Worse than I ever imagined in my wildest nightmares

That is the only way to describe the summer.

I have been so sick, so stressed, and having to white knuckle brave face it for hours and hours and hours of long days that eventually became long months of trying not to let da Creature know how hard life actually was for da Mama.  It has been just awful.

Today is the first day of school.  I am alone again for a few hours.  Selfishness would dictate that I'd be happy about that, but all I see is failure everywhere.  I failed to do all the summer things that would have more pushed him forward.  I failed to be entirely enthusiastic about the things we did manage to do.  I failed to love him as well as he deserved.  I failed to get well on demand.  I failed my Sunday obligations over and over again because I was too sick or too worried about the stress of Mass with him making me sick.  I failed to be a good daughter and do things in a timely way to help my father build the mouse droid.  I failed to return to work this fall like I had promised I would.  I failed in so many varied ways it's almost unbelievable that a single person could fail so expertly at every single thing she tried to do, but....

There it is.

How do I recover from this staggering and humiliating series of unfortunate events?

Dust off the bum, get the train back in gear, get back to prayer and Mass as soon as I have help again with him, and try to solve health issues and emotional issues and see if solving one informs the other...

In the meantime, I suppose I'll blog some and see where that leads.

Toodles

H. M. S. Pinafore!

UPDATE 2014--- Major OOOOPS!!!  I never actually published this blog post.  I had it ready to publish and assumed I'd done it, and I went looking for it to link it to the new one and found it listed as "draft".  I get the big D'oh for today!  Argh.   So here it is, and I put its original date with it, too.

What a whirlwind of a weekend!  The original plan had been that we would drive to Houston to see

H.M.S. Pinafore, which da Creature was ever so counting on, but da Mama got super sick (actually, I've been super sick and no one seems to be the wiser as to why, which is super frustrating) so we got to have an EXTRA special surprise and go on a AIRPLANE to Houston (special surprise number two?  have you booked airline tickets three days ahead of a trip before?  don't....just....don't... cha-ching!).

Fortunately, United still has non-stop flights to Houston from Jackson, so it was quick and a shuttle ride later had us at the Doubletree safe and sound where I could recover a bit before we'd go to the show the next day.

First, let me say how amazing the folks are over at the Gilbert and Sullivan Socieity of Houston.  They were able to seat us where we needed to be, and let me know they'd put together a goodie bag and he could get his score signed.

So...we got all spiffied up, and headed out for the show.

We had reservations at a restaurant near the theatre, Birraporetti's (an Italian restaurant), and I had promised Eric he'd get to eat there, so we went, even though I couldn't eat.  I got him all his favorites (which we had planned to split) and he had such fun eating all that great looking food, he was just stuffed.  We sat near the back, and he found a poster for Pinafore on the wall behind him, and couldn't get enough of turning around and pointing and telling everyone who came by that he was going to see it in a few minutes and were they going too and it's about....  (at which point I'd have to gently focus him back on the food so as not to give a detailed summary of Pinafore to passerby's).

"Mama, why are you taking pictures of me eating?"

Then we realized we had a LOT of time to kill before the show.  We wandered around the front of the Wortham and found these giant balls, which were fascinating to Eric, and he madly danced from one to the other and we took a LOT of silly pictures and I did not snicker, not once, I promise, not even a little at the Wortham's giant balls...not a peep outta me, I'm respectable, you know.  *snicker*

Such a little boy, with such big dreams

MY score.  MY score.  It's MINE. 

Finally, they let us go in, and we attended the pre-show lecture.  Eric was so giddy, and happy to hear someone talking about things he REALLY understood that I fear he aggravated the man giving the lecture a bit.  Sad, really, since if the man had only really known him, he'd probably have been delighted to be talking to someone who followed every word and could even add details that many adults might never have encountered.  His working knowledge of the period and the corpus of G&S is really extraordinary, I mean, "Rain Man" extraordinary, but he can be a bit of an ass about it at times, but he's only 9, so the fact he knows all of this stuff is kind of cool, if you think about it.

At the lecture before the show!

He has three operas memorized already and is set to learn another one (or two) next year.  He LOVES Gilbert and Sullivan.  And American and British history.  And snarky sarcastic humor.  It's all a match made in heaven.  (...at least he didn't get all the ball jokes I didn't make.  Really, I kept it to myself.  Mostly)

 Before the show, we talked for a while about how theatre works, and he wanted to hear all my silly stories from being in theatre in my much younger days, and we sat in our seats and I tried to not let my dizzy, nauseated self be too distracted and I told stories of falling in the orchestra pit and being fallen on (Papageno straight-up dropped Papagena on the timpani one time during Magic Flute.  I was playing Glockenspiel, so she missed me by about two feet)!

A nice lady in front of us took our picture.  Thank you so much, it's the only photo I have that proves I was there!!!  :D

Afterwards, we went to the Green Room.  He got to meet the cast and get his score signed (a huge big giant deal for Eric), and I took as many pictures as I could.  I was sad to discover when I uploaded them, that I had failed to get some pictures, even though we got everyone's autograph.  *sigh*  (Next year, I'll do better).

