Dr. Flea

I wasn't going to go here. I've tried really hard to stay away, but here I go anyway.

Remember this guy? Here's a link to my own blog because OOPS! the supermega blogstar's blog is gone!

Want to know what happened? Well, the short story is, his ego got way out of control. Here's the long story, which I very accidentally ran accross, having no intention of ever going back to his blog again.



Just a friendly reminder to do your best to choose a doctor with a smaller EGO, as difficult as that may be.

I'm here!

I haven't disappeared from the planet. Blogging seems to be something I can't make time for lately!

We had the one year anniversary of Marissa's death last June 11. We turned off the phone and nobody got their calls returned. We did get a few messages from people letting us know they love us and were thinking of us and that really truly means the world to me, so THANK YOU to our friends who did that for us.

On June 11, we each wrote a letter to Marissa. Then we "sent" them to her by burning them with the fire from a candle lit in her honor. At the same time she died, we planned to be at the park that sits below the hospital window dh and I were looking out as we held her and let her go. That was an adventure! The park is halfway down what is termed "medical hill" (ick~ but that's another story). The parking situation anywhere within the vicinity of downtown is truly sad, so we parked way at the top of the hill and had to walk most of the way down to get to the park. On the way, our 5 year old decides he must go to the bathroom right NOW. So he and I race across the street and luckily find a bathroom at the community college on the other side. We race back across the street and the 4 year old must go to the bathroom right NOW. So she and I race across the street. We race back, to discover she has left her incense in the bathroom. So I race back accross and find the incense. OK! We were off to an interesting start!

We made it to the park, which is a term used extremely loosely here. What it really is, is a very small strip of land with a huge drop-off going the rest of the way down medical hill on one side and a busy street on the other. We made it just in time (Marissa's official time of death was 7:41PM) and lit our incense. Then the baby started crying because he wanted to get down and crawl around and my 7 year old started really sobbing uncontrolably. I think this was good, but I was really afraid she would pass out. She was hyperventilating the whole time we were there and all the way back up the hugemongous hill, which seemed a whole lot bigger going in the other direction with 5 little kids; two of them needing to be carried or pushed, and one of them sobbing. Everyone that walked by was checking us out, wondering what we were doing to her.

All the kids stayed up late except the 2 year old, who crashed early. Venus was bright in the sky and was a beautiful sight from our house. The kids and dh wrestled in the front yard and seemed to have a great time. After they went to bed dh and I sat outside until about 1AM, sharing a bottle of wine sent to us by a dear friend.

The day itself was kind of bad. It was long. Very very long.
The day before was worse. I think because it was a Sunday and she died on a Sunday. I was marking time that day. Noticing when the clock said 10:30 because that's when she coded. Remembering the drive to the hospital. Going through each and every event in my head.

June has been hard. I woke up June 1 and knew it was June. I felt as though she had just died a couple weeks ago. It was not a shadow of the previous pain as I had expected it to be. It was the same sharp, unendurable pain. That was a surprise. But today I feel OK. I have hope and joy and can feel the promise of life. I don't know what tomorrow will be like, but I suppose any one of us could say that on all kinds of levels.

So here I go. Moving forward. I have no choice. As long as she gives me some of those wonderful signs once in a while I'll be OK until I see her again.

Oh! I should mention that the sky looked exactly the same that it did one year ago June 11. It was lavender with wispy clouds.

Roller coaster ride

Truly. That's what this is. The highs are higher than I've ever experienced before. The feeling that things will be OK, that I was immeasurably blessed to have cared for Marissa in the short time that I had her; and that is enough~ except. Except it's not. The highs have an undercurrent of unbearable sadness. When the transitory good feeling passes in hours or days and possibly weeks, I know that what is left is this. Where I am now.

I love school. I'm doing really well. Marissa led me here. It was so perfectly orchestrated. I was really high on that for a while. Now I'm back to what seems to be my set point. I thought about putting a positive spin on this, and I could, but that would not be the truth, and the truth is what matters most.

It's spring. I love spring. Everything is reborn~ except Marissa. She's not here with me anymore. This is my first spring without her. The last pictures we have of her were taken last May, a few weeks before she died. May is coming soon. Time is totally crazy that way. I can't wrap my brain around it. How is it possible that my baby will be gone an entire year this summer?

