Breathe

The moment we are born, the first epic thing we do is gasp that first breath of air. The importance of that few seconds of waiting between leaving the womb and getting that breath is precious. Once the doctor and nurse check us over and monitor the breathing, we are cleared to live life to the fullest of each breath. And so we go about life-- most times not really considering how the next breath will come-- but assuming it will come and just do its thing. All the cliche's (which I detest most of them on the basis of non-originality)... "You can breath easy now" or "It's as easy as breathing" or "a breath of fresh air" or "wasting one's breath" and the plethora of breathing clauses (look up a list, it's ginormous) really make breathing out to be blasé. It's what we do right along with eating and sleeping and the heart beating. Breathing just is.

Life has a way of reminding us that breathing really isn't "just is". My relationship with breathing obviously started the day I was born, but it's only been in the last five years that I've spent time thinking about the act of breathing. Bear with me, you know my brain doesn't rest often... because I have spent hours thinking about the inhale and the exhale of life. 2015, as most of my friends know, was a truly horrific year. The first six months of the year marked six months of absolute stress and trauma. January came in with us preparing to move from Pennsylvania to Arkansas and the loss of our family dog, Chaucer. February saw us in Arkansas with ten days to find a house and then the return home to PA to find the interior at 25 degrees and frozen solid-- toilet water included and shards of metal, from the blown up radiators, frozen to the surfaces of the floors and cabinetry. March saw us living in a hotel, prepping to move to Arkansas, insurance agents and claims, workers in and out of the still frozen house, and a move to Arkansas with only what we could fit in our vehicles. April brought me another trip back to PA to get ready to move and the actual move, which garnered a return trip. That's 1,200 miles one way. I did that five times in the first four months of the year. May brought that "breath of fresh air" but I was already geared to expect the worst of 2015. June came around, vandals broke into our PA house. 1,200 miles on way to repaint the walls and clean the mess. 1,200 miles, and one flat tire in Somewhere, Indiana. The work on the house for the frozen pipes wasn't complete until August. At this point, we were strapped for cash in a hardcore way. Insurance didn't cover all of the $25, 000 worth of damage and we now had two mortgages. We tried for five years to sell that house. It would take another two years before we were rid of it. 

It was now the end of 2015. I have seen a couple of pictures of myself from that fall and winter. I look aged in a way that only stress can do. It's not a good look. My eyes speak volumes, and then again just look hollow. I was struggling with what life chunked at me-- there was no handling of the matter, it was straight up dung bombs-- and trying to find where I fit in to my new life. Thus began my thoughts about breathing. I wasn't sleeping much anymore. My favorite thing to say at the time was "There's no waiting for the next shoe to drop-- it will." 2015 was a nightmare, literally. So I would lay in bed at night and listen to myself breath. The anxiety of it all sat on my chest. There was no getting out from under it. Wake up. It's there. Lay down to sleep. It's there. But at night, there is no one and no activity to put off the thinking. Breathe in. Breathe out. A simple process. And the weight is so heavy. Hold the breath. It doesn't hurt. The emotions of loss of our beloved pet, to the loss of my church family and friends in PA (a desperate homesickness for the support of those who KNEW me and my history with them), to the trauma of all the things thrown at us sat there on my chest. Breathe in. Breathe out. The simplicity of that blessing from our Creator, the act of breathing took effort. Those nights were me, God, and breathing. It took a good couple of years to breathe my way through what was 2015. 

The years have gone by with easier breathing. Things have slowed down. It took a long time to trust life again... that there wasn't something around the corner that was going to jump out at me. Talk about PTSD. Last September was my 39th birthday. Not gonna lie, that kind of bothered me a bit. I've been breathing for 39 years, but that 40th was staring at me from a year away. I pondered the type of year 2020 would be leading up to the Big Day. As with every other living human being on the planet, this is not the 2020 I envisioned. It's somewhat reminiscent at times of 2015. 2020 and I certainly didn't start out on the right foot. The youngest kid got strep the first week of January. By January 8th, I was hit with fever (the likes of which my body only experienced when I had chicken pox as a kid-- 103.5 in an adult ain't right), body aches, headache, sore throat, and chest pain. Now I don't know if what I had was coronavirus. The first weekend in January I was at singing event where people all over the country had come together. It was beautiful, but also within the realms of possibility of getting the sick from someone there. I was flu negative. I've had dozens of people message me "Hey, do you think..." I'll never have a definitive answer to that. My experience does mirror just as many stories as I've seen in recent months. I did an antibody test recently and it came back negative, with a bunch of disclaimers saying the test wasn't really a good one and I should try something else. Also in recent weeks, they say the antibodies don't stay around for very long. It's been six months. So there's that. 

