Bloody blog, House Husband, SAD

Onsite is over again. I've got a million and one thoughts rattling through my brain, so I'm just going to ramble a bit. I know that there is at least one person reading this who has needle issues, so I'm going to block-quote until I'm done with the needle talk (just skip down to where the margin shifts back to normal...)

I started IVs today. And at last onsite. These seem easy to me. There is something about the feel of it. About how you can just FEEL when you have gotten to the right spot and you're (almost) home free from there. I'm still a little messy about it, but I picked up a great tip from the RN in the group about how to keep things a little neater. On the other hand, I seem to be non-competant at drawing blood. I am not sure why I find the IV *cannula in particular* so easy to feel, but have no similar "just feel it" going on with the blood drawing. My instructors think that this is peculiar (not the instructors for this particular course, who are wisely -IMO- not critiquing this disconnect just yet), as not only are the ideas so similar but most people have it the other way 'round.

I have a bruise on my hand that is there by no fault of my classmate. I am mightily impressed that she got an IV running on the back of my hand, in a vein that looked and felt to me little larger than the IV cannula itself. I got saline and electrolytes. My dehydrated body loves you, Classmate.

We also took a look at some real lab slips, and that was awesome. The learning had been ridiculously abstract.

I still don't have a preceptor and am feeling...irritated. I am essentially in home turf for SMS, and them asking me for a list of midwives in my area makes me feel...how shall I put this nicely...oh I can't...like they're fucking with me. *breathe out* *release tension in shoulder muscles* *you didn't want a clinical placement yet anyway, you TOLD them you wanted to ease into it slowly and that delayed was OK, it is unfair of you to freak out about it now*

*sigh*

In other news, my husband has been having a grand time with the kids this week. They have met up with other papas, they've met up with his brother, they've gone to the zoo, and to the park. He has kept them clean and fed, bathed and played and happy. He CLEANED. The house is far cleaner right now than it normally is while I'm watching them.

He shows no signs of being stressed out about all of this. When I got home at 10 last night, he was putting the polish on a full day and totally happy about it. This reminds me of those times when I have been forced (not in a prying-it-out-of-my-hands kind of way, but in a "I can't jump in and just do it" way) to hand over large chunks of parental responsibility in order to preserve my personal integrity in the face of hyperemesis (morning sickness) or early postpartum. My husband has by and large simply jumped in and taken up the vast majority of what REALLY comprises the heart and soul of parenting. The tear-wiping, the park-going, the storm-drain-watching, the patient teaching, the kid-nurturing HEART of parenting. I've never needed to ask him to do any of these things, he has just seen the kids' needs and filled them.

He wants another baby.

I think that *he* could handle another baby with the way we live. But I don't think that I could. It makes me sad to tell him that I can't do it now, it really does, because of all the things that midwifery school has caused us to give up, this is the biggest saddest one. Not that we are giving up having another baby entirely, but that it feels so unfair to ask my husband to make all these huge sacrifices and contributions to something that is essentially all about *me*...and then I am, on top of that, telling him that while I can hear him and feel his pain and longing for another child, I just can't do it. And it is largely a CHOICE, a lifestyle CHOICE that I made when I decided that now was the time to do this crazy midwifery education thing. A choice that was all about me. I am important. It is my body, and my life that is overrun for the first good-long-while of a new child's life. So I stand rather comfortably by that choice as the best one all around. But it hurts to see my husband hurt, and to know that what I have chosen has largely caused that. Not that he doesn't have choices, too, and not that his hurt is ruining or overshadowing our relationship/family/whatever. Not that he is perfect and such a stellar person and father that I feel like I'm denying him this one-last-piece to his perfect life. It is simply a sad, sad thing.

But I am also, simultaneously, realizing that I suffer from some variation on SAD (seasonal affective disorder) that is kind of like a Seasonal Kinesthetic Disorder or something. My mood does not become depressed, but my body does. I was sick on and off all winter, and got so tired so easily and for so long. When the days are longer and I am spending time in the sun, I can get far less sleep and still be happy and healthy about it. I do think that there was something chemically, physically different about my body this winter, and I do think that it is because of the weather. What to do about that, if anything, is a different question entirely. At the moment I am simply relieved that I'm not feeling the 7 consecutive nights of less than 6 hours of sleep in the same way that I would have a two months ago. When we get around to next winter, perhaps I will devise some sort of management plan...even if that plan is simply to be aware of the fact that my body has set these limitations, and in order not to drive myself into sickness, I need to accept them.

Out of Context?

You guys are just going to trust that the context surrounding this quote was exactly what logic leads you to think it is, because you're almost certainly right.

I have to rest in the fact that my husband will seek God for council and then answer to God for his decisions. I will answer to God for how I submitted to my husband.

This has been bugging me since I first read it, plucked from a homeschooling discussion board, about 5 days ago. Bugging me in a "does not compute" kind of way.

Marriage is not a free pass out of hell. Christianity (you'll have to trust that's the context of this, 'cause it is) is not about passing off your own responsibility. It is really about some curious mixture between personal accountability and Jesus, in most versions of the religion.

And frankly, it scares me that there is even one woman out there who hangs her hopes of eternal salvation on how well she submits to her husband. That's not Christianity, that is husband-worship. I've read the Bible through and through no few times, and I've never seen THAT advocated. It could also be, in my opinion, a rather cowardly attempt to assign blame for one's own damnation on another human being. Isn't your soul worth more than that to you?

*Phew* monkey off my chest, I do hope.

Ahhhhh

So, yes while I am in a state of generalized consternation about the origins of Mothers' Day and the current form in which we celebrate it...the kids are too damned cute. And I do love my mom and did give her a call today.

And I have a rockin' husband who doesn't expect me to be housekeeper-then-wife-then-mother-THEN-person. See? And yeah, he did invite his mom over this afternoon. But we had a pretty decent time of it. She actually seemed to LIKE helping the kids make "leaf soup" in their humongous stump aka "the house."

Fran did something else that rocked today, too. He and Girliness continued their togetherness kick by cooking together - while Toddlerness took her nap they prepared the teriyaki marinade. As usual, Fran was far more patient than I usually am and by this evening - after several more daddy/daughter learning experiences - I overheard Girliness telling him "Some kids learn in school. And some kids have home school. And some kids learn because they do things every day and their brains work and they figure things out." Followed by a lengthy listing of things she'd learned today (everything from dividing a recipe to figuring out which sticks are dry enough to start a fire).

So this evening I am experiencing a more-than-anticipated warmth and happiness with my family.

I still think the holiday is a sham. And if we have to pretend that it's about celebrating our mothers, I'd much rather have done it with my own than with Fran's. And I do have flowers slowly withering and dying on my kitchen counter, courtesy of MIL. *Sigh* at least they're pretty. I wonder how many tons of glass make it into the landfill courtesy of Mother's Day vases, though.

Happy Mothers' Day?

It seems odd that I, a mother, dislike Mothers' Day (and yes, the apostrophe IS supposed to be after the "s").

Some history, may I? Under the guise of legitimizing what is basically a holiday intended to celebrate women who have remained happily in "their place," numerous versions of the history of mothers' day exist.

In my personal favorite fiction, Mother's Day has been celebrated since before recorded history, in the guise of worship of feminine mother-deities. Sorry, no. While such deities have certainly been celebrated, it's a pretty awesome stretch to say that mothers were thus celebrated and therefore we need to buy things from Hallmark. There is no straight line (nor even a curvy dashed one) between the two.

