I’m Beautiful Like Me.

Cinderella, Hanna Montana, Hippie, Joy as Vampire, Buddha as John Wayne. Husband and I were there, but not as festive. We had a lot of fun!

After a week of sick and ick, our household is coming back around again. The baby is still feeling a bit of the cranky side from lack of sleep and proper meals (I think his belly is still a bit flippy-floppy - an educated guess since that is how mine is feelings). The girl is doing pretty well, too.

Big Rob’s girlfriend’s oldest daughter spent the night one night this week since they are still ironing out the details of her new school since they just moved. Joy was thrilled to have her. During the day before Joy came home from school, she cleaned Joy’s room from top to bottom. After dinner, she and Joy tackled the dishes and the next day, she folded a mountain of laundry. I’m ready to trade her for the boy!

I had the job interview with the state yesterday, but I’m not feeling very confident about it. They told me they should have their decision around November 15.

In the meantime, I’m still in restaurant hell. Husband has been advertising for his business online and we’ve printed out some fliers that we’ve handed out to our friends, but at this time we haven’t heard a breath, let alone a word. I’m nervous about how the bills will be paid next month.

I did get to go out to knit night last night after missing it the week before. Husband was cool with me leaving a bit early, too, so I got quite a few hours away! As usual, I had fun (even though I missed seeing Sonnie there!) and I got one of the armwarmers I’m working on finished and a pretty good start on the second. I’m going to finish the thumbs on both later. I also frogged that damn Nutkin sock again. This time it was too small. Sigh. (I can hear Nellis now: “Gauge!”)

When I got home, Husband and I hung out watching House and a few other shows before heading to bed. Big Rob’s girlfriend wanted to return the favor and kept Joy overnight at her place and drove her to school this morning. Buddha actually slept last night, too, so it was a very nice evening.

I fell asleep with Buddha early on Monday night, ’round 8pm. At 2:30am, we awoke to some commotion. My bed has a clear view to the bathroom down the hall when our bedroom door is open - and it was - and I see Husband standing there with Joy, lights ablaze about the entire apartment. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes to see what the hell is going on.

Joy has been sick. The out-from-every-orifice kinda sick, no less. Husband was cleaning up after her (she would have made it if not for the dag-blasted baby gate) and she was fresh from a shower. Well, as fresh as one can be after this kinda sick in a bathroom rife with said sickness.

Well, I have already slept for a good 7 hours or more, so sleep is done. The girl is up and down all night, running for the bathroom. Husband didn’t go to bed until 6am. I don’t even remember why not, just that it aggravated the hell outta me later that day.

Now it’s Tuesday. But not just any Tuesday - no, it’s the Tuesday we’ve been looking forward to for about 3 weeks, when Buddha first got his cast. His appointment is at 12:45pm for x-rays and, God willing, cast removal. That begs the question, what do you do with the girl? One can’t very well take a sick girl to the office of an orthopedic doctor. I did the next best thing. I made her a Nyquil smoothie and called my mom. Turns out that mom is sitting at the Immediate Care Center herself: she fell and suspected (rightly so, we later learned) a broken thumb. Okay, so I really didn’t make the girl a NyQuil smoothie, but my mom did come over to hang out with her while Husband and I took the boy in for doom and gloom x-rays and cast removal.

Unlike the last time, we were only at the doctor’s office maybe an hour. If we had thought the reaction boy had to the x-rays was similar to torture, well he truly must have been dying for real when the nurse removed his cast. I felt sorry for him during the x-ray and coddled him, but the way he howled when the nurse was trying to fit him for a boot after his cast was off had me referring to him as mama’s drama queen son. They weren’t able to get that damn boot on him the right way, ’cause he was so full of drama and wouldn’t stop squirming and trying to kick the nurse with the recently-declared no-longer-broken leg. But he still walked with the thing on.

The entire way home he picked at the velcro on the boot and told us “Off!” The doc said that he didn’t need it, but that some people - kids or otherwise - do well to have some transition support. We took the boot off of him when we got home and he has scampered about without it ever since. At first we tried to coerce it back on for at least a few hours a day, but he adamantly refuses. Frankly, it’s not a battle I want to fight. He’s still walking around with a stiff ankle turned outward as though the cast is still there, but he’s enjoying bending his knees again.

And despite being super-flarpin’ tired from the long day (that started at 2:30am) of puking girl and screaming boy, I stayed up too late, without going to knit night. Boo hiss!

Wednesday came and went without much of a hitch. Joy stayed home from school again since she needed a little more time to feel normal and correct her sleep schedule. I worked. (Did I mention that I hate the job? It’s not even so much the actual work I do so much as the people with whom I work and the fact that, due to said people, I don’t make enough to actually support anything.) We went to Big Rob’s girlfriend’s house for dinner. She recently moved and they wanted us to check out the new place. Moreover, Big Rob decided that he wanted our mom to meet his girlfriend. We had a pretty good time and her new place is really nice, but Joy was whiny and Buddha was into everything at her not-childproof apartment. It could’ve been more fun.

