Gratitude #35: Getting to Spend Time with My Oldest, One-on-One

The Boy's elementary school holds a grade-level picnic every year. Last year, Super Ninja went, so we traded off this year. I want both of us to be on equally comfortable footing with his teachers, school leadership, and the parents of the other kids in the classroom. If only one of us consistently shows up to school events, that parent is seen as the captain, and the less-present parent is considered the first officer. I want them to see us as co-pilots*, but not in that creepy, we-attend-everything-together kind of way. In the, you-don't-have-to-talk-down-to-me-because-I-know-what's-going-on-in-the-classroom kind of way.

Also? The Boy loves both of us, and takes pride in our being there for him. I didn't have a lot of that as a kid. The being there of parents, I mean. Both of mine worked jobs where if they didn't show, they didn't earn, and if they didn't earn, I didn't get cereal. But I have the incredible luxury of blowing off work for two hours, sitting atop an Incredible Hulk blanket shaded by an elm , and watching my kid play a game of pick-up soccer with eight other little boys. I don't fault other parents who weren't able to be there, but I am very grateful that I can be.

At his age, a quarter of parenting is keeping them from doing Stupid Shit, like leaping from the deck to the yard below. Another quarter is giving them the instruction manual to life, such as, "You should say 'hello' back to someone who says 'hello' to you, because they think you didn't hear them otherwise." The other half? BEING THERE. Don't delude yourself that if you ask the other parent about how the day went, you are totally plugged into who your kid is. Doesn't work that way.

See, just like with your spouse, if you want to keep the relationship strong with your kids, you have to work at it. It doesn't just happen. And the best way to stitch yourselves to each other's lives is having shared experiences. If you're never there, you're not embedding yourselves in their lives.

Dude, I'm cutting this short(er). It got unexpectedly heavy. I really intended on this just being a "Hey! I had a PB & J sandwich outside with my kid and it was great!" post. Instead it because a manifesto on parenting.

*I don't know why I'm using airplane terminology. Everything I know about airplanes I learned from the Zucker brothers.

(from Wednesday, June 15)

Gratitude #34: Big Brothers

I'm not talking about an Orwellian dystopia. Nope, I mean actual big brothers. I've got three of 'em. They aren't your Hollywood-style big brothers who show up at the snap of a little sister's fingers to deliver a beat down to a grabby boy. Nah, mine are the kind that will talk at length about conspiracy theories, oil changes, and whether or not the Raven's head coach made a good decision with that last play. And they won't talk down to you 'cause you're a girl.

Despite the age differences (5, 10, and 11 years) between me and these men, they were all uber cool to me as a kid. They treat me well as an adult too, but the strength of our relationships now is based on the foundation laid back then. We never had one of those, "Man, maybe you're NOT an ass!" epiphanies as adults because we actually liked each other growing up.

What wasn't for me to like? They picked me up from school, played music for me, let me play with their precious and sophisticated Commodore 64, took me to carnivals, parties, all ages shows, movies and parties with them. They never made me feel disincluded, and they would hold me accountable if I did something annoying like use their hair conditioner or TOTALLY shred the top flap of a box of cereal instead of asking for help opening it. I look back now and marvel at the generosity and interest they showed in me. Think about it: when I was learning to tie my shoes, Glasses was playing basketball (and maybe a little Dungeons and Dragons), Mechanic was stripping down minibikes and putting them back together, and Handy Man was officially driving and thisclose to the legal drinking age.

June 14 is Mechanic's birthday, which is why I thought of this, but it didn't seem fair to leave the others out. Especially since I've always rather liked being one of the youngest in the family.

(from Tuesday, June 14)

Gratitude #33: Thinning Traffic Patterns

As the school year winds down 'round these parts, so does the traffic. It is glorious. Now that the minivan brigade no longer wends its way around the beltway, dropping off their precious cargo at outrageously expensive private schools, I can get to work 10 minutes faster, which means leaving 10 minutes sooner.

It doesn't sound like much, but those 10 minutes, man, they are the difference between children who are happily munching on dinner and children who morph into angry puddles of ravenous tantrum.

Lest you get the wrong idea, we are not intentionally starving them. It just takes longer to put their dinner together if you are trying to do that AND keep them from braining themselves. Little Guy has taken to clambering upon furniture, Spidey-style. Seriously, we found him in the middle of the kitchen table last week. And he's mimicking jumping now, and while he's currently not actually getting any air, I'm sweating when he's finally puts two-and-two together and thinks, "Hey, wait! I can climb up THERE, and jump back down HERE!"

So, anyway, I am grateful for the decrease in time spent commuting.

(from Monday, June 13)

Gratitude #32: Husband Who Believes in Time with Kids Parity

Super Ninja had a bachelor party to attend this weekend. Thank God, we have moved past the age when a bachelor party was actually a bachelor weekend (or week) in a remote city, and involved a lot of booze and vanilla-scented, glittery boobs. I KNOW WHAT GOES ON.

Anyway, while this bachelor party was NOT a three-day drunk fest in Vegas, it was still a good eight-hour event. During that time, I solo-parented. No big deal, right? Just eight hours? To that I say: HA! Once you have kids, the math goes like this:

# Kids X # of Hours Alone = # of Hours It Feels Like You Are Alone

So, I was BASICALLY alone with the kids for a whole day. That gets exhausting, yo. So Super Ninja invited me to leave the house and go be by myself somewhere for five hours. AND I TOOK IT. I know, I know, my last post was about how I can feel guilty escaping to the gym for an hour. But I'd paid it forward, so there was no guilt attached to this.

I will say this: it always takes me the first hour to get over the fact that I won't be interrupted often. I swear, when I'm with the kids, I only have a time horizon of five minutes. If I can't plan to get something done within that five minutes, it's a task best left 'til later, because otherwise it will either get completely derailed and end up costing me MORE time to correct, or whatever I'm trying to do will get completely wrecked with sticky hand prints. So, better just to be engaged with the kids while they are up and active and wriggling all over me like delicious little puppies.

(from Sunday, June 12)

Gratitude #31: Drop-In Childcare at the Gym

When I drag my twenty-five-pounds-overweight self to the gym (okay, maybe it's just twenty, 'cause hair and boob weight surely doesn't count, right?), I feel a little guilty because I'm leaving Super Ninja with three kids to tend.

How messed up is that? Going to the gym makes me feel guilty because it costs someone else some time, some personal space, whatever. I know that I should be looking at it as something I'm doing for them as much as me. If I'm healthier, my kids are less likely to have to worry about me when I'm older. I could outline additional examples, but I'm already boring myself, so I won't.

Also, you don't have to call the Oprah police on me to convince me that doing good things for myself is not something about which I should truly feel guilty.

BUT! All of this sturm und drang is made moot by the fact that our gym has drop-in childcare for toilet-trained kids (I don't blame them for making the distinction -- people would fling their babies in astounding numbers at the teen aged girls who run the drop-in center). And the hours are good for my schedule. So many things for kids -- story hours, drop-in childcare, pre-schools, Mommy & Me classes, etc., are geared toward schedules that are convenient only to stay-at-home-mothers, which, obviously, is not me.

After discovering this whole drop-in situation, I can at least take the Boy and the Girl, and Super Ninja just needs to chill with the Little Guy. WIN!

(from Saturday, June 11)

Gratitude #30: Friday, Friday

Oh yes, I linked to Rebecca Black's 'Friday, Friday.' I am only, what, two months late to that party? A tastemaker, I am not. Mostly, I prefer to stand in the corner and pretend to be above it all, which makes a most excellent cover for not really knowing what the hell is trendy these days.

Anyway, I loves me a Friday. I think it's something to do with the whole weekend unfolding before me, rife with potential for relaxation and productivity. It's also the eve of my sleep-in morning, which I've mentioned before in this series. So, Friday represents a day when I can just RELAX, already.

(from Friday, June 10)

Gratitude #29: My Nook Color!

Holy frijoles! I cannot BELIEVE it took me this long to express my gratitude for my Nook Color*! Is it cheesy to be grateful for a gadget? Like, doesn't a tiny part of you want to vomit when you hear someone waxing poetic about AppleTV? No? Just me?

Anyway, I really, really like my Nook Color. Between the Kindle and the Nook Color, I can say that the Nook Color wins. I actually have a basis for comparison since I was able to test drive an old skool Kindle last summer and fall. How did I score that sweetness, you ask?

I work for an educational nonprofit, and my department shelled out for one to get a sense of how well they'd jibe with our educational materials. In my estimation, not very well. Kids are primarily tactile learners, and things like highlighting, crossing out, and underlining, are vital to a kid's ability to consume a text. E-readers provide that digitally, but the sense experience isn't there, which is critical for the text to make an impression.

Or, I am just a fogey about all this.

Anyway, for fiction? E-readers = MCV reading sooooooooo much more than I did before. Maybe I'm lazy, but getting myself to the library or the bookstore just doesn't happen as much as I might want. And then you're limited to whatever's on the shelves. WHAT? No opportunity for instant gratification? Nuts to that!