Mothers' Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

And yet, it is the saccharine Anna Jervis version (a pale shadow of the Mothers' Work Days that her mother, Anna Reeves Jervis, promoted and celebrated) of the holiday that made it into the hearts of the (male, durh) lawmakers. By the time Mother's Day had (apostrophe appropriately moved) made it just a few years, even Anna Jervis who said: "I wanted it to be a day of sentiment, not profit," was more than a little sickened by what was developing. Which isn't even why I dislike Mother's Day (although I certainly don't like the commercialism).

So why do I dislike Mother's Day? I dislike the celebration of ideal-woman-as-domestic. I am passionate about the FACT that women deserve respect. How is this respect? This tradition of a pat on the head and a few flowers and a "job well done!" congratulations for "all that woman-type work" we do?

Well, damn, I'd rather have my husband hand me a martini on the way in the door every evening. And keep the kids quiet...I've worked hard and need my rest, after all. Dinner should be warm too, in appreciation of the hard work I've done.

You see? SEE how it comes down? Men get this respect. Women get a breakfast in bed once a year. Little hand-scrawl-imitation greeting cards showing stick women with vaccuum cleaners. And doesn't every woman love watching flowers slowly wither and die in a vase on the kitchen counter?

Give me a fucking break.

~L~ Made Me a Pretty

Nature Toddler

The big kids spent the morning planting with me. Becca planted all of her flowers all by herself, after I showed her how to do the first one :). She even came up, on her own, with a method of measuring the distance between them using a long stick so that they are now spaced evenly and take up the whole border of our longest planting bed. I planted the other lovelies I got from Molbaks, and the flowers from my MIL. The big kids ran off to play on the waterslide again, and I got to follow her royal toddlerness around with a camera as she got progressively dirtier and more tired.

The Day Was Fun (But Toddlers Still Suck and Bugs Can Hurt)

Yesterday, on the way to meet a newly-van-endowed ~L~ at Molbaks (great place!), I decided to stop for crackers and cookies for the little buggers. Um, bad idea? Holy shit, the bad behavior! And Toddlerness at the head of the group! Stay in the cart? Oh HELL NO. She can undo the strappies...and cast herself right on out of that seat. Yes, cast. Or climb. And if she's not busy doing that, she's busy taking stuff off the shelves. Never fear, if I let her out, she just grabs more stuff from lower shelves. As she runs out of my range. With reckless abandon. Into the paths of other carts.

The whole grocery store shenanigan took over 30 minutes. To get two bags of groceries worth less than $20. I left my house when ~L~ left Fife, and she BEAT ME TO WOODINVILLE. What the hell.

Molbaks was a similar toddler-chasing shitstorm. Got out of there for $20-something, (oooh, maybe less, because I had to go back and get refunded for an overcharge), especially remarkable considering the whole tray of flowers I got *just for Becca* (who was very thrilled with that whole idea).

~L~s family then came to my house, where kids played and had fun with surprisingly few incidents, and mamas drank coffee and watched kids flow in and out with surprisingly few incidents. At 6 I suddenly realized it was, well, 6, and started making dinner. As I was completing that prep, GirlieG (Girliness' similar-age bud) came SCREAMING up the hill.

Of course I immediately blamed Boyness (in my brain), but the true culprit was yellow jackets...and that had hurt so much she'd gone barelling straight into the stinging nettles. Poor girlie! A bath, lots of vit. c (she chewed the not-chewable tablets! And didn't even complain! Like a particularly reliable message board participant had said, they know when they need it and just eat it, even though it's nasty), some salve, and she was well enough to sit and eat dinner. Which surprised the crap out of me, because she'd been stung on the lip. And it was quite swollen. I do believe I'd have been curled up in my bed with a handful of ice, clothed full body to keep from irritating the nettle stings, feeling sorry for myself.

Boyness got stung too, on his chest, and some sting gel seemed to help him enough that he forgot about it rather promptly. This is a relief, since the gel doesn't work worth shit on nettle stings, so it's good to know it is useful for something.

The Diabetic Husband

So Fran has been diagnosed with diabetes. We were going to hold off until he had insurance with his new job, but he talked to his doctor's office about it and they pushed through all the fun stuff he'd have gotten then anyway. He's got the monitors and the strips (free, no payment portion for us, cool eh?) and since he's off the plan shortly, they gave him a boatload of strips. They told us that this wouldn't be a problem with his new insurance unless he was going to go self-employed; any employer plan would cover him, and the stuff they'd balk at getting him was what the office gave him yesterday. So yeah, they'd better be right about that.

He was feeling rather depressive about all of it on Tuesday, after talking on the phone with the nurse there about his test results, but after his half-day appointment/counseling/etc session yesterday is actually feeling really good about everything. He had nothing but glowing, wonderful things to say about the nurse that did his counseling, actually. I was kinda worried about the poor soul who would have that task. Fran tells me that she reminded him strongly of my own mom, because she has an issue (my mom's is breastfeeding, this nurse's was dietary control of diabetes), and simply knows everything about it and tells you exactly what you need to hear about.

So anyway, if I knew who this mysterious nurse was (and she was the touchy-feely sort), there would be many hugs and kisses and expressions of utmost gratitude. Because I sure as hell don't have it in me to be any sort of inspirational or uplifting or anysuchshit, and he is taking this so very well after that talk.

His doctor thinks that the nurse (another one) rather overstated the severity of his disease over the phone, and it is highly likely that he has many more years of small dietary changes being plenty, and may never actually need to be on insulin. Given that he has several uncles, an aunt, and a grandmother on insulin, and that he has already exhibited peripheral neuropathy, I was surprised to hear this, but his doctor seems to think that the problem is not hugely abnormal blood sugar readings so much as minimally abnormal readings over a long period of time.

I was also relieved to hear that he won't need to make a huge overhaul, at least not at first. I'll change some of what I buy and make, of course, but the doctor doesn't seem to think that he needs to take such extreme measures as not eating bread or rice any more (as was the case with his grandma) - just switch to the whole grain (I'd already started this) and halve the carb portions and see what happens first. This is a whole lot more palatable to me than the diet I've seen his other family members on.

So we'll see, eh?

Nettles, Waterslides, and Tricycles

This is what it looks like on both sides of the path down to the neighbor's house. Cute, eh? In case you don't recognize it, that is stinging nettle. These, erm, lovely plants hold acid on the undersides of their leaves. Acid that they fling at anything that happens to touch (brush against, think about) them. The kids refer to them unaffectionately as "the stingies." They feel like some mesh between a bee sting and a burn. I have just decided that the next unwary friend to come to my house will find her children covered head to toe and battling the nettles. I have some uses for the plants, but not for that many. Luckily, they don't just compost "well," they are stellar composters, actually heating up the compost mixture (speeding the process).

Here are some kids going down the "watersliderslipper" (term courtesy of some random neighborfamily kid), which - yes - consists of a kiddie slide and about 40 feet of plastic sheeting - and OMG the fun. Yes, that is Naomi climbing the slide at the top of the photo, and yes, she thought it was GREAT. After a few rides down the hill she decided she was sooooo cold, but wasn't willing to come home with me for new clothes/towels, and curled up on a piece of sun-warmed plastic until she got bored and went to ride her tricycle in the driveway with the other too-cold children. Becca, of course, milked every last second out of the availability of the waterslide coolness, and came home with a sore rear end long after the other two had given it up.

