Time flies whether you’re having fun or not

January 10, 2013 at 5:14 pm (General Life Updates)

So much has happened in the past 6 months, and at the same time nothing has changed. Basics of life: K still has sporadic hours but is making a pretty good living. He’s trying to find a different job since he’s sick of the inconsistency, but who knows what will happen. The kids are in school. And I’m still here, still trying to be and do my best.

Details, at least a few of them:

I did run the Platteville 5K on Harvest Daze. I got my best time ever, at somewhere around 35:22. I also got a medal, but since I didn’t stick around to receive it I didn’t find out about it until weeks later, and by then I could pick it up, but no one knew what it was for exactly. My division, or something since I know I didn’t win the race overall, nor was I the first female over the finish. Harvest Daze was a wonderful day. My parents did come. We went from the race to the all-you-can-eat breakfast at the VFW, to the fair at the park (booths and bouncy castles and crafts for the kids). It was really hot, and fun to see how many people we know around here this year. My parents were enchanted with the old-school small-town feel of the festivities. In the afternoon we hung at the house for a couple hours (got a part for my Dad’s vehicle), and then went to the live music down the street to watch the kids dance and run around, other people get drunk, and then the wonderful fireworks after dark. All in all, it was a fabulous day.

P is doing well in school. She has to read 30 minutes, 5 times a week, and write some stuff down to show she did it. The details were confusing at the beginning of the year, but she’s got the hang of it now. I just have to make sure her books aren’t too easy or too hard, but that’s hard to regulate since she likes to choose on her own. Right now she really wants a set of kids’ non-fiction books about world disasters called “I Survived”. For example, “I Survived 9/11” or “I Survived Pearl Harbor”. I hope I can get them for her – it will be the first time I’ve ever ordered from the numerous book order forms that come home with the kids. She is learning her multiplication tables, and seems excited about it. She’s always trying to quiz K2 on math, and he’s kinda clueless so it doesn’t usually go well. She seems to have good friends and enjoy school for the most part, though she complains when its time to go back after our 3-day weekends, especially if it was a good weekend. She is in Activity Days at church and is trying to pass off the Articles of Faith so she can get her ears pierced. She loves AD and gets very excited to go every other Tuesday. I wish I could say the same. For me, it means I’m driving 3-4 girls to the church where I have to just hang out for an hour since its not worth the 10 minutes I’d get to spend at home if I made the drive while I’m waiting. Sometimes I’ve worked out, sometimes I’ve hidden in a room and read on my Kindle. Sometimes I chat with other moms. It just means that night’s particularly hectic. This coming Tuesday, I’ll have to make the trip with my two little ones since K will be working, and that should be interesting. P has got most of her front permanent teeth, and their still a hot mess. I need to take her in and see what we should expect for braces, cuz she’s going to need them for sure. Her hair is much longer and we still haven’t gotten it cut; she says she still wants to, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to take her this weekend.

K2 is still much the same. Wonderful and terrible at the same time. Loves and plays and is a joy. And still has trouble staying out of his sisters’ space and responding appropriately to “No” and “Stop”. But he does great at school, and is supposedly often a big helper with the younger children. His teachers love him, other kids’ parents love him, his friends love him. He can be a bit bossy, but mostly he is a star pupil. He’ll be one of the oldest kids in kindergarten next year, and I worry about that. But I think in the long run it will be fine. He broke his arm December 11th (part of the December from hell that I will sum up). It is a buckle fracture in his left arm right above the wrist. Simple enough supposedly to heal from. He has a blue cast that he’s used to now; it comes off in 4 days. He’s excited to see how skinny his arm is going to be. Strange, what kids get psyched about. The night it happened, he was running pell mell across the living room, and he stumbled and fell wrist-first into the hard part of the couch. He kept crying and crying while I poked at it to try and figure out if something was broken, but it wasn’t until my neighbor/good friend came over that she thought to try and flip is arm over and look at the inside/under side, where there was a big bulge. I immediately went to get my shoes on. She took D home with her and I went to the Children’s Hospital, where K was able to meet me coming off a shift (thank goodness). We are still waiting for the bills from all that. Along with all the other bills from December. Because……

December 6th I had another D&C with another miscarriage. I was about 12 weeks along when I started bleeding. It was a Sunday morning at about 3 in the morning when I discovered it, and I bled all day Sunday. Monday morning, my friend’s (same friend) kids watched my kids while she took me to the ER. Sure enough, baby had stopped growing and there was no blood flow or heartbeat. Tuesday, I saw a regular doctor and we scheduled the D&C for Thursday December 6th at 4 in the afternoon. I’ve always had my D&C’s in the early morning so that was different for me. I still remember lots of details about the day, but I don’t think they’re important. K was able to be with me, which was a nice surprise because I planned the whole thing assuming I’d be on my own for the first time since he was on his long week at work. My friend really stepped up and helped me a lot over the next few days. Going to the hospital with K2 for his broken arm was the first time I left the house since my surgery. I am sad about the baby, and over the course of it all (in Sept I thought I was pregnant and was stressed out, then I wasn’t, then I was disappointed, then I was pregnant, then I miscarried) I gained about 25 pounds. So I definitely have work to do, but I haven’t been able to make myself get started again yet. I eat ok, but I don’t eat great. And I’ve been baking a lot, whenever the fancy strikes me. Which lately has been weirdly almost every day.