What I can tell you is that I had a lung event. An overall inability to breathe due to build of liquids (of some viscosity) that made breathing exceptionally difficult. Pneumonia stemming from the flu. Breathe in-- well, that's difficult... keep it shallow. *crackle crackle* Breathe out-- well, that was painful. *crackle crackle* Hold the breath-- no pain. *crackle crackle* Apparently your lungs aren't supposed to sound like Rice Krispies. But I was not in my right mind. For three days my days looked like this: sleep for four hours, alarms goes off, take temperature (never found it under 102),pop meds, strip out of sweat soaked clothes, stand under luke warm shower, reset alarm, go back to sleep. I was texting some friends who were checking in on me and my niece. I have no recollection of sending her a video of my the sounds my chest was making. All of them said "Go to the doctor now and if not that, go to the ER."

I spent a week in the hospital. I have very few memories of that time (and look forward to next year's TimeHop to show me what I posted in the midst of my oxygen deprived moments). But that breathing relationship was a hardship. There is no understanding of not being able to breathe until you literally can't. It's very difficult to hold off the panic. I'm a chill person. The lack of oxygen and the depth to breathe stretched that chillness thin. There was no leaving the hospital until I could expand my lungs well enough to breath without stressing them out. I have a cute little souvenir from the hospital that I was sent home with to continue my breathing exercises. It's not just being able to suck some air in and then release, you have to exercise the capacity to do so.

Two days after I got home, my then thirteen year old, having the same symptoms and a negative flu test (all while I was still in the hospital) walked into the kitchen, her face completely gray. That's not right. To the doctor and then to the hospital she went. She just didn't get the same fancy ambulance ride I got. I'm at home, still puffing away on my little breath exerciser thingy, and she's in the hospital trying to breath. It's a devastating moment to be sitting at home with weak lungs where walking from the bedroom to the kitchen is a breathless feat, and have your girl in the hospital also struggling. Breathing is all you think about. Breathe in. Breathe out. And praying that she will continue to breathe in and breathe out. She spent longer in the hospital than I did. Breathing. Struggling to breathe.

There's no quick bounce back from something like this. By the end of February I was still struggling, but finally felt like this was going to be okay. Let's get back to this normal living business. The world laughed. Mightily. Now there are people around the world that are struggling to breathe. And many who took that last breath. One of those clauses "to the last breath." There is an ultimate finality to that last breath. That simple thing looks you right in the face. You want it desperately. I can't think of a worse way to leave this world, honestly. I'd prefer something swift and done. But when all you have is a hospital bed, all the tubes, there's nothing more pressing than that next breath. The breath in. The breath out. And the tears rolling down your face in the pause between the inhale and the exhale. Nothing is more precious in that moment. Just like the first breath you took upon entering the world. 

I've been dealing with some sinus congestion and a sore throat the last few days. It moved down a bit in my throat yesterday, and the urge to panic manifested. My psyche isn't on board with another lung event. So more thoughts on breathing. Slow breathing... it's going to be just fine. Breathe in. Breathe out. This isn't January or February. Breathing has taken up much of our first seven months of 2020. From the pandemic of gasping for the next (or last) breath to "I can't breathe."The unfortunate part of breathing these days is that our breaths have been politicized to the point where many have overlooked the essential need to breath. The breaths we have been given are being used in a variety of different ways, but mostly in ways that are detrimental to those facing their last breath. This is in no way a political post. But just what are the breaths that are taken easily doing for those whose breath is taken away? It's a simple thing to breath. We have good breaths, struggling breaths, painful breaths... if they are so precious, how are we using them? When you are out and about doing life, what are your breaths fueling? When you sit down in front of your computer, what breaths take over your body as you read things? Are they calm? Are they angry huffs? Slow, drawn out sighs? There is a pause between that inhale and that exhale, a choice in how to breath, how you allow yourself to breath. That breath is precious because you can choose how it will be used. For those who want that next breath so urgently, they aren't using it to fuel offense... they just want to breath, to live. We have a responsibility to those who just want to breath. "Take a breath" and be intentional with how that God-given breath serves those around us.

