The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

First, just an update on the meal planning adventure (because we call everything tedious an “Adventure!” around here):

This site has been really handy.The frustrating thing about cooking is that I can’t look at a stack of ingredients and intuitively know how to put them together to make something delicious. If a dish has more than 5 ingredients, I need detailed instructions, and then when I do break out the cook books, I get 3 ingredients down the list before I run into something I do not have and have no idea how to replace. Enter this site, where I can list what I do have, and it spits out recipes that I can make right away. I also really like the feature where you can highlight items that you need to use right away (produce that is getting mushy, meat you forgot you took down from the freezer yesterday, etc) and it will narrow the recipes to only those that have that item. There are some quirks - I wish all the “Entrees” were not meat based, and that they had more categories (Soups, sides, breads, etc) - but over all I am impressed. Now, if this application could be plugged into a weekly meal planning site, I would be ecstatic - does that exist somewhere and I am just missing it?

Oh, and I made bread:

With yeast even ya’ll! Without a bread maker! I made three loaves and they were gone in two days, so I would say it was a successful first attempt. Next up: Asiago cheese dinner rolls.

I opened this window to write a response to FireMom’s entry over here, but then I realized it is 10am and both girls are napping. This could be the first sign of a lurking Sick, so I better ready the battle stations. Is it depressing to anyone else that when my kids actually sleep well, I assume they are ill?

(Ella begged for a bed on the deck, so I indulged her, thinking it would be for her bear. My computer is right next to the window, and I watched her climb in, lay her head down, and pass out. I wonder if i can manage to put sunblock on her while she is sleeping?)

Ella woke up five times last night, screaming “Mama sick, mama hurts!” Tonight has been quieter, but it is only 10:30, there is a whole lot of night still to go. My sweet girl - she has nightmares about Swiper the Fox on a regular basis, so I feel horrible that she was in the room when I went into full “I can’t breath” panic mode. In the midst of the ordeal, I was more upset that she was sitting alone on the Dr’s office exam table, wide eyed and scared, than I was that I was about to black out. Thank goodness we were there and not at home though.

It’s been weeks that I have been coughing, and in the last 4 or 5 days I had gotten to the point where I would cough until I was so out of breath that i would have to put down the baby out of fear of dropping her because my arms were tingling. But still, I blamed it on ‘just allergies’. Tom finally convinced me to call my doctor yesterday morning, because I had kept everyone in the house awake with my constant choking cough, but of course they could not get me in until Friday.  They recommended I call the nurse hotline for my insurance, where they asked me “How impacted is your breathing, from 1-10?” and I had to honestly answer a 6 or 7. The nurse, who had been rather bored with me until then, told me to go to the ER right away, which I rolled my eyes about. Pshaw, I just can’t breathe, no biggie. Tom was shocked that I wasn’t taking it seriously, and bargained with me to go to an Urgent Care place down the road instead.

Have you been to an Urgent Care center? I don’t know that I had ever seen one until the last few years, but now there are at least three within a five minute drive from my house. There was no way I could drive, so Tom packed a diaper bag and away we all went. The one we went to was next to a restaurant, and was a clean, quiet lobby with only a few people waiting to see the doctor. I was by far the sickest person there, and I felt bad coughing and choking over in the corner, while my baby yelled and my husband tried his best to keep the toddler from licking all the magazines.

In the waiting room I felt my chest constrict more, and could only get one or two breaths in between the coughing fits, which lasted around half a minute. I mentioned to Tom at one point that I didn’t know if I could walk, which scared him into asking when we could see the doctor. A minute later they had me in a patient room, and I sat in a chair on one side of the room while Tom and the girls were sitting on the exam table, playing with stickers. I started coughing, and then I just could not get air into my lungs - it felt like someone had their hands wrapped around my neck, and I felt my body go into fight or flight mode (which was ridiculous since either of those choices require working lungs). I was crying, but just these squeaking sobs could come out, and I closed my eyes and felt my face going numb.

The doctor walked into the room at that moment and, looking at his clipboard, started asking me routine questions until he actually looked at me and yelled for a nurse. They propped me up and started a breathing treatment right away, but it wasn’t for another couple minutes before I stopped shaking and could look over at Ella. Tom was holding Alice in one arm and holding my hand with the other, so Ella was alone, across the room, watching two nurses and a doctor holding a mask up to my face, telling me to take deep breaths (which felt like a cruel joke). I couldn’t really talk, but I shooed Tom towards her and tried to stop crying because I knew that was the part that was upsetting her the most. The doctor mentioned needing to give me a steroid shot if I didn’t improve soon,  but about half way through the first breathing treatment I was able to take a full breath, so he recommended I stay and have two more treatments (with different medications) and then follow up with an inhaler at home every two hours for 24 hours, and then every four hours after that. Ella crawled up on my lap towards the end, and gave me kisses to “Help mama feel better? Kisses help?”

