Author: Dre

Incoherent, Who?

So lately I’m having a little trouble putting my thoughts into words. Or, when I am able to put them into words they don’t make much sense. Especially on paper, or maybe that’s just because I can go back and see what I’ve tried to say – whereas in conversations, it’s more of a crap shoot of what the other person walked away understanding.

There is so much going on in our lives right now, things that are keeping me from sleeping well. Some things, like Blythe waking up every few hours, are understandable – but once I lay back down I just can’t get back to sleep. WHY I can’t sleep when I’m completely exhausted is beyond me. I lay there and think and worry, which is my way. Tired doesn’t even begin to describe the muddled state of my brain.

Some things that I worry about aren’t my stories to share, so I can’t really talk about them here. But I’m going to write a little bit about the rest of them so that I can just get them out of my brain for a bit, and see if that helps clear up a little space. And, pardon me if none of them make any sense.

– We’re purchasing two bank-owned homes in our area. One of them should close today, the other some time next week, I would guess. Numero Uno needs a new roof, some fresh paint, and some flooring replaced and then it’s good to go. We’ve even got prospective tenants already lined up. Always a good thing! Especially if they’re willing to put some elbow grease into getting things ready faster.

Numero Dos requires a WHOLE LOT of freaking work. I’m talking not just new flooring, but a new FLOOR. Because you can’t walk around in there without worrying that you’ll fall right through the soft spots. Also a new roof, new sheet rock in a lot of places where there is water damage, possibly new studs if there’s any dry rot, new paint, new bathroom fixtures, stucco, NEWNEWNEWNEW. It was a steal of a house, 3 bedrooms 2 baths on a half acre – but some work, let me tell you.  I can’t explain it, but Jeremy and I LOVE the house. Maybe because we like to see something so… pitiful and unwanted turn into something beautiful. Ugly duckling syndrome, anyone?

– Jeremy and I started a charity back in November, called Meat for Dinner. We’re organizing donations of packaged beef (and possibly other types of meat) from local ranchers and distributing it through the schools in our county to needy children and their families. We dropped off the first round of donated meat (100 pounds) on the last day of school before winter break. I’m beyond excited about this, the potential and what it can become. What keeps me up at night is that I can’t pursue more donations, or push any PR until I finish creating marketing brochures. My friend Mikah lent me a computer program to help me make them, but so far I haven’t had time. And, with my current incoherency issues, should I really be writing marketing brochures? Hmm. Still, they need to be done and I lay there at night thinking about what exactly to say other than: Donate meat so kids can eat. The end.

– Our neighbor/tenant decided to get into breeding Labrador Retrievers last Spring after taking his dog and two of her puppies back from people who weren’t exactly treating her like the princess she is.  Unfortunately the set up he had arranged for the dogs wasn’t quite ideal for a mama dog and ELEVEN puppies once they got over a certain size.  Since I apparently felt like I wasn’t meeting my daily contact-with-poop quota, I moved them down here and DAMN.

I clean up poop from sun up to sun down, and then while I’m sleeping they fill the yard with so much shit you would not believe me unless I showed you a picture, but I CAN’T because Alison misplaced my camera the day after Christmas and so I’ve been methodically going through every square inch of the house (purging and cleaning as I go) looking for it, but no luck yet and how, OH HOW am I expected to survive without my camera? Especially with cute puppies around. Yes, I still think they are cute even though I spend my days cleaning up after them. Just not when they step in it or fall in it, and then I have to wash them and dry them before they are considered “cute” instead of “gross”. Is anyone interested in a cute little lab puppy? I wish I could show you a picture so you could fall in love and come adopt one next week, and that would be a few less piles for me to clean up.

– Alison. I spend so much of my time worrying about Blythe, and keeping her safe, dealing with her food allergy exposures, researching what to DO, that Alison gets lost in the shuffle sometimes. She has her own “special needs”, ones I need to give more attention to and do more research on also, and yet, because they are less immediate, they get pushed to the side. Before I knew it, she turned 5 and I was like, “What the HELL?” and yet at the same time, I try to think back to when she was 2 and I realize, especially now that I have another child, that Alison was never what you’d call a NORMAL toddler.