Caught in the Greenery

Caught. Somewhere between what is normal and abnormal, between what is meaningful and what is perfunctory, between compassion and indifference. Caught between what my head logically determines and what my heart bleeds. This virus has been a fascinating social experiment-- one we are all ready to move far beyond-- with this tug of war with politics, the economists, the health care community, and anyone who chooses to don the title "expert" and goes to bat for what is happening; how they are experiencing the happening, and the overwhelming inability to predict any kind of sure future. It's been a matter of weeks... scrambling, numbing, unifying, polarizing-- what to think about all this?

In my tiny slice of life, this all began as reaction to crisis. I'm good at that. You can't live the life I've lived and not somehow learned to thrive in chaos. Greater people came before me and made beautiful paths for me to bumble along. But this-- THIS-- feeling of interminable caught-ness is a roller coaster. Some days it's a "get things done" mentality, but more are the days of dragging myself out of bed

to do the basics while my heart flounders. My minds keeps seeing this quote from John Green from his book An Abundance of Katherines: What matters defines your mattering. For us all this event has brought what matters much closer to home... literally.

In recent weeks, I decided to plant things. It's something to do. I have filled every plant growing receptacle with dirt and planted all the things. I have tilled small swaths of earth, scattering and planting every seed or bulb that I could find around the house. I have curiously checked my pots daily (if not more) for any sign of life.  I thrilled over each tiny green shoot that peeped from the soil. I have reveled in those signs of life. All the while knowing I more than likely won't see their blooms this year. The blooms I do have dotting my yard came from plantings of previous years. My lilac bush grabbed my soul a few weeks ago when I saw the plethora of buds. I planted it several years ago and it didn't bloom for two years. Every spring I would appreciate its green leafiness, but, oh, how I longed for the flowers. Funny thing about blooms, though. They are so temporary. The soft, colorful petals last only a few days or a few weeks at most. My lilac bush, just a couple of weeks ago, was laden with buds that quickly bloomed into fragrant clusters, drawing in butterflies and bees. Today, most of the sweet pretties are gone, the ones still clinging on have lost their luster and have gone to brown.

I've tried for years to get poppies to grow; every year sowing seeds and bulbs. Last year I tried spreading a whole can of seeds. Then Keith unknowingly poisoned the entire area. Ah, well... it was worth the try. But some actually survived and I was brought to a standstill the first time I noticed the bright orange of the California poppy growing. Of course the ones that are growing are not exactly where they had been planted, one even defiantly growing on the other side of the brick wall from the garden it had been intended for.  A seed got caught in the garden wall and thrived. I have watched the daily changes to this lone poppy plant, from one bloom to many. It has become the most beautiful thing in my yard. It's not where it should be. It put down a promise of life over a year ago, living through the seasons and the unintentional poisoning.

12 March changed life for most of us and we have experienced truly strange times, unprecedented in modern collective memory. Today, I went to Walmart to pickup my groceries, pulled up to my parking spot, and waited for the worker to bring them out to my car. This new normal of seeing masks on peoples faces touches me deeply-- it's covering human emotion and our basic communicative features aside from words. The sectioned-off store entry and exits are bizarre to me, existing only in some kind of upside down world that you only read about and don't see. When I do go into the store, the  usual friendly greeting has been replaced by someone counting my person as data for who enters and who exits. For pickup, the sign in front of my car says "For your safety and ours, please open the area you want your groceries placed, wait inside your vehicle with windows up." Once I return home from my twenty minute excursion out of my house, it takes me longer to wipe down my groceries with disinfectant than it did to pick them up. How are we supposed to thrive in such an impersonal, sterilized world? It's hard to trudge along, difficult to stay out of my own head, when the world has seemingly gone mad. I'm growing an all out jungle of indoor plants, and my outdoor plants are peeking out so very slowly. My wild poppies are promising me that a year from now the mundanity of my current life will blossom into something I long for. I just need to take it one day at a time, as it comes, focusing on the mattering.