And here are a few photos of the warmer-in-the-driveway fun:

Playing, Barbeque, and Baking Happiness

Yesterday was glorious. By 10am, we'd hit 60 (and when our little shaded spot here hits 60 that early, you know the rest of the world is having a nice warm day). So I threw some beef ribs in a marinade (prep for dinner - go me!), fed the children, and off we ran to Pine Lake Park. We spent 6 lovely hours there (wow, the 6 hour theme! That must be my kids' wide-barrel attention span or something). The kids spent entirely too much time quizzing the people on the dock about all things fishing-related (except for the older couple from Belarus who couldn't understand the kids too well, they all seemed happy with the curious kids).
We ended up meeting the neighbor kids there entirely by accident in the last hour we were there. This could not have thrilled the little buggers more...but there were 8 kids altogether and I'm afraid they descended back upon the playground, newly excited, like a plague of overlarge locusts. When the neighbor family had to take a bathroom break, I seized the opportunity afforded by the temporary friendlessness of my children, gathered up my (thank GOD it's only three) little monsters and ran for it.
The park was entirely too pretty yesterday. So was our own "yard," though. When Fran came home I set him to the grilling and the kid-supervising, and worked on my own half-finished baking projects. And cleaning projects. Because thanks to Toddlerness, the house smelled like fennel. A lot of fennel. Underfoot, it crushes a little like dried lavender - not in that it smells at all the same, but in that as you step on it and grind it into the carpet it creates a smell-aura. Added to the heat of the day finally catching up with my (very insulated) house, it was actually pretty hot. Pretty hot plus fennel-mess. Ew.
Anywho, they played outside and barbequed ribs and I did all my baking (and a goodish volume of school reading and carpet vacuuming), until Fran poked his head in the door "hey Niki?" "yeah?" "is it really 8:10?" "errr...YES! Yikes!" "Ok, we're coming in!" And this is when I admit to rambling a bit so that the pictures fit into the blog better. I'm tired of rambling now and hopefully have filled enough space for it not to look funky on your screen. So I'll talk about bread now.

Last week I did an experiment, making a dough with half white/half whole wheat flour...and then leaving it to rise until it collapsed. I wanted to see just how far I could push it, you know? At the end of the experiment (it collapsed between 4 and 5 hours) I had some yummy, but very dense, sourdough bread. So yesterday I made the same recipe, this time with maximum rise in mind. It worked! I mean, not that you can really tell in the picture or anything. But it is light and fluffy and wonderful inside. Just like my previous attempts at whole wheat/blended bread haven't been. We ate it with soft cheese, along with our (very messy) barbeque ribs.

I also made angel food cake. I lacked quite a few necessary implements, though. No beaters (not even hand-cranked ones!), no sifter, no tube pan. No "cake flour." Thank goodness for healthy local chickens making healthy eggs with hard-to-break yolks, because my first egg separation ever came off perfectly. The cake was a little too dense, as I simply didn't have any more whisking in me by the time I got to "ok it's kind of making a peak," but it was of recognizeable taste and texture and was excellent with strawberries and ice cream. And yes, that is a picture of the inside of my oven.

By the time we had eaten barbeque ribs, bread with cheese, peas, and then our strawberry "shortcake" kinda thing, it was 10. At 10:30 I read stories to the kids. And now at 8:30 this morning, it is looking like another glorious day and the big ones are still sleeping. On the list for today? Laundry, a decidedly indoor task. Damn.

I Bought TIME!

Ok, well, just as good!



I've been wanting to get a marble run for a long time. For a while I was stuck on the really expensive wooden ones, but this fantastic set was just $15 at Target, so I broke down and bought it. I was gratified to find, once I got home, that I simply couldn't have gotten the same set online for any less, although the same company makes a really cool transparent set as well as a humongous set, both of which are on the future-purchase-or-present list.



And yesterday, for 6 GLORIOUS hours, I did homework and studied and Fran caught up on his sleep, all to the wonderful clack-clack-clack-bump and vocal quietude of happy-busy kids.

In Which the Kids Have Way Too Much Fun

Birthday party at Odyssey 1 in Tacoma. Pretty much the awesomest place ever for kids. All three of them had a BLAST.

Toddler, Toddler, Toddler

You may have to dig to find posts about anything but my toddler.

At it again...she was up way too late last night. And the night before. It has been a struggle, this past week, to get her to GO TO SLEEP. And no, I don't mean to get her to go to sleep on her own or without nursing or in her own bed or whatever other nice progress-in-development kind of thing. A struggle to get her to go to sleep in her usual cuddled-up-with-mama, nursing, book-reading kind of way.

This is simply NOT COOL in the world of the already-too-little-time Niki. I don't want to spend two hours getting my toddler to sleep. Do you have any idea what I could get accomplished in those two hours? You know, if I was being forced not to sleep anyway.

And on the subject of irritating toddler, GIRL would you PLEASE let me put a sweater on you? PLEASE? It wouldn't kill you, I PROMISE, and it was like 40 degrees out there with daddy last night. You were freezing. I know it because you tried to remedy that by curling up against my belly. COLDCOLDCOLDCOLDCOLD. But no sweater, jacket, anything. Must only have ONE LAYER of clothing, eh? And it HAS to be THAT SHIRT that you chose today, eh?

Well, freeze then.

What Toddlerness Is Made Of

So this morning, just after Toddlerness finished her "wake up nummies," she informed me:

"Mama, I made of nummies. And a french fries."

"oh, nummies and french fries?"

"yeah, and some a whip cream."

Good to know.

Gardening Semi-Success

A semi-success, because I don't know yet if it will actually result in an actual garden with actual thriving vegetables.

I've spent entirely too much time over the last week preparing the beds and planting my plants, and now I have just a smallish lineup of seedlings on my windowsill - I have reclaimed my living room! We ate at the table last night!

Anyway, I've got a lot of little bitty plant babies in the ground outside right now. Last year I had near-zero success with direct seeding, so I've only got three things I'm going to direct seed (and honestly it is a little depressing that I have MORE beds to prep).

MIL reframe success (or some similar title)

I have more than one family member who doesn't seem to understand homeschooling as anything other than school at home. Or at least, didn't. The last straw (so to speak) with my MIL came about two weeks ago, when she sent me a packet of interesting unit-study type stuff for the kidlets and "slipped in" a several-page piece on classroom management. I hadn't realized until that point just how badly she didn't get it. I wonder if there was a picture in her mind of me setting Girliness down at the table, fending off the younger two, and filling her head with the all-powerful schooly-type KNOWLEDGE day after day.

So I went a-searching for stuff to counter that (because what I SAY never seems to really sink in...oh, she is great about not challenging us, but it is like she doesn't REALLY believe it until it comes from somewhere else too). Wound up with Dumbing Us Down and Teach Your Own. Broke as I am, I borrowed them from the library and passed them off to MIL with attempted sensitivity "I don't think we're thinking of the same thing when we think of homeschooling - I brought these over so you can take a look and maybe we will be speaking the same language in the future. Take a look, you can return them at your library when you're done, let me know if you'd like more than 3 weeks, blah blah blah."

And much to my surprise, a few days later she wrote back with happy reviews, told me about how she's seen some of this in the classrooms when she subs, and is purchasing these books and a few others to add to her own collection. This is simply beyond my expectation (I was merely hoping for a little reprieve from the school-at-home mindset).

