Pulmonary Revolt

My oldest, the Evil Genius, brought home some germ infestation recently. It struck strong and swiftly. Blessed is the husband who understands the value of his wife's health. Devildog sent me to the bedroom Monday evening, with my nest of stuff I'd need, so I could bed-surf and recuperate. I tried avoiding carbs and sugar all day with fair success till the evening. As I'm told, it slows your recovery when you consume those things. I then spent Tuesday and Wednesday bedsurfing as well. I would have still been there except things like signing up for a motorcycle endorsement class and a job yanked me out of the bed.
As with every variety of cold that comes my way, it becomes bronchitis. YAY! ASTHMA!
The coughing could be potentially tolerated if #1 it wasn't wearing me out, #2 it wasn't non-productive, #3 it didn't make me feel oxygen-deprived.

You know what happens when a mother's brain becomes oxygen-deprived, right?
It's never pretty.

I knew there was a reason I liked Margaret Cho

http://jezebel.com/5875219/cho-mad-twitter
This is what prompted my previous blog post. It was late, and I had to empty my brain. Reading that page strummed an emotional chord with me, and I wouldn't have slept if I hadn't gotten all that out of my head.

I sometimes struggle with balancing the sweet and the sour sides of me. On occasion I think I should be more docile and kinder in general. And while I should, the long-standing anger and resentment that I keep shoving back to its dark hole still reaches an arm up and grabs my ankle, trying to pull me down there with it. But in all honesty, I like who I am now, and I don't want to change things. I do want to corral the mean side of me, but that's always going to be a work in progress. I don't want to become so docile that I fail to LIVE. (Insert Auntie Mame-to-Miss Gooch quote about living here)

I used to be shy. Yes, me, shy - it's sometimes hard for me to believe too. Teachers would call on me because they knew I was smart enough to answer the question, but I was barely audible to even the kid sitting next to me. An hour later, the teacher could hear me talking over the rest of the class. There were lots of things that shoved me into that dark hole. Constantly being stymied and squashed by my parents for whatever reasons they held, being teased by my peers, having a raging case of ADD and no skills to work around it, having a big lack of social skills, being molested several times over the course of a few years by someone related to me, and a general case of "nobody gets me" for years will do a number on a person. I knew I could do so much more than I was actually accomplishing, and that failing of myself cuts too. A sheer lack of electives that interested me at the junior high is what sent me to band. I needed 2 performing arts credits to graduate, so naturally I opted for band again when I moved to the high school for 10th grade. That single set of decisions is what I credit for changing my life entirely. Band geeks get it, and each other, and they don't judge (much) for the quirks. Score one for my dig out of the hole. A girl in band with me moved to my school because her dad was in the Lutheran seminary and that was his year to serve at the church down the street from school. She was in Upward Bound. I got into the program here because I knew her, even though my school wasn't a feeder for that program. That program has a summer component where you live on the college campus, in the dorms, go to classes to get you a leg up for the school year, and you continue through the year on Saturdays. That program is where I met Devildog.

I credit him with cracking my shell. I'm pretty sure that sometimes, he wishes he hadn't. He single-handedly reversed the inner voices in my head. Because of him, I believe that I really AM a beautiful, intelligent, capable and awesome woman. He refused to let me say that I was ugly, stupid, incapable, or less than stellar. He encouraged me to do things that I had been scared of doing for the lamest of reasons to be scared. While he didn't build my confidence, he did do his part to give me the means to feel confident. BIG score 2 for my dig out of the hole.
Because Devildog & I had 1.75 kids by the time we graduated high school, he opted to join the Marine Corps. As a Marine's wife, you put up with a lot of crap that civilian wives don't. You also grow a backbone bigger than a civilian wife's. You gain skills that even some males don't have. My husband brought home a book called "Roses & Thorns", which turned out to be a handy written heads-up for me. I think every military spouse should read it as soon as they're engaged or married to a service member. Then he signed me up for a Brides's Class at the Family Service Center at Camp Lejune. I freaked when he said he wasn't going. "I'm not doing that without you!" He calmly looked at me and said "Honey, I still have to go to work. And they'll pay for child care for you to go to the class". That one, he SHOVED me at, kicking and screaming and I am ever grateful he did. I learned a hell of a lot those 3 days. That prompted me to start volunteering at Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society, where I learned much-needed career skills, and more about navigating military life. From there I landed a job at a hotel, where I made myself valuable. Then I moved on to the merchandising job I have now.