The Remembered Moments

    History. I don't remember a time when I wasn't completely enthralled by it. My love for it is woven into my foundation of what it means to be Miranda. History has long been an intense coping mechanism for the stresses of my life and how I view those around me. I'm not a fan of specific dates when something happened because for me the road to that moment is more important. The people and their choices alone are so far reaching that by saying "This person (usually singular) did this one thing, and history is forever changed." It's much too clinical, a simplicity that denies the hardship and the celebration of many more that came before that date.
    I am an optimist of the worst sort. The kind of optimist that flies in the face of the pessimist in the worst way... because the pessimist feels the overwhelming need to label my optimism as naive and to break my rose colored glasses, assuming that I have little knowledge of tragedy or grief or know how living an unexpected, unsettled life can be. I forget sometimes I'm the only one living in my head, which has been a lot since COVID-19 began sucking life away (which was about 12 March). This new state of life has brought out the best and worst in people in the few short weeks since our lives were turned upside down-- well, every day is something new on that front, and its difficult to face drastic change head on.
    Ever the optimist, I set out to encourage and support, fully armed with my own brand of humor. That's how I've always dealt with my tragedies, grief, and unsettled moments in life. But for once, I was resoundingly wrong-footed and the backlash was a deep hurt. It's a very rare thing for me to find disappointment in the humans I choose to interact with. The optimist in me says "You don't know what they are going through or what they've experienced in this life to react and use the words they have used." There is always something more going on when the reaction is over the top. My pool of brain matter has been busy; considering, analyzing, and above all reminding myself that people are flawed and that embitterment is the last thing I want to recall about this time twenty years from now.
    You see, history is at my core, and I recognize so much of history is people and their minute decisions. I am optimistic because history shows me there is always that moment of choice, that glimmer of hope, that small simple action that can affect humanity for more than a lifetime. The world has spent a few months rearranging itself to ward off COVID-19. Have you ever studied diseases in history? The Spanish Influenza of 100 years ago, raged for two years, taking more people than the four years of the first world war. Polio, the worst year being 1916 but showing up regularly until Salk's vaccine in 1954 was indiscriminate. Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 was short-lived but deadly with 5,000+ deaths. The Great Plague of London (1665-1666) swept through the population, killing 100,000+, and it would have continued longer if the Great Fire of London hadn't consumed the diseased areas. (Numbers could actually be higher because numbers were not kept well at the time. There is a toss up on who died from the plague and who died from the fire, because the fire burned so hot it was instant cremation for those caught up in it.) The Black Death (all of Europe) moved through the land quickly from 1346-1353. Yersinia pestis took out millions of people for decades. Further back in history, pandemic after pandemic reshaped the world one disease at a time.
    We've been social distancing for a matter of weeks. We've seen crazed shopping, panic, and upset in all areas. Given what history has told me, we are living in an extraordinary time. This time the story can be different. We are better equipped to handle COVID-19 than our predecessors. Are we inconvenienced? Sure. Will there be economic repercussions? Absolutely. But quite frankly, when we compare our current situation with the past, we have so much going for us. Isn't a little optimism warranted?
    This in no way denigrates each individual's story in this. Am I unsettled? In this situation, not really. They asked an introvert to stay home. I'm part Hobbit, you know, that periodically unleashes my inner Took (brownie points if you get the reference). However, this doesn't mean that I am not mindful of the plight of others. This is hard stuff. Our family spent the better part of six weeks this year already social distancing due to sickness and hospitalization. The emotions have run the gamut. And this is the moment for the history books.
    The people of history fascinate me. I know people that think we live in hard times *cough-- pessimists* but we really don't. We lead such sterile lives that real, large scale suffering is not easy to contemplate. I was reading up on the Victorian Era recently (as you do if you're me) and came across a video about Victorians and their relationship with death. They knew death, were not untouched by it. They expected it. They revered it. Want to be super grossed out (and understand why I say our society is so sterile)? Google memento mori or Victoria jewelry made from hair. Death was like any other facet of life to them. Read Poe. Read Charles Dickens. Death is central, a core part of the plots.
    Today, death-- the idea of it-- sends people into a panic. Disease that can limit your life so suddenly is terrifying. We don't accept that. This COVID-19 brings out this overwhelming negativity-- a competition on who has it worse. Is this seriously what we want in our history books? When I was young, I was let loose in my public library (original Kemp Public Library for those Wichita Falls folks) on a weekly basis, and long before I should have (more than likely), I was drawn in by the history of The Depression (I have Okie family), World War Two, and the Holocaust. I have read "Reminisce" magazine for the better part of thirty years. Do you know what those stories are about? They are the memories of people taking care of people. That's what people remember. They remember the hardship, the tragedy, and the death, but they remember the people who eased the load, who silently stepped in and walked beside them. You have no idea how badly I want this to happen for us, but it's been hard to see it when someone would rather criticize or compare.
    One of my most cherished Holocaust stories is about Francine Christophe. She was an eight year old French Jew that was thousands of miles away from home and family in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She had been allowed to bring something with her from France. Her mother had two pieces of chocolate, telling Francine "We save these until we need them." There was a pregnant woman interned with them. On the day the woman went into labor, Francine's mother asked her for her piece of chocolate saying, "Giving birth here will be hard. She may die. If I give her the chocolate, it may help her." The baby was born. The mother and baby survived, liberated six months later. Francine went back to France and the years and then decades slipped by. A few years ago, Francine was part of a group of lecturers that spoke about their Holocaust experiences and what they could have been had they had proper therapy in the aftermath. At one of these lectureships, a psychiatrist took to the podium, but before she began her talk, she spoke directly to Francine, while holding out a piece of chocolate: "I am that baby."
    It takes so very little to touch a life. Our current set of circumstances should make us want to impart a kind word, to offer support. One tiny slice of life, one tiny piece of chocolate, and decades later, the touched lives remember. That baby would have no recollection and her mother would have told her often about the simple act of sharing a piece of chocolate. Whether or not the chocolate actually saved the woman and her baby is immaterial. The thought, the act, the memory is still there long past the horrors of life. How will we remember these days? And can we really compare our realities? Our current reality pales in comparison to history, but it will be remembered.