Procrastination Rant

So amidst my blog-reading procrastination attempts (there's a clinical skills worksheet due this evening) I found something over on Sage Femme's blog, and started to comment only to find a whole post coming out.

The growth chart issue is one of those that will just about send me into a head-against-wall pose, just about every time.

With the same customary logic that had people commenting that my (100% breastfed) son was so big that I MUST need to supplement to keep him happy (huh?), woman after woman after woman is told that their breastfed baby is "too small."

Too small compared to WHAT? Compared to the - dare I say it - infant-version-of-obese babies that are fed formula? There's no doubt now about the correlation later on. But what if, just what if (come on now people, it isn't really THAT much of a stretch) what we are seeing on the growth charts ISN'T NATURAL. What if it leads to a whole LIFETIME of NOT NATURAL? Nobody really knows what an obese infant looks like. And I'm just going to be horrifically insensitive and say that just as it isn't natural for an infant to be fed formula, it isn't natural for an infant to be obese, and feeding our kids formula is giving their bodies that first taste of that unnatural growth - and we already know that our bodies imprint this and tend to go back to it later.

Why on earth would we want to compare our breastfed babies to THAT?

In classic American style, what we're really worried about is winning. What are we winning? IS there a big mama race for the biggest/best/most normal/most advanced baby? Are we really after bragging rights? After a dainty little below-the-average pocket-sized girl? A BIG HUGE my-penis-is-bigger-than-yours boy? Well, yes, actually, I think there is, just like there's a big mama race for the most advanced toddler, best preschooler, honor-child elementary student, AP academic high schooler (who lettered in Football, to boot!). I can see no other reason for moms to get together and proudly flaunt their childrens' positions on the growth curve or whisper in that horrified drawing-people-in kind of way about how the doctor said their baby just wasn't up to par.

What if we applied it to adults? I have failure to thrive because I'm only 5'2" - it must be my mom's fault for not giving me formula. Only, wait a second, I was a big kid. That must be my mom's fault for not giving me formula. Oh, wait, I'm an average-sized adult. It must have happened DESPITE the fact that my mom didn't give me formula, because everyone knows that the only RELIABLE way to keep to "normal" is formula. It has an ingredient list and comes with a measuring spoon, after all.

It drives me, in case you couldn't tell, fucking batty.

(This post courtesy of Ross Laboratories.)

Why I Love Online Exams

So I could complain (and complain and complain and complain) about the Midwifery Care exam I took this morning, but I'm taking a different tact. Instead of dwelling on the substance, I'm going to dwell on the process.

I love online exams.

I woke up this morning at about 6:30, brewed my coffee, put on an undershirt, started up the computer, and opened my exam (7am). I sat in my very comfy chair and read/clicked away. About 20 mintues in I ran out of coffee, so I got up and made myself some more and went back to my test. At about 40 minutes in, I had to go to the bathroom, so I did.

Can I just say, as someone with an insanely small bladder, bathroom-anytime-priviledges are awfully nice.

When I was done with the damned thing, I clicked "submit" or whatever similar thing there is on that particular form, and opened my email.

So yes, I love the online test-taking thing.

I would love it even more if I found out I passed this exam.

Why I Blog

I've been tagged by Louisa...

So I had to think about this for a bit. I still don't really know why I blog, so I'll just ramble along on the subject.

I guess I've always been fascinated with the idea of a journal, and I have tried a few times to start one without ever getting past the first couple of entries (literal - 2-3 days). I never really knew what to write in a journal, anyway. The idea of just keeping writing appealed to me, but the secrecy really didn't. Having this sort of open journal that my friends and family can read and sometimes enjoy is a sort of positive reinforcement for my efforts. At the same time, it gives these people insight into who I am and what our family is. When we interact with other people, it is almost never in a vaccuum. There is the background and the nuance, and in a way the blog informs that. Teaching friends to speak my language (and I've learned a lot about them, in turn, from their own blogs) enriches those interactions.

Corollary to that: I there are bits of me that just don't come out while I'm in the mother-role or the student-role, and all of my friends see me in one or the other of those virtually 100% of the time. For a while my blog was very vent-heavy, a sort of backlash from that supressed and angry part of me that got stuffed down under "mom." It was never a very big part of my personality, as those who know me well understand - I'm easygoing simply by nature. But "mom" can't really scream "MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD" at her 5 year old when he wacks her with a stick (by accident), or crush the 2yo, and for a while the built-up energy hit the blog full force.

So yeah, it is also a venting space, and not just for anger. It spares my children the force of my irritation on at least a weekly basis. I can get the feeling (usually frustration) out just by writing it down: I can do it and feel that it has been utterly spent. I rarely hold on to it after I've hit that "publish" button. For some reason, this is a very different feeling than journalling it privately would be. I know that this is something that not everyone who blogs/journals/whatevers holds in common with me, but it is the reason blogging can be a very healthy therapeutic release in my case.

Sometimes my blog simply chronicles our adventures, like the series I did from our trip to Hawaii in July 2006. There are a LOT of these. It is nice to be able to go back and see the pictures along with their stories, and I'm going to have to take care to keep them for the future. When Fran's grandpa died, he left behind many carefully-kept photo albums. They're wonderful and all, but nobody knows who is in those photos, or what was going on. The photos I've placed on the blog are often some of my most favorite, and they all have some level of backstory and context and who-is-who written into the text and labelling surrounding them. I have no grand plan for my blog, I don't intend to live beyond my years through it or anything. But it lays life out in neat little packages, and I like that.

I have an easy time rambling around in my writings and could probably do this all day. But I think that's the core of it, so I'll leave it here.

I'm tagging Lory (if you've done it before, link it) and in an effort to get her to write a little more (because she is an excellent writer with a lot of good things to say), Aimee.

Onsite - accomplished

It is the day after onsite. I discussed GBS treatment practicalities, scared some freshwomen-to-be, inserted some IVs, resuscitated some plastic dummies, and actually found this to be one of the most practically helpful onsites I've had so far.

And now I am home and it STINKS. I've learned, I think, that after onsite I want to either be with my family or go home and get stuff done without them...doesn't matter which, really, as long as it isn't BOTH, which just plain sucks. Oh, not that I don't want to see my family until the next day, but a couple of hours to get my stuff put away and the clothing off the floor and dinner started before dealing with attention-starved children...that would be good.

On Weds, Boyness got dairy (mostly DH's fault but it was innocent, I'll spare the details) and turned into the full dairy monster, waking up in the middle of the night yelling about nothing and everything. His hearing is obviously affected still, or at least it was last night when I needed to speak far too loud for the situation and when we read aloud from Harry Potter, he moved to within a couple feet of me because he just couldn't hear me where he was (usually they lounge on their beds).

Anyway, the house is a wreck, the yard is a wreck, the brick path needs to be completed, the seedlings need planting, my dad is visiting tomorrow and I can't pull out the futon until I've planted the seedlings and removed the extra table from the living room, I need to return school materials, I have a midwifery care exam...busy, busy, busy.

Teething!!

Toddlerness is teething again. And she's actually doing it somewhat gracefully. I didn't even notice it, in fact, until ~l~ mentioned that her toddler was teething and I thought "hmm, Toddlerness has been a tad contrary this past week." I thought it was pretty normal toddler behavior, actually. For Toddlerness, who has always treated teething as a full-contact sport, the very fact that her molars coming in could escape my notice is absolutely stunning. By the time ~l~'s observations prompted my little adventure into toddler mouth spelunking, Toddlerness had sprouted two new bottom teeth and the top ones were pressing their way out of her gums.