She has always been wise beyond her years and as her mother, I allowed myself to believe that since she understood things at a young age she should be able to act older, too. I think about the things I expected of her, things I continue to expect of her and I feel ashamed of myself. There are people three, five, even ten times her age who grasp things just as she does and still don’t have the self control to apply their understanding to every day life.  I worry that I’ve taught her that, in my eyes, her sister can do no wrong and she can do no right. Which is the absolute LAST thing I ever want her to think, or look back on when she’s older and see plain as day, that that’s how it was even if I didn’t realize it at the time.  So I’m working on it – more patience, more empathy, lower expectations. She is, after all, FIVE YEARS OLD, regardless of how much higher her IQ is than mine.

– Blythe. Her exposures seem to be better controlled now, Thank the Universe, and so she’s starting to sleep better, although I’m sure there will continue to be ups and downs. I am taking a huge leap and enrolling her at our gym’s day care two mornings a week so I can start working out again. I’ve ordered a special day care kit from the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network so that all of their workers will have knowledge of how serious food allergies are, they will have practiced with an Epi-Pen trainer, and they’ll be well aware of Blythe’s situation. For my own peace of mind I also made stickers for her to wear that say, “I’m cute, but please don’t fee me! I’m food allergic”. I’ll be right there on site, and that makes me a little more comfortable, but I’m also pleased with how willing the staff seems to be in preparing for her.

– My body. I’ve put my body through hell over the past two years, and it’s starting to let me know, in no uncertain terms, that I’ve got to DO something. I have cysts the size of golf balls on my ovaries, and they are SO painful at certain times of the month. When I flex my stomach muscles, my ovaries are clearly visible lumps on my lower abdomen – that’s not normal, it’s freaky. And did I mention painful?

Also, apparently, I have some sort of yeast overgrowth and here’s what’s especially interesting about that: did you know that yeast feeds on sugar? So the more sugar you have in your diet, the more likely you are to have an overgrowth of yeast? That’s why they put sugar in bread – so the yeast has something to “feed” on.  I learn something new every day, I tell ya. So my hormones are all out of whack, and I’m consuming too much sugar. The recommended action on my part: Increase my lean protein intake, quit eating like a PIG, cut back on sugar (man I used to be so good about not consuming much sugar, and now I’m an addict), take probiotics, exercise. All that sounds well and good, so what am I waiting for? GAH.

– CONGRATULATIONS if you made it this far. You deserve a prize. Maybe I’ll send you all my sugary snacks. But don’t be surprised if there are bites taken out of them.

I Never Thought I’d Say This, But

Post author By Dre
Post date January 6, 2009
8 Comments on I Never Thought I’d Say This, But

I’m so grateful my husband wipes his own ass. Really.

Since I wipe my own, and both of my daughters’, I feel like all I do every day is wipe somebody. And speaking of that, does any one else’s 5 year old still demand to be wiped? ‘Cause somehow I thought I’d be down by one at this point. Instead, she needs to be wiped once with paper and once with a wipe. God forbid I tell her to do it herself!

All of that ass involvement leads to a whole lot of hand washing. I mean, do you EVER really feel clean when your hands touch ass that many times in one day? It makes me wonder how people with a dozen young kids get by. Maybe they just wear those surgical gloves at all times?

Me, I’ve always been a hand washer, even when mine was the only rear end I wiped. Since I’ve been a rancher though, and subsequently a mom, I’ve washed my hands until the fingerprints wore off. The FBI is not a fan of mine, having to do my fingerprints the old fashioned way in order for me to pass through Criminal Background Checks.

In the winter, my fingers crack open and bleed, and then I wash them some more, lest I contract some nasty disease through my open wounds. Even typing has become a bit of an issue, because while it’s painful at times to type with bloody stumps for fingers, it’s impossible to type with band aids on the tips. The typos are atrocious, so I just rip the band aids off, and worry about the blood on the keyboard later.

Today I’m typing with cuts on two middle fingers, one pointer finger and a thumb.

Let’s just hope no more fingers bust open today, shall we?