If you would like to see the short video of Francine Christophe, click here.

If you would like to watch the video of Victorians and Their Obsession with Death, click here.

The Walmart Saga

My respect for the elderly was deeply ingrained as a child. There's no way to politely walk away from an eighty-seven year old woman in Walmart with the scary ability to latch on like an octopus and force a twenty minute conversation upon my person. What exactly stood out about me that begged this woman to flag me down? Mums. Chrysanthemums. The kind that appear on my porch annually within the first week of September (because September 1st is reserved for hanging my fall wreath on the door-- and don't think I'm obsessive about my seasonal ornamentation, this only happens in September). But back to the mums, two small pots-- of the burnt orange and yellow varieties-- and they were chosen proudly by Paxton who had begged go along for the trip (something about being out of milk for two days and not trusting me to deliver and further impeded his desperate need for cereal). The dairy section of Walmart is where I was backed into a superfluous, one-sided conversation.
Here is what I learned from this little old lady with thinning white hair and oversized, cat-eyed sunglasses that were so dark I couldn't even make out her facial features.

1. Mums return every year, and if replanted will come back and multiply. I've never had this experience. I generally kill them (accidentally, of course), before December 1st. I was hoping she'd tell me how not to kill them, but it was a repeat of the comment "But they are hardy." Apparently, there's no helping me if I kill the hardiest plant (named a HARDY mum) known to man. 
2. She let me know that lilies were just as hardy, and the ones you get from the store at Easter-- EASTER LILIES (now I think she's questioning my intelligence since I obviously kill hardy mums) can be replanted as well. Her grandfather owned most of the county I live in and parts of two others and along the fence row to the home place were planted lilies. They came back every year. She always wanted to know what kind of lilies they were (I almost suggested the Easter variety but that's pushing the limits of what I would ever say respectfully to a woman of her age), but it was the Depression and she was six years old trying to feed her family. I stalled on the bit about being six... maybe I misheard her? But that was a time most people didn't experience childhood the way we think they should-- and it fits her mid-80s range of life. But the lilies. I should try lilies, she says, unless I think I'll kill them, too. (More than likely.)
3. She volunteered with the Optimist Club for 63 years and that's saying something since the organization is only 100, and she learned the value of sports. She pointed to Paxton and wanted to know if he was in sports yet. She informed me that boys not kept busy with sports ended up as drug addicts and he needs to get involved straight away. Oh, and not to let him play T Ball because that makes boys scared of the balls. He needs pitched baseball. Remember pitched or thrown balls keeps boys off drugs. They are too busy chasing the balls to be idle.
4. She and her husband had a good life, but then he got sick and died. She had to bury him in her coffin because they thought she would go first and hadn't bought his yet. And it's the fault of the Affordable Care Act and that President Obama. She didn't vote for him. She voted "Christian" unlike the people that voted for all the crap and ruined her life. I may have zoned out a bit after that. I'm always struck by how black and white people take life and use labels to identify an obvious conservative as the Christian vote and make the "others" fall into an evil category that borders on Satanic, as it's clearly the opposite, as liberals are bad. It's a long history.
5. Her health woes continued. I was desperate to move on. Paxton was agitated. He was speaking to me in full on burp sentences. "Let's gooooooo..." in burp is quite impressive and adamant.
6. She was adept at blocking my retreats and following me, her conversation never letting up as I attempted to maneuver myself away. We were blocking a good chunk of aisle that people were actively perusing. She has mad skills. I kept telling myself she was probably lonely and had no one to talk to. But seriously... twenty minutes. And I said nothing after I told her I killed mums, other than to nod and mmmhmmm noncommitally.
7. The girl who delivers my mail walked by me three times while the lady continued to drone on. I made eye contact and tried conversing with her, trying to give the old lady the hint that it's been fifteen minutes now.... But the mail girl didn't get the hint. She's dead to me now. I don't care how nerdy her shirt is when she delivers the mail tomorrow. I'll be wearing a plain t-shirt and there will be no geek out comparisons.
8. The old lady knows all about the medical system in northwest Arkansas and how bad it is. And her pacemaker is faulty. She KNOWS because she heard it from the physician that Vice President Dick Cheney (such a good man) saw when he was in office. She tried to switch to him, but that Affordable Care Act wouldn't let her switch doctors. He told her so.
9. I seriously need to learn how to politely make people stop talking. I don't even talk to people I like as much as these random people that assault my being with their verbosity.
10. I would shop somewhere else besides Walmart, but it's northwest Arkansas, and I do enjoy running into most people I know. It's just these people I don't know that are killing me slowly with unsought conversations. Maybe I should go at midnight.