Today has been a lot better - I am still coughing, but it isn’t a “punch in the chest” kind of cough, and I am am not wheezing. Alice is starting to act sick, so we took her to her pediatrician who we love, and he assured us that right now she is okay. He also listened to my lungs for me again, and told me he thinks I will live, so that is a plus. I got a 5 hour nap in this afternoon while Tom cleaned the entire house, despite the fact that he is working an insane shift lately and should have been sleeping himself.

So, that is the long drawn out story about how I need to not be such a putz and take care of myself. I am much too tired to proofread, so let’s put this in the “posted in haste” category, aye?

Oh hey, sorry I haven’t been writing. I was busy with my three day asthma attack, and before that my two and half week lung infection.

Awesome.

Today has been loooonnnnnng, especially considering I haven’t slept 20 minutes in a row in days, what with the coughing and the choking and the not breathing and all. So I will expound on how stupid I am for waiting until I was in a full blown attack, freaking out my husband and kids, before I finally went to the Urgent Care place near my house, later. I’m a little traumatized to tell you the truth. Traumatized and tired.

I Wear My Stretchmarks Like Tattoos

to show
I am a woman
whose belly has billowed
a mainsail on a pirate ship
on its way to treasure
a queen-size-bed topsheet
on a new clothesilne in March

they make
silver parantheses
around my freckled navel
tiny river tributaries
from the cold spring of my joy
pattern rising to the touch
like fired-rice-grain china

and oh
the way the sunlight catches
above my hipline skirts
when the music births itself again
and I start moving I start
moving and with my daughter
dance

-Katharyn Howd Machan

I celebrated Tom’s first day off in two weeks by throwing the kids at him and hiding in the basement. He’s working all day on Sunday, so let’s call it an early Mother’s Day present, aye?

And because I got almost an hour and a half without anyone grabbing for the hot iron, I made a dress.

When Ella was little, a snarky person told me “You can always tell when someone makes their kid’s clothes, because they use… different fabrics.” Ella was wearing this little smock dress, which I still love and made Alice wear the other day. The woman was a grandmotherly sort who always came into the quilt shop I worked at, so at first I hadn’t realized it was a dig, so I smiled and said “Thanks!” while handing her her change. She looked at Ella playing on the floor behind the counter and leaned in close, “You won’t make her wear things like that to school, will you?”

Why yes I will apparently.

I found both fabrics in the remnant bin at Joannes the other day, which made me happy. I have.. way to much fabric to be buying more, but if it is on sale, it’s not really buying it right? Wait.. yes it is. But I used the fabric right away, so it did not go into the basement abyss, so I’m telling myself it doesn’t count.

The dress is just the simplest of simple A-line dresses, but I added pockets at the last minute because I can always get Ella to wear something if I say “But it has pockets!” And lo and behold, when she took it off today, we found a bottle cap, a handful of rocks, a M&M mini candy, an empty Monkey pill bottle (it has been empty for a while), 2 dimes, and a bracelet. Pockets: just what a hoarder needs. I still need to do top stitching around the top, and hem the bottom, but all in all, mission successful.

And since I was on a roll and the girls were not screaming, we rearranged the basement play area into a little bedroom for my nephews. My sister and her boys are coming in about a month, and we are setting them up with their own area down stairs, so that they never leave they feel comfortable. There is also a bedroom downstairs that my sister will use, but it will be nice for the boys to have an area to hang out in the morning before the house is awake/after Ella goes to bed upstairs.

The shade is there because the lights are all on one switch, and I figure Ella may be taking naps down there on odd days until the boys get here, and I want to be able to keep her asleep without having to work in the dark. Plus, it feels like a tent, and what kid doesn’t love a tent?

Tomorrow will not be as productive. In fact, since Tom’s new shift starts at 4am every morning, I may never be productive again.

Just a few Ella-isms that I don’t want to forget.

Feeding Bubba the cat invisible fish: “Bubba, try it! It tastes like candy! Just one bite, yummmy. Not mushrooms, fish candy! Try it! Mmmmm. Did you like it? No? Okay, have a bagel.”

Sitting in the floor with one of my books, Alice laying beside her: “Here, I read. See no pictures. Once a time there was a girl named Ell.. Alice! And she go downstairs and watch TV. Max say “Yes!” but Ruby say “No!” and Ella cry. *Flipping pages* The end. New book!”

Every two minutes: “You hear that?”

After a bath: “Mmmm I smell like candy. And Daddy smells like ice cream, Mama smells like coffee, and Alice smells like puke.”

Any time Alice ‘talks’ to her: “Oh Cricket, I love you too.”

Edited to add: At dinner tonight Ella leaned it to tell me something secretive and said “Whales eat me-mes” (her word for penguins). She looked at me for confirmation, and when I nodded, she looked down at her plate. “But then!” she said, throwing her arms in the air, “me-mes dance and me-mes sing!”

I guess someone watched Happy Feet at Grandpa’s house the other day.

And then I blinked.

Happy 5 months Alice.

A package from Tom’s grandma (so the girls’ Great Grandma Flora) came today, with two little spring bunny vests in it. I am so in love with them, and with the fact that our girls have so many handmade things from their family - between my sister, Tom’s mom, my grandma and his, (not to mention me, haha) our girls are surrounded by things knit and sewn for them. I can’t imagine preferring a department store quilt over one sewn by someone who loves them. After mom passed away, I was so mad that she had died before I had kids, and that she wouldn’t be here to make their baby blankets. Luckily, I was wrong in imagining a future bereft of little things with tags that say “stitched with love”.