Allergies Kids Motherhood and Pregnancy Parenting

When God Negotiates

Lately I’ve been lying in bed at night, thinking about universal balance. You know: karma, yin and yang, give and receive, having your beautiful cake and not being able to eat it, too.

It led me to wonder, when God grants a prayer request, does He also scribble down a little IOU? It’s funny to think of Him standing there, holding a stack of invoices, but it’s a little scary too – you never know exactly what the cost is, or when it’s due. I mean, when is your debt really paid? It’s not like He sends a statement.

Back when we were trying to get pregnant with what turned out to be Blythe, I would take my monthly pregnancy test (or five) (who am I kidding, I mean 10) (ish) and while waiting the requisite 4 minutes, I’d say “Please let it be positive this time. Please, God, just this once”. And then it would be negative and I’d start again the next month with the begging. God was probably tired of hearing from me.

After a year or so, we took a little break and wouldn’t you know, one day a few months later, a burrito sounded damn good and I wolfed it down even though I’ve always thought, my whole life through, that burritos were disgusting, and BAM. Positive pregnancy test. No negotiations required.

I begged God or the Universe, or who ever else was listening, to let the baby be in a good spot in my deformed uterus. Because, otherwise, the chance of miscarriage was something like 85% and who bets on those odds? Our relief at her good uterine placement was short lived when, at 9 weeks, during one of my many daily bathroom visits, I discovered copious amounts of blood gushing from the worst possible place for a pregnant woman.

Have you ever seen a mother beg for her child’s life? It’s not pretty. It involves a lot of blubbering and tears and even snot bubbles, and if you think I might have offered up every thing we possess to the Keeper of the Universe if this child could live, you’d be spot on. We had to wait through the entire weekend, me on bed rest and continuing my mental begging, before getting to see whether the baby made it.

When I saw not only a little peanut in my uterus but the flashing light that indicated a heart beat, I just knew this baby was going to make it the whole nine yards, and I quit my begging. My request had been granted and I didn’t want anyone changing their mind based on the fact that I was annoying.

Over the past few months I picked up my old habit where I left off, asking God and the Universe to let Blythe grow out of her food allergies. It’s not such a big request, is it? It’s all I’m asking for, not a fancy new car or world peace or for my adult acne to finally go away, because, really, don’t you think someone in their 30’s should be able to focus on their wrinkles instead?

But then, about a month ago, after I’d gotten all cocky about how I had this thing down pat, what with Blythe going months now without a reaction, we got a rude awakening. She picked up a girl scout cookie her sister accidentally left within her reach. Not only did she put it in her mouth, she ate the entire thing.

I could blame the girl scouts for putting high fructose corn syrup in their cookies, myself for keeping a stash of them, my husband for finding the stash, Alison for leaving the cookie out, Blythe for eating it. But you know, sometimes things are just inevitable. No matter how hard you try, sometimes mistakes happen. You can look back on that one thing, that catapult, if you will, and regret it or relive it the rest of your life, but you can’t ever change it.

Every day for 5 weeks now, Blythe has been struggling. One corn-laden cookie knocked her immune system down and now she’s not only hyper-sensitive to anything corn, she developed a NEW allergy, to soy. Anyone who comes around has to wash their hands and face before touching or kissing her. Jeremy has to take a shower and change his clothes before he’s allowed anywhere near her, because she has a reaction from particles he accumulates on his clothes and skin from animal feed and the like. For Blythe, these allergies went from manageable to out of freaking control.

Being anal retentive and a bit dramatic, I spent a few days thinking, “WHAT NOW? We may as well order ourselves a bubble and put her in it”. I felt like we were up against something I couldn’t see, couldn’t predict, couldn’t fix, all while my baby girl suffered and whimpered her way through her days and nights.

But, you know, looking at this as the debt we owe in exchange for her survival, it doesn’t look so bad. It’s what has changed my attitude from one of defeat to one of proactivity. I’ll take a sweet, loving, thoughtful, happy little girl who happens to be extremely food allergic over a clump of bloody cells in my toilet, every time.