I very rarely cry. The pain seems so far beyond what simple tears could ever hope to relieve. I feel like such a fraud; walking around like things actually matter. Paying bills and cleaning the house as if I care at all. I talk to people on the phone and it just seems so stupid. We talk about nothing important and I pretend I'm fine.

I watch the baby sleep and I can see his sister's face perfectly. I can't stand to look at him sometimes because it hurts too much. But at the same time I am intensely grateful that I can see Marissa so clearly in him.

How do people live with this pain? And the roller coaster? Does it even out eventually? And at what cost? Do I have to forget what it was like when she was alive? Do I just become numb to it all?

As I finished this post, my 7 year old brought me a handful of lavender flowers she found growing by the house. Hi Rissa Roo:o)

Those everyday things that go wrong..........and more

We woke up yesterday to a broken bathroom faucet and had to spend all day with the water shut off. My dh had to work, and I hear that plumbers are outrageously expensive. I am so grateful for the internet because I was able to google plumbing troubleshooting and come up with what might be wrong. This morning dh is off to Home Depot or some place like that to get a new seal. Meanwhile, the water is still off! I turned it on briefly this morning and raced through a pile of dishes as fast as I could and got things wiped up and flushed the toliets. Yeah, that was the best part with 7 people in the house~ no way to flush the toliets. :P Lucky for me, dh is able to fix it. We are also blessed that we happen to have a bunch of bottled water, so we won't be thirsty and I can have my coffee.

I haven't posted for a while. I'm in school! I love it. In high school you couldn't get me to go to class and I graduated by the skin of my teeth and a couple teachers who knew I could and should do better. I went to college and hated it. Well, the school part I hated. I did like the classes in my major, but truly I didn't care at all about the other ones. Studying was a chore and I pretty much did the last minute cram thing. So I graduated and worked in a job that wasn't even in my field and now have been at home with my kids for the last 9 years or so. This is different. This is homeopathy. I LOVE it. I was studying it before anyway, but now I get to work toward my degree, which gives me even more incentive. I just got my first papers back and got A's on all, plus extra points. :o) I don't think anyone's ever seen me give a damn about an A before. Well, I am quite a bit older now, my partying days are well behind me, and, well, like I said, it's homeopathy.....how can you not love that?

Law of Attraction

This is the whole "Secret" phenomenon. Something I think most people inherently know anyway, but it makes it seem easier somehow. We all know people who are negative about everything and conversations with those people always go in the same direction. We spend lots of time hearing them wonder aloud why these things always happen to them. It is often perfectly clear to the rest of us.

That's all the Secret is. It's focusing on the positive power of attraction, which is so easily lost in the negative. It seems to be human nature to focus on negative energy. We are glued to CNN and coverage of the war and Anna Nicole Smith and how awful it all is. How many positive stories are covered? They are rare indeed. So I will give the movie that. It helps us pay attention to the positive and gives us concrete ways to do it. It also has been able to reach a huge number of people. That can only be good. Our world certainly needs something like that right about now.

What cracks me up about the Secret is how ancient these ideas are. Again, this is stuff we all know, we've just managed to forget~ I include myself here. This is the essence of ancient religions. I liken it to creating your own Karma, or Reaping what you sow, with more intention.

So I had an amazing experience regarding this LoA. I was on MDC complaining about how people want me to "do" something other than be a mom and how I didn't want to do that. One of the members reminded me that others are merely reflecting back to me what I believe to be true in myself. That was a bit of a revelation for me. (I know these things are painfully obvious to others, but they are so hard to see in ourselves) I realized I really did want to do what I thought others wanted me to do. And within one day, the opportunity fell into my lap. I discovered the British Institute of Homeopathy has a complete 3 year homeopathy course, at the end of which I can take the CHC exam and be an actual, legitimate, professional homeopath. This degree requires NO travel. This piece is important because the reason I could never see myself getting the degree is that all of the schools are very far away and require me to be present on many occasions for seminars and tests and so forth. The icing on the cake is that the very day I discovered this, our tax refund was deposited into our account and it is enough that I can pay for this! It will also fit quite nicely in the three year gap I am looking for before inviting the next baby in.

I am so excited that I can't sleep! I was awake much of last night thinking about how wonderful this is. I will start my studies next week and I can not WAIT. Homeopathy speaks to me like nothing else. I am certain this is the direction my life is meant to go in.