Again, I stayed up too late. Tsk, tsk, tata!

This time, it was the boy. He wakes up in the middle of the night to nurse still, so it wasn’t unusual when he woke up this time. But, he didn’t wake up to nurse; rather he woke up to puke, first in his own bed, then in ours. I was so frustrated that I left the room and came to the couch, yelling at Husband all the while. Why would he think I’d want to lie in vomit while I sleep?! Not much later, he emerged from the bedroom with the boy and the two of them stole the couch from me. I dozed for a bit in the office chair (big mistake - my back has been killing me ever since) while we laundered the linen from both our bed and the boy’s and every farkin’ towel in the house. The poor kid must’ve thrown up every half hour all morning long. I wasn’t able to find anyone to cover my shift at work, so I went in despite having only slept all of maybe two hours.

Work was awful. The other servers that have been there the longest have this attitude like they don’t have to do any of the required sidework to keep the restaurant running smoothly through the rush. This one in particular made a snotty comment about how she isn’t going to run silverware through the wash ’cause “it’ll fuck up my nails.” I was so frustrated that I came within inches of quitting. I made a whooping $18 over in the corner-hole section where no patron in their right mind would want to dine. Guess who decided that section should be mine?! You guessed it - the same one that made the aforementioned comment.

I called Husband as I was leaving work to vent. He said the boy was still puking every half hour. He’d given him a light lunch of dry toast and water and everything came back up. When I got home, Buddha was asleep, but as soon as he woke up, he begged to nurse, begged for his cup, and begged for food. I nursed him for about 20 minutes and we waited at the ready with a towel. Nothing. I gave him small sips of water one straw-full at a time. We waited at the ready with a towel and still nothing. I had even offered to let him drink straight from the cup with the straw, but when I wouldn’t let him hold the cup, he had a meltdown of colossal proportions that drove my sleep-deprived mind to the brink. I finished the laundry and went to bed, closing the door behind me. I don’t even know what time it was. I can say that Joy wasn’t home from school yet (she gets here about 4:15pm). I slept until about 4:30am.

While dozing in the office chair yesterday morning, I was trying to publish a sponsored post but my server was down. That led to more frustration for the day yesterday, too. I tried to resolve the issue a number of ways before throwing the towel in. In any case, I wanted to point out that I knew about it, tried to fix it, and that now all seems to be working in order again. I lost the opportunity to actually earn from that sponsored post, so I took it back down. Oh, well.

Could be worse.

I’m still nursing! Technically, we’re at 1 year, 7 months and 3 days. Every day is still another victory.

I’m very ambivalent about weaning. We’re down to nursing 3-4 times per day: mornings, bedtime and during the night, with the very occasional lunchtime session. Since I started working several weeks ago, nap time nursing is more and more rare. I was off today, so Buddha got himself a rare treat. Mostly, I’m ready to reclaim my body, but I know that when it is over at long last, I will miss it. Short of a medical anomaly, he is to be my last child. And while he isn’t my only child, he is the only child I have successfully nursed for any length of time. I’m very proud that we have come this far.

He has been eating like a bottomless pit. He has inherited his Daddy’s hollow legs. He really loves fries and can identify them by their bag in the frozen food aisle (assuming he’s not too busy trying to chuck items out of the cart). He is so full of personality: his smile is beautiful and as contagious as his hearty laughs, he is increasingly inquisitive and has one helluva temper. He likes to look at pictures - he points us out and calls us by our respective names. He can identify his eyes, nose, ears, hair, chin, and knees. He insists on meowing at all animals, but I attribute that to his living with a cat. Like Daddy, he is very interested in electronics, particularly if they are the telephone (which he refers to as "hello" or "’lo"), the remote ("teedee"), flashlights, or anything that lights up, makes noise and he shouldn’t really be touching.

He doesn’t let a broken tibia or a casted leg slow him down. Speaking of which, tomorrow we return to the pediatric orthopedic office to X-ray (hell) and,  hopefully, cast removal. I dread it. Remembering how much he hated the previous X-rays, I’m anxious that he’ll spot the machine and start crying. And then - assuming  - the cast does come off, they are going to use that horrible vibrating tool-ma-jigger to remove it. God grant me strength…

The girl has been a handful. Since we lost power for 4 days during the time our meds needed refilling, she has been completely off-kilter. Hell, so have I. It takes weeks for us to both return to "normal," too. And since my lack of meds affects my memory, I’ve further screwed up a time or five in reminding her to take hers. Point is, she has been especially whiny and defiant. Husband and I are very frustrated with her. She is doing well in school per her teacher at the recent parent-teacher conference, just talks too much every single day and gets in trouble for it every single day. So, we’ve opted to extend her consequences for that at home. If she comes home with strikes for talking, she won’t be allowed to play outside. This method has worked for us in the past, we’re hoping it will work again.