All along the way, I've ticked little things off my bucket list. I have grown bigger balls than I ever imagined I would have. If I'd had the skills, attitude, confidence and general persona that I have now, when I was in my 20's, I think our lives would be even better now than they are. I have taken on a personality that people aren't sure about when they first meet me. I am rough around the edges despite my outward beauty. I feel even more beautiful now than I did 10 years ago, despite my need to work out and tone up the muscles from baby#4. But inside I still feel edgy, and the inner Betty Badass keeps popping up to say hi. She's the reason I can take my van someplace and be taken seriously. I learned to use a weapon out of necessity, because one was in the house. If you have something in your life, you need to know how to operate it. The gun range is FUN, and I love going. I haven't been since before I got pregnant with the Blur. I'm overdue for some range time.
Likewise, I've wanted to learn how to ride a motorcycle since I was a kid my daughter's age. It was always something on my list, but I didn't have much drive or need to accomplish it just yet. Then, Devildog's Bronco was having some issues, and fixing it was becoming a regular thing. The neighbor jacked up his truck to excessive redneck proportions, to the point it was no longer street legal. He needed to get a truck to tow his TRUCK, so he put his motorcycle up for sale. We used a chunk of our tax refund to buy it. Even I knew it was an awesome deal, and I don't lament or regret that purchase. So, now, that means I have to learn how to ride for real. I've long staved off Devildog buying a bike, saying "I am not gonna be the broad on the back. You get a bike when I get one too." Well, necessity and a great deal on a bike has merited a change of sorts. I'm ok waiting till the kids are older for us to buy a 2nd motorcycle. However, before I even think about riding the back of someone's bike, I have to learn how to operate one. I need to know what to expect from my driver if I'm riding passenger. So that's one of the bigger things on my bucket list that I'm ticking off of it soon. I love gifts, but given the state of my house, clutter free ones are awesome. I asked for the class for my birthday, and some friends have helped make that happen.

And when I finish that course, and get the motorcycle endorsement that Florida requires to legally ride a motorcycle, you can bet, that Betty's ego will be just a little bit bigger. And that shy, beaten-down little girl who still lurks in the recesses of my life will have won another small victory over the people like my grandmother who threw her hands up cursing and saying I'd never learn how to crochet (HAH~ check me out ya witch, I can crochet AND knit!), those who called me ugly, weird, stupid, mistreated me, harmed me and the ones who asked me at 7 months pregnant with my now 18 year old son "Who would f**k you?". Yes, Dennis and Ronnie, I am still waiting to see you this many years later, because I'll gladly introduce you to the Devildog. And I look better now, than I did when we were in school. Tsk, too bad you were a prick to me, because I had a major crush on one of you in 9th grade too.

I get the best revenge because I refuse to let the shadows of my past keep me stuck there, and hiding behind dreams and what-ifs. And in a couple weeks, I can look a little more like Betty - riding a motorcycle.