Now, not all of my children have been as dramatic as toddlerness. In fact, the only way I could ever tell Boyness was teething was that my nipples would hurt a little as his latch would change. Girliness was the model of stoicism. Nevermind teething, you couldn't tell she was sick until you touched her and your hands blistered. No worries, she's grown out of that.

Anywho...it was this teething thing that had us sleeping, me on my side with toddlerness reclined against my belly, Fran on his back with toddlerness' feet wedged under his arm, for most of the night last night. Apparently it isn't bad enough that she'll yell about it (I'd give her motrin for that) but she DID cast herself all over the damn bed every couple of hours trying to get comfy (which looked suspiciously like "uncomfy" from my point of view, but whatever, she was sleeping).

Toddlerism

"Nomi, what a big pee you're making!" (as toddlerness proves she has the bladder of steel by filling her potty....)
"No!" - looks horrified - "no BIG pee!"
"OK hon, that's a cute little pee you made this morning!"
"yeah, yeah cute pee yeah."

Oh, the princessness of it all...

Day in Pictures

Becca making dandelion cookies:



Contrast from the sunlight:





The new desk:



Using the new desk:




Much to my surprise, Toddlerness was able to thread this whole strand by herself (she did complete it, but decided to put the beads back before I could get a picture).

Wednesday Fun

That was my Toddlerness, 5 minutes after leaving ~l~'s house yesterday. Yah, I was driving, not the best pic ever, but you get the idea. Crash city. Even after being generously dosed with sugar - because ~l~ is truly evil: she gave my children two purple peeps each as they entered the van. Luckily the little purple peeple eaters had so much fun at her house that they dropped like flies in a freezer - the car starts, and eyelids start drooping, and before you know it, I'm driving along with nobody but the radio for company. By the time we got home, the older two were in a great mood, but Toddlerness had decided that she would DIE ON THE SPOT if she didn't get nummies in bed (maynownies - short for "lay-down-have-nummies"), peep stickiness and backyard grime and all. It was an unpleasant bath but um, no girlie. She still sleeps in my bed. I don't think so.

Toddlerness learned about fair trades. ~l~'s toddler is now in very proud posession of a pair of pink Dora boots, and my Toddlerness can hardly believe her luck, as she came home with the covetted green froggy rainboots.

In other news, this morning, Boyness found the condom stash and decided that they would be fun to play with. No open packaging, he just used them as frisbees...oh the fun I'm having finding them scattered around the living room. Tell me again why the packages are shiny? At least it's handy when you're searching for them amidst the kid art supply mess.

Beany Addendum

DH has decided that dried beans are MUCH better in chili than canned ones. Went all raving about it.

So, add another meal to the list of meals I need to plan IN ADVANCE. Why does "good" have to be such a PITA!? Yes, I hear you now, dried-bean-lovers, "it's not so much work." The point isn't the volume of work, it's the fact it needs to be planned and I'm plan phobic.

Mmmmm, Beany

So I didn't fuck up beans. The chili came out great, the kids love it (bonus, they helped sort the beans and Toddlerness is now reminiscing as she eats them...with enthusiasm).

We went to IKEA today and the kids nearly got into a fist fight about what color their new desk would be. And I nearly strangled Toddlerness after about the (oh, let's seee...) 500th or some-odd iteration of "sit DOWN [Toddlerness]". It was not the most relaxing trip to IKEA that has ever been taken. But we got what we needed.

I spent most of the afternoon putting all the due dates for the quarter on one of those desk-sized calendars that I've always wondered WTF could possibly be used for...apparently, for stuff like this. First quarter I kept everything online and it got frustrating turning back and forth and wondering which version was correct. Second quarter I put it all in a binder and never used it. So gigantic calendar it is. I am really liking it so far. Guess how long it took Toddlerness to scribble on it? Yeah, I had only finished writing in the dates for one course.

Incidentally, I have a massive set of Learning Objectives (individualized assignments) due on the 7th. About subject material we're supposed to cover starting the 9th. Tell me again how this is supposed to make sense? How I'm supposed to hang on to my sanity? Um, no, it isn't working. First day of the quarter and I'm confused already.

Fuck.

Oh, wait, let's end this post on a good note. I've got planty-type things growing in my living room. On purpose. In egg cartons. They're doing nicely. I should have given the broccoli more room, as ALL of it is sprouting and growing nicely but I'm going to have to thin it down a LOT. And I need to move the tomato plants on up to something with a little more growing room. But yes, having them actually GROW is a nice turn of events after the too-late planting fiasco that occured last year.

Break - Over

So tomorrow (Monday) marks the start of another quarter. And how would I *really* know this, except that one textbook failed to arrive, one textbook failed to SHIP (that's what I get for buying used through Amazon, eh?), and one class book list updated too late to buy the frigging thing in time anyway.

We celebrated the end of break in style at the D.Family house (I need to come up with a nickname for you guys...) with kid crafts, rotisserie chicken, movies, and strawberry shortcake. Ah, fun.

But I'm tired just THINKING about starting another school cycle. *Sigh* and I don't even have a practicum site set up yet (waiting on the school).

In other news, I am going to try, for the first time EVER, to cook using dried beans. Getting them ready to make chili tomorrow. I'm skeert. This sounds like the kind of easy thing I could fuck up and not know why...ever. Like how some people just *can't* make bread, no matter how *right* they seem to make it (I can, incidentally, make bread just fine...but am scared of beans forsomeoddreason).

Freaky!

You can get these doll things to look an awfully lot like your real self...my kids are getting a real kick out of these too.

ETA - here they are!

Becca:

Tony:


Naomi (Becca had a lot to do with this one):

Whirlwind!

As if to prove that:

1) It is indeed spring, and
2) I am indeed on break

We've done too many things to blog about in the last several days. Had ~l~'s family over (adventures), had BIL over for dinner, had a bonfire, had GirlieG sleep over (more adventures), put down more patio bricks, had another nine-kid meetup over at MD's place, went to the History Museum (Free every Thursday 5-8pm!). Somewhere in there the kids played outside enough to need several baths a day and go through too much clothing. Busy, busy, busy.

Somewhere in all this I made a decision I've been sitting on for quite a while and pulled Girliness out of K12/WAVA. The letter I wrote to her teacher really sums it up pretty nicely, so I'm not going to rewrite it...here it is:

I thought I'd give you a heads-up that you will not be receiving work samples from us. We are withdrawing from WAVA. We have found it a poor fit for Becca's learning style. We've found that she goes on a fit of learning in a single subject and that the WAVA curriculum slows that learning down - and that when she is unprepared to learn a particular thing she simply does not, creating a battle. She is currently reading Level 2 books, but according to the WAVA benchmarks isn't reading at all. This is not as simple a problem as it sounds...we chose to forego traditional schooling to avoid this type of busy work, only to find ourselves in a situation in which I would be testing her for the next year and a half on things that I know that she knows. Meanwhile, she is finding and naming insects, using a field guide to identify plants, and learning about monocots and dicots...and going nowhere in the WAVA science curriculum.

In short, K12 is at odds with the way she would learn in a natural non-forced way. Since the natural way that she learns is both faster and easier than forcing a curriculum on her, we've elected to stop the struggle and lay aside the artificial structure.

You have been an excellent teacher and we appreciate that. There is nothing artificial in the above statements about why we are leaving. The administration and you, our teacher, have been wonderful and non-adversarial despite our failure to "fit in" from the beginning.

