Smother Mother

My skills as a Smother Mother are about to be tested. My oldest daughter, Kelci, is leaving next week, with MY grandson to join her husband in Iowa, while he works for a couple of months. I haven't even got a leg to stand on. Her dad won a scholarship to study architecture in Europe for 7 months. We left when she was 8 months old and came back the night before Thanksgiving when she was 15 months old. It was in 1985 and terrorism was happening all over Europe. We were at places that blew up within 2 days of us being there, three different times. We arrived in Rome right after the Achilles Lauro had been hijacked the Italian government had collapsed. There were soldiers with machine guns at intersections and when my ex asked one for directions, I knew it was time to go home to Oklahoma....Yep, putting her grandparents through that kind of torture is really coming back to haunt me.

We did get both sets of grandparents to come over and visit us. There is nothing like strolling through the red light district in Amsterdam,with your in-laws. Below is Kelci and me in St.Mark's Square, Venice, Italy, 1985.

RJ spent the morning with me, the afternoon with his Great-Grandma Renee then the evening with me while his mother was taking some engagement pictures for some friends. Grandpa Ed walked by and started talking to him and RJ grabbed his finger in delight at the sound of a male voice and the comfort that there was still testosterone in the world. Being the first boy in 3 generations is a lot of pressure for the little guy, I think he is in danger of estrogen toxicity.

Hannah and Jason's engagement pictures turned out beautiful. Kelci is spreading her wings as a photographer and soaring.

Heart attack and roving tumors

The other night I couldn't sleep and finally gave in and took a sleeping pill about three in the morning. My husband gets up at six to get ready for work and that morning he wasn't feeling well and his left hand and arm was numb. He woke me to ask what I thought he should do and in my head I told him I had just taken a sleeping pill, but apparently all that I did tell him was to call the doctor. I do vaguely remember him asking me to drive him to the hospital but since he works at the hospital, I assumed he just wanted a ride to work and told him to have our youngest daughter take him. In my head once again,I explained that I could not drive with Ambien in my system.....Ambien makes me do a lot of things, once we found a half eaten ice cream bar by the printer...but that is another story.

How my husband,Ed, tells the story is that he woke up not feeling well and his arm and hand were numb and he was worried about a heart attack. He woke me up to ask me what to do, because I am the reluctant expert of all things medical in this family. I just sleepily told him to call the doctor, so he called into work to tell them that he wouldn't be in. He called the doctor after they got to the office and they said they would ask the doctor and call him back. All the while I slept blissfully on. At some point he became more concerned and wanted me to take him to the hospital. He was dying and his spouse did not give a care in the world. He got fed up and drove himself to the hospital and worked, until the doctor's office called him back with an appointment.

I have always teased him about his tumor that migrates. Every time he has a pain, he worries that it is a tumor. He is diabetic and has arthritis and the other various aches and pains of being sixty, so pains occur often, in numerous places.

Turns out he has a pinched nerve in his neck and needs to take muscle relaxers to treat it. He now knows that I do give a care, I just can't articulate that caring attitude if I have recently taken an Ambien.

I love him, but I can't work with him.

I love my husband. After my first marriage turned toxic, I was not looking to get married again. But then I met my best friend. He wrote to me first, the good old fashioned way to court,then he chuckled in that deep voice on the phone. I used to make him stay on the line until he feel asleep, just so I could hear him talk. We have so much in common,he's a chef, I like to eat. He likes to buy bookshelves, I like to read, a lot. He loves my daughters and I love his sons. BUT, did I mention that he is an excellent chef, he knows everything and he can make spam taste good. Sometimes handyman chores are not his forte...

One Saturday discord crept up between us,he lost his listening ability and I lost my patience. It was supposed to be a simple job....they ALWAYS are. We bought a keypad for outside the garage door. So whenever the kids lose their keys....again. They can get into the house with out jumping the fence, reaching up through the doggies door to unlock the back door.

There was a large page of instructions, that I hasn't read yet, it was divided and he was only reading the left side which was looking for dip switches on the motor unit on the ceiling, to set the code for the keypad. After I climbed the ladder that was broke and duct taped together, I couldn't find the dip switches and when I asked him what the right side of the instructions said, he told me it was the Spanish instructions and I just needed to look again. I finally got the instructions away from him and the right side was alternate instructions if you had a model that didn't have dip switches. DUH! So then I pushed the quick learn code button and he read the codes and put them into the keypad....nothing was working. At this point I was threatening to come down the ladder and bop him upside his head. Instead, I hit the button, climbed down off the ladder to put in the codes but he insisted on reading them to me. Yet another recipe for disaster. We were both pretty frustrated by this point and couldn't dial a code correctly if our life depended on it.