So even though I have thanked them in person, let me reiterate to my brother-in-law (Writer) and my sister-in-law (Playwright) that I'm grateful daily for this Christmas gift.

Gratitude #28: New Recipes that Turn Out Well

Cooking food is really soothing for me. I know, some of you pop that vein in your forehead just THINKING about two burners going at the same time. I am married to one of you. Super Ninja once set an oven aflame with a tater tot. I don't know how tater tots could possibly be so stressful that you rush the process and drop one on the glowing orange element of an electric oven. And so, much of the family cooking defaults to me. I'm happy with that assignment.

(Did I ever tell you that I have a theory that most married couples divide chores by who hates it least? There are a few that each of us really enjoys -- me, cooking, Super Ninja, clearing the DVR list -- but things like cleaning the bathroom are accomplished through dares, bribes, or whomever is there when it hits critical grossness.)

Anyway, I'm a confident cook. Sometimes, when the fridge contents do not call typical pairings to mind, I get all creative up in here. The meal that inspired this post? Sweet Italian sausage, fried in olive oil with a thinly sliced onion, cherry tomatoes and spinach added in 'til wilty, then mixed up with al dente penne, and sprinkled with feta.

The end result of the experiment was three very full adults (Best Friend came over for dinner), and three children with noses wrinkled, nay, TURNED UP at the concoction. Stick with your chicken nuggets, kids. We didn't want to share anyway.

(from Wednesday, June 8)

Gratitude #27: Team Work

Admittedly, a part of me wants you to shoot me now for admitting that I am grateful for team work.

In high school, I was allergic to group work. It made me irritable and sweaty. Why? Well, in my schools, group work boiled down to misapplied cooperative learning techniques, the end result of which was that MARY DID EVERYTHING. (Yes, the M in MCV stands for Mary. Good for you for picking up on that.)

Also? I was so panicky about getting a good grade that I would volunteer to do the heavy lifting. I didn't trust the others in my group enough to believe they'd be able to knock it out equally well. Lest you think I'm a total egomaniac, my faith in my own academic abilities was not unfounded. I was valedictorian.

But now, I find myself needing to rely on the expertise of others. And it ain't easy. Yet there it is. We all get hired for the different skill sets we bring to the table. No one person has it all. Awesome as I may be, I don't know how to program in SQL. It's like those role-playing games -- the whole point is that you need a group to get through the challenges. Can't do it solo. And that would be creepy, yeah? One player traipsing through adventures of a dungeon master's making, likely dying off because the first enemy dishes out some pain that another type of character could have deflect.

Sweet baby jeebus, I think I'm going to have to punch Super Ninja in the shoulder for infecting my go-to list of analogous experiences with Dungeons and Dragons. Yeesh.

(from Tuesday, June 7)

Gratitude #26: Modern Printers

This is probably the silliest of all of my gratitudes thus far, but I just printed 1,600 pages of materials to distribute at a conference tomorrow, and it only took me 45 minutes, with nary a paper jam or indecipherable error code.

Love it.

I go waaaaaaaay back with printers. All the way to the daisy wheels. Things started getting a little more sophisticated when I hit college, and my roommates had bubble jet printers, and my work-study job had a laser jet. Only problem with the laser jet was the 'PC Load Letter' error. I mean, seriously. Does anyone even know what that means?

And now, the glorious networkable laser workhorse printer, that allows me to procrastinate 'til the day before a conference before printing out my training materials. Huzzah!

Gratitude #25: A Husband Who Takes an Interest in My Work

By 'work', I don't mean my profession. I mean my avocation. Which is writing. Or nattering, I guess, depending on how you feel about my wordsmithing. But Super Ninja always happily reads whatever pages I dump on him, and offers critique. Not namby pamby art school critique where you are REQUIRED to say one good thing and one bad thing. He offers honest, legit points that are not just personal preference. Sometimes they are, and he acknowledges that, but that's what's so clutch: he knows when he would have gone a different way, but that doesn't make it a BETTER way.

Gratitude #24: My Children Weren't the Worst-Behaved Kids in Church

I'm not saying they were angels. I'm not even saying they were nephilim. They just weren't the worst. Sometimes, as a parent, that's the bar you shoot for: not the worst.

So, I am grateful for that one little kid in the cry room who, while not crying, just kept yelling, "MAH! MAH! MAH!" during the homily.

Gratitude #23: Cool Down

Earlier, I mentioned what a swamptastic time we've been having here in Baltimore. On Saturday, it FINALLY broke. No more 95 degree temperatures with 95% humidty. I mean, what the hell is 95% humidity? Isn't that just rain that can't commit?

ANYWAY, it finally cooled off so I didn't break into a sweat when doing non-taxing things. Like walking outside. Glorious!

Gratitude #22: Friends with Skillz

Our air conditioning was scary leaking. I have a policy against messing around problems involving water AND electricity, so I didn't go poking around with a screwdriver in our moist, poorly lit HVAC closet.

Enter Bryan!

He is my friend's husband, and he knows these joints inside and out. They came over last week with their kids. While the little ones ran 'round the house, he grabbed his bundle of equipment (which, sidebar, totally made him look like a Ghostbuster), and headed down to the Den of Damp to check it out. The problem was minor, and he showed me how to prevent it from happening again. Bonus!

All it cost me was a dinner. Who wouldn't be grateful for that?

Gratitude #21: Finishing Something

My writing has gone to pot over the past two years. I've always had something in the hopper that I've been messing around with. You'll recall my most recent endeavour. That was something I worked on, off and on, for something like seven years. Yeesh. I had to go back and count that up, but it's true.

I started it somewhere in 2002, and then fiddled like a loon for YEARS. To be fair to myself, I did buy two houses, have three children, and change jobs thrice in that time. So, yes, delay. And I queried publishers, got some bites, but ultimately nothing came from it. Result? Self-publishing. I have actually been selling some copies. Nothing that will make the New York Times or anything, but I MAY be able to buy a fancy dinner for my family.

There have been other things I've played with, but nothing I'd call finished. 'Til now. I was kicking an idea around, something I knew that would not be meaty enough for a novel or anything. But that was okay. I was just shooting for a short story. At the end of March, I had a day off, so I got started. And I ended up with sixty pages. Some short story. But I'm whittling away, shaving it down to a reasonable short story size.

Just feels good to (mostly) finish something.

Gratitude #20: Chick-fil-A Kids & Family Night

I SWEAR, this is not a paid advertisement. I mean, SURE, I get tens of readers, most of whom are on my Christmas card list, so it would make sense that a corporation like Chick-fil-A would try and pay for space on my blog. But that's not what this is.

Our local Chick-fil-A hosts a kids and family night on Wednesdays, and I love it. LOVE IT. If an adult buys a meal, you get a kids meal for free. Shweet. All five of us can eat there for less than $20. But that's not the best part. The thing the kids love is the indoor playground. There's apparatus that's appropriate for all three of my kids (okay, fine, the Little Guy likes to try to climb UP the sliding tube and doesn't understand why he keeps failing). When we leave, they are full, and tuckered out, though slightly sweaty.

For those of you who want to beat me down for taking my children to a fast food joint, I foist healthier choices on them. They get the chicken nuggets, milk, and fresh fruit combo. Here's the nutrition info. BLAM. Not awful. Not organic muesli with a side of flax, but not awful.

Gratitude #19: Meeting-Free Work Days

As a project manager, my days are rife with meetings. I like people, but man, I usually leave meetings with more things to do than I came in with. So, meetings don't resolve any issues for me. They just bubble them up like evil and yon Weird Sisters from that Scottish play. So days sans meetings? Glorious.

Gratitude #18: Holidays

When I was in college, holidays were a big HA HA. That was when the papers got written, the research got done, or the body decided to fall apart because it knew you had a spare day or two (hello, sophomore year Thanksgiving!). As a young adult, I usually used the time to catch up on work projects. I've mentioned before that I am a nerd, yes?

But now? Now I have FINALLY realized that the Work Will Never All Be Done. There will always be laundry. There will always be e-mails to which I have not responded. There will always, always, always be a floor that needs sweeping. And since that work will always be there, then it doesn't really have to get done on a national holiday. That time is to be spent lolling about on the deck, playing with Lego, and braiding hair.

Gratitude #17: Relatives with Pools

Memorial Day weekend was HOT in Baltimore. Like, rude hot. Punch you in the face hot. Iron your clothes WHILE YOU ARE STILL WEARING THEM hot. And it is on days like this that I am grateful for relatives with pools.

See, we could pay a bajillion dollars for a pool membership. But, as we are hard up for a bajillion dollars, we need to depend on the kindness of relatives so blessed. Plus, seriously. With a one-year-old, four-year-old, and six-year-old, it is an absolute crap shoot as to whether all three of them will be down with the idea of swimming. Usually, we get two out of three. If we are going to pay for the pleasure of swimming, we actually want to get our money's worth. And I'm pretty sure it would be seen as unreasonable to chuck your kids in a pool simply to recoup the entrance fee.

As of this post, I have three local relatives who have pools, and they are all wildly generous and willing to share. How great is that?

If you're keeping track, this post shoulda been posted on Sunday, May 29th.