So now we are afloat in a complete lack of curriculum. Not that I care. We were paring down the K12 curriculum a ton and STILL felt like we were just going through the motions, the real learning happening elsewhere. I do believe that now that Becca has officially shaken off the public school mentality (as of a month or so ago), we're ready to dive into unschooling headfirst. I already know that we'll come out on top, because Becca has rapidly picked up better and better reading and writing skills without any coaching at all from me (aside from the occassional "I can't read this word mama, o-u-t-s-i-d-e" "what does o-u-t spell?" "out...OH, outside!"). So...woohooooo off we go.

New and Variations on that Theme

There it is! The new piano! Thanks almost-all to my FIL, who thought it important enough to send us some money.

So off we went to The Guitar Center, where we took entirely too long picking it out and haggling over various things. The stand in the ad (supposedly free) wasn't available, so would you take a collapsible one instead? Errr, not really no? At the last minute they found one. Purchased the piano. Left.

Later that evening, I got almost all the way through assembling it (seriously, I was at "screw in the four fasteners, done!") before coming up against a "what screw hole" problem and realizing that this stand didn't fit this keyboard. I was all ready to go into a bit of a fit, but Fran said "can't we just modify it?" and ran out to the shed, grabbed a plank, cut it to size, and brought it triumphantly into the house. A bit of sandpaper and a few screws later, and we wind up with something that I think is actually BETTER than the original intended stand.

Meanwhile, I move the wall-mounted shelves up a few inches because they would have been in the way of the music prop.

We get everything together and in place before realizing - oh shit - that couple inches wasn't going to do it. I'd forgotten somehow that I didn't just need enough space for the stand itself, but also for the music that would go on it. I was out of drywall screws. The shelves are going to remain too close for a while, I think. This job is a royal PITA.

Yesterday we spent some time outside the house; I have laid approximately 20 more square feet of patio bricking. I gave up on "perfect" and am now aiming for "workable." Because it was just never going to get done on "perfect" mode.

I have the kids outside right now trying to collect small rocks to lay around the grill Fran made out of old cinder blocks (because it is ugly and the grass growing up around it is even uglier). I'll be going out in a minute here to lay more bricks. I planned to go out today, to grab some groceries and deposit some checks and take the kids to the library, but it is looking sunny and the kids are having fun. Who knows.

We've eaten dinner after 8 and slept after 10 for the past 5 nights. This heralds the awkward transition into summertime in this climate, I recognize it now. This failure to recognize that the day is closing until it actually gets dark, at which point an actual meal is out of the question and I'm fishing frozen spaghetti sauce from the back of the freezer while the kids shower mud from their tired bodies and check themselves for new cuts and scrapes...this is what spring looks like in the Pacific Northwest. In our home, in what little space we have, we made room for some plants - they are coming up now, little bits of life flourishing on the tabletop in the egg cartons, tomatoes and pumpkin and watermellon and canteloupe. Toddlerness picked some of the canteloupe seedlings, but luckily enough that was the plant that was coming up heartiest, so it was just a little lesson in how roots grow.

And to backtrack a bit, Girliness hadn't been at a sleepover without me for a long, long time when we decided she could stay at ~l~'s house on Friday night. I got "that" call with my softly crying child a bit after 10. Poor thing. She stayed the night and has decided that she had fun, though, and would do it again and be less scared if she could. It isn't like this is her first sleepover ever, and I'm not sure what her particular problem is. Goodness, she loves ~l~'s house! Out of practice I suppose.

Up Late For No Reason

Why, why, WHY?

I'm done with finals, been done since Thursday.

My kitchen is clean.

There is no work to do.

Haven't had any caffeine this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon, whatever.

It isn't the result of some fit of married-emotion-gone-wrong apoplexy.

And yet, here I am.

I have this vague sense of anxiety, this vague uneasiness. I feel like I've forgotten something, like at any moment my world is going to come crashing down around me and it will be all my fault. Like those forgotten homework assignments a few weeks back - I'll be happily noodling about la-dee-da and all of a sudden BAM! something will hit me and it will be irreversible, and I'll have screwed up EVERYTHING. Or as EVERYTHING as there can be, anyway, when you're living in 500sq feet and paying off a car that is older than your children.

Fran asked me, as we drove along with dozing children in the back of our dirty-plum-colored (and already mentioned above) minivan, what he could do to help me, what TANGIBLE thing he could do. And I couldn't answer him - not really, anyway. "My worries are more vague. We don't have enough money, I don't have enough time. I don't know what to ask you for. You wash dishes, you come home every night and you love on the kids. I just don't know." But he says he feels like he doesn't do enough, like I'm shouldering everything AND trying to squeeze my own dream in there somewhere. Which sometimes seems true, and sometimes doesn't. The fact is that I've got him and that is important. Yes, even if I sit around with my girlfriends and complain that he calls to often and talks about things that are too inconsequential - oh, that must be so much better than the reverse, right?

The feeling of general anxiety that I find on my shoulders now isn't entirely new - it's been something that has hit me, always for no discernable reason, a couple of times a year - just for a day and it's gone. What IS new is the fact that here I am, awake, typing on the computer. In the past I've been too sleep deprived (slept in until 10:30 this morning!) to let this get to me, and have managed to fall asleep right on cue with the kids and let the feelings dissappear along with sleep, the tendrils of unease gradually loosening and eventually drifting off entirely, gone by morning.

The frightening thing is that a few days ago I was walking around in my kitchen and feeling something familiar - something that felt an awful lot like what had rattled around in my head and in my aura (for lack of a better way to state it) during my bout with postpartum depression after the birth of my first. I wanted to say that it was different entirely, but I had caught the edges of it before. Perhaps the best thing that can be said is that having been in PPD and come through it, I can feel the edges of depression now and know them for what they are. I've palpated the mass of this feeling, finding where it blends seemlessly with sleep deprivation here, sticks out sorely from physical cause there, hides itself neatly where I'm scared to poke too hard elsehwere. And I felt its insidious aura, hanging about my core, standing in the kitchen that day. Not like I'd felt it many times this past month or so, as if it was simply present in some peripheral portion of my existance - maybe brushed over too many times by memory and thought about too often lately? - but like it had crept into the same room I was standing in and I could suddenly simply SENSE it there without ever actually seeing or feeling or hearing it slip in.

All this I have been wanting off my chest for a bit now, but sitting here at 2:30am and counting, it suddenly seems more important than the million other things I could write about the last two days (at least three of them interesting enough to rank whole entries of their own if I was in the mood). I do know this - lest anyone actually worry about me - I'll be fine, and I'm not just saying that. My thoughts dull; tiredness is finally creeping up on me, and I wonder if the simple act of getting this down has been enough to proffer relief. A green card into good mental health. Having taken words to my worries, they suddenly don't seem so large..although I'm sure I've managed to go and send at least a couple of you, oh reader-friends, into varying levels of "oh shit Niki is losing it"ness - like I've written some sort of an open letter to everyone "let me know if I start acting like I've disconnected from reality," all blaze and shit like I'm crying for help. Which really, I'm not. I'm looking for something a little more like catharsis, here in the wee hours of the morning, my family rapidly racking up sleep hours that I'm missing; looking for a bit of catharsis, a kind of healthier anesthesia for my nerves.