Memories & Margaret Cho

As a kid, my favorite memory of watching Margaret Cho on tv, doing her standup comedy, was the story of her mom standing outside at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, yelling for the "keeeeeeeds" to get up and get dressed so they could go to "Mongomonery War".
I have absolutely no idea why or how that is my primary and only association of Margaret Cho, but that's just how my brain works sometimes. It's funny stuff, and my cognitive function grabbed THAT snippet and kept it. My brain is weird, and talking to my younger sister, it's a genetic mishap, and I got the lucky end of the weird stick.
Then again, she has had her own challenges, issues, and interactions that have colored her perspective on things. We both will have a different idea of the same event, and we lived in the same house, relegated to the same renovated sleeping porch turned into two 8x10 cells, a bathroom and laundry room. I'll have to tell you about Dad's construction later. This is about something completely different. We spent time at a Catholic school. After my initial culture shock of about the first 3/4 of my first year there for 6th grade, I had a couple AHA! moments and things got better for me. They never got better for my sister from 4th grade till she finally left after 7th grade. I never knew. Or I was just that obtuse and never paid attention. It never occurred to me to ask anything. If I'd known even an inkling of the crap people did to my sister, I would've tried to do something about it. I'm an Aquarius, my sense of justice is resolute. But I was unaware of the things my sister was subjected to till we were adults.
My childhood was not stellar. Dad worked hard, Mom stayed home to raise us. But mom had her own issues that never got resolved. Despite the 20 year age gap, the two of them had enough crap swept under rugs, that there was a LOT of carpet in their lives. So they lacked the tools and means to deal with the crap their kids got from other people. I didn't know my mom was molested until my aunt told me during the week she was here for mom's funeral. That explained a few things. I am thankful my aunt shared her view of my mother, because it truly helped me get in my mom's head enough to understand why she did things the way she had. As a child, I had been molested, and when I told my mother, she literally ran away from me. I had unwittingly shoved a sword into her own festering wound, and she couldn't handle it. Top it with the belief she was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, physically and emotionally abused by her parents (till the day her mother died in 1994 at that) and add in a car accident that toppled her around inside a 15 passenger van in the later 1980s, and you have a mother who honestly was not fully right in the head. So, in the end, we found ourselves learning about life from neighbors, parents of friends, enemies, strangers, and everywhere else those lessons presented themselves to us. The fact that the younger 3 kids (I jokingly call the 2nd litter) are able to cook creatively with flavor, and that we don't just take my very Irish grandmother's approach and just boil everything - is AMAZING. I still have issues with overcooking and scorching though.
All through elementary school, I was called names. I really was weird by their perspective. I honestly was poor. Mom smoked (ugh), and we often came home to find a garbage bag of clothes on the doorstep. But my oblivion prevented me from seeing what I lacked fiscally. It didn't prevent my classmates from trying to make sure I knew what I was missing though. I thankfully was not bullied physically, and I think my oblivion is what spared me a lot of what others tried to inflict on me. I was still hurt by people, and the advice I'd been given never helped me. Looking back, I'm glad to have gotten away from that same circle of kids and that I got to go somewhere new for 6th grade. I was just sucktacularly prepared for any of the culture shock. It did teach me how to adapt to changes. I was around adults almost exclusively as a kid, so I didn't know how to act around other kids. They didn't know how to relate to me either. Even now, most of my friends are older than I am. I finally caught on to the way it worked after several months of struggle. And like most everything I do, once I get the hang of it, I have it, and I flourish (ie: knitting, crocheting, cooking). Then I went back to public school, and my past met me at the door. I'd changed, but no one else wanted to see that. My advantage was that I was stronger because I'd learned how to adapt, and was confident because the academics had become much easier for me after 3 years of Catholic school. I got through the challenges of that year, even begging my mother NOT to intervene and just let me handle it, because she would've just made things worse. I'd learned to read people, and I'd learned how to utilize the grapevine to my advantage. I preferred to hang out with the guys because they were not entirely up to catty BS like 99% of the girls were. Then as high school progressed I still had jerks in my day, but I wasn't as affected by them. Or so I thought. I had no idea of the true extent of my wounds. And I probably still don't, nor do I want to any more.
Over the years I'd been torn down by people trying to make themselves look, feel or sound better. Deep down, I knew I could do more, be more, and take Auntie Mame's advice and LIVE more. I just didn't know how to take a leap of faith.

Birthdaying

It's a record, I've posted more than one blog in 8 weeks' time.
Oh. Sorry. I guess that floor came up and smacked you. Stupid chair, why didn't you keep my reader from falling?

In any case, my birthday is this weekend, and since last year demonstrated that I can't be taken out in public, I decided to do a birthday party for myself at home. And in usual fashion, I am making at least a weekend out of it. The kids are out of school Friday for planning day. I worked doggedly Thursday, long into the evening, with multiple interruptions to get all my work done so I can stay in bed longer and enjoy my coffee on Friday. I get to skip having to wake up at the butt crack-o-dawn and zero dark thirty to take people to meet their educational facilities. So, Thursday was my Friday. My Thursday-Friday means, I enjoyed some Irish Cream. My Friday-Friday may be for the Rum & Dr Pepper after the party preparations are done (or during them, who knows). Devildog must go to bed early Friday, because HE must get up at the crack of zero-dark-really-asinine on Saturday morning, to fulfill a commitment he made. I'll have to tell you about the commitment later. That commitment cemented my decision to stay at home to celebrate my birthday.