Gratitude #16: Living Near the Uncrowded Movie Theater

Editor's Note: I am WAY behind in my gratitude. Not that I'm not feelin' it. Just to busy livin', I guess. OR, I have been immersed in other projects. Like relaxing in the tub. Jealous?

Anyway...

Last Saturday I took my kids to see Kung Fu Panda 2. It was all right. Solid B. But you know what was AWESOME? It took us eight minutes to get to the theater from our house, we parked within a minute, and managed to buy tickets, snacks, and find seats within another five. For those of you who stink at math, that's fourteen minutes from the time we left our driveway to sitting in the theater, munching on popcorn.

How does this miracle come to pass?

It's because I avoid the popular movie theater. You know the one I mean. The one that's situated near a mall and a bevy of chain eateries like P.F. Chang's and the Cheesecake Factory. The one where teenagers loiter and spill over into kiddie movies because their Furious Face Smash with Inexplicably Oiled Bodies sold out.

I am a PROUD codger.

Gratitude #15: Having a Social Network

Glugh. That sounds so... Facebooky. But that's not what I mean by social network. I mean an actual, honest-to-God real-life group of friends and relatives. Sometimes the day-to-day of family life can feel a little... Isolating. There are lots of things that we can't spontaneously do because we have to worry about weather or not naps have been had, if baths will need to be given, if there is space (and time) to just run around when some chubby little legs get restless. It is, I imagine, what owning an electric car would be like. You can do things, but there will be some planning, insistence that the event is within a reasonable radius of your home, and confirmation that you can get what you need at your destination, should you run out of packed supplies.

Did I just compare managing children to owning a Leaf? Guess so.

ANYWAY, the whole point of this, is that we received four different invitations in the past couple of weeks. ALL FOR THE SAME DAY. Baby shower, wedding, and two graduation parties. The graduates will get short-changed because we are already obligated to go to the baby shower (my college roommate) and the wedding (Super Ninja's in the wedding party). But it's nice to feel wanted. (OK, fine, I'm willing to admit that my 18-year-old second cousins are just in it for the graduation gift, but still....)

(from Saturday)

Gratitude #14: The Return of Super Ninja

That is not a reference to some kind of J.R.R. Tolkien-meets-Mr. Miyagi mash-up flick. Once upon a time my husband asked that I refer to him as Super Ninja on this blog. Why? I have no idea. He doesn't know karate, though he is super.

Anyway, he was out of town for work for most of this week*. He left Monday morning, and got back at nearly midnight last night. Know what that means? I solo-parented for three mornings and four nights. Three kids. A six-year-old, a four-year-old, and an one-year-old who is absolutely determined to brain himself.

I am tired. And humbled. I must give all single parents way, way more slack. Not that I"m the obnoxious woman who shakes her head and makes rude commments about how that kid should not be making that much noise. Not a bit. Actually, when I travel alone and there's an open seating situation on an airplane, I deliberately sit near a baby because squalls and screeches won't actually irritate me. Why? Because it's not MY kid.

Yeah, so, it is so incredibly exhausting to look after three children and run a house on your own. And remember to take out the trash. And lock the doors. And do the laundry so that the only two pairs of shorts your six-year-old thinks are comfortable are clean. And feed all three of them at reasonable times. And take them to do things so that they go to bed at a reasonable hour. And get them to places on time. And make sure they do their homework, and that they spelled everything properly. And shower. And make sure they bathe, brush their teeth, and don't wear the same underwear every day.

I have loved Super Ninja pretty much from the minute we met. Never been any doubt about that. So while he was away, I obviously missed him, our conversation, laughing with him. But now I know how much I need him. Not in that namby-pamby "you complete me" nonsense kind of way. But in a "I couldn't do this without you" kind of way. I depend on him. And I am OK with that. For a long time, I've felt like admitting dependence was akin to admitting a flaw. Or that if I acknowledged I need help, the perhaps I was not handling my bidness properly. Maybe I'm maturing, but I don't have ANY kind of problem with that now.

So, I am grateful for a devoted (and HELPFUL) husband and father to my kids.

*My Facebook friends may be all, "Wha? Why didn't you post that as a status?" Here's the deal: even though I run a pretty tight security ship on my FB account, I think it's a good idea not to share with the world that a 5'2" woman and her three small children are home alone. YES, we have an alarm system, and YES, I live in a safe neighborhood. But I don't get it when people are all, "Wheee! I'm going to be home alone this weekend!" Or, "Can't wait 'til me and the fam head to the beach for a solid week!" I know, I have a suspicious mind.

Gratitude #13: Calm Weather

Maryland is (generally) free of all of the End-of-Times nature shenanigans that get lobbed at other regions of the nation. There's the occasional blizzard that will dump multiple feet of snow, but I will take that over tornadoes and hurricanes and wild fires ANY DAY OF THE WEEK. One involves curling up with some hot chocolate and stoking a fire. The other involves curling up in a basement over your children to try and keep the wind from pulling them from your grip.

Yeah, so, very grateful that things are merely hazy, hot, and humid in my neck of the woods. And those suffering through the aftermath of the Midwestern catastrophes, my thoughts are with you.

Gratitude #12: Proactive Kids

MY SIX-YEAR-OLD DID HIS HOMEWORK BEFORE ANYONE ASKED HIM TO. I don't think I need to explain why that would make me grateful.

Gratitude #11: Awesome Playgrounds

Ten years ago, playgrounds would have hovered somewhere around 99 out of my top 100 favorite things. And most of that would have been because of fond memories of illicit and/or trespassy situations during my teenage years. But now? Holy jeez, a playground with shade and stations designed for multiple age groups is a godsend. And I have access to several of those, visits to which are rotated throughout the week.

Now, if I could just keep the little guy from eating sand...

(from Tuesday)

Gratitude Interlude: Fellas, Let Me Explain Something about Offering Solutions to your Girlfriend/Wife/Mother/Sister/Other Woman in Your Life

This topic has come up in many different areas of my life lately, and is causing consternation among my man friends. I am omnibenevolent, so lemme explain a really basic fact about women and problem-solving.

If you want to get a pen and a notepad, I'll wait.

Ready? Great. Here we go.

If a woman in your life complains about something, vents, or otherwise orates about a difficulty, she is not actually asking you for help in solving it. I know, I know, seems crazy right? WHY would she spend all of this time -- all of YOUR time -- talking about this thing if she could figure it out on her own? Wouldn't she just sit quietly and think it through, perhaps will fixing a carburetor?

Nope.

That's how (many) men operate. You ponder. You brood. You excogitate. And in only the direst of circumstances will you actually approach a buddy and lay it all out there.

But women?

Most women (not ALL, so Dear (Female) Reader, don't get huffy) need to unravel their problems out loud to decide on the best course of action. So if she's talking to you about it, she is actually in the process of problem-solving. When you start to offer solutions, it is perceived as follows:

1) You don't think she's capable of finding the solution;
2) You think she's an idiot, because OBVIOUSLY she's already thought of the first three things you said;
3) You are trying to hurry her up so you can get back to whatever dumb thing you want to do, like fix that carburator.

This may seem nutty. You may say, "Well, jeez, THAT's not what I meant at all! Why would she think that way? I'm just trying to be helpful."

So, lemme help you out: when a woman wants you to provide a solution to a problem, SHE WILL TELL YOU. She will turn to you and say, "Darling dear, I just don't know what I should do here. What do you think?"

If you do not get that very clear verbal direction, STEER CLEAR OF PROVIDING SOLUTIONS. Offer clucks of support, a tsk, a shake of the head while she describes her latest burden. But do not ask her if she has done X, Y, or Z, or when exactly she thinks she will resolve the issue at hand.

Hard to understand? Well, I won't argue that. Chacun à son goût. But I'm not asking for your comprehension. I'm just sayin' that if you don't want a conversation about your ladyfriend's problem to devolve into an argument about how you don't clean the bathroom properly*, then just take my advice. The first few times you try it, you may have to ask her, "Honey, do you want my help with this? Or do you want me just to listen?"

That kind of ham-handedeness is actually okay (at first). She may still be annoyed that you don't know already, but it helps establish the pattern.

Good luck!

*Actually happened to a friend of mine. Who is now separated from his wife. SEE? Do you see how this goes?

Gratitude #10: Flexible Work Environment

My office is incredibly family-friendly, something that I don't think gets enough praise. My schedule had to shift a little bit this week, and nobody has said boo about it. That's more the norm than not when you have kids. Someone gets sick, someone has a field trip, someone needs a dance leotard and you have to run out in the middle of the day to get one... I could go on, but that's not very interesting, now is it? Anyway, I appreciate not being made to feel like an outrageous burden because I have to work two hours of my day at home this week.

Gratitude #9: Sunday Dinners with Family

Sunday evening is reserved for hosting (or being hosted by) family. For those of you who do not live near to your dear ones, this arrangement may either horrify you or make you wistful. Me? I'm a fan. Much of my fandom is based on my family's attitudes toward these get-togethers. See, we don't do any fancy-schmancy candlelit, formally attired events. Nah, it's all shorts and flip-flops and french fries and beer. How could that be anything but a good time?