Chaos Smoothers

I told myself in April that once May hit, life would slow down and I could regroup. I also told myself I would take up the reigns of the personal blog, since The Rambling Historian had such a solid run during the semester for our homeschool co-op.

And then...

Life imploded.

I say imploded and not exploded because in retrospect, the last two months seem to be some elegantly orchestrated chaos. Just this shimmery, shiny bubble where big things happened and all the details just danced around the edges and smoothing the chaos in ways that brought about the best of outcomes.

For example, Paxton's brain went on the fritz. The first couple of times it happened we attributed it to heat overexposure. By the fourth or fifth time, his symptoms had escalated to that of watching a drunk midget having a stroke. It's not a good look for a six year old boy. The husband was with us for that one. Someone told me how wonderful it was that he was home for this ER run for once. I think it's one of those chaos smoothers. Most other ER runs of the last decade have been made sans husband; like the time I was carrying a bleeding toddler on my hip and dragging a three year old into an emergency room wearing a blood stained t-shirt with the words "Guess What's Cooking" wrapped tightly around my eight month pregnant belly. There's really no dignity left at that point.

This kid's brain event was weirdly my entire focus. I didn't even know where the other kids were or who was watching the dogs until a day or two later. Then came the insurance hassles, appointments, referrals, and the "soonest we can get him in is the end of August." It's not the best way to live-- on tenterhooks, wondering if his episodes will continue and knowing our one option is more ER visits until that elusive appointment. His brain decided one more doozy of an episode would do the trick and we went straight to Arkansas Children's in Little Rock. Lovely, lovely place. I would never hesitate in returning or telling others to go there as well. He had a 26 hour EEG-- I used selfie mode on my phone so he could watch the tech glue the wires to his head, to which he proclaimed "I am sooo cute!" Uh, sure.-- and then an MRI, which was seriously the best part because I got to be there for the laughing gas. "It smells sooooo good... it's cherry."

He believed his hospital stay to be the best vacation EVER. They brought him food in bed. He got to order whatever he wanted to eat, and he could watch TV and pick what he wanted to watch, he received some amazing Lego sets, his bed could recline and it was like a ride for him, and above all, he got to relieve himself in a urinal that kept tabs on how much liquid waste his body produced-- "How much this time, Mom?!?!" Nobody needs to be that excited about urine.

Paxton's brain also made sure this second ER visit happened on the husband's days off. That was fortuitous and chaos smoothing. The diagnosis was complex/complicated migraine. He's on daily medication and has done brilliantly on it. I got the statement of benefits from the insurance company and was more than pleased to see that nothing was owed on our part for the $20,000.00 bill. Fairly certain chaos smoother should be a hashtag. #chaossmoother 

All while this little man was doing his weird brain thing, all three girls needed to be prepped and ready for camp. Looooong story short, the pediatrician's office where we used to go took like five months to remember to send over records to our new family clinic. I needed shot records. After way too many hours trying to get administrative types to get records to the right places, I finally was ready to get Evelynn her tetanus shot. The Health Department didn't think to tell me I needed an appointment to get this done when I had talked to them previously, and they offered the soonest available date... in the middle of the girls' camp week. Did you know you could get a prescription from a doctor for a tetanus shot and got to Walgreen's where they administer said shot? Blew my mind just a tad. #chaossmoother 

This could easily be an album cover.