My shameless plug

If you know anyone who needs a child's walker, please send them here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Rifton-Pacer-502-gait-trainer-walker-MEDIUM-used-once_W0QQitemZ150089801231QQihZ005QQcategoryZ28176QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

OK, I do see that I can insert hyperlinks here, but I am now officially out of time and patience, so anyone who wants to can cut and paste. Sorry! I am working on my lack of computer literacy little by little.

Also, this apparently does not work at all on Firefox. I can only see the whole link on Safari. Amazing~ weren't computers supposed to make our lives easier??

This was my daughter's walker. She sat in it one time and was never healthy enough to use it. We got it just weeks before she died. It's as new as you can get, and we don't want nearly as much as it costs in it's present condition. Rifton sells this exact one for almost $3,000. For someone without good insurance, this would be a good thing.

That was my shameless plug. We really, really need this to sell.

Thanks for reading:) And now you can check out my knitting below;o)

I knit, too

I am really not good at taking pictures, and even less good at uploading them to the computer. I guess it's not high on my priority list, for whatever reason.

So I finally uploaded a couple pictures of my knitting that I took around Christmas time. Most of the things I knit are given away right away, so I never get around to pictures.

This is the wrap I knit for my mother in law. She asked for it a few months before Christmas. I was really happy with the way it turned out. I used a wool/alpaca blend to knit.



This is a hat I knit for my niece. She was SO cute in it!



I would LOVE to contribute to the family income with my knitting. I haven't been able to figure out how to do that, though. Pretty sure my husband would love that too. For now I'll just continue knitting for those I love, which is reward enough in itself. I am working on a very cute cabled baby sweater for either my nephew or a friends baby due in March. Probably the latter, since my nephew is growing so fast.


Oh, I almost forgot I have a picture of a sweater I knit for my mom.

Sleep

Sleep deprivation is not fun. I understand why it's used as torture when I am nursing a babe who jerks awake repeatedly, just as I am about to nod off. My poor brain thinks it's about to shut down, only to be jarred back to life. Then there is the toddler, who for some reason has decided that nursing 5 to 7 times each night is a great idea. I try to tell her no, but she is loud. If you have little ones, you understand. The screaming wakes the whole house up. And believe me, the only solution is to give in and nurse. We try appealing to her toddler sensibility and beg her to please be patient while Mommy finishes nursing the baby. I try to get her to wait until the sun comes up, or to get "Daddy huggies", I've even promised to make cookies the next day. All to no avail. There is only one thing that will make her quiet, and that's nursies.

The baby is learning to crawl, which is really cute. He is taking his sweet time. Pushing up on hands and knees and looking around for approval. Kids #2 through #5 were all zipping around on all fours at 5 months, pulling to stand at 6 months, and taking first steps at 8 months. I am enjoying this slower pace. This is the track Marissa was on.

Anyway, I think that part of the baby's sleep difficulty comes from learning a new skill. Doesn't the brain rewire or something when new skills are learned? So for this reason, I want him to just go ahead and crawl. I am TIRED. I realize the outlet plugs will have to be plugged back in and the gate will have to go up at the top of the steps, and he will have to be vigilantly watched, but maybe I can rest at night so I can actually keep up with all that.

So what the heck am I doing up right now when all the children are sleeping? I realize this is stupid. I am going to bed.

Last night I watched video of Marissa for the first time since she died. It was weird. I'm not sure how to put it into words. People used to say that pictures steal your soul. I can see how they would think that now. I saw her on the screen, but something was different. Not anything I can describe. Just a subtle difference.

I watched Marissa as a 5 year old watching her brother and sisters play. I watched her sit in the leaves in the backyard as we all tried to get her in the spirit of fall and entice her to laugh. She just sat there grumpily. She didn't care to be outside for too long. I watched her on her 8th and final birthday, when the camera was all about her.

There are two reasons I'm glad I watched the video. First, I got to hear her laugh and blow her raspberries. Those are two sounds I dearly miss. Second, I saw how her siblings love her. They went out of their way to include her in play, to talk to her, to make her laugh. Someone almost always had an arm around Rissa. I didn't realize how involved in her life they all were. I guess it's hard to pay attention in the moment.

So I'm glad for the tapes. At the same time, I'm not sure how they make me feel. Maybe it's because it's nothing more than an image of my daughter, which is painfully apparent now that she is gone. But they will help me remember things I may otherwise have forgotten. And my living children will be able to look and remember when they get older as well.