I'm debating whether or not to post this right now, because it seems pathetic, like I'm splaying open some untoward portion of my emotional innards, the psychological equivalent of plumbers butt - do you really post that on your blog? But for some reason, I feel like the cleansing will be more complete if it is really *out there." Like an advertisment for some sort of sequel to the other bits of ugliness that everyone already knows about me: "Niki - You've Seen the Petty Flaws, Come See the BIG Problem!"

Well, there it is. Niki's Big Problem. As plain as Plumber's Butt, out there in the open.

Learning Opportunities

Wow, I think everyone learned something yesterday!

I learned not to take two cold, tired toddlers on a long walk home by myself. Too big to carry. Too small to get pissed at and demand they just suck it up and walk home quickly. My arms hurt.

M learned that the ~l~ house vortex is a reality.

M's toddler learned that you do not lick crabs.

My toddlerness learned that it is not a good idea to take a flying leap from the top bunk. Yes, she landed on her feet. No, there wasn't anything softer than, well, the carpet, there to catch her. She's in the other room telling her daddy about it now. "My legs, a sleeping bed, a JUMP! Look a my toes! Look a my feet! A JUMP! A hurt!"

Boyness learned that Mr. P could kick his ass.

DH learned that if he knows the camera is about to run out of batteries, but doesn't charge it, and all the more pictures I get to take of awesome beachness are the above preliminaries, I might just be a little irritable.

Ah, a learning kind of day.

A poopie, a poopie

Because life just isn't complete until your toddlerness demonstrates just how like her daddy she is and starts making up her own songs. You write what you know, right? And toddlerness is toilet training, right? So her song:

A poopie, a poopie
Poopies, poopies
Flush a toilet, flushit!

Poopie, a Poopie
Poopies, poopies
Poopies on a floor, POOPIES!

Ah, doesn't your heart just melt? Or, um, not?

She's doing a fantastic job with the whole toilet training thing, so I guess I can overlook this bit of craziness. Kind of. As long as the older kids don't start singing with her.

Scissors and the Internet

No, they aren't related. Well, not in the cause-and-effect sort of way.

This morning things were going so phenominally well in kidville that I decided to go ahead and take the gyn exam. I might have even gotten most of the way through it before the kids ran out of energy on their projects and started bugging me again.

But nah, instead, Comcast picked this morning to simply stop working. No way to blame this on anyone tangible (and available for strangulation) like my husband - the neighbor's internet and phone didn't work either. Comcast has worked and worked and worked so solidly for us for so long that I was just FLOORED that it happened...this morning...while I was taking a final exam. I was a grand 'ole 14 questions in, already wondering how on earth I was going to finish it in the alotted time, when it happened. And I sat. And sat. And it didn't come back.

And I fumed.

And I called people.

And somewhere in this fuming and calling people, Boyness stopped using his scissors on his art project, and used them on Toddlerness' hair instead. Snipped a couple of times roundabouts her right ear. Some first haircut, eh?

Furious kind of touches the edges of how I felt. Kind of. But not quite. Be proud, be very proud - I did not beat the living shit out of my son. Matter of fact, I didn't even look at him. I sent him off to his bed, collected fallen hairs in a ziploc, and tried not to look at toddlerness' head until I wasn't quite so mad. Not her fault, after all. Somewhere in this time, toddlerness decided life was peachy and went about her toddlerific paper-fish rearrangements, which kind of left me without so much pissy ammo.

I got internet back, bitched at people, gave Boyness his reprieve, got the test reopened, took the test. Booked a hair appointment at the kiddie salon for Toddlerness. Got her there...and there was no consoling her. OMG she acted like she was being TORTURED. There was no holding even remotely still. Even on my lap she sobbed and flung and carried on. The poor woman who cut her hair did an admirable job and offered to touch it up if I thought I could coach some not-so-hysterics out of her for a return visit, but I don't know if that is going to happen. I think I'd rather have her hair be uneven than go through that again. I may try to fix it myself - she got a nice under layer in there before Toddlerness went completely into hysterics, but couldn't get anything remotely resembling "even" accomplished after that.





After spending too much money on a haircut, we spent too much money on lunch. But at least we all enjoyed the lunch part of the day. It is now 5:10 and I have accomplished almost nothing in my list of things to do today (which is imaginary, as anyone who knows me and my aversion to organization could have guessed).

I Love/Hate Coffee

Oh, magical stuff that gives me the staying power to sort through and reread gynecology LOs and articles until nearly 1am.

But I am not immune to its effects. I am now tired but not sleepy. And yeah, that sucks. This is why I usually don't drink anything caffeinated after 5pm.

I love that I've finished reorganizing all my Gyn stuff. I hate how I physically feel right now. Yeah. Love/Hate. Next time I'm out, I'm buying myself some decaf and mixing it in with the regular for these nighttime study sessions.

In the meantime, I'm going to go sit down with a non-school-related book and vibrate randomly until the caffeine clears my system. Or until enough of it does that fatigue overrides it and I drop instantly into an unnatural REM sleep cycle and wake up a million times tonight with random disjointed thoughts running halfway in and halfway out of my conscious awareness. Whichever.

Self-indulgent

My whining seems pretty heartily self-indulgent after listening to Louisa's day/night/day today. Hope you get the lengthy episode of unconsciousness you need, Louisa.

We're all kind of wondering, after the supporting-a-midwife primer we had this week (class ended at 8:15pm on Thursday, and I was literally in that building for over 12 hours...how ya like that one?) how in the fuck we're going to be able to handle it when we're doing both practicum and actual school work. We've been told that THIS is our hardest quarter...but that, eh, well, I wouldn't say the other ones are EASIER, just DIFFERENT.

This sounds suspiciously like the sugar-coated-shit everyone serves parents-to-be. It will be "different."

I hope that for ME, "different" means: "My life is in perpetual turmoil, and I have some days where I want to curl up in a corner and sing Itsy Bitsy Spider to myself (thanks for that visual, Kate), but I would not take it back for the WORLD, because other days are so awesome I can barely contain it...and the rest are just LIFE." Which, incidentally, is the kind of "different" that parenthood brought me.

Oh, this will be fun to read when I'm a senior student...

Vent, Rant, Rave

I'm out of energy. Finals next week, but I'm not really thinking about them. There's a schedule, but I don't know it.

Thinking about what I am doing *right now* and what is happening *right after* and no further.

It isn't even that I'm TIRED so much as I'm out of energy.

Thank GOODNESS we're on our last day of onsite.

Onsite Week Again

Here I am again.

At onsite week again.

*sigh* (again).

I love these because I love my classmates and most of the actual course material, but they are tough to get through.

In other news, I've thought forever that I'm lactose intolerant. On Saturday night, I had a huge-ass bowl of ice cream and on Sunday, I woke up with a raging headache and was an absolute, complete, utter lunatic by the afternoon. I'm thinking...am I Tony, or what? The thing is, I have relatively little dairy just because it isn't nice on me in a digestive sense...but having a raging headache, sinus pressure, and mild psychotic episode makes me think twice about the etiology here.

Not the Best Idea?

Seriously,

I should not have gotten up early this morning, started the laundry, started the fire, cleaned the kitchen, made coffee...

...sat down in front of the computer with my coffee, ahhhh....

And opened a 40-slide gyn presentation on visual findings in Reproductive Infections/STDs.

I just shouldn't have done that.

Now my coffee is all cold.

Purty

In my fantasy online shopping trip for my kids...because L linked me to this site and damn, I like their selection...I would get this:



And this:


And this:


Oh, and like everything on this page http://www.oompa.com/cgi-bin/category/woodten_toys_ba

Oh hell, and like 50 more things from that site. But the above three things, dang, if I wasn't so strapped for cash they'd be on the way here now.