And there is no theme, no planning of minutiae, no type A anything with any of my gatherings at my awesome-for-entertaining house. Literally, it seems like all my parties here are "show up, put random food on the counter, pour drinks, and visit with people". It's what works for us. Now, for Christmas dinner there was a chow line but that was out of sheer necessity. With that many people and that much food, there was no way formality would have worked AT ALL here. Plus there's nothing formal about us or our house. Which is completely right up our alley because we're not plan to the nth anything people. I announced loose plans for a birthday the week prior, not sure if Friday or Saturday would be the better party day. I finally decided at the crux of Sunday/Monday that Saturday was best because we could start earlier in the day, and I needed Friday to get stuff ready. And seeing as how my husband has to go to bed early Friday, that would put a cramp in the debauchery my friends and I can create for ourselves. Not exactly conducive to birthdaying when you have to shush your friends because "the baby husband is trying to sleep"

Elusive Solitude

It is 7:10 in the morning, the sun's first rays are crafting themselves behind the trees. As I look out my kitchen window, I see dark tree shadows against a multi-hued sunrise. This is the quietest my house ever is, and even then there is always noise. The refrigerator is humming, and at any random minute the icemaker will drop frozen cubes into its bin with a groan, creak and a crash, then water to refill and repeat. The HVAC unit just stopped. I hear cargo ships a couple miles away on the river. The water heater is doing something. And my husband is snoring. I've joked he snores to the point that the ceiling over our bed is concaved, risking collapse. I've just returned from the high school bus run to take my junior and senior to be collected by some guy they all call Freelove. They hate the bus, because the other kids on it are, to be polite - obnoxious. But it's a given in life that we all have things we disdain and deal with anyway. My Clone is asleep when she should be awake, because she stayed up way too late last night watching tv with Devildog. Blur is, very thankfully, still asleep so Devildog gets to keep snoring a little while longer. And here I sit, when I should be moving about to get the day going. The coffee in my FSU Tervis Tumbler, the appliances going about their business, and the sky behind the trees changing from the pretty colors of sunrise to the ones seen the rest of the day. I have knitting I want to be doing, but that means I'd have to turn on a light and risk waking Blur who sleeps on the couch most nights because we're overly permissive and let this ginger midget run the show more than she should. But like her sister who at that age also slept on the couch and with us for way too long, at least she is asleep. With a toddler, just like during that time affectionately called "baby jail", if that child sleeps ANY where at all, so that parents can sleep, then that child can sleep where ever they cease to fidget. Because when you have children, solitude is ever sought after on a regular basis. When you have 4 who run the gamut of ages and stages, you make a point to seek out any ounce of solace you can when ever you can. And then you get off the computer to go wake that 4th grader who is going to be even crankier the 3rd & 4th time you go in there to wake her because it's now 7:30 and she needs to be ready to walk out the door in 1/10th of the minutes she usually has because she wakes up by 7:00. And you pray her complaints don't wake the toddler, ever thankful she's on the couch so she doesn't pick up her head with that grunt that makes mommy want to curse because you just *know* you better bolster the coffee pot for Devildog because she's not going to go back to sleep.
Ah, there's the icemaker now. And looking around, I better put away the yarn because I know someone will want to "koh-shay" because mommy does too.

Exhaustion

I've been quite busy and when I get home, I just want downtime and I don't want to have to think or do. It's royally catching up to me and it's creating chaos for me. I'm also not getting enough sleep. So, as a result, my usual verbosity is not making its appearance here.
This broad is going to bed in about 2.8 seconds...well 129.9 because I have to click a couple things for you to see it, and then get my tush out of the chair and set up the coffee pot for the morning (or there will be even MORE chaos for me)

Blogdeath

Yea, I've long suffered this whole blogdeath thing. In my ADD-laden brain, it's just easier to keep up with stuff on crackbook. I get instant grantification because of that feed on my page. Oh, and the stalker-feed too. I often miss blogging. My status updates get to a certain level of verbosity and my son comes to me and tells me I type too much on crackbook.

In the last few months, my workload has increased. Retail is busy this time of year, and retail merchandising is as well. I haven't seen much of my husband and kids because I've been busy, and then subsequently tired. I haven't even done my Christmas baking because the one weekend it was low profile, it was 80 degrees outside, and I was NOT about to crank up the oven in THAT weather. So, my supplies sit in the bin where I placed them so that my family would avoid eating my ingredients. Maybe I can bake for my birthday.

Right before Thanksgiving, my husband's grandfather finally gave out on us. He'd been sent home from the hospital to hospice care at the end of July because his remaining kidney was failing, and then it rebounded. He'd been waning steadily, and he finally ended the fight the Saturday before Thanksgiving. We went to Charleston for Thanksgiving with Devildog's sister.

Then work got real crazy.

