Holy Shit Batman!

So the title says it all.  Holy shit batman!  I'm honestly freaked the fuck out.  I'm a procrastinator by nature.  Not on all things, but when it comes to... Oh say writing out quetions that the hubs and I have for the uber-guru professional high risk baby catcher, total farking procrastinator because let's face it.  I know I've got some serious issues, and the possibility of having a baby has until this point been way too damn exciting for me to even think about problems, let alone face them and write them down. 

Today I get a card in the mail that says basically to call and confirm our appointment with the uber-guru and I think "Oh shit. That's in like two weeks."  Literally two weeks.  So in two weeks I'll have a little short, Asian-American man tinkering around in my girl bits, running tests, giving advice, and basically telling us whether I can stop looking at midget clothing and gear and start buying or whether I am going to be cursing whatever diety there is out there and being Mommy to just the minion not dos minions. 

Having made the call to confirm, I sit down on my rockin new sofa with my laptop and start compiling questions for the uber-guru.  I have 8 really good ones so far and a mini-panic attack because saying that one has issues with their girly junk and the whole pregnant thing is a WHOLE different story than getting it down on paper and thinking "Holy fuck! He's going to tell me no.  There's no way he'd tell me yes with this fucked up mess I'm working with." Panic kind of sets in when you think that the thing you and hubs want SO DAMN MUCH quite possibly will never be a reality.  Then you start crying even though you know that it's a possiblity that uber-guru will tell you that they can work around the uterus of shame, and bring a live, healthy baby into the world.  I just can't help it.  I've got all these people around me saying "Oh it'll happen! Stop worrying!" that I want to believe it, but hello hope, here's some dash to fuck up your day.  It's happened before. Medical science has matured a bit since those times, so who knows.

 SO. I'm trying to be positive, but I'm big enough to say it's really damn difficult.  I really want to have it over with and done so that I can move on one way or another.  The waiting game sucks.  The whole ordeal sucks.

And on a lighter note..... A cute picture. 

Oops.....

So I'm guilty.... Guilty of forgetting that I had this blog, forgetting the email address I used to create this blog, and forgetting to write some of the funny shit that happens around here in the zoo Hubs and I call home.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that I got married in December too.  Whoops!  Not that it's a new thing or anything... I mean we've only been together for like fricken ever, we just decided to make it legal and binding and all that jazz.  I mean, since we heart each other and all... when we don't want to beat each other over the head with the closest 2x4 that is.  :) 

So... Funny stuff in life... Hrm.  Not a lot funny around here today unless you want to count achy bones as funny.  We're old as fuck here or we at least feel it after redoing the minion's bedroom from top to bottom, re-furnishing the living room, re-furnishing the dining room, and basically hauling more furniture around than we care to think about.  Oh, did I mention that the minion's room is now in what was our office and the office is now in his former room? No? Hmmm... yeah, I don't want to mention the TWO WEEKS of intensive labor we put into that room on afternoons after work or days I wasn't working.  He's totally worth it, and we had a good time arguing over paint (lime green) and random other bs that goes in a kid's room.  Including the posters, lamp, and headboard. 

I honestly can't think of anything else overly funny.  Life has been busy, full, and achy around these parts.   Oh and semi cranky because we're flippin exhausted.  We skipped Valentines day and went for the "Oh, I love you enough to buy you a new dining set so the sofa we're buying doesn't get fucked up by minions with food." I finally after a billion ages (literally 4 years!) and 500 furniture stores picked out a sofa that hubs doesn't hate so *gasp* we bought it and I'm so totally in love with the chair and a half and the fact that it's almost as long as I am tall and 4 of me can fit in it sideways stretched out and lazy.  I mean seriously.  It's a big damn chair. 

We've gone baby crazy around here too.  We see the professional high risk baby catcher in a few weeks and find out if we should even be considering the idea of procreating.  I can't even begin to tell you how.... fucking... excited.... I.... am!  Even though the guy is going to go spelunking (sp?) in my crotch and all that jazz I'm still pretty stoked about the idea of another minion or minion-ette.  Preferably the latter since the minion won't let me braid his hair and shit.  Since we don't have one here yet or on the way we've been buying Fred and Peanut shit.  Baby Nikes, Hello Kitty shirts, shorts and random other crap.  I even have a high chair in my kitchen. 

And that's about all we've been up to.  Not a damn thing.  I'll write more at another time, I've got Fred and his parents coming for dinner and I need to cook. 

Memories

Today as I do every year I wrote my son his annual birthday letter.  Now I don't give him these letters, as they're something that when he was a baby I told myself I'd write and stick away for when he was older and I'm gone.  They'll be something for him to have of me that I wrote on his birthday.  I've continued the tradition for me and with any luck I'll raise a child who will be as traditionalist a soul as his mother is and will keep them around for memories.  I've written one every year, starting just a few days after his birth until now.