These pictures are deceptive in that they make it look like we are frolicking outside today, enjoying the sunshine and the company. Instead, I am thiiiiis close to falling asleep on my keyboard, because last night was the night.from.hell. Between my sinuses draining into my chest and making me cough all night long (which woke up the baby every single time), and Ella waking up screaming every 20 minutes because she couldn’t breath, all the girls in the family ended up curled up on the couch at 1:30 am, in an effort to try and let Tom get some sleep. And let me tell ya, you just haven’t lived until you’ve slept sitting up with a 5 month old drooling on your chest, and a toddler kicking you every time you nod off. Oh, and don’t forget the ‘choking on your own phlegm’ part. I loved it so much I think we may do it again tonight.

So, today has been a TV and bagel day, though hopefully not in the way yesterday was a TV and bagel day. This kid. Every time I think I know how to ‘do’ this mother thing, she tests me. We’ve been sending her to her room a lot lately, mostly because if she is standing right in front of me making another mess while I clean up the last one, I lose it. So, to her room she goes, where she can make as much of a mess as she wants, because I can’t see it, Lalalala it doesn’t exist.

I am so excited for naptime.

Perhaps the most harrowing thing to hear over the baby monitor is “Eww, my feet smell like poop. Poop, get off my feet!”

In other news, it’s my birthday. Woo twenty-five. We actually did “birthday” on Saturday, since Pam will be out of town for nearly 3 weeks and we wanted to have birthday dinner while she was here, and today I am just eating leftover cake. Tom and I are going to dinner tonight while my father-in-law watches Ella, but I already got my big gift, and whew. I feel spoiled. To convince myself that I will actually use it, I finished that little mini quilt I was working on for my midwife.

Or maybe it’s not finished. I can’t tell. I CAN tell that this machine cost more than my first car, because it took me an hour to get this far, after it taking 4 hours of cussing at my old machine to get to here. That big white boob is bothering me, but I can’t decide what to do to it without making it stand out even more. Ugh. Boobs, always causing trouble. In fact, a lot of things about the quilt are bothering me (Baby should be huge! Where is the placenta? Why the weird belly ridge?) but I keep reminding myself that it doesn’t have to be anatomically correct to get the idea across (the roll of water in birth, to ease the transition for baby (from water into water), and to comfort the mother (hence the supporting lines around the mother’s body)). I accidentally embroidered the baby backwards the first time, so I have an extra, and could just call this one a test run (and keep it myself) if I end up getting to picky about giving it to Cathy.

I also want to pull this bag apart, since I finished it last week and wince when I look at the stitching now.

It’s the project that inspired this post, because ack, I just want to redo the entire thing. But I don’t have time for that, so I’ll just wait until the seams fall apart and then I’ll make a new one. I know a couple people recognize the pattern, but I won’t link to it, because I really can’t recommend it.  When an English major thinks a pattern is too wordy and needs more pictures, you know there is a problem. I didn’t even bother pressing it after I was done, because I was just tired of messing with it. Ugh.

Okay, Ella isn’t going to take a nap today (allergies have hit and she can’t sleep unless I drug her up) so we’re headed outside to enjoy the sunshine overcast skies.

Know what I can’t wait for? The day when I can do things right the first time. Good god am I tired of “doing what I can, when I can”. I want to be able to focus, to undo and redo something if it’s not perfect, to experiment and not feel like I am wasting precious minutes of silence.

Tom doesn’t understand why I get so flustered when I am trying to write (sew/paint/plan/sketch/read/design) and Ella is standing at my elbow asking for something. It’s not that it’s hugely inconvenient to get the juice - it’s just that I want to be able to sit and think for 2 minutes without being interrupted. So much of my creativity comes from being able to focus in on one thing and see it, and resee it, until it is finally ‘right’ and I can not remember the last time I felt like I could really do that.

If I am being honest, this is probably one of my main deterrents to having more kids - another baby means another 5 years tacked on until I can reasonably expect to be alone. And that of course is if I send the kids to school, which I am torn about. It feels so selfish to want them to just get out from under my feet, when I really do believe that homeschooling can give kids tools that public school can not, but then I have to ask myself if it is always a bad thing to be selfish. Is it taboo for a mom to be selfish with her time, with her energy? Is it unseemly to admit that being a wife and mother does not fulfill me entirely? Why do I feel the need to tack on “I really do love my life right now” when I would hope that those of you reading this know that. I feel so defensive about just wanting time and space to write, as if one passion cancels out the other. (It doesn’t.)

I keep telling myself that it will come. That eventually I will be able to use my degree for more than wall filler. That someday I will have time to sit and rewrite the same sentence 23 times, patiently waiting for boredom to bear fruit. Until then, I will continue to hit the ‘publish’ button long before the blog post is finished, and I will try and make peace with crooked seams.