Redefining Perfect

Wow it’s been such a long time since I posted! An entire month, actually! I’ve been so very busy doing stuff around this house prepping for christmas and actually taking part in it.  That I just havne’t posted.

Sad thing is, I’ve been online…I just have not been motivated or inspired to post.  There are some things I have simply NOT been able to post about, and everything else seemed trivial, to trivial to post.  

Excuses aside, I’m starting to come out of my hole again, I think.  I hope.  I just paid for another year of my URL, and it would be a shame to waste it as much as I did in 2009.  My amount of posting really dropped off and died for a long time…think I can revive it again?  Gosh, I hope so.

I have a lot of little (and big) projects going on.  I have pictures of my massive crafting expidition and resulting Christmas day to post.  I have a lot going on, and hopefully I’ll be sharing a lot more of it with you again!  And yes, this involves visiting your blogs as well! 

~~~~~

*Paraphrased quote from Slap Shot.

There is nothing I can write.

Not at the moment.

There is too much.

It can’t be said here. It can’t be said there.

I am on a trip.  I’m visiting my best friend Jess.  We are meeting for the first time and that is wonderful…but the reasons behind it are too heavy to divulge right now.

I will be back. Soon. I will be posting.

Eventually it will come out, but for now when I return the posts will focus on the joy of this trip and my children. 

The rest will wait until I am in a better place to explain my absence.

I have not forgotten you. I just cannot put into words where I am. Or I could, but I won’t. This isn’t the place for it. It isn’t the time for it.

Please forgive me this brief break of posting that I had this week. The events were coming for a while, but hit suddenly as all things do.

I hope to return by Monday if I’m recovered from my long drive home on Sunday. If not, Tuesday. Then you will be able to see and hear of the joy I have felt in being here in this place, surrounded by the love of a dear friend that I have known online for six years – but have just now met face to face this week.

Until then.

Watch that last step it’s a doozy!

I had no intentions of ending up disappearing for this long.  I have at least a dozen half-baked and sometimes half started posts in my head and on my dashboard waiting to be written.  I have no good explanation except…”oh hai, I have blog?”  Yeah – I could just never hit publish or wrap my head around actually completng a post.

On a good note – real life has been absolutely packed with stuff.  Our October calendar was packed full of activites of which we’ve only done about 1/2…because we also had some illness creep through and things like cruddy weather getting in the way.

Instead of blogging I’ve been driving my wonderful husband Archie nuts with the crafting supplies now absolutely overflowing out of their previously neat and tidy corner.  I’m making presents and decorations for the upcoming Yule/Christmas season! 

I have made several of the decorations. Two adorable little pettiskirts, and overskirts.  I’ve got the materials nearly completed for two twirly skirts for which I’m making my own pattern and hoping to let them both be free and overskirts for the pettiskirts.  I’ve also started other gifts, but I can’t say what they are on this public area

Brandon has been going forward in school like wildfire.  He has been doing his afterschool program and loving it.  His grades are (mostly) holding on great and we went to his first band concert this year!  I actually got to go on a Field Trip with him this year – to the zoo!  It was great finally meeting some other parents in his grade and getting to the zoo. I’m getting ready to go in a few weeks to the formation of the new parents group that’s forming along the lines of a PTO…I’ve been painfully aware over the past few years that I’ve never been involved enough in these things – so I’m trying to be now.

Today I finally got the girls to the new homeschool group.  Riley got stung by a bee, but it didn’t hold her back.  They had a blast and I had a nice time socializing with the moms….and being able to come home and tell Archie about the large group of (successfully) homeschooled kids from the girls age up to 17!  I think I can learn a lot from these women and look forward to going again next week!

I’ve also been really busy doing some behind the scenes stuff online…I have a lot more work to do in that area, but hopefully I won’t forget this place again!!  Or any of you!  I feel like I’ve gone to no blogs at all lately…and it’s time to rectify that right now!!

I spent the better part of the weekend (from Thursday to Sunday) sleeping.  I was sick, sick, sick…and have just now started feeling better.  The worst part of being sick was having two sickies with me (*thing 1 and thing 2*) that were just as miserable as I was. 

Riley recovered fast, but it clung to my Angel like  glue. The cough lingered and she was put on antibiotics (drugs…woohoo).  She recovered a bit, but continued to cough.  And cough. And cough – waking up at nights.  It wasn’t continuous – just lingering. So, as luck would have it we had our regularly scheduled visit to the CF clinic yesterday. Her lung functions have gone down, so the pulm has extended and increased her antibiotics….and added steroids. 