Volleyball took up quite a bit of time the early part of this summer-- Evelynn is playing this fall. I gulp at the magnitude of volleyball events sucking up so many dates in my calendar from May to October but her love for the sport makes it worth it. So practices and fund raisers were sprinkled around the brain thing and camp and business. Weirdly enough, these things never clashed; where one event stopped, the other started. #chaossmoother

I had decided months ago that when the girls were at camp, I would redecorate their room and clean out the other room. The request dubious-- a combination of Star Wars and Audrey Hepburn. Sometimes I am amazed at how diverse they are in their interests and revel in how unique they can be... and then they ask for Star Wars and Audrey Hepburn. Good thing I had months to consider this. 

The cleanout was real. The girls' things were completely cleaned out and organized. Evelynn's room was insane. Have you every cleaned out an artist's quarters? It's like all the papers, pens, pencils, markers, and pastels breed in the corners. No one tells you these things when you are feeding a passion at a young age. She has mad skills. And I know that these things are important to her craft. But I found like 500 hundred writing utensils in every nook and cranny.

That's a cubby box that is about 1/3 to 1/2 full.

Cleaning out the rooms and sorting through mountains of clothes the kids have outgrown is the most freeing aspect of regrouping. All four kids have been all growing monstrous amounts for the last three months. No one tells you these things when you have kids close together. Oh, you bought new clothes for summer? How about we all outgrow them before summer even hits full force. Out with the old, in with the new. #chaossmoother

Somewhere along the way, we picked up another cat and four chickens. The husband and girls were out for a run on a trail and found an abandoned kitten. He is super young, but he has done well. After much discussion, he was dubbed Yondu. After a week or so, I think Toothless or Night Fury would have been better because he looks just like that dragon in cat form. He's quite sweet and cuddly, a far cry from our other cat, Fleur, who only cares about people when her food bowl is empty. Having another animal that is easy-- #chaossmoother

 This is the general standoff between Oaken and Yondu. Neither is quite sure the purpose of the other. 

The homeschool life hasn't slowed down much either. I can't even remember what happened that I neglected to post the last two lessons on the other blog... I think I hit the end, walked out of the building, and was done. I may or may not have emptied that particular book bag yesterday (said in the smallest of voices). Someone did ask my girls when the end of their school year was and they told the person "I don't know... we haven't really been doing much of anything." One of that fantastic 'pinches bridge of nose' moments. The clarification is I really didn't have an "end of school year" date. The last two years have been more 'year round' school, so we can fit in travel, our homeschool group activities, and a bit more wiggle room in our schedule. While we don't do the extras-- like science, history, and language arts-- we continue with reading and math. Three months without those two and it's chaos once September hits. #chaossmoother

I'm already gearing up for the next school year. I sold some old books at a sale that was somewhere between the brain thing, a volleyball camp, and a tetanus shot. Out went the pre-K and kindergarten books and other items for the first time in many years. I didn't sniff once over that. Pre-K and kindergarten teachers are a special breed of people, and I'm thoroughly ecstatic to no longer be in that realm. I lost the surface of most the shelves and desks in our school room/office, and even some floor space for the last month or so, and finally found it yesterday, as I did the massive switch of incoming/outgoing books. I seriously considered another bookshelf, but reigned myself in and actually removed quite a few redundant and out of use books. I sniffed over that dilemma. What's done is done. I found my desk, and cleaned out files. And the final check was written for the travesty of the Pennsylvania house became in the last four years. That whole mess and stress has ended and it seemed so exceptionally anticlimactic. So I gathered all the files of old bills and mortgage company paper work that dogged our steps for years and........ I BURNED THEM ALL in a giant pile outside in the yard. Now that, THAT, was the cathartic gesture I was looking for. #chaossmoother

I think that brings us up to the now. Life can get to be such a blur and I tell myself to write it down before it fogs over and is lost. I won't always want to remember the chaos, but I want to remember what made it all smoother, running along from imploding bubble to the next.

This Week in Parenting

I have to say that as the kids get older my days of standing on the edge of the cliff of insanity are fewer and far between. Something about not having babies or toddlers is less manic than it once was. Nowadays, when parenting gets sketchy, I google memes. It's like a weird encouragement in believing that if someone made a meme about their children, and it fits so well with my experiences, then I'm really not alone and that this insanity is, for want of a better word, "normal".  It's been super cold outside and they have spent an inordinate amount of time inside lately, so I'm sure that's what this boils down to... right? The following memes perfectly sum up the last week of parenting for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