Mostly, for me, it's about making memories. Like how my toddler danced vigorously to my Dad's big band music. Definitely something I'll remember long past his babyhood.

Gratittude #8: Sleeping In

My husband and I have a sleep-in arrangement on the weekend. Saturday's my day to sleep in, Sunday is his. Having his free and full permission to stay abed 'til my internal clock wakes me, and not, say, a squalling child or a screechy alarm is one of the kindest acts bestowed upon me. And it recurs weekly. I often don't stay tucked under my covers past 9 a.m., but the thing about it being my CHOICE to get up rather than what life demands of me is immeasurably satisfying.

(Delayed from Saturday)

Gratitude #7: Blow-outs

Got my hair trimmed up today (I was starting to look a bit like Cousin It). I don't think the stylist finished asking me if I wanted a blowout before I said, "Yes, please!" I accept this offer EVERY TIME. Why, you ask? Why is it such a treat? Because I can't do it myself. Seriously, at one point, there were FOUR brushes in my hair. Four. And the stylist only has two hands, one of which is holding the hair dryer. I don't know if she consumed some kind of Peter Parker cocktail to tackle the feat that is my hair, but I came out of there looking shiny and bouncy.

Gratitude #6: New (Work) Laptop

I love it when the office upgrades electronics because I get to bask in the techie glow of a new gadget without having to shell out a thousand smackers.

Gratitude #5: Potluck-ish Dinners

I have a friend whom has been my best for twenty-five years. Holy moly, that's shocking. Most of the time I feel like I have the maturity level of a fifteen-year-old, so it's nutty that I have a decades-long relationship outside of family bonds.

Anyway, she comes over for dinner once a week. Often, we will shoot each other e-mails ahead of time, listing out whatever ingredients we have that are right on the edge of expiration, and make a dinner plan based on that. Last night's accomplishment? Chana masala and chicken tandoori. That's right. We went all ethnic AND it was delicious.

Best part? She cooked it for me. In my own house, 'cause she got there first. How awesome is that?

Gratitude #4: One-Cup Coffee Makers

For someone who loves caffeine-induced spikes of energy AND does not have a spouse who drinks coffee, one-cup coffee makers are the BEST. A fresh, awesome cup of coffee, and no mess. Okay, sure, it's easier for me to tally up the number of cups of coffee I've had at the end of a day, and be slightly frightened by that number. But the convenience supersedes all else.

Gratitude #3: Commuting

I am grateful for visiting family members who are willing to wait with my six-year-old at the bus stop so that I can get a twenty-minute jump on my morning commute, which translates to a twenty-minute jump on my punch-out time.

Gratitude #2: Babies

My sixteen-month-old reliably -- and easily -- naps. Sure, he might talk to himself for about ten minutes, but he eventually climbs into the arms of Morpheus* without histrionics. Who wouldn't be grateful for that?

*Not The Matrix character depicted by Laurence Fishburne, you goon. The god of dreams from Greek mythology. I'd be thoroughly creeped out if my toddler scurried into the lap of a futuristic man in a leather duster. And definitely not grateful for it. I mean, how would I explain that to the in-laws?

Two Months of Gratitude

I've gone four months between posts. FOUR MONTHS. Perhaps it is my fallow period? Anyway, in the wake of all the grief and worry that's overwhelmed me this past year, I'm going to try to go the other way and express gratitude. Hopefully in a way that doesn't make you gag.

Here's why: lately, loads of my pals on social networks have, almost exclusively, been venting about all things wrong with their lives, in ways big and small. 'That exam SUCKED,' or 'My kids are driving me up a wall!,' or, 'Hey, telemarketer, you're not scamming ME.' I'm not saying that these things shouldn't be expressed, because if I didn't have chance to decompress, I would probably explode. Because, seriously, that guy who cut me off on 695? TOTALLY in the wrong.

But the truth is, sustained venting actually makes you feel worse. Sure, you feel better if you turn to your spouse and say, "Christ alive, if my co-worker sends ONE more e-mail of cute and fuzzy animal pictures, I am going to lose it at the office." It's a mini-problem, you get some sympathy, and you move on.

It's the the stuff you complain about ad nauseum that makes you feel worse. Here's why: ultimately, you understand you're devoting a ton of talky time to a problem because you can't actually DO anything about the problem. Sadness follows because powerlessness sucks a nut.

SO! I have noticed the complainy trend in my own conversation topics of late, and to combat that, I have resolved to post my gratitude each day 'til my 36th birthday. This, I think, will help balance some of the wah-wah that's out there in the universe. I mean, I FEEL the gratitude, so why not share that instead of the annoying stuff?

Here's the framework: these are not going to be big picture things, like "I am grateful that I can breathe clean air," "I am grateful that I am employed," or "I am grateful that my husband loves me and is devoted to our children." All true, but doesn't that just make you want to vomit? The tide of bitterness that I'd like to combat is more about the little picture stuff. People should still seek comfort from others about the big stuff. It is 100% okay in my book for someone to express sadness that she has to put her deceased parent's estate up for auction, because. God damn, that person deserves to reap some sympathy.

Here we go:

#1: Fresh-baked rolls from the grocery store + thin sliced roast beef + horseradish sauce, AND fresh Utz potato chips. This is heaven on a lunch plate. It is astounding how a good sandwich can brighten my day.

There, see? Gratitude. And I will be serving up more tomorrow. (I was going to write, 'Unless I get hit by a car.' But then I realize that would put a damper on the gratitude. Did I tell you it is cripplingly difficult for me to express a true emotion without making a joke out of it? Yeah, I'm working on that.)

A Thousand Little Quiet Devastations

NOTE: I'm continuing to release these old posts, the ones that I wrote right after my mother's death. I'd thought about refining them, editing them, but I won't. It'd be false. I'd be gilding them with a perspective gained in these last three months, and that wouldn't be true to the feeling behind them. Don't misunderstand: the feelings that motivated the writing are still here, a little reduced by time, like a sauce that's been simmering. But those feelings still overflow this inadequate vessel unexpectedly and often. Anyway I leave the old posts incomplete, because that's how I feel these days: incomplete.

Life is a series of befores and afters. Watershed moments, some call them. In the before, you reside in ignorance or anticipation, and in the afters, oh those afters.... The afters run the gamut between joyous and devastating, and right now, my feet are firmly planted in devastated terrain.

My mother passed away on New Year's Eve, 2010, the before-iest day of the year. The after will last the rest of my life. And in this after, I'm finding that the little devastations pierce my heart most thoroughly. Maybe it's because the big ones are too much right now, and I can wrap my head around the little ones more easily. Who knows? And maybe it's because the little ones seem like they will be unending, some daily, innocent reminder of my loss. I'm compelled to document them, though, because I don't want to forget, these things that blindside me with sadness.

Chancing on a photo of a smiling her that rests on my digital camera from my daughter's birthday in November...

Finding her voter registration card from 30 years ago in her wallet, a token of our former residence, the home that served as a backdrop to all of our childhoods...

Putting together the digital slide show of her life for the funeral services, her life flashing before my eyes. And in those photos, seeing unending delight in her eyes... How had I not seen that before? What a happy woman she was? What a contented woman she was? And beautiful. How did I not realize how beautiful she was?

Realizing that my last real conversation with her, when I knew that she knew she wasn't confusing me with someone else, was about gifts she wanted to get my children for Christmas.

Watching my older sister give her permission to die, telling her that we'd be okay, and that we'd miss her, but that she didn't need to put herself through this anymore.

Shopping in the infant aisle at the pharmacy, desperate to find any tools that might help us feed her better, and settling on baby spoons and eyedroppers.

Spoon feeding her water when she could no longer sip from straws. Then moving to sponging water into her mouth when she could no longer sip from a spoon.

Hearing my father tell the hospice chaplain that she'd already received Extreme Unction.

Holding her hand when she died.

Realizing that none of the dresses from the weddings of her children would really fit properly because she'd lost so much weight in the past couple of weeks.

Seeing the blanket that I'd purchased for her for Christmas, that covered her all during her stay in hospice, draped over her recliner at my parents' home.

Going through her jewelry and not knowing if the detritus mingled among the gold -- a Lite Brite peg, a barrette, a Lego -- were casual reminders of our childhoods, or evidence that she never cleaned out that jewelry box.

My daughter, hugging the photo album of her Baptism to her chest as she slept, the night before my mother died. There were several pictures of the two of them together in that little album.

Seeing that my father has started using Mom's side of the bed as a way station for paperwork, which I interpret as his needing to fill that space with something, anything.

My daughter, hearing me sniffle, say that I shouldn't be sad because Grandmom wasn't in pain anymore and is in Heaven, something I certainly hadn't said to her (but her daycare provider had, showing me that my daughter required some comfort that I hadn't provided).

My brother's voice quavering as he read Ecclesiastes 3:2 during her funeral service.

Seeing the mausoleum space, the "filing cabinet," as Mom called it, swallow up her casket as the three burly graveyard workers pushed it to the back.