Kings and Queens

Becca has been more than a little interested, lately, in Kings and Queens and how they get to be King and Queen. It all started with one of the "Enchanted Forest Chronicles" books, in which the humans have an interesting time understanding the dragons' practice of considering a King a position rather than a dragon - male or female - so either sex is just as suited to be King. So we talked a lot about human beings and why Queens are different from Kings and blah blah blah blah.

So this morning, Becca presented us with a book she'd written - entirely without my help or input. It was pretty darned long in 7yo land, so I'll supply the synopsis:

King and Queen meet, like each other plenty, get married, have a kid.

They have a fight with the wizards, and the King is killed.

The kid grows up.

The Queen meets a man with lots of muscles who works out every day and looks really good, and they decide to get married. But he's not the King, he's just the Queen's husband.

LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO OH, pity that she didn't illustrate it...

FFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKK

It is 70 degrees in here and I'm freezing. My hands and feet are frozen, my ears are burning, and the toilet seat is painfully cold. Last night, my husband placed a hand on my hip and said "you're hot," and not in a husband-fishing-for-sex kind of way, either. In a horrified, are you seriously getting sick AGAIN kind of way.

If I am sick again I am going to cry. And not a pretty, shed a couple of tears kind of cry, either. An ugly, snotty, OMG should we be calling mental health services kind of cry.

In other news, my kids have been outrageously cute today. I think I'll be burying this pitiful wail of a post under some stories about them in a second here.

Hitting A Wall

I am pretty sure that my brain is finished for the quarter. Sometime around last Friday, my brain ceased to work. My ability to create a mental map of when assignments are due has completely and totally short-circuited. I forgot to turn two in and forgot another two existed. I went about my weekend blissfully unaware of my uncompleted shit, only to face the pileup on Monday. Yesterday, I managed to gather enough of my whits to author a LO for Gyn, but I'll be damned if I didn't wake up this morning thinking "fuck, I forgot to even discuss homeopathics!" But we haven't had that course yet and, well damn, it feels like I'm constantly overstretching my knowledge to write gyn LOs. I may have had enough with that class. Which is what this post was about in the first place, no? I've had enough learning for one quarter. Done. I don't really have control over it, my brain says so.

It is totally not helping any that it has been over a month since I've woken up feeling like I've had enough sleep. Every night, Her Royal Toddlerness wants to nurse a couple of times (she regressed from the nightweaned state during the flu, and hasn't yet recovered adequately to not need that extra 'meal' - I've tested it, she seems to really be hungry, waking again in a short while if I don't feed her but sleeping another good solid chunk if I do). Every morning, well before I'm ready, Boyness is invading my space and smiling at me, waiting for me to create his day for him. You'd think he'd know better, since the answer is some gentler version of "bug the fuck off!" every morning, but nah, smiling Boyness RIGHT IN MY FACE every morning, over and over again. You'd think that his happiness would be contagious, but honestly, there are mornings when it just makes me want to launch him bodily out the nearest window, to go spread sunshine somewhere ELSE and let me SLEEP, damnit.

And of course, I feel like I can't complain to Fran, because he gets even less sleep than I do. Nevermind that he NEEDS less sleep than I do...the simple fact that every morning when he leaves I am still asleep and can expect to continue being asleep for at least another hour makes it hard to complain and not feel like a big fat whiny-ass baby.

In other news, I sat in the sun for an hour yesterday and watched my kids run around at a park. Sitting in the sun, in short sleeves. Kids not demanding ANYTHING, dancing around happily, burning energy willingly. Best mental therapy I've had all month. I was actually able to sit and write something lucid in the evening.

Toddle-Logic

Toddlerness almost stole my coffee this morning. Almost. With great stealth, she slid it off the desktop, hiding it against her chest, and then...

The urge hit! Oh, the nature of Toddler! "MY COFFEE!" she shouted.

Damn, foiled again.

But this is just another of many times that the Toddler Possessiveness has destroyed what might, otherwise, have been a perfectly toddlerific time. "MY spiderman!" Really, ya think so Toddlerness? Don't you think Tony might argue that point? And there's nothing like screaming "MY MAMA!" when Boyness hugs me to get me to hug him back...extra-long.

The older two didn't do this. I swear it. I'm told everyone does it, but they didn't. Why? Beats the fuck out of me. Obviously, since Toddlerness does it, it was no stroke of genius on our part.

I half want her to grow out of it...'cause really, there's nothing like a toddler screaming "MINE!" and running away with your textbook...and half don't. I mean, there's something cute about something so small being so adamant. And she doesn't do it to pick a fight...she just, DOES it. Like she can't help it or something. I mean, really, is there any place other than Toddler Brains where screaming "MY COFFEE" would make sense?

My Life Has Been Saved by the Miracle of Vagina

Before the movie "Robots" (which was entertaining my kids while I made lunch today) there is a preview for the Garfield Movie - Garfield says "my life has been saved by the miracle of lasagna."

And my 5yo Boyness comes up with the completely out-of-left-field comment:

"Lasagna is like penis for a girl."

So I respond without thinking too much:

"Honey, lasagna is something you eat."

Oh, crap, maybe that wasn't the best way to clarify things for him...

"I mean, you eat lasagna, it is a food...you are thinking of a girl's vagina I think. The vagina is the part for girls that is in the same place the penis is on boys."

Job go buh-bye-all-gone

So they announced today at my husband's work that the layoffs over the last month or so were just the beginning. They are pulling out of the Sound altogether. Those lucky few that still exist right now will "get" to stay on to close down the stores and receive a severance package when it is all over. They estimate that this will take less than three months.

Fran has been less than enthused about his job for quite a while now. And true, it is good to be given the time to look for a new job while being paid. But dude doesn't adjust well to this kind of change and we were stressed out...very much so...already. AND this will place his new-jobness and my practicum-starting-ness into the same time frame.

And there's the possibility that we'll end up having to make do with even less income than we have now. Which might well be impossible.

Suckage.

Morality My Ass

http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2007/02/07/hscout601704.html

So standing around in the kitchen making pizza (a monster of a task, I need to make it totally from scratch to oblige dairy-boy) gave me the opportunity to rattle these thoughts around in my head a bit. And fume.

To whoever would take a 16yo girl's confidence and vulnerability and hold her hostage to her parents, FUCK YOU.

To the doctors who not only do not trust their clients to think for themselves, but also don't trust them to have their own morals...FUCK YOU.

You know who gets the short end of this stick, EVERY.FUCKING.TIME? Women, that's who! You don't see any MEN being denied treatment on moral grounds, that's for damn sure.

29%...TWENTY-NINE PERCENT...of doctors would have trouble referring patients to someone who could help them. Fucking asshole self-aggrandizing pompous BASTARDS!!!!! You fucking WHAT?!

You cannot...CANNOT deny a patient a treatment they need simply because YOU have trouble fitting it into your narrow, happy little world-view. And yet 14 percent - an utterly humongous, unexcusable 14% when you consider what we're talking about - wouldn't even MENTION the availability of that treatment! WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Morals come easily to those in a position of power. It's easy to say what's right and wrong without compunction when you've never been personally, directly challenged with the necessity of doing something outside your belief system.

It is funny, oh Doctor-People, how when you follow your happy comfy little morals, WE suffer.