I’m Beautiful Like Me.

I quit.

I’ve been missing from the blog!

Truth is, life has been pretty hectic and mostly depressing. I haven’t felt compelled to write much, what with all the money worry that is going on with us right now. I haven’t checked the Google Reader in over a week, haven’t been very active on Entrecard or even Plurk. I’ve focused my online time to trying to earn some flow and my offline time to the same thing. I apologize for not posting anything interesting in a while. I’ll be back around again as soon as I can.

Namaste.

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 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.

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.

Keep Reading…

Can you believe I have no pictures of Joy as a baby on the computer?! When she was really tiny, we didn’t have a digital camera. I lost a nauseating amount of images of her when a transformer down the street that powered my computer randomly exploded one sunny afternoon several years ago. If you learn nothing else from reading my blog, I sincerely hope you take me for my word at this: back up your images!!!

At around 2pm, September 30, 1998, my water broke. At first I thought my already-questionable bladder had completely failed me, but I quickly realized that wasn’t the case. No one ever tells you that when your water breaks, it isn’t just a gush. It does not stop trickling! I called xSO at work to let him know and excitedly paced the house, calling people. After three and a half hours and still no labor pain, we headed to the hospital and yes, I drove.

Keep Reading…

Buddha’s leg is broken. Refresher here. Needless to say, I feel like the World’s Worst Mama.

Joy was late for school this morning. We all piled in the Jeep at 8:45am, dropped Joy to school, made a deposit at the bank, stopped at the gas station and went to Buddha’s appointment.

From there, we were sent downtown to the Children’s Hospital for X-rays. He hated the X-rays. I cried with him.

They wouldn’t give me the results and I couldn’t get the doctor’s office on the phone. Lots of freaking out ensued. The radiologist tech was awesome, though and made it happen. The NP we saw at the doctor’s office confirmed that his right tibia is fractured.

We waited around for films to be developed to take to orthopedics. Naturally stressed out, I went outside and off hospital campus for a smoke. On my way back in, I fell and busted my knee up something horrid. It’s all swollen and wicked red.

Then to the orthopedic office. But wait! No one is home to get Joy off the school bus. ARGH! Rushed over to pick her up from school, then to the pediatric orthopedic office clear back the other side of town. We were in that office for over 3 hours. Both of my kids made me proud by being extremely well-behaved. Buddha was in good spirits, particularly considering the injury and the strong negative reaction he had to the X-ray procedures. Finally, at long last, he was seen by the doctor and casted. He didn’t much care for that whole ordeal, either.

My poor baby.

It was 6:30pm when we left the office. We stopped at McDonald’s for dinner. I ran into yet another familiar (and beautiful) face, which lifted my mood a bit. I wish we could’ve visited longer. It was 7:30pm by the time we got home. Husband, the boy and I are thoroughly exhausted. We are going to crawl on the couch and watch television for the remainder of the evening.