Finding the dress that Mom had requested she be buried in, after the fact, tucked away in a drawer far away from the hanging rack, where she'd told me it rested back in the Fall.

There's more. There will always be more. I pan my day-to-day life for the sad elements, surprising myself when I don't uncover them, annoyed with myself that I can't just eat Butterscotch Krimpets without analyzing if they make me upset because Mom liked them too.

This year, her absence will render all sorts of firsts and milestones bittersweet. I'm okay, all things considered. It all happened in a year. ONE YEAR. Her first brush with a health problem, one that required being seen by a doctor, was last April. She had a chest cold, was exhausted beyond anything else she experienced, and was diagnosed with pneumonia. She couldn't go to my nephew's first birthday party the first weekend in May because of it, but was recovered enough by mid-month to go to my son's Baptism. Then July, the diagnosis came, the ensuing flurry of treatments and tests and meetings, the supposed all-clear in November, and then her rapid decline and death in December.

I'm still reeling. I think I'm okay, then something stupid will punch me in the gut, like last night when I made chicken parmigiana, one of the meals in her rotation of Sunday dinner menus.

I think I'm where I'm supposed to be. My mother died. It's awful. I'm allowed to be sad, and I don't paint on a smile to fake it 'til I make it or anything like that. But the sadness hasn't trumped all else. It's not who I am. Who I am is my mother's daughter, with an outrageous work ethic, and a ferocious need to make sure things are stable for the family. Doing those things makes me feel better. I feel the grief when it surfaces, I push off feeling it 'til it's more convenient. I function. I find joy in life,I laugh with my kids, I delight in my husband and family, I cook dinner, help with homework, fold laundry, scrub bathrooms, take walks, go on dates, laugh at movies, take bubble baths, lose myself in a good novel, put photo albums together, help my sister look for houses when she moves back, go to work. I don't ask what the point of everything is, I haven't suddenly gone all churchy or gotten angry with higher powers.

But this... This has been awful. There's no way around that. One of my friends, someone who's been through this, which is really the only way I think you can understand it, wrote me the best note. She said, "Your mother deserved more time. You deserved more time with her."

So very, very true.

Pandora's Box

So, here's the thing: my mother passed away on December 31, 2010 after an awful, terrible pummeling from brain cancer, spinal cancer, and small cell lung cancer. Since then I have been stopped up like a three-year-old who eats nothing but steak. I did write a few posts in the couple of weeks after her passing, which I'll share here when I feel OK about it. These are not shiny samples sunshine and optimism. Sorry. Here's one of 'em.

When I was eight years old, I became enamored of my older sister's English text book. She was a sophomore in high school, and they were studying Greek myths. (Tangent: Hellz yeah, I was reading high school literature when I was in third grade.)

Back then, I thought it was kinda friendly of the gods to bundle Hope in with the demons, disease, and pestilence showered upon humankind when Pandora opened that box. A little ray of sunshine mixed in with the thundersnow. It was nice to think that no matter what happened, no matter how bad things got, people could always find some comfort in their hope for something better to come along.

Now?

Now I realize that Hope is kind of a tricky little bitch. Because while you are hopeful, you can indulge in denial. Once you settle up with reality, though, you can raze the earth, rebuild, move forward.

Eulogy

I wish I were a poet, because the words that I have to memorialize my mother seem lumpy, awkward, and ham-handed. Insufficient, really.

My lack of articulation is ironic, because during Mom’s illness, I learned to swim in a new vocabulary. Most of those words were unappealing, though a few of them were hopeful. All of the words, good and bad, were sprinkled throughout the updates that went out to most of you, the collection of family and friends who worried for her. So it only seemed right to offer this final missive, or “Mom Update,” to all of you.

We’ve always known Mom to have a lot of spirit, a mischievous glint in her eye, and to season her stories with more than a few embellishments. You know, just to make it more interesting. Oh, and she was loud. Let’s not forget loud. I think anyone who was able to call all of her children home at night without the aid of cell phones or bullhorns can be called loud.

All of that is to say that she was full of vitality. Or as she might have said, “Vim and vigor.” The snapshots that decorate every inch of every wall in my parents’ home are infused with evidence of this. And if pictures are worth a thousand words, then Dad has provided at least a million words about Mom. Nearly every one of those photos show her holding at least one child, laughing, making food, hugging someone, comforting someone, or picking crabs. In short, she enjoyed life.

Contrasting that woman – the one who could pull together a dinner for twenty-five in an hour without having to go shopping or asking for help – with the woman suffering the effects of cancer and the related treatments… Well, it’s night and day.

I think that we can all agree that watching Mom’s decline over the past six months has been heartbreaking. But Mom never stopped being, well, Mom. During her initial hospitalization in July, Mom made it clear that she didn’t want to be in the hospital. She didn’t want to be in a bed, being fussed over, or considered sick. She tried to make a break for it nearly every day. I think there may have been bribes.

While she was still in the hospital, though, she was worried about the rest of us. For example, even though her brain was swollen and peppered with tumors, she wanted to make sure we were eating. So she gave me a detailed order for what to pick up for everyone. Another time, she handed over her grandmother’s ring to Dad to have the stones set for her two most recent grandbabies. She’d realized she hadn’t included them yet and didn’t want them to be left out.

This continued to be true after she returned home and regained her clearheadedness. The last real conversation I had with Mom was at the tail end of a Sunday visit. It was December 12th, just before she went to the hospital this last time. My husband had packed up the car and the kids, and I was on my way out the door. Mom stopped me and said, “I need to know what to get all the kids for Christmas.” We spoke about it briefly, and I offered to do the shopping for her. We now know that the cancer had bloomed again, and despite that, she was focused on her grand kids.

This past half-year shouldn’t eclipse Mom’s previous sixty-seven years. She wouldn’t want us to remember her with a walker, or breathing heavily, or without hair. She’d prefer us to think of her singing the ‘Foot Foot Song’ or playing catch in the backyard. But I share the stories from her illness with you because, ultimately, I think who we are when the chips are down is probably who we are at our core. And with Mom, despite the pain, the bone-crushing fatigue, and the body not working the way she wanted it to, she stayed true to the caring, gracious, devoted, funny woman that she was.

I am grateful for the woman that she was, and am honored and privileged to have been her daughter. My brothers and sisters and I have been commended on how dutiful we’ve been during all of this. But none of what we’ve done was performed out of a sense of duty. It was out of love for both of our parents. Returning the love and the help that they have given us. Back in May of this year, before all of this began, I’d asked Mom to make a ham for my youngest son’s Baptism. Who does that? A side dish or a dessert, sure, but who asks someone to bring the main course? But Mom agreed without skipping a beat. I thanked her, perhaps too effusively. She laid her hand on my arm and said, with a smile, “It’s my pleasure.”

So, I wanted to say in return, it was our pleasure, Mom. Our pleasure.

Beaver Falls Can Suck It

Most of the time I love "It's a Wonderful Life." I do. It's an uplifting tale of the human spirit, n'est-ce pas? Humankind can always do with a little uplift. Well, unless you're Falcon Heene. However, in my darker, more skeptical moments, I question the way it goes about delivering its core message.

Frankly, I want the residents of Beaver Falls to say to George Bailey, "You know what, buddy? We all ask so much of you. You've sacrificed so much for us -- your hearing in one ear, the opportunity to see the world, follow your bliss, do big things. You deserve a little break. We'll watch the kids and manage the Building & Loan while you and your wife skedaddle to Europe to do a little site-seeing, eat a good meal or two. Oh, and we absolutely won't lose $8,000 when we are distracted for 42 seconds. Have a good time."

But NO. Instead, they're all, "Hey, George, I need you to rescue me. AGAIN. 'Cause man, I would just poke my own eyes out by accident if you weren't on the scene. Oh, by the way? There's a line out the door of other people who need your help too. It'll cost you some personal comfort, time, money, and sanity. The consolation, though, is that you're engendering all sorts of good will that won't actually manifest in anyone helping YOU until you try to commit suicide. So, are we cool with that plan?"

Sheesh. What kind of town does he live in, anyway?

Tangent: something I I find troubling about the movie in my dark AND light moments: in the alternate universe, poor, poor Mary is left to a gruesome fate without her soul mate: she is a spinster librarian. WHO WEARS GLASSES. The HORROR!

I Think This Is Okay, Right?

My daughter is enamored of pop music. Now, I loves me some pop music. I'm not one of those hipsters who chillaxes on the playground blaring Kings of Leon from an iPad to craft a childhood soundtrack for my kids. They're going to like stuff that I can't stand, I know. But she's four, and I really didn't want to hear about how before she leaves she brushes her teeth with a bottle of Jack. So, I decided to expose her to pop that isn't part of today's tween machine.

I will take a moment to acknowledge that I am putting old skool pop (i.e., '80's pop) on a bit of a pedestal. My head knows that it is not any better, critically, than today's stuff. But my heart? My heart defies you to compare, say, Katy Perry to Cyndi Lauper.

Which brings me to the point of this blog post.