As I was writing memories swamped me.  From the moment I found he existed in the depths of my womb, the moment I felt him kick the first time, the moment I reached down and with a final monumental effort brought him into this world and hauled him onto my chest naked and howling, his first smile, and all the other moments that make a mother smile including the moment I found him naked in his crib with a dirty diaper dangling precariously from the wall.

It's amazing how much time has passed since any of those moments.  Now I look at him and I see a lanky 5'2" boy with shaggy hair, bright green and amber eyes that match mine, a brilliant smile, a farmer's tan, and a southern accent.  It amazes me how much he's grown from the 21 1/4 inches he was on our first moment together and how tall he is.  It also amazes me that despite my faults and flaws he sees me as his mom and to him that's good enough.  I don't have to be perfect to carry that title.  It's more than daunting if you think about it long enough. 

So as he grows like the first moment we had together I'll often laugh and cry at the same time.  I'll always be proud of him.  I'll always be slightly stunned for a moment when I look at him. I'll always, always love him fiercely.  And as the days count down to his tenth birthday, I'm going to be looking back and smiling at all of the memories ten years have brought. 

Lilac Woes

Recently someone gave me a French lilac to plant in my yard.  It had outgrown a pot at her house and she didn't feel like digging the hole to plant it in the ground.  So I dragged it home in the backseat of my truck and like eventually got around to planting it in my back yard.  Big ass hole, check! Water hose, check! Sunburn and sweat rolling, check!

So I plant this damn bush and am standing around watering it in when a friend calls and asks if I can babysit one of the cutest babies ever who happens to be my honorary nephew for a couple of hours.  Hell yeah I can!  He loves the Nina.  We get along great. He had a bath, and a bottle and played in the floor on a blanket with the toys I bought for here specifically for him.  It was a great time. 

Fast forward to the time after the baby has gone home and I look out my back door to admire my freshly planted lilac.  Imagine my surprise when I see one of the dogs (Kenya the chew monster) gleefully carrying my big ass lilac around in her mouth as my husky (Loki... aka Super Dog aka the Roki-Roki) gives chase because he thinks it's a game.  Now imagine a sunburned me chasing the dog and yelling at her to drop it.  Eventually she dropped it after making my extremely out of shape self chase her around the yard for a good half hour.  Apparently she dragged it out of the ground RIGHT after I wheeled the wheel barrow out of the back yard and shut the gate so my poor lilac is toast.  I no live no more and went to the land of shriveled dog chewed shrubs. 

Now my son's birthday is coming up in a few days and until then I'd been planning on making his day with a bouncy death-trap aka a trampoline.  After the escapade with the lilac I'm sure as hell not putting a $300 chew toy in the back yard for that bitch to chew. 

Which now brings me to my dillema.... He's a gaming addict. Meaning he'd just as soon stay pasty white and get his tan doing chores at his dad's to going outside to actually play with something other than a controller.  Me, I worry about said child because both his father and myself have family histories with heart disease, diabetes, and obesity and I'd just as soon my precious redneck not start to look like a walking ball and have to poke himself repeatedly to check his sugar.  My thoughts are to buy something to boot said midget out into the yard to entertain himself and to save my sanity from the pow! pow! pow! of the ever wonderful zombie mode on one of the latest war games. 

So I've bought a basketball goal and basketball, a volleyball/bad minton/whatever the hell else set, two game posters for his bedroom wall, a ball that when you lay your hand on it shoots little spikes of electricity out and causes your hair to stand up (yeah, really intelligent I know), and a season pass to the local water park.  Way to get him active right? I gave up the really cool toys (electric scooter) in an effort to get my little monster active.  Let's see how big a bomb this birthday really is. 

At least the posters will be a big hit.  Hopefully.

The lilac chewer.

The Loki.

It's not all rainbows and sunshine here...

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I have been having dreams lately.  Lousy ones that chances are I'll always have this time of year. I have another blog dedicated to the subject matter of these dreams, one specifically just for myself that I don't publicize and hasn't been written in since 2006.  Chances are I'll never write in it again, but I thought I'd poison this blog with some explanation of why I haven't been around lately.  Why I haven't written a post in a couple weeks.  I wrote my thoughts out earlier, and without edit or prettying up, here they are... An explanation of sorts.