So after all of this, I’m finally back.  Still keeping an eye on my baby – but I’m here!  Sorry I was so MIA.  Whateer this summer cold was made of, it kicked my ass!

And the Rock and Roll?

Well, it’s RIGHT HERE!!

You thought you’d get a post from Mr. Perfect today, didn’t you?  Well, you aren’t that lucky…he’s still writing.  So instead you get the fun random bullets…

* I’ve been sick the past few days.  I feel ‘okay’ in the morning and it starts to hit by about 1 every day.  Headache, sore throat, muscle aches, grumpiness, and feeling clammy-like.  After two nights of putting up with me, Archie wants me to call the doctor. I did and go in today. I’m sure I’ll be told it’s just a cold, but it’s just as well to go in w/ the sore throat and a CF babe in the house.

* Remember the Saga of the Big Toe that started in January and I thought was done in April with a big fat cortizone shot?  Well, it’s not.  After enough distractions and pain killers (thank you, gall bladder), I was able to ignore it for 3 months – but the pain is not gone.  It gets worse when I wear my sneakers for more than an hour or two.  So, I go back to the podiatrist next week.  It’s a good thing I like that man with how much I despise feet….

* Today I finally got off my butt and scheduled doctor’s appointments I was supposed to a couple of months ago.  My podiatrist for one, I called the OBGYN for my 2 year check (hooray for no parts, checks get farther apart) – only to find out I’d already scheduled it months ago…and I got Riley’s appt with her geneticist set again. 

* I’ve been sewing like mad – well, previous to my sickliness.  Trying to get Christmas presents done for the girls.  It involves working my poor sewing machine to the bone, but will be worth it…if I can restrain myself from putting the clothes on the girls prior to Christmas.

* Brandon starts 6th grade on Tuesday.  Tuesday!  I can’t believe summer is over already…but I’m relieved in a way.  We seriously need the break from each other.

* The girls old OT called today just to see how they were doing.  I thought that was so sweet of her.  It was good to talk to her again briefly.

* Had one of my ex’s actually act surprised and hurt that I ignored his friend request on Facebook.  He sent me a message asking if I still hated him that much that I wouldn’t friend him.  I didn’t bother replying – but have to say that I don’t hate him…hate is such a strong word..but really, I don’t LIKE him enough to friend him…anywhere. 

* July was a great month of visiting family…and I’m sad I wasn’t able to get to Buffalo to do the same.  Hopefully next year I will get there.

* Still wishing I could make it to Type A Mom.  No sign of sponsorship in sight, though…so that may be another I miss again.  Maybe next year.

* Have an editor actually reading my novel now.  Here’s to hoping she loves it and you’ll be looking at the latest published blogger here soon  

That’s it for now.  Hopefully soon hubs will finish his blog post for me…and yes, I’m putting this out here to help nudge him toward it

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You know those sneaky roller coaster rides where you climb and climb every so slowly to the top and just as you crest, ready for the exhileration of the drop – it’s just a little bump?  You have to wait another interminable second before the rush of the real drop? I’m stuck on a series of little bumps…waiting for the rush of the drop…

Every step forward with potty training is met with steps backward. 

I’ve tried defending their actions, explaining them away…but I’m down to the last hair on my head, pulling each one out in frustration.

I can’t call them ‘accidents’ I know that they know what they’re doing…but do they?  Despite the fact that they know where the potty is, how to go, they are no longer afraid of it…and have even used public toilets…they have yet to initiate a potty run. 

I take that back – Angel did it ONCE, on father’s day. 

I’m tired of washing sheets every day because they keep wetting the bed.  I’m tired of asking them if they have to go and gettig a flat out ‘no’ – only to have them peeing on the ground two minutes later. 

Is it a sensory issue?  Or just stubborness?  Or are they just not ready, despite being 3&4?!? 

I don’t want to return to diapers…I don’t want that cost…but I don’t know how much more I can handle.

***

My apologies for the potty-roller coaster analogy…and for a post about potty-training…I’m just super frustrated right now.

I went to WalMart to pick up a few odds and ends.

Indiana was under a severe storm alert.

When I got to the parking lot I sat there watching the storm roll in, trying to get some lightning pictures with my camera (only one relatively successful one. Need to remember my tripod next time). 

By the time I finally headed inside the tornado sirens were going off and the wind was kicking up something fierce.  I headed inside as two guys walked up with a hard-top from a truck bed between them – cracked and ripped off the truck it had been on.