But in all this, I was able to spend time with my family at Christmas. My Father-in-law came down to visit for a couple days with his dog. She's an awesome dog too, and if we had her as a pet, we would be spoiled at how well behaved she is. My dad preferred to eat at my house for dinner because my older sibling annoys him. The oldest sister had enough of her own going on, she didn't even have stuff at her house. More on that later. My youngest sister lives with dad, and had to drive him to my house because he can't find it on his own. He's 84 and relatively independent, but even 9 years ago when my youngest sister lived in this exact same neighborhood, he couldn't find his way over here. My youngest brother brought his daughter, his girlfriend and her son. They got called at 9am to cook her grandmother's dinner because they'd caught a cold and were too unwell to cook. Brother & company hadn't even gotten out of bed, nor opened gifts yet. They were all too happy to come here to eat food that had flavor. Everyone loved it. Good, because I busted chops for several hours to make it. And on about 4 hours of sleep (don't ask, I won't even go there).

My oldest sister has been dealing her own health issues, compounded with the year-plus long cancer struggles of her husband of 25+ years. They've been together since she was 15 or 16, and they got married when I was 8 years old. We celebrated her 50th birthday a couple years ago. I could go search the clerk of court website and pinpoint that detail but honestly, it doesn't matter. When the man you've spent your entire life with is wasting away, you basically just circle the wagons and go into survival mode. I can relate, except my stuff was work-related, not majorly-change-your-entire-f'ing-life stuff. Johnny had been in hospice care a few weeks and was sent home because he'd improved. I found out he was on his deathbed with a matter of time before the inevitable happens via my dad arriving for dinner and telling me.

So, really, in the grand scheme of things, my life is busy, but my sister's world is crashing down around her, and I was clueless. It really puts things into perspective.

Crazy?

I was crazy once.
They sent me to live on Sunny Hill


It has been just that. The pace we're keeping isn't bad, but at times it feels overwhelming. We spent Thanksgiving at my sister-in-law's and went to a Festival of Lights that the park does every year there. Clone wanted to climb the rock wall, and scaled it in less than 2 minutes, and got 2 feet from the top on her second try in the same amount of time. Her arms wore out and she didn't ring the bell a second time. However, seeing some little girl outdo them, set the numerous boys into a tizzy of "I can't be shown up by a girl!"

I am proud of her for doing it. Not only the actual DOING part of it, but the fact that she wasn't a chicken about it at all. She has her father's sense of adventure in many ways. And whoooo is she competitive! But that rock wall will probably be the highlight of the trip for her. I took as many pictures as I could, but they were mostly blurry. Unfortunately, my camera has taken too many hits and is no longer thinking as fast as it could. I need to get the battery door fixed so I don't have the jerry-rigged rubber band around it. But that is low priority, and I have bigger fish to fry at the moment.

So, does anyone know where Sunny Hill is?

236

Happy 236th Birthday United States Marine Corps!


OOHRAH Devildogs! Go eat some cake.

WHOOSH

That is how I feel some days. It's been a rather chronic state of busy around here for the last few months. The last several weeks have been more so than typical. I keep looking for the "short work week" and it hasn't appeared on my work dashboard yet. I want to whine, but I can't. I don't have time during the day, and I don't have the energy in the evening for it. Plus, I'm the one with a job, so I'll take the extra hours. Unfortunately, it comes at the cost of study time for Devildog. While this one day a week of school works for my work schedule, it doesn't work well for him. I hate that I leave him with the Blur all day, but it was the other way around when he was working. Except, I was home with all the kids while he worked overnights, so there was the juggle of schedules, trying to keep the kids quiet so he can sleep during the day, and be a geographical single parent in the evenings to 4 kids with a broad space between ages. But he manages as best as he can. He does a lot more than some guys I know. I am one of those that firmly believe that every father should spend time as a stay-at-home dad so he understands that moms are not all sitting on the blessed assurance all day.
This level of busy brings about some neglecting of friendships. I see posts on Crackbook of a group of people I know that do stuff, and wonder why I wasn't included. Oh yea, I am not in contact with them as much. It's a brief passing online as I read their updates, and wave as I pass them in the parking lot.
I am having a Pampered Chef party on Friday. I have invited friends I haven't seen in a while. If they don't buy any kitchen stuff then I at least hope I will have an opportunity to catch up with some of them. I've contemplated having a movie night or game night at my house just so I can do something fun with friends. I think a game night would be more fun since movie tastes vary so much among my friends.
Now, pardon me, I have to WHOOSH myself off to get more stuff done today.