If you recall the recent bad news, I managed to dodge that bullet with her. P’s daughter L ended up not coming by or speaking to Joy about what had happened, so I simply told Joy that L had lost a friend from her classroom to death and might be feeling sad for a while. I’m somewhat relieved, in all honesty. I’m very uncertain how Joy would’ve reacted to hearing all of this at this moment in time, since she has been such an emotional wreck from whacky med-schedules.

In other news, Husband and I have decided to start our own business. Husband surprised everyone by coming up with a wonderfully clever name for it. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in restaurant hell but looking forward to two job interviews very soon, including one with the state next Tuesday (the 21st). Please keep your fingers crossed! While it isn’t a gob of money, it is compared to what I’m doing now and seems to be quite secure in the otherwise nose-diving economy. The benefits are quite nice, too. Best of all, it’s a good way to get my foot into the door doing the kind of work I want to do.

I don’t watch the news. It’s my humble opinion that it is full of negativity that I can live just fine without. The really important need-to-know information makes it to me without having to suffer through the news.

Last night, I received an email from my good friend P. It’s one of those stories I go out of my way to avoid. Here’s an excerpt from the Courier-Journal article:

"Authorities say a mother stabbed her two children to death, then fatally shot herself yesterday at their home in the 200 block of Appomattox Road near Fairdale.

Jefferson County Deputy Coroner R.D. Jones identified the mother as Hope Orwick, 35, and the children as Emily Orwick, 9, and Lindsey Orwick, 8. Jones said Hope Orwick died of a gunshot wound in the head, and the girls were both stabbed to death."

As it were, P’s older daughter, L (who is my daughter’s best friend) has attended school with Emily since they were in Kindergarten and was in her current class, as well. L has spent the night at their home in the past and even knew the mom quite well since she frequently volunteered at the school.

As one might imagine, L is quite distraught.

Earlier this week, P asked us if we’d be able to watch her younger daughter, C for a couple of hours today. P will be bringing L along when she comes to pick up C in just a bit and certainly L is going to want to (quite understandably) talk with Joy about her loss.

The kids in our county haven’t had school since last Thursday due to Professional days, so it is L’s first day back to school since this tragedy. The paper reports that grief counselors were available today for those kids.

P and I talked last night about L telling Joy about this devastating news. Obviously, I’m concerned because Joy has OCD and anxiety problems (to be clear, Joy does not know this family). We agreed that we’ll all sit together and share our feelings about it. How else does one explain the unthinkable? I want the girls to know that it’s okay if they don’t understand it - I’m 31 years old and I don’t.

Related articles can be found here and here.

If you pray, won’t you whisper the names of these folks? If you have kids, squeeze ‘em extra tight.

After Joy’s party-at-the-park on Saturday, Big Rob accompanied us back to our place. He kicked it there with us until it was time for the show. I got very short notice that Common Ground was reuniting for a show on October 4th and my generous brother agreed to hang out with my kids so Husband and I could go. YAY!

He had a great time dancing with the baby and it was pretty funny. Love the Grateful Dead and my weirdo family

After getting Buddha to sleep and the girls settled in quietly (so’s not to wake the sleep babe), Big Rob shared his bottle with us. Mom brought the bottle back from Germany for him.

Husband had one shot and I had two shots of Absinth. Good gravy, but is it potent! And surprisingly tasty. It looks and tastes like NyQuil, only more robust and… for lack of a better word, hot.

I love the caption on the back of the bottle. It says “…und ich sah, wie die Schmetterlinge tanzten” which means “…and I saw, how the butterflies dance.”

By the time we were halfway to the show, I had a pretty strong, but very clean buzz.

We got to Headliners Music Hall just as Common Ground took the stage. I was so excited to be seeing them play again! They split about 4 years ago, but I hadn’t seen them play since 2002 when they opened for none other than Vanilla Ice. Unfortunately, we got there late and I only saw one song that night. Worse still, my friend insisted we stay and watch Vanilla Ice! I stayed in touch with the band via their message board, but eventually the forum became a ghost town.

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Joy turned 10 on Wednesday, but her party was on Saturday at the park. Some of the neighborhood kids came, my brother and his youngest (who is precisely 3 weeks younger than Joy), my mom, and Sonnie and her gang.

She was embarrassed when we sang “Happy Birthday” in very loud voices so that the entire playground heard.

There aren’t many pictures of her that I can post since she is surrounded by a number of other children in most of them and I didn’t ask their parents permission to post their kids, so I’m posting what I can.

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