Despite the mutual aggression that was evolving, love prevailed and no bodily harm was done. We worked out one last plan, I would take the instructions up the ladder with me, push the button, and read the codes to him while he put them in. Ta Da! Yet another household chore finished, and only after putting it off for several months and nearly coming to blows. I can hardly wait to take up the carpet in the living room and refinish the hardwood floors underneath....I'll keep you posted....I may need bail money. :>

Pictures of Love

Most all of the pictures you may see in my blog were taken by my oldest daughter. She got a digital camera for her birthday last September and has been clicking away ever since. Digital Photography is amazing, just a click and you can see what you have and a quick trip to the store or a computer and you can get prints within minutes. No smelly, expensive chemicals, paper, or trying to turn an apartment's only bathroom into a darkroom. Let me tell you, this was especially hard with a toddler and a husband who might want to use it too.

When I went to college, I majored in Medical Technology, I had a cousin with Cystic Fibrosis and I knew I wanted to do something to help. Caregiving and adopting strays was something that my mom taught by example. It seemed as natural as breathing, someone needed help, drop everything and pull out the stops to help. My other great determination was art, drawing, fiber arts, crafts, everything I saw I wanted to learn how to do. Yet another thing that I need a 12 step program for, the other being chocolate.:> Things changed after my second year of college, my dad passed away. He and his parents were my link to art. I found that when the emphasis in my life was science and caring for patients, I missed my art. So I changed my major to Photographic Journalism and carried my camera everywhere I went. I loved the instant gratification of photography as opposed to the drawing I had done up to that point.

Both of my daughters have good cameras and take great pictures, it is just another thread that binds us but it is one that I enjoy so very much.

Friends

Ever have someone that you just "click" with right from the start? I had just moved into a new house and a neighbor from across the street, came over and brought me a chocolate cake. Sounds ordinary, normal, even common courtesy. She was anything but those things. I had some misgivings when she stood up her one year old son on my kitchen floor and tapped him on the forehead and told him to go forth and walk. Oh my, I had heard stories about the Holy Rollers and this one had already tempted me with chocolate cake....I could see deprogramming in my future. Her little one promptly plopped on his little tush and she looked up and said, "That never works", I smiled back and jumped into that friendship with both feet. I knew she was my kind of gal. Melanie has been an angel, co-conspirator, bad influence, partner in crime and best friend to me ever since.

We perfected the "Opps, I HAVE to have milk for the morning, since the kids are asleep, lets leave our husbands to watch the kids and run to the store at 10 pm and get it". These trips often involved sharing Cheddar Bites from Sonic, which we ate there and left the trash, so that there would not be any evidence against us. When we heard on the news that pharmaceutical companies were taking the alcohol out of children's medicines, we read every label to find out which one's still had it and stocked up. We lived out in the country and a toddler with a bad cold during a snowstorm is not the time to take a stand against alcohol in children's medications. My daughters had a small tent that they played in, when the new wore off and they were no longer interested in it, Melanie and I hid in it so we could have a few moments of peace and quiet. Good times.

We saw each other through births, deaths and frenzied "clean before company comes". She said she could always tell when my mom was coming to visit because I opened every curtain in my house so I had the most light to see to clean. (My mother is known for wiping out the inside of the dryer and sweeping the bricks of the house before company came.) When one or both of us was PMS'ing, we learned to signal each other with our curtains, open meant we were up and ready for a call or visit, closed meant, we were still in bed, a child was sick or we were just b*tchy and needed some space.

She saw me through my first husband, a divorce and then later a second marriage. I could count on her to tell it to me straight. She was my port in the storm, listening to hours of frustration and hurt, encouraging me to stand up for myself and my daughters. She sent her husband over my first night alone to change my locks, she went to court with me and she even watched over my ex when he came to get his things, arranging for me to be out of the house and eating pizza with her pastor.

We live in different states and don't talk as often as we would like but we can pick up the conversation just like it was yesterday that we talked instead of months ago. If everyone had just one friend like that, the world would be a lot more fun and a lot more secure.

Whatever this little post tells you about her, is not near enough.

Lab Rat

I went to the Rheumatologist today. It was for Inclusion or Exclusion in a drug trial. Funny thing about Lupus, you want to fail some tests just so they can figure out what is wrong so it can be treated. When the first major test results came back that pointed to an auto-immune disorder, I called my mom to tell her that I had a positive ANA and therefore I wasn't crazy. She replied,"Honey, the test didn't say you weren't crazy."

I am pretty sure that I was responsible for the death of a tree today. The paperwork for this study took almost 3 hours to complete. The nurse took 5 vials of blood then she asked me to do as much as I could for the urine sample because they had a couple of tests to run on it. As usual, I overachieved, I overflowed the cup and had to pour some out.....ewww. I did feel quite proud of myself when I left the sample on the little table outside the restroom, it was brighter and bigger than anyone else's. Yes, I am easily amused, just ask anyone who knows me.

Now I wait until the lab results are in and a panel for the drug trial reviews my chart and decides if I am included or excluded. Never have I wanted to be "included" so much.

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