My husband's car has a many-CD changer, and he grabbed some discs from my collection (yes, I still have PHYSICAL music, 'cause I'm vintage like that). I suggested Cyndi Lauper. I mean, I studied Cyndi Lauper in a Cultural Studies class ("Oh mama dear we're not the fortunate ones" being a subtle reference to women's rights.). That means Cyndi Lauper SHOULD be heard, right?

Yeah, I forgot about "She Bop." It's an ode to masturbation. And my daughter loves it. LOVES IT. Knows all the words. Still, I think it's better to sing along with this than getting footless drunk and waking up hung over in strange places, right?

Things I Didn't Need, Necessarily

Today my mother told me what she wants to be buried in. So, that's awesome.

And the ensemble of her choosing? The gown she wore to my sister's wedding.

Have You Ever Heard of Plato? Aristotle? Socrates? Morons.

Have you ever really noodled over a concept, a philosophy, a theory, and upon the crystallization of an idea, realized you are a huge dummy because your ideas are not at all new or unique, and in fact have likely been featured in fortune cookies? I have!

Let me explain.

In the continuing aftermath of my mother's cancers, I have pondered. Oh, how deeply I have pondered Very Important Shit. (I stole that from Zadie Smith. See? Me and the originality, we are not as one.) The end result of all of this pondering? EXACTLY the things I have been taught since I was two. I guess I'm a slow learner. Nah, it's just that I didn't have the life experience to understand these truisms and take them to heart. Which (a) shows you that experience is the best teacher, and (b) well, that experience is the best teacher. I guess I'm just trying to emphasize that whole experience thing.

Since I know you are wildly curious, here's the V.I.S. that I have learned during my mother's pas de deux with Small Cell Lung Cancer that has metastasized in the brain:

1. Don't be a douche. See? I told you these were not going to earn an A+ for originality. But the sentiment stands. Just don't be a douche in life. I don't think I need to enumerate the whys and wherefores of this one. Christ put it a little differently, of course, but I think most would appreciate my 21st-century-ization of the Golden Rule.
2. Don't live in isolation. There's strength in them thar numbers. Sounds corny, I know. But humans are social beings, and oh my LORD, does Mom perk up when she has visitors. But if you don't know anyone well enough that they'll come visit you in the hospital or in your convalescence, well, you won't exactly have a network of support, will ya? (For a clear illustration of how it's important for people to have friends, see the 1995 cinematic meh-sterpiece, The Net.).
3. Be close to those you love. Physically close, I mean. If circumstances prevent you from living close by, have a lifestyle that affords you the ability to drop everything and be with them. I would have lost my ever-loving mind if I couldn't be with my parents through this. Just ask my sister who lives in England. Phone calls are great, but can't ever, ever replace the realities of being there when your mother needs someone to help her go to the bathroom, but her mind is so far gone she doesn't know where she is, and the only faces she recognizes are those of her husband and children. If you have kids, you have probably felt this when you take them to the doctor for shots or something. You know that they have no idea what's going on, but your presence is a comfort to them. Now, imagine handing that unpleasant task off to someone else. Your kid has no idea what's going on, AND he has no one to turn to for reassurance and hugs.
4. Let people in. I'm still working this one through... Obviously this idea relates strongly to the whole not living-in-isolation thing. Whereas that one was just about enjoying some one's company, though, this one is about accepting help. I'll be the first to admit that I struggle with this because I am fiercely independent. Asking for or accepting help is an indicator that I can't handle my bidness, right? I mean, I get frustrated when IKEA recommends a "team lift" for certain packages. HOW DARE THEY? The truth is, though, there's grace in accepting help from someone. People like to feel needed. I'm not just talking about someone helping by doing grunt work like laundry or scrubbing toilets, though that's appreciated. It's also about inviting people over because you need their company, to confide in them.

That's all that I really have for now. This all sounds really selfish, I know. Like the only reason to be nice to people is that you'll need something from them. The reason that you should be nice to people is that, given the choice, wouldn't you rather live in a world where people are kind to each other? But an awesome side effect of all of that kindness is that people will be willing to help you when you are in your time of need. No matter what, you WILL have a time of need. I'm not Mistress Doom and Gloom here, but that's something you can bank on. Even if you've buttoned up your life circumstances pretty neatly and are healthy, and moneyed, and have 5-year-plans, life STILL has a way of kicking you between the eyes once in awhile.

I guess you can tell that all of this...well, it's been too much for a white girl to handle. My cup runneth over with awfulness. And if people hadn't come out of the woodwork asking what they could do, how they could help, I don't know what I would have done. I had to accept the help, and I'm all the better for it. The help comes in various shapes and sizes... Calling my parents to check in on them...  Taking dinners over to them so that they don't have to cook... Listening to me babble on about it so that I don't have to pay a therapist (yet)...

I don't mean to imply that I have sole ownership of my mother's care. Not at all; not even close.  Please, please don't perceive that.  My six siblings and their spouses have all been contorting their schedules to help my parents. No one of us individually could do it; it takes all of us, really, and I'm so grateful not to be going through this alone.  That's so important, especially since we are all grieving and enduring this prolonged panic.

Writer's (Un)Block

I've been writing a lot lately. Pages upon pages, really. The sporadic posting here is no evidence of that, of course. Why? Because the writing all centers around either (a) information about my mother's health, or (b) software system requirements for work. Both of which are written in the same (fairly) dispassionate style...

...Mom's due for her next round of chemo, and depending on blood cell counts, will start her third just after her 67th birthday...

...The system shall provide counts of students' achievement as relates to the school's adequate yearly progress goals, broken out by grading period...

There's no parallel in these topics, so I won't try to fit a thematic square peg into a round hole. I just... I'm project managing my mother's health care, and it skeeves me out.

For the better part of my working life I've been assigned to tasks/problems/projects because I'm willing to ferret out solutions. Most of the time, when you tell people that you manage projects, there's no archetype that they can wrap their heads around. Teacher? Sure. Doctor? Absolutely. Police officer? No problem. Everyone knows people like that in their own lives, so they understand what you do and the kind of person you must be in signing up to do that kind of work. But project manager? If anything, that title calls to mind an ineffectual weenie who doesn't actually produce anything but anxiety among the people who actually get the work done.

It's been a secret desire of mine to have a job that makes sense to other people, and on a related note, a skill set that I can employ in service of others. It's the Jesuits' influence, I s'pose.

It might sound stupid, but I'm jealous of the brother who's a handy-man and can re-wire a house and get it up to code, of the brother who's a mechanic and can get your rust bucket fixed no matter what ails it, of the other two brothers who can rip your computer apart and put it back together so that it runs better than ever. Me? I'm handy with a power tool, but am wise enough to recognize that professionals should be called in for the really heavy lifting. Otherwise, I am just one of those goobers who tells herself that her shiny personality and wit will help people through tough times.

Right now? I'd rather be an oncologist than Oscar Wilde.

A Moment of Levity

Should I let my friend know that I think maybe her Facebook status could use some editing? I hope it needs some editing. Otherwise, how can I stay friends with someone who supports breast cancer?

[Name Removed to Protect the Innocent] Please help! I will be walking 60 miles in the Komen 3 day to support breast cancer. So far I have raised over $800, but I still need over $1,000 to reach my goal. No donation is too small! To donate there is a link on my facebook page or go to www.the3day.org, click donate, search for a participant, and then type in my name. Thanks so much!

If You Ask Me How I Am, I Will Cry

Sounds dramatic, I know. But it's true. Right now, if you talk to me about the weather, or parenting, or traffic, I will happily chat along with you. I may even appear to be carefree. But the sadness, the worry, the grief is lurking just under the surface. Scratch at it a little with an innocent question like, "How are you?" or with a expression of concern for me, and the tears will well up like Jed Clampett's crude.

So, if you care about me, please be rude to me so that I don't have to embarass myself with quavery voice.

Live from Cancer-ville

Mom's diagnosis is the same. I appreciate that the doctors were so blunt with the worst-case-scenario from the outset of all of this. Stage IV lung cancer that has metastasized in the brain. Some doctor in the future will ask me about my family medical history for my medical record, and this will be my answer for how my mother died. That is awful to contemplate, so I don't. Not really.

She's started chemotherapy, though I'm not entirely sure that she really wanted it. I think Mom always knew that her endgame would go this way, and to prepare, she told each of her seven children -- in separate, one-on-one conversations -- that if she were ever diagnosed with a terminal illness, she wouldn't fight it with aggressive treatments. She said she'd just give into it and live the rest of her days as comfortably as possible.

Yet in our family meeting she said, "Let's do it," when asked if she wanted to undergo a round of chemotherapy. A family meeting, for the uninitiated, is an awful, medical all-cards-on-the-table meeting wherein the doctors inform loved ones, in the presence of the person who is ill, what the treatment options and recommendations are. I call it awful because it has all the hallmarks of a business meeting -- agenda, packets of information, next steps -- but the meeting is about your mother's life. So you hear numbers, percentages and time frames and things like that, but it's not about whether your company is in the black. It's about whether your Mom is going to make it to her next birthday.