Mastitis

Ever heard how Incredibly. Painful. mastitis can be? That ain't no joke.

I had mastitis (an infection of the milk ducts in the (usually) lactating breast) about a month ago. Oh, I felt awful. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I had a bad case of the flu. It was not fun, but I found my remedy pretty quickly and everything resolved. I just felt icky for a few days.

Last Monday, I was cooking dinner at 4:00pm. I thought I felt like I might be coming down with something. I talked to my friend, trying to figure out what the remedy might be, after failing on my own. We came up with a few options, none of them hitting the mark, unfortunately.

By 6:00pm, I was shaking like a leaf. I was freezing cold and hurt everywhere. I called dh at work and asked him what the soonest he could get home was. He didn't think he could be here before 9:00. I said that was fine, because that was the best he could do. I was SO cold that I got into a tub of very hot water, which probably was not the best idea in hindsight. I'm sure it pushed my already high fever up even higher, but even mountains of blankets weren't doing the trick.

By 7:00pm I was lying in bed with the baby beside me, literally crying and rolling back and forth. I was in intense pain and had no idea what to do to mitigate it. I was incapable of caring for my children. My seven year old did an outstanding job following directions and herding everyone into my bedroom or nearby so I knew they were safe.

Then I started throwing up. As I sat in the bathroom, I decided I needed to get to the hospital. There was no way on earth I was going to be able to wait until morning or even until dh got home. My seven year old went next door and our neighbors came immediately. One stayed with the kids and the other drove me to the hospital.

I went to a small nearby hospital rather than the monster hospital downtown, and I'm glad I did because *nearly* everyone was very nice and respectful. Honestly, when the nurse left me in the room and asked if I had any questions, my only question was "How long until you give me pain meds?". I am not a wimp, by the way. I give birth at home unassisted for pete's sake. You would think a little bit of mastitis wouldn't bother me too much. But when dh finally got to the hospital I said "They pumped me full of drugs and I Do Not Care because I don't hurt anymore."

After being discharged with the mandatory dose of antibiotics, an anti-nausea drug (Zofran), and whatever narcotic they put in my IV, I went home to continue vomiting. Whee! So not only did I have minimal sleep because drugged sleep is just not good sleep, but I had to awaken every hour to trudge into the bathroom and lean over the toliet. Yippee. BUT the pain was so much less that I did not care.

So for 48 hours I threw up just about every hour. Thank goodness I finally took Bryonia and stopped that. I still felt immeasurably better than I would have.

Some people think of me as completely anti western medicine. But I truly am not. I just think it is extremely overused. And I am still very glad I went to the ER last Monday.

The Internet

I have a strange relationship with my computer. Periods of time will go by when I am on every day. I spend lots of time browsing MDC and other similar websites and perhaps blogs. I read about knitting. The kids and I look up random things such as the configuration of the galaxy (we can do that~ thank you unschooling:o)). And quite honestly, after a while, it becomes my escape. The kids start screaming and yelling and demanding, and I sit down to nurse the baby and pop the laptop open. I don't like it when I use it like that. I can zone out for quite a while. Nursing baby, prolactin flowing~ aaaaaaaah. I can barely hear the fighting.

Soon I have to come back to reality; and in all honesty, "quite a while" for me is 15 minutes or so. But I don't feel refreshed, as I feel when I have truly taken time for myself~ a bath, a walk, etc. Instead I am more frustrated and find it even harder to continue on with my day.

Then I have periods such as the one I happen to be in now. I'm not sure why or how this starts, but suddenly while cruising around the internet, I am bored. I lose interest in the goings-on of other people's lives. I get much more immersed in my family again. The time I spend on the computer is minimal and it doesn't bother me that it is.

The internet is a crazy place anyway. It's not real, and it is, at the same time. I type words into my computer to try and help someone, or give my opinion, or just vent, and I know that somehow, someone somewhere could make the decision to delete it all. Weird.

I've been told that those who followed my generation have a different perspective. Part of me is sad for that. We miss so much when we sacrifice our face to face and even phone interactions. I think it's important to be in a space where your family and real-life friends are all-consuming.

I'm sure I'll be back on-line with more frequency again. It is one of the things I do while waiting for my husband to get home from work at night, after all. As in all things, I imagine the key is moderation.