I'm paying twice what my friends our for NFL Sunday Ticket. Can you fix that for me?"
DirecTV agent: "According to the information in your account, I can offer you another $20 credit in addition to the 10% off."
Me: "Okay, but I'm still paying almost twice what other people are."
DirecTV agent: "That's all I can offer you based on the information I have here."
Me: "Well, then, can I talk to a manager who might have more information?"

And she did the whole please hold while I get someone, blah-blah-blah, click....dial tone.

While up to that point she had been very nice, mistaking the hold button for the hang up button is just not cool.

So I called back (slightly less patient this time for having been hung up on), got another agent, and went around the same circle again (in spite of asking for a manager first).

When I finally did reach a manager, the conversation went something like this.

Me: "Hi. So did your agent give you the background to my situation?"
Manager: "Yes."
Paaaauuuuuuse.
Me: "So, um, can you understand my frustration and is there anything you can do to help?"
Manager: "We already gave you the best deal we can offer you."
Me: Much exasperation trying to explain the complete lack of logic of charging two different prices for the exact same service.

And this is where it gets good.

Manager: "We offer the best deals to our most valued and loyal customers."
Me: "So basically what you're telling me is that I'm not a valued customer?"
Manager: "Well, we have some people who have been with us for eight years.":
Me: "And since you are the only carrier with this football offer and we switched to your company for it, so we have every intention of staying with you for at least that long."

Wait for it...

Manager: "Yes, but the NFL package costs us $4 billion a year. The people we make the best offers to have our best packages. You only have our most basic service."

And that's when the conversation hit the skids.

You see, back in January, things got a little tight financially in Insta-Land. It seems that having two babies at one time is twice as expensive as the one you planned for (shocker, I know). And that extra expense really piles up after a year. Not to mention that the six-seater car we responsibly bought knowing we wanted to expand our family worked great until we had to get two toddler seats into the middle at the same time and have access to the back seat. So there were the new car payments and the old student loans and the creeping in from the background credit card debt that we had never had before.

So we reevaluated, and I chose having a fancy cell phone and monthly weekends in the travel trailer at the beach over having 500 channels that didn't get watched anyway.

Sure, I miss out on all the cool cable shows like Hung and The Closer. There are times I would stop coloring my hair forever for ten minutes of CNN or an E! True Hollywood Story. But I knew it wasn't permanent. Mostly importantly, though, we felt like we were doing the responsible thing by trying to erase our debt.

Not that all that information would have changed things for Mr. Manager and his $4 billion dollars. Nope. I was flatly told I was not valued, and I didn't spend enough money to deserve a discount.

Fine. I don't agree with the policy, but I get it. But to tell me it's because I choose not to spend my money on TV? To more than imply that I am not valued?

Bite me.

I'm wondering if grocery stores will start this kind of policy soon. Oh, you don't by lettuce every week--then it's going to cost you twice as much.

What about the electric company? Oh, you don't use as much power as your neighbors. Well, then it's going to cost you more when you do decide to run your air conditioner this summer.

The worst part is that I adore my husband, and watching him on Sunday afternoons as he flips through all the games while checking his fantasy football score on the laptop every thirty seconds is just plain endearing.

I won't take away from him the few hours of fun and relaxation he gets from that.

So, my cheap ass will be coughing up twice as much money as those "valued" people this year to make my husband happy for sixteen weeks. Because DirecTV is our only choice--and so they can tell us to bend over and smile about it.

And that sour bit of ethics will likely be the hardest hit we see this football season.



More ranting:
This is the same company that charged us $80 extra to install because we had our house pre-wired for satellite and they had to drop the wires through a wall rather than drilling a hole in the side of my house. Apparently sticking holes in things is cheaper than actually trying to respect and work with what someone else has tried to do to preserve their property.