But you can have an idea of how you want to handle these things and change your mind about it, right? When you're prepping to have a baby they tell you that you shouldn't firmly decide whether or not to have an epidural because you can't really know for sure how you'll feel when you're in the thick of labor. So I have to think this is true when battling cancer.

I suppose I'm mixed up about this because the lesions in Mom's brain are causing disorientation, forgetfulness, and things like that. So, for lack of a better way to put it, I don't know if Mom's agreement to undergo chemotherapy is HER decision, or the lesions'. I don't know that someone should be included on her medical decisions when she sometimes thinks it's 2003 and she's in the hospital for a heart attack.

Guess that's all water under the bridge, though, because she's completed her first round of chemotherapy.

Since she's done with that, she was discharged from the hospital. They were recommending that she go to an inpatient physical therapy rehab center. The Army of Brain Lesions have caused weakness and a lack of coordination, which caused her to fall at the house in the middle of the night last Monday, which in resulted in a banged-up knee that swelled to the size of a volleyball. All of this adds up to need to learn how to work the body she's got right now. But, Mom was desperate to come home, and Dad is desperate to do right by her and follow her wishes as best he can, so they selected an alternate option that the hospital outlined: discharge Mom to home care, and send a nurse and a physical therapist to her home three times per week, for an hour at a time.

This has my siblings and me very, very worried. My father is not capable of doing this on his own, and we of course want to help, but I don't know if we have the facility for this kind of thing. He has a decent chunk of change saved up, but I'm not sure if he can afford long-term 24/7 care, which, frankly, is the only thing that would ease my mind and would also satisfy my mother's desire to be home.

Today, we have another family meeting among the kids to divvy up responsibilities -- helping my father, getting Mom to-and-from appointments, making sure the prescriptions get filled, and things like that. I feel incredibly, outrageously lucky to have family -- my brothers, their wives, my sisters, my brother-in-law -- who can help with this kind of thing.  They are all such wonderful people, all with the best hearts.I appreciate this beyond all measure, really. 

I also feel very lucky to be geographically close to my mother. One of my sisters lives abroad, and it's crushing her soul not to be able to be here to see Mom, help her, talk to her. I recognize that our situation is better than most in terms of time, and money, and support. Cold comfort. It all still sucks though. A lot.

Raw

If you came here looking for WWE information, hie the here.

Otherwise, the title describes how I'm feeling right now. My mother is sick. Like really, really sick. And it's all shocking, but not really. Maybe this is how Cassandra felt when things she foresaw came true?

Let me explain.

In late April, my Mom was diagnosed with pneumonia. Not the normal time of year for that sort of thing, but it happens. She took antibiotics, she got better, done. In the second week of June, she and my father flew to England to visit my sister. The first week of the visit, she was her normal self. But the second week of the visit, she started slowing down, had shortness of breath, and basically took to her bed. She was fairly certain that it was pneumonia again, but kept pooh-poohing my sister's request that she go see a doctor. On the third day -- this would have been June 28, I think -- of my mother being completely wiped out, my sister and brother-in-law basically forced her to go to the doctor in England. He clinically diagnosed her with pneumonia, but urged her to have a chest x-ray when she returned to the States.

Why?

Because my mother is a smoker. For fifty years, she's been a smoker. Usually a pack a day. I've always been grossed out by the habit. Have you ever been around and ashtray while you're trying to enjoy Saturday morning cartoons? I have. And when I flounced onto Mom's comfy recliner, it would knock into the end table on which the ashtray sat, and specks of blue ash would mushroom up and out of the ashtray. Yuck.

So, this doctor was telling her that it could be more than pneumonia. Red flag. No, CRIMSON flag. VERMILION flag.

They flew home on June 30. I can only imagine what a nightmare that was for her. Unable to breathe properly, weak, and cramped into a coach seat on a transatlantic flight. My older brother picked them up from the airport and got them home.  He called me to reassure me that he'd gotten them, but I could hear her saying things like, "What are you doing in New York?" in the background.  That must have been so awful for him.

The next day, Mom was seen by her general practitioner, who took a chest x-ray. But, the results wouldn't be back until after the holiday weekend. They went home with fresh prescriptions, and Mom retired to the bed again. She was up and about a bit throughout the weekend, paying bills, eating a little here and there. So it seemed like she was on the mend, little by little.

Then she fell.

In the middle of the night on Monday night, she took a spill. My father found her in the bathroom and tried to help her up as best he could. He's seventy-nine and has a history of back problems, so it was not an easy endeavour. For most of Tuesday, she was in bed, and very disoriented. My husband and I had already decided to visit since it was on the way home after our holiday weekend visiting his parents. Luckily, we'd decided to leave our three children with my in-laws for an extended visit. Why luckily?

Because kids can get scared when you have paramedics tromping through the house.

We called an ambulance. As soon as I saw my mother, I knew she had to go to the hospital. One of my older brothers, got there a few minutes after us and agreed. Thank God he was there. My Dad didn't know what to do, and I would have only been playacting if I expressed any idea of what to do. 


Mom couldn't move. She'd wrenched her knee so badly, she couldn't support her own weight and was pretty disoriented. We helped her into a wheelchair that was leftover from my grandparents' convalescence and rolled her into the family room. The paramedics arrived very quickly and performed an exam of her. It was pretty clear that they were thinking she'd had a stroke. So was I, frankly.

I rode with Mom in the ambulance, but I had to ride in the front seat. It was a really long ride. We caught EVERY red light on the way, and the paramedic who was driving didn't turn on the siren. She wasn't an EMERGENCY emergency, I guess. He was a nice enough guy, and tried to make conversation. When I said we'd just gotten back from Cleveland, he decided I must be from Cleveland. This meant that for the ten minutes it took to get to the hospital, he would periodically ask me how I liked living in Cleveland, and whether I liked the Ravens. After the second or third correction, I just went with it and waxed poetically about the weather in Cleveland as compared to the muggy soup that is Baltimore's atmosphere.

Did I mention that it was like 105 degrees that day?

Once at the E.R., Mom's gurney was parked near the automatic doors. There was no room at the inn, which I found frustrating. I mean, if the hospital says it's receiving ER patients, shouldn't it, you know, RECEIVE them? But I was trying to be patient. Mom, though, kept fidgeting, pulling at her I.D. bracelet, wanting to get up. The automatic doors kept opening and closing, opening and closing. Elderly people in gurneys were strewn about the hallways, and it was so sad to see that they had no one with them. That firmed up my resolve that I wouldn't leave my mother's side. There was a young woman near us who was being questioned by a paramedic. He kept telling her that she was slurring her words, that they found a lot of mostly empty pill bottles, so they can only conclude that she had overdosed on something.

I couldn't help thinking that I SURE there's a HIPAA violation in there somewhere.

At one point my Mom said she had to go to the bathroom. She's had seven children, so the muscles Down There aren't super strong. Honestly, she knows where every public or store bathroom is within a five mile radius of her home. But she couldn't do it on her own, so I and a paramedic had to help her go. I literally carried my mother. It was not dissimilar to my daughter's potty-training routine, so thank goodness I had that under my belt.

I stayed with her until we had a room -- or rather an area -- in the E.R. Dad came back at that point. Any time there was an update, I'd text it to my brother and husband in the waiting room, and they would relay the information to our other family members. By that time, another of my brothers, we'll call him, had joined them in the waiting room. Doctors would periodically visit to examine her. We answered the same questions many, many times. My Dad offered too much information. Not inappropriate information. Just unnecessary. Like how he thinks that he might have caused some of the damage with Mom's knee because he has a history of sacroiliac problems, so he doesn't think he helped her up from the bathroom floor very well. And the bathroom, by the way, is a very small space. He was so, so overwhelmed.

Based on what they were asking, it seemed like they too thought Mom had a stroke. They recommended another chest x-ray, a head CT, and possibly a lumbar puncture. These things would tell us about pneumonia, stroke or concussion, and maybe meningitis. Dad and I awkwardly trying to pass the time while I furiously texted information to my brothers and husband.

Imagine my surprise when a beautiful curly-haired doctor came back and told us that based on what they saw with the chest x-ray and the head CT, that they believed Mom had lung cancer that had metastisized in the brain. This was four hours into our stay at the E.R.

Mom seemed to understand what was said. But I wasn't sure, because she wasn't wailing or gnashing her teeth, you know? Then another doctor came back to talk to her a bit more, and he asked if she understood what was going on. She looked at him and tearfully said, "I'm dying." The doctor seemed to slip out of Medical Man mode for a moment and said, "And I'm very sorry about that." Then he explained that she would be admitted, and that they'd need to do further scans and testing the next day. But that the average life expectancy is about five months.

Once they had an idea of what was going on, they could admit her. After she was nestled into her room, we all went home. I wanted to stay because I knew that she would be confused and lonely, but they said it wasn't allowed in her unit, the Intermediary Care Unit, which is a step down from Intensive Care.

There was weeping. All of the weeping I wanted to do at various points in the previous five hours came out at that point. I was trying to be strong for my Dad and my mother, but when it was just my husband and me... Well, he knows that I'm about as tough as dandelion that's gone to seed. So I could just let go.

I haven't cried like that for a long, long time.