I heard the manager on the radio telling other employees to make sure no one else left the store by any door and to get everyone to the middle of the store.

Everyone in the store – full carts, empty carts, paid for bagged up products, and employees alike gathered in the middle of the store.  Some people were freaking out crying, others  just leaning on clothes racks bored…and just about everyone on cell phones.

Twenty minutes later we got the all-clear and the manager called off the “code black.” 

A tornado had touched down a little north of us and was heading right toward us (according to NWS)…but we didn’t get hit. 

When I left WM about 30 minutes later there were cars lined up in the no parking zone, people on phones with their insurance agents.  One car with the rear windshield blown out, the truck that had lost the bed top, and a couple others. 

So tonight was not my average trip to WM.  It was far different…

On and off like clockwork, every six months, I look for you.  I google you, your old screen name, your real name, your maiden name.  I wonder how you are. I wonder where your life is now. 

For a long time I never found you.  Old journal entries, old youtube videos, but never anything recent.

Today I found you. Now and here and present. You’re on facebook. I stare at the picture of you and your husband and my heart breaks.

There are days that I miss you so terribly I cry. There are days that I’m so angry at myself for letting things fall apart the way they did.  There are days that I’m furious with you for pushing us away. 

We still talk about you…at times melancholy, and at times angry. 

My heart aches and my mouse hovers over the ’send message’ button. Even if I could push past my own pride, what would I say? It has been two years this month since things came to an end between us. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t easy. I still have a hole in my heart where you used to reside.  It’s still an open wound, jagged and raw.

Do you think of us? Do you search for us?  Do you miss us?  Or did you just stop caring all together? Are we just a distant memory that annoys you?

I still wonder what happened.  How such a friendship could crumble. Why you feared that WE would be mad at the path your life took? Of all people. Why you felt that you couldn’t trust us with the truth. Why we didn’t search for it sooner. Could things have ended differently if we’d spoken up months before we did?  Or if we’d just remained blindly ignorant and let things totally slide by.

I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Was our friendship real?  If it was, how could it end like that?

Yesterday morning I was feeling positive.  My novel was gettin good response from my readers, I was getting things done for the writing blog I have about said novel, the girls potty training was on a good run, I’d finally scheduled appointments for the dog and the girls’ checkups, I’d made a commitment here to post every day this month…Things were on an upswing.

In a matter of an hour it all changed. 

The idiot webhost I HAD (solidinternet – do not EVER use them) once again had my site down.  In the past two weeks it’s been an almost constant state. 

The SUPER idiot “tree service” the local power company hired to trim back the trees DESTROYED my tree (sheered one side clean off), AND broke my clothes line.

My website continued to be down for the count. 

I found a replacement webhost that ooked very positive.  My BFF and I agreed to switch together to a server that we could load all of our sites into and planned the switch…I thought things were looking up…

But the transfer went kerflooey and at 2AM last night I was ready to completely give up…and did.  I went to bed and just gave up.

This morning the Jess was able to save my sites and restore them to full glory (such as they are).

Then I had to take the dog to the vet.  Not a big deal normally. 

My dog gets carsick. On the way to the vet there was a minor incident, but barely.  On the way home (a 20 minute ride approximately) she threw up TREMENDOUSLY five minutes in.  On the rest of the way home she walked through it, sat in it, laid in it, ate it…got it all over my truck.  I got home, managed to get her out of the car and tried to take her out back to clean up…missed the edge of the sidewalk and went down – totally wrenched my ankle.

Now I’m sitting on the couch with my ankle iced and elevated. Archie’s been wonderful, getting me pop and pizza before I disappeared.

After a day of (unfinished) cleaning, it’s nice to rest…but there’s still so much to do.  I hate getting interrupted like that. 

Well, after one day of hell I’m ready for the upswing.  Who’s with me?

Considering my lack of posting in recent months I’m going to force my own hand here.  I’m starting two days late but I have decided to join in the NaBloPoMo for June.  The theme is Heroes, and I’ll try to follow that theme at least once a week.  The biggest thing for me is to get back into the posting groove.  I fell out of it when I panicked and deleted the blog completely, and never got back into it. 

So for June I’m committing myself to posting every day the rest of the month.  I need to get back on the ball.  I’ve been totaly wrapped up in my novel and prepping to try to find an agent, not to mention getting the magazine up and running…that this place has gone even more by the wayside.

Oh, and along with that commitment to post, is the commitment to actually read and comment on other blogs too…so I hope to see a lot more of you soon!