Along with miscarriage, surgery, broken little-boy arm in December, our water backed up 3 different times. The first time flooded the basement. The other times, we caught it soon enough to keep the water from flooding, but each time we went for hours without being able to use the water while we waited for the plumbing companies to come. It is a root problem and needs to be fixed but the owners of the house have not decided to do it yet. So each day I wonder if this is the day that it will back up again. We’ve been fine since about 3 days before Christmas, when our property manager brought me some copper sulfate and had me flush it down the toilet to try and kill the problem roots. He’s going to schedule preventative snakings, but for a while there they were coming within days of each other.

Along with all that, we all got sick the 2 weeks before Christmas. Just as I was recovering from the D&C, I got the nastiest flu/cold I think I’ve ever had as an adult. Coughing, congestion, etc., and a killer fever of at least 102 that lasted almost a week. We were kind of all the walking-miserable. We were barely recovered enough to prepare for Christmas and kind of enjoy it. The kids got it, but with them their fever lasted 2-3 days and they didn’t seem as miserable as I felt, at least if I gave them medicine to bring their fever down. I felt like curling into a ball and staying that way forever. The mental place I was in didn’t help. I was depressed and overwhelmed with everything that had happened added to what was supposed to be a festive season.

I’m doing a little better now. Physically, I have a little phlegm to cough up occasionally, but I’m find. Emotionally, I’ve come to terms with my 3rd miscarriage, but I haven’t decided yet if I have it in me to try one more time. I started working out again, but I haven’t really gone gung-ho because I’m still eating pretty much whatever I want, & it seems like hard, 6-day-a-week workouts would be a wasted effort when nutritionally I’m negating them. I went to Zumba Monday night and that was nice to get back to since its been over a month. But I couldn’t go last night. Tomorrow morning is Fit Friday at the church, an assignment I was asked to lead when word spread around the ward about my fitness efforts and how I like to train people. We had just really gotten going when December Hell hit for me, so I was out of commission for a while. Last Friday we had class and we did a basic circuit involving pushups, situps, squats, lunges, jumping jacks, and a wall-sit. I overdid it a bit and could barely walk on Saturday. But the annoying part is I’ve diagnosed myself with a “rib out” from that workout that is affecting everything. It hurts to breathe deeply below my right shoulder blade on my back. Coughing the little that I’m coughing now hurts worse than when all my muscles were strained from constant coughing. Just in that one spot. It gets better, and then I move wrong and its all bad again. I wish I had the money to go see a chiropractor that I trust, but I don’t know one in the area. Anyway, tomorrow we have class again, and this time we’re going to try a Firm video to use the steps that the church owns there at the building. I’m not excited about it – I watched the video and I find the lead-lady annoying and the workout boring, but maybe I’ll feel differently about it when I’m actually doing it. Its worth trying once. Next week, I think we’ll do T-Tapp, and then we’ll do Zumba again (our first class I taught Zumba). I want to get Zumba certified, and was thinking about doing it at the January class here in Denver and the miscarriage put me off that goal. So I need to renew my enthusiasm and look for the next class.

My calling at church since mid-summer is teaching the 7-turning-8 year olds. Up until a couple weeks ago, that included my daughter P. Now I have 8 new little squirmy kids that have just graduated from junior primary to senior. Getting them to adhere to my “we’re–not-sunbeams-and-can-sit-like-big-kids” motto is going to be a long haul, especially with the little deaf boy and another boy that seems to think his chair is a jungle gym. That reminds me I need to look at my lesson for Sunday. It keeps sneaking up on me.

In the immediate stuff going on, my good friend (same friend) had her baby on Friday the 4th, and her little 9.5 lb baby almost immediately got an infection and went septic. Now, this lady has 7 other kids. So I’ve stepped in and have been watching them as much as I can. In other words, its been chaos around here a lot. I like her kids (unusual for me) so its been OK, but at the same time, I’m about done. I think they’ll be spending the evening at home so that’s kind of a relief. Tomorrow night, I have another friend’s kid spending the night and Saturday here, and I’m dreading that because I DON’T like her kids. Because I’m an evil person. Oh, well. Kids usually aren’t my thing, and hers have issues. LOTS of issues. But she needs help, so I’ll just treat her (the extra) like I would treat mine and if she acts out, she’ll spend the day alone in a constant time-out corner. Apparently I’ll have that same child the 24th overnight and maybe the 25th overnight after school since her mom has to make a trip to go to court about her ex’s child support payments in UT. I’m glad I can help, I just wished I liked the child, so I could not dread the time, and so I could stop feeling guilty. Maybe I need to go to therapy as much as the child does.

Hopefully, my first friend’s baby will be able to come home from the hospital next week so there will only be a few more days of this madness. I can handle it, I’m just running a little short on patience for the children’s nonsense. And all children have nonsense. And when there’s 10 in the same house (her 7, my 3) there’s a lot of nonsense.

That about catches me up on journaling  though its a pathetic effort when it only happens twice a year. Need to do better. I’m out.