The next day was, if possible, harder than the previous day. My mother had gone from the sharp tack that maintains the bills, the house, the everything, to someone who didn't know she was in the hospital, or why, and only wanted to go home. There were some hallucinations, as well. They did another CT to see if the cancer has spread anyhwere else, and to help guide them during the biopsy. Again, I spent the better part of the visiting hours in her shared room with my Dad.

Shared rooms, by the way? They stink.

Mom's roomate was hard of hearing, and during that second day, the first in the IMC, this woman's visitors would need to shout to be heard. Since my mother was easily distracted and suffering swollen brain dementia, she thought they were talking to her. And my mother is nothing if not social, so she'd talk back. She was making me laugh, because she'd kind of roll her eyes as if to say, "Jeez, these people clearly do NOT know up from down since they are talking to me like they know me."

We didn't get the results of the CT scan until yesterday, July 8. They said that based on what they saw, they weren't going to do just a biopsy, but something called a bronchoscopy. This will be done today, hopefully. They changed what they thought needed to be done because the mass on her lung is apparently really close to her airway, which has in turn partially collapsed the lung. This procedure will help clear the airway and deal with those problems, and at the same time they should be able to get a tissue sample to biopsy. So, better to do two procedures at once than to put her through two separate procedures. They may still have to do a regular thoracic biopsy if this doesn't produce results.

Ugh. Words that are now a part of my every day vernacular are ugly, lumpy, greco-latin words.

Visiting hours start in a couple of hours, so I'll head over then. I don't know what today will bring. Yesterday her cancer specialist doc told us that she MIGHT be able to be discharged this weekend and start radiation therapy for her brain lesions next week. That brings up a whole host of other realities that need to be dealt with, like how best to get her to and from and to make their house as comfy as possible for her.

And me? Well, I'm pretty crushed. I can't wrap my head around the fact that I need to start doing what I can to, for lack of a better way to express it, wrap up this mother-daughter relationship. I thought I'd have more time. That sounds stupid, doesn't it? I've already gotten more time with my mother than she had with hers. She's seen me grow into an adult, and succeed, and settle into a beautiful home and marry a wonderful man and have gorgeous, friendly children. And then I dissolve because my younger two probably won't remember her and how much she loved them, how she calls after every pediatrician appointment to find out how it went. And that I can't call her to ask if she'll watch them because daycare is closed, or if she could give me the recipe for her potato salad.

Oh, God, potato salad is going to make me cry for the rest of my life.

So that's where I am right now. We don't know everything about this THING that is eating her from the inside out, this thing that she opened the door to (most likely) because of a habit that was cool and harmless when she came of age. But based on educated guesses and likelihoods and averages, I'll be lucky beyond all measure if she can see my baby turn one in January.

It HURTS Me to Stay Out of This

I do not become embroiled in political rants if I can help it. It becomes really difficult to maintain my veneer of politeness in the face of political disagreement. HOWEVER, I do enjoy being snarky, and there is a ridiculously ripe opportunity that I have to forego for the sake of familial harmony...

One of my cousins' Facebook status is, "I'm A BIRTHER and I'm proud of it!!! mmmmm be a birther, you be a birther, wouldn't you want to be a birther too? (sung to the tune of Dr. Pepper)."

Someone asked Coz to clarify what a 'birther' is and he explained that it's someone who doesn't believe that Barack Obama should be president because he is not a legitimate American citizen. For some reason, Coz thinks that having a non-American father matters (it doesn't if you were born in the U.S.) and that Obama was born in Kenya (he wasn't). He then goes on and on and ON about Obama issuing an executive order to block the release of any information about him (he actually did the opposite). His evidence? Search after search after search for Obama documents relating to his birth and residency return nothing. But, if Coz believes these things to be true, of COURSE he would rant about it. I mean, who wouldn't?

Here's what is making my eye twitch: my cousin keeps spelling the President's first name, "Barak." Which is wrong. So I REALLY want to reply to his comments and tell him that maybe Coz can't find any info about the president because he's spelling his name wrong.

But I fear that would cause a hairy eyeball at my son's forthcoming Baptism, so I'll just leave it be.

A Sound Investment Plan

I have decided to go all Gordon Gekko and dive into the stock market. Okay, wade into the stock market. Slowly. Like, an inch at a time until I get acclimated even though the pool water is like eighty degrees.

Of course, we've been investing for some time now in Reponsible Things like retirement accounts and college savings plans. But I actually wanted to select specific stocks instead of the 2040 Retirement Fund. Ugh. 2040. Really? I've got another thirty years of office work ahead of me? (I know, I know, I shouldn't carp about being gainfully employed in This Economy*. But seriously, THIRTY years?)

Thing is, those funds have pretty reliable returns on investment, but I don't get to choose the companies involved. So what, right? Well, me, I'm kind of bossy, and I want to hand pick the stocks myself. But I am all sorts of lazy about research, so if I was all, "I hear Toyota makes a dandy automobile!" I'd have lost my shirt.

BUT, I have figured out a way to feel OK if whatever miniscule amount I invest disappears into the ether! The stocks I will choose will totally be a reflection of my family's brand and product loyalties. Here's what I find hilarious about this autobiographical investing: if I lose all of my moolah, that kind of means that we suck. Or at least the marketplace thinks we do.

I am determined not to suck.

Here are my rules:
1) I will not invest more than $50 per month.
2) I will only buy stock in a company if we have personal, good, experience with their products.
3) If it's between me and Bud Fox, I'm totally sending him to the chokey.

I started this last month. I bought a share of Netflix. Thus far in April, I've purchased some ING and SiriusXM. And guess what? THE MARKETPLACE INDICATES THAT I DO NOT SUCK! That's right. I'm up twenty bucks. Boo-yah! I am a financial GENIUS!

I will keep you posted on my inevitable ascension to Warren Buffet-land.

*Everywhere you turn people are talking about THIS ECONOMY, so I think it needs to be capitalized. Many people are really and truly impacted by the downturn in the economy, but I think there are an awful lot of people who are using it as a catchall reason for any financial problems they might have. Like buying things you cannot afford. Honestly, I think this is the only financial education that anyone needs.

Things and Stuff

I have been thinking about stuff lately. I'm not using "stuff" as a catch-all term for life, the universe, and everything. Nah, I mean real and actual STUFF.

Why all this mental capital spent on such a blah topic?

Well, we moved at the end of last summer and went through The Great Divestiture. Except, not really. Because I was also quite pregnant at the time. In my non-pregnant state, I am able, with stunning speed, to make decisions about stuff and whether to keep it, toss it, store it, donate it, or sell it. In my pregnant state, I am able to sleep on a couch. So, during the move, it was up to my husband to make these evaluations. He chose not to do so. What he chose to do instead was to pack random crap together. I guess it isn't totally random because I know what he did. He packed stuff that was geographically close in large boxes labeled "Stuff: Basement." This results in things like Christmas decorations getting packed up with detergent. Why? BECAUSE THEY WERE NEXT TO EACH OTHER IN THE BASEMENT.

I have completely given up on finding that collection of IKEA bolts for the love seat I'm trying to put back together. I'm sure I will find them in a Connect Four game box five years hence.

Anyway, I'm thinking about this because, just as I've gotten most of our stuff unpacked and deposited in what I've deemed the correct nooks and crannies around our house, I have to begin the Great Repack. This happens every time there is a period-of-life shift.

Examples? My maternity clothes, which I've not really worn for the past couple of weeks, need to get out of my closet. They need to make room for the work clothes that I'm wearing since maternity leave is dunzo. And Boy the Second? Well, he's a solid size 3-6 months, so I need to boot those too-small baby clothes out of the dresser. This is also known as The Most Hated Chore of All Time. I don't know why, but this particular activity really pings my hoarder instinct and I get vertigo when I'm trying to figure out if he really can't wear that adorable monkey outfit anymore.

But I will overcome it even though I'm not quite back to my usual self (i.e., I'm still recovering from the pregnancy brain shrinkage). I mean, after those closets get cleared out, I need to decide what to do with those photos and pieces of art that I have deemed unworthy for my new home's walls.
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The fun never stops around here! Jealous?

There's more that I have to say about this, but I have to go because the tower of boxes that I've saved for packing all these things is about to fall over on me....aaarghhh...

Dear MDOT,

Please contribute a chunk of your operating budget to Maryland public schools so that they can teach everyone to read faster. Why? Because traffic slows to a freakin' crawl every time you post something on your highway signs.

Listen, I totally understand that you want to keep the general public apprised of the happenings on the Old Line State's highways and byways. But could we maybe restrict it to real alerts? Like accidents and road closures? Could we maybe leave off the time estimates from point A to point B? 'Cause here's my time estimate: every one of these signs adds five minutes to my commute when you put anything at all on there. Seriously, the message could be "Have a Nice Day!" And suddenly people hunker over their steering wheels, panicking that they are going to miss some vital information, like Martians are attacking or the JFK Tunnel is shut down. In my sixteen years of driving, something like that has only happened three times. Not the Martians bit. The closed-tunnel-magnitude calamity.

I feel a little better now.

Sincerely,

Me