G diminished 7th

    There's a piano at my in-laws' house that I've paid little attention to in the last several years. The excuses of "It's been so long since I played" or "I really don't want to focus on the reading of the notes with the intent to process the notes in the plonking of the keys" have built up until I finally just sat down and found two books, one being popular music of the 40s, 50s, and 60s and the other Disney songs. I played for a while, the years away from the piano quite evident in my execution, slow with many fumblings. I found that despite that, I had many unremembered things I'd learned in seven years of weekly lessons.
    My lessons were taken in the small front room in the home of a Mrs. B.J. Woodall. B.J. standing for Bertha Jane and I can hear her in my mind still saying "How a mother can name her child Bertha Jane... it always made me think of a fat elephant... so I'm B.J." There was no way I was calling this older, no nonsense lady B.J., so she was Mrs. Woodall. Her home was about instruments and rocks. Both she and her husband were rock hounds, the serious kind that belonged to clubs that traveled to far away places like New Mexico to find rocks like the desert rose rock. Her specimens were on display on one side of her living room and to the other side there was a piano, an organ, and an accordion, also with a few favorite rock finds sitting proudly across the top of the piano and next to the accursed metronome, a simple nod to the two great passions of her life. She taught all three instruments and she had great hopes that once I had learned all I could of piano from her, I would be down for the other two instruments. I finished up my piano lessons during my senior year of high school, and like most eighteen year olds, I was ready to move on... and not with an organ or an accordion.
    The grand focus of those many years of lessons was chords. At the time, I thought this was probably a direct result of her being a church pianist and organist, and she promised that once the time came for me to pick up organ lessons, my chord work was the great foundation and that would help me in learning accordion as well. Whatever my young thoughts were, chords are the foundation for any piece of music, determining key and the underlying sound. It often seemed tedious and headache inducing. I fought many bitter tears and hateful thoughts as a teenager being forced to fill dozens of lined music sheets with penciled notes of songs she set for me to transpose. Transposing is much like algebra to me. I did it and never looked back other that to shudder when my thoughts got close to remembering (like now).
    But for all that, my time at the piano today was enjoyable. The Disney book of music lead me to discover the Sherman Brothers (think most early Disney music like Mary Poppins, The Aristocats, "It's A Small World, and the non Disney Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) favored really, really, really wonky chords, especially the G diminished 7th. I stopped playing the first time I came across it, and not because I didn't recognize it, but that I did. It's been twenty years. TWENTY. And this random chord, hidden away in the middle of song that was not even remotely in the key of G demanded my attention and my fingers knew instinctively where to go.
    For several months now, I have considered what I'm giving to my kids, and what other adults I've put into their lives are giving to my kids as well. I'm also more aware these days of what I am giving to other young people in my life that aren't my kids. I think it goes without saying that I don't mean materially what I'm giving, but the things I want to be part of their foundation in life that twenty years from now my kids will find value in. I want my kids to have a clear idea of why they hold onto the values I and other adults impart on them in these early years.
    Seven years of sitting on a piano bench beside Mrs. Woodall, providing proof of my practice, explaining my lack of practice (which was usually along the lines of 'my dog ate my homework'), promising myself to one day shred my chord book, crying over hand cramps because my short fingers burned against reaching that full octave for months and months, respectfully hating having to learn syncopated timing and that dreadful piece of music "Beat me Daddy, Eight to the Bar", and vowing to torch that blasted metronome that mocked me with every tick and tock that clicked at me, saying "Too. slow...... not. fast. e. nough."
    You would think that after all that, I would not sit down today and find any value in G diminished 7th, but it was there. It was self satisfaction that I had remembered a long ago lesson, it was the love of music that Mrs. Woodall shared with me, it was her patience in teaching, it was her scariness in demanding a job well done, it was her praise in a well played piece of music, and it was the sharing of her life with mine. Mrs. Woodall passed away several years ago, and I have always had a sense of guilt over dropping out of her life so efficiently. I had learned all I could from her and then I had moved on with the next phase of my life. We exchanged Christmas cards a few times, and then one year it was returned as undeliverable, where I learned she had passed.  I could say that was life, but it does little to assuage what I feel now that the chance to verbalize how her presence in my life shored up my foundation. Simple lessons, the sharing of values, being a part of my foundation and echoing truths twenty years later... for only one hour a week for seven years... such a minuscule bit of what we call time. When I consider what I want for my life right now, I want to be her, to brush against others and leave them more solidly along their path. I desperately want that for my own children; to have people in their lives that will quietly show the importance of having values and sticking to them, to have the gentle assurance that what they are learning now will echo throughout their years and guide their steps, and to have that simple G diminished 7th chord that becomes a trigger reminder of why I want these things for myself and my children.