Oh and God, if you’re listening? I think you can mark that invoice “PAID”.

Blogging Business Letters Life in general

Time in a Bottle

A little over a year ago, the company my husband worked for decided to close their plumbing division. Not surprising, given the downward spiral the housing market has been in. What makes it an especially interesting decision, on the part of the company, is that merely one year before, they had bought the plumbing company my husband and his brother had built up together in order to create that division.

We were faced with a decision: start our own company, just the two of us, or go find a job in a sagging economy. With contracts still waiting to be fulfilled from the closing company, we threw together a business. I’m proud to say that after a year, our little company is thriving despite the economy.

However. With a business comes sacrifices. When we started, I had just finished earning my certificate to be a childbirth educator and was set to start teaching classes a few times a month at the birth center where I’d given birth. That dream was set on a back burner.

My husband, an athlete who treats his body as a temple, cut back on his workouts, slowly at first, but eventually had no time for them.

As a family, we have less time together than ever before. But we have food on our table, stable jobs, health insurance. I don’t regret the decision to start our business, but some of the sacrifices we make sadden me.

Through those sacrifices, I have clung to this blog and to the blogosphere in general, because having lived a some-what isolated life for many years out here on this ranch, blogging has allowed me to have a voice and stretch my cramped social wings. I protected my blogging time like a mama bird protects her fragile egg.

If they sold time in a bottle at Target, I would buy a whole case, just so that I could continue blogging while taking care of all that is required of me at the end of the year. But since it hasn’t gone on sale yet, I’m having to make cut-backs.

The end of the year is an important and busy time for any business, but especially a small one who has to make sure every i is dotted, every t crossed before December 31st comes, and mistakes can no longer be fixed. We are also gearing up for the holiday season, and Jeremy’s Grandma’s annual two week visit from North Carolina.

In short, my invisible friends, the blog hasn’t made it through budget cuts this time around. I’ve resisted this for as long as possible, but the time has come. If my husband can get rid of some of his animals, I can take a blogging hiatus. It’s only fair.

How I will miss meeting my blogging friends on this great invention called the internet. When I return in January, your children will have grown, many of you will be working new jobs, and your blogs will have grown as well, while mine sat here, ignored and empty. Unless anyone decides to read my archives, that is.

I hope that when I return, we can pick up our friendships where they left off, because I treasure them. I will be updating Sexy Makes a Comeback occasionally, because I’ll be working on those tips anyway. When I’m feeling especially lonesome, I’ll visit some of your blogs and see how you are.

If anyone needs to reach me (or in case you’ve found time in a bottle on clearance) email me at Jerdre53 (at) aol (dot) com.

I look forward to January, and I hope to see you then!

Kids Parenting

Shhh! I Sleepin’

Last night was rough. Alison was up twice, Blythe was up crying. I broke my “new” rule to not go to her at night (except when she’s sick) because for the first time, she was crying for “Da-Da” instead of just plain old crying.

My heart broke a little, thinking of her sitting in there crying for someone who wasn’t allowed to come. When I picked her up she groped me, asking for a “ba-ba”. It wasn’t there because, hello, girlfriend, we’re giving those things up.

And there’s no way I’m going back to the ~~days~~ nights when she would wake up every 3 or 4 hours wanting a bottle. It’s the whole reason the no-going-in rule is in place – Mommy likes sleep.

Blythe let me rock her, her head on my chest and her hands tucked up between us. Despite the fact that she is no longer hyperactive due to her corn allergy, she’s still not one to be cuddled. In those moments, I didn’t care if going in to her set us back for a few nights. I was holding my baby girl in my arms, and there was no other place either one of us wanted to be.

As we rocked in the quiet darkness, her soft hair tickling my chin, I thought about the fact that in a few short days, she will turn 18 months old. Where on earth has that time gone? So many days I robotically move from sunrise to sunset, that the details of our lives blur together.

Gone are the baby days. She is my last, and it gets harder and harder to deny that she is growing up.

Just before she drifted off to sleep in my arms, she whispered, “Shhhh! I sleepin'”.

I squeezed her a little tighter, my baby who is suddenly a little girl.