Buttercup was his favorite today... "You sounded better than Felicity Palmer!!"

From Britain, the head of the company, Alistair Donkin.  He was FABULOUS as Sir Joseph Porter.  Eric LOVED him so much!!

Thank you, Scott, for EVERYTHING!!!!!

RideAbility First Lesson!

NOTE:  This post is picture heavy, not because I am an inconsiderate blogger, but because Google has taken my ability to just post a slideshow from Picasa away from me.  I personally find it offensive that Google is demanding that we upload ALL of our pictures to Google+ in order to use them, especially since I'd like to just write a blog post and have a slideshow with cool captions rather than photobomb my poor blog at the expense of my readers patience.  Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if I can tolerate the invasive nature of Google anymore...

So, on with our wonderful fun day at the barn with RideAbility and his hippotherapy... (an essay in pictures)

Yay! I'm at the barn! I'm bored! I'm restless!  I want to ride HORSES NOW!

Oh, thank heavens she gave him a job to do...

Talking through grooming and saddling

Rowdy says Hello

Rules and information time while waiting on his horse

Mounting Skip with lots of help

Stirrups and such

da Creature and his entourage...Safety at all times

Practice leading

Back at the Barn

What a wonderful experience this was.  At one point, he was throwing a ball back and forth from one of the men on the side of his horse to the other one while riding.  OT on stirrups!!!  They were so great with him.  I can't wait to see how this progresses.  He had a magnificent time.

Toodles

Well, that was unfortunate...

I have returned to the land of the living mostly now.

It has been an incredibly awful horrible no good very bad two weeks.

Catastrophizing took on a whole new level as I diligently applied it to every aspect of being sick...sure that death would follow, da Firstborn would have to return from her summer job to care for her little brother, leaving her invalid mother to suffer the indignities of Hospice...you know, the usual.  (eyeroll at self)

However much catastrophizing layered on top of my distress and discomfort, all's well that ends well and I am well-ish again.

Word of advice?  If you get a headache for ten days straight, it is important that you not stop paying attention to things like FLUID INTAKE and such because you can become dehydrated.  My only experience with dehydration has always been vomiting and diarrhea so I had ZERO understanding that dehydration when it occurs due to not taking in fluids can manifest itself in a whole other manner...  Guess what happens if you neither understand what is happening nor act quickly and decisively to avoid complications?!?  You get serious complications.  Ugh.  So I guess the topic of poop just loops around.  In your twenties, it's all about baby poop.  In your sixties and seventies, apparently talking about it is as important an activity as watching the weather channel.  I know WAY too many seniors, because my series of unfortunate events alluded to above then led to many many conversations which were, ahem,  awkward at best.

This explains those looks people gave us in our twenties when we were happily chirping away about the various colors and textures of stuff emanating from our baby's behinds.  It's weird to talk about folks.  Just weird.

However, if you are in your late forties, beware the fluid monster.  Danger lurks in your gut, and not knowing how dangerous a gut can be can lead to intelligent folk dying from bowel symptoms which should have been easily managed.  Don't be the tragedy.  Be the googlemaniac and figure it all out.

So, moving on... ba-doomp-cha, I will be all better soon and safe from those imagined catastrophes.

Life's really funny from a distance, and I have to laugh at myself.  If I don't, I get all sad and strange.

Tomorrow will be a happy hyppy post about Horses and da Creature.

Toodles

Inexterminatable Dalek Goodness

Today we had a special treat!  The guys from Krewe du Who came to film the Dalek for the promos for NOLA Time Fest 2013.  It was a hot time in the old garage, but I am quite excited to see how it all comes together.  

Here they are setting up and getting shots laid out:

When you must walk your Dalek...be sure it's guns are facing AWAY from you...

 

Lewis D'Aubin checking his shot....

Recording the promo in EXCELLENT EXTERMINATION VOCALIZATION!!!

So, those of you in NOLA, and our friends around the internet, as soon as they have put the footage to good use, I will share the link with you guys and you can see the magic that can happen when you green screen things.  So excited!

Toodles,
me

Dinner and Dishes

My little one has taken a liking to doing the dishes by hand.  At first, I was skeptical, but like all good things we have forgotten in the rush to be "modern" there is a simplicity and a joy to washing dishes with a person standing beside you with a towel in their hand.  An elegance to the moment. with it's patient pace, it's evening quietude, and it's intimacy. 

I think I hated doing dishes because I did them alone my whole life before I had da Firstborn and a house. 

Being a child abandoned in a dark kitchen while the adults have gone upstairs to the televisions of their choice, alone in the creaking downstairs with the dog, left to do dishes on the rare occasions when we were all home and she cooked something, was an indelible painful mark in my memory.  I hated them for hating each other so much that she left us, hated them for fighting from the time she'd come home on the rare weekend until the very moment we were waving goodbye as the gravel crunched in the driveway under her tires as she left finally and there was again the stubborn silence of discomfort and rage.

Dishes meant she had been home. 

Other nights we just ate at McDonald's. 

I remember though, being very small, and living in a neighborhood.  I remember other people's houses, and food that was cooked by "old-fashioned" women, the ones my militant feminist mother ridiculed in her march toward "independence from men."  Those kitchens were warm, they smelled good, and you never found a kid standing alone after a meal washing the dishes while the adults went off to fight some more.  You found brothers and sisters loudly laughing and the occasional broken dish crashing and water splashing.  Even on calm nights, there was talking and verbal sparring and the clatter of comraderie.

She deprived me of brothers and sisters.  She deprived me of companionship in the mundane tasks of life and deprived me of the revelation that mundane tasks are the fabric through which life is learned and shared and woven together.  I try to forgive her, but I hit this wall sometimes.  She was selfish and ambitious and self-indulgent. 

"Old-fashioned" women raised families.  It was not some archaic throw-back.  It was and is life, shared and lived together.  Cooking (the kind where you start from ingredients, not the kind where you heat something some factory produced) and cleaning things the long way pass the time in a manner that, if done as a collective activity, make life more bearable.  Less isolating. 

When we install the new dishwasher, I plan to also buy a dish drain.  When life is rocking hard against us and time is short, we will eat frozen things we prepared in calmer times and throw the dishes in the machine, but when life is slower (like summer), we'll stand together and laugh and talk and I will wash and he will dry.  I only wish I'd figured this out long ago...my apologies to the Firstborn, who did many dishes alone while I rested from cooking alone.  Lil' bro will have a new set of memories and I promise to be present and cheerful and patient. 

Toodles

Appliances are Hell

Remember when appliances lasted into the two-digit amount of years?!?  

Wow, you're OLD.

Which makes me old and cranky.

Our hot water heater is 23 years old.  I know...I watch the pan for signs of trouble, but yet, there it is.  23 years old.  It probably deserves a medal or something.  The one I can replace it with, even if I spend the most money a person can spend on a hot water will still only last 7-10 years.

And do NOT get me started on dishwashers, or as I have come to understand them, those disposable expensive things that do not ever really work right, or for long...

So, I'm off to Home Depot to give them a chance to fail to install a dishwasher properly.

Meanwhile, I'm back to farm life and no dishwasher.

On a related note...my adolescence was punctuated by this moment of parental glory...

We had a brand new dishwasher in a box in my fathers' workshop for YEARS. One day, I asked him to please install the dishwasher and he responded "Why?  We HAVE a dishwasher."  He meant me, of course and isn't being an only child ever so much fun?  To wit, I responded "an ELECTRIC dishwasher!" His response?  "Okay, we'll wire you to the floor."

Typical shot of my Father's workshop...notably, that's not a dishwasher either...story of my life... (eyeroll)

Visited a Guy Named Van Something...

...and he was not as tall as we had imagined...

We went to the art museum here in town, and they had a traveling collection of "Old Masters" which was about 300 years worth of French art, and there were some Manet's, Monet's and a solitary Van Gogh self portrait.  Da Creature thought it was cool, but seemed mostly impressed with the fact that some of the painters in Paris in the late 1700's probably knew Ben Franklin.  He's a trip, right?  (Not Ben Franklin, ya moog, but da Creature who finds a way to make EVERYTHING about the revolutionary war because he's so obsessed with it currently).

I, on the other hand, was as underwhelmed as usual with the Mississippi Museum of Art, which boasts tiny little collections of mostly irrelevant junk and occasionally has some larger collections travel through on their way to somewhere interesting.  Sorry, those of you in Jackson who really LIKE the Museum, and I'm sure many Bothans died to bring it to us or some other such nonsense about how sacrificial those in charge have had to live in order for us to have even this.... BUT, I've been to real museums and this ain't it, boys and girls.  Still, da Creature enjoyed himself and my $8 or so wasn't terribly wasted.

Someday, I hope to take him to Washington, D.C. and New York.  There are at least more museums there; some of renown, even.  Meanwhile, I will regale him with tales of our days spent trying to get as much seen in the Hermitage as was humanly possible in the little time we had, and talk about being in the cold room at the British Museum, between the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible. He can look at our pictures of the Brownian movement we endured with the thousands of other people crammed into the Vatican museums that day (those few hours) and I can teach him about scultpure and art in the great Cathedrals as best I can in books and photos. In the meantime, though, I suppose this will have to suffice.

And in the WTH files from the art museum...

Steam punk folk do better work than this.  Seriously.  I have seen better art at Sci-fi conventions.

Departure Day for BIG THINGS TO COME

Saying good bye in an airport is a mixed bag of things.  I always walk away trying not to visibly cry.  It works about as well as you'd imagine.  So, the Firstborn is off for a summer of adventure in the mountains.  da Creature and I must begin our long summer of trying to make things work and learn new things and generally manage without her.  She has been SUCH an important part of how he and I function that it is always hard to be without her, but looking toward this giant expanse of minutes hours days weeks and months is so hard for me...

You will be missed.  Have a BLAST foldin' laundry and doin' dishes.  You're already good at those things so it will be nice to get paid to do them for a change, eh?  In the meantime, we promise to be good to each other and muddle through...

*sniff*

BIG THINGS TO COME! :D

Toodles
-me

Prison Mentality

Laundry.

If you have