Several years ago I lost a child to stillbirth at full term. It’s not a secret. I don’t hide it, and I will talk about it. I don’t clam up at the mention of that night, or go stiff at the mention of her name. I couldn’t because in my belief, she’s as much here as the child I have who still lives. She’s just perpetually a baby who never took a breath and is buried in a casket smaller than a cushion on my sofa. I named her Jaime which according to the baby name book means “I love you” because I did and always will love her just as I will always, always dream of her around holidays and during the summers.
　
The dreams are something I'll probably have for the rest of my life. Normally I don't have them, but this time of year I'll have them almost continually. It's difficult and often confuses and puts people I mention them to in an awkward position as they didn’t know her, but it's my little cross to bear. They stink because a mother should never have to bury a child, and it drags it all back and makes the grief there fresh again and to a point makes me look at Alice, my oldest niece, and wonder what might have been if Jaime had made it. Would they get along? Would they play Barbie or trucks when they were together? It's just difficult. As I explained to my mother after it happened and she asked how I was, it's like jumping off a cliff and knowing you're going to make it, but knowing it's going to hurt like hell when you hit bottom, and knowing that every season change is going to be a reminder. This season, summer would be her birthday. August 6th. She'd be going into first grade at the end of August and losing her first teeth and the world would be opening up to her for her to explore. Summers would no longer be about just her birthday but they'd be about freedom from school and the explorations of a soon to be six year old.

I often wonder what this child of mine would look like now. Would she look like me still? Would she look like her brother and be tall and leggy with big green eyes? Would she be like me and prefer her hair short to keep it out of her way, or would she love having long hair and imagine she was a princess as I sat and brushed it out in the evenings after her bath? That’s also difficult. Watching other children run, and play, and grow gives my heart a yank, always because I wonder if she’d have done the same or if she’d have been content to sit and color and play with her Barbie’s or paint. Would she dream about princes and white knights or would she be the perpetual tom-boy and dream of battles fought and won in our back yard with her trusty dog by her side and dragging the cat along to be the evil space monster?
As a mother, as her mother I mourn the fact that I didn’t get to see her first breath, her first tooth, her first steps, and all the other firsts that go with a new baby. I mourn on this end of the school year because my little girl never got to take those steps to accept her kindergarten diploma or learn the steps to a silly dance with the rest of her class. There will be no graduation from kindergarten, no gapped tooth smiles, no candy scented clothing, no skinned knees, no heartbreaks or crushes, no high school or college graduations, and no learning to drive. I mourn for her, always. I mourn that her brother never got to know her, or be annoyed by her, or fight with her. I mourn that her father never got to threaten a date, or give her away at her wedding, or play pony for her. There are so many things that none of us ever got to do with her.

She’s forever a memory and the only things I have of her are an ultrasound video of when she still moved, memories of acid reflux and achy ribs from her kicking, a few pictures my mother took after she was born, a pair of tiny shoes she never wore that match the outfit I buried her in, hand and foot prints in a book the hospital was kind enough to provide, a few stretch marks she caused, and a certificate of stillbirth the state only recently started providing for a fee of $12. I still have some of the clothing I bought for her, and a blanket but I gave her furniture and most of her clothing to my sister who was also pregnant at the time with Alice. In my grief I gave away everything but a few mementos my mother insisted I keep.

In six years the grief has lessened, but it never fully goes away and like any other grief process you have good days and bad. You’ll be laughing and enjoying a mocha with a friend one day and the next you’re so consumed with grief that you stagger through your day barely remembering to function let alone thrive. One of these days I’ll be able to see those pictures and ache only a little. One of these days I’ll be able to see those tiny shoes as more than a reminder that she never wore them and the fact that the funeral director sent them home with me instead of putting them on her feet to be buried because they were miles too big and see them as merely shoes that a beautiful baby would have worn eventually had she lived. One of these days I won’t resent the fact that other people can pop babies they don’t want out repeatedly but I can’t or rather can’t risk the health issues involved in the baby process. One of these days I’ll stop crying like a baby every time a baby in our family is born healthy and howling. One of these days I’ll stop crying on her birthday. One of these days I won’t dream about her during the summers.

But for now…. I’ll relive that night over and over again in my head and in my sleep because that grief, that ache are the only memories I have of her outside my womb and in some way, I need that.
　

Lord Save Me From Rednecks

Now one might assume that since I live in the ass-crack of the United States )and have for several years since my parents abandoned my home state and still favorite football team for a place where they stuck AR on Kansas and called it good), that I am a redneck.  They'd be completely wrong.  Not that I have anything against them, as hello this is Arkansas and if I did I'd basically have to close my eyes every time I wandered outside my home or looked at my son, but still, not a damn redneck.  I totally blame my Yankee transplant turned redneck ex-husband for my son's southern twang and tendency to piss off the porch.  Even in the suburbs, in front of people. *shudders*  But I digress.....My child's bladder release tendencies are another story for another day.

The whole purpose of this post is to inform and entertain... about rednecks.  In Arkansas.  Like it's never been done before.  Duh. Now redneck stories are supposed to be kind of uncommon in my parts.  I mean I'm in the suburbs of the largest city in the state.  Granted, it's Arkansas, but still.  Big city. Multiple interstate systems.  Get the picture?

Either way, I was in redneck heaven (read: Wal-Mart) today picking up wrapping paper for my mom's day gift to the woman who pushed my 9 pound 8 ounce self into this world almost 28 years ago when I came across two dental care impared women blocking the Hallmark aisle and commenting on their new-fangled (yes they used that phrase!) cell-oo-lur phone... and yes the one said it just that way, I couldn't make this shit up.  One redneck says to the other "Look how flat this dern thang is! I swear it's flatter than ma-maw's pancakes!" Redneck two says "That's pretty dern flat, Sue. But that new cell-oo-lur phone you got should work bettern the last un. Just don't drop it in lard again." Oh goodness.

At this point I'm fairly sure my eyes have popped wide at bad grammar and my eyes are watering at the aroma of a combination of beer, BO, and some sort of fried food, but I continue to stand there as these women look over a pair of semi-state-of-the-art cellular phones they picked up in the cellular center there in our super center (say that 5 times fast).  I am on the hunt for wrapping paper! Nothing can deter me! This is my mission! Until redneck number two pops her bottom dentures out, pops them in her pocket, and grabs for a wrapping paper I was looking at before turning to smile at me. She had a few teeth up top and dentures for the bottom... not a problem, I know people with dentures, but holy cripes.  This woman touched the damn wrapping paper with her saliva coated fingers, and then changes her mind and puts it back.  The LAST damn roll of wrapping paper that doesn't have a phrase directed at a birthday, wedding, a kid's cartoon, or a new baby. 

Now what the hell am I supposed to do?  I can't show up with a Barbie wrapped gift... You'd have to know my mother, I'd never live it down.  I can't hand her a "happy birthday" wrapped gift,  not her birthday and she may be old, but I'm not senile and I don't want to hear it.  And then it gets worse.....

Redneck number one or redneck number two I'm not quite sure lets out a gaseous obscenity so foul that my eyebrows wilted and my eyeliner flecked off right after my over-starched shirt wilts and my jeans lose their color.  I'm trying to haul ass out of the Hallmark aisle only to discover that I'm not the only bitch shopping for mom cards and wrapping paper and someone else is blocking the aisle.  I damn near suffocated trying to hold my breath all while hearing the rednecks discuss cell phones and denture adhesive in voices that belong on Hee-Haw and looking like the creatures in the horror film "The Hills Have Eyes".  It scared the holy hell out of me.  I'm traumatized. 

I managed to escape, barely before I passed out from lack of oxygen and drive to another town for wrapping paper.  And I prayed to anything and everything holy that some damn redneck hadn't slobbered all over it.  I'm still shuddering and I'm fairly certain I've got a tic in my left eye that has been there since my ill-fated run in with the inbred in central suburbia. I may just start shopping in another town. 

Oh The Joys Of Monday

Today I'm Betty Crocker with a slightly less 50's-ish do, cuter shoes, jeans, and a state of the art electric range.  I managed to bake a blueberry pie this morning while fielding and making phone calls for my job and then put a meatloaf, mashed potatoes, brown gravy, and veggies on the table for dinner all while putting my front-loading washer and dryer to the test. I did a TON of laundry. I tell you.... I'm a fricken miracle worker on laundry and cooking a meal that people won't turn their noses up at.  AND the best parts are, I do it while belting out rock lyrics in an extremely off key voice and with a fantastic manicure. My neighbors think I'm slightly crazy, or at least tone deaf. Ok ok, so maybe those aren't the perks.  Pie is the perk but really, don't get picky on me. 

Now here's the part where I should really entertain you with something witty or at least slightly humorous that happened this week/weekend, but really there isn't much that happened that was funny.  I'm really not feeling very funny tonight, either.  Honestly, I'm tired.  I worked my ass off today on my house and laundry, chasing down a big ass banner and screen printed t-shirts for my job, and playing southern chef extrordinaire and I didn't sleep for shit last night.  Instead I was plagued with rotten dreams of the "going to forever haunt me" variety.  Total stink.  Add to that it's still raining... big fat raindrops that have caused some major flooding in the whole damn state and have effectively cut me off from my version of semi-civilization.  I don't know the backroads which apparently the state road workers got ass-backwards on and made the higher ground, so I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to navigate my way to the current place of my obsession (Sally Beauty) let alone to the grocery store or pet store.  I'm low on doggy crunchies... which here in this house where I have two rather large canine children is dangerous and I'm officially out of French Vanilla coffeemate liquid cream to flavor my irrational love for the java bean juice. *pout* Have beans, need creamer.  Vanilla soy milk isn't the same and the rain is making me blue.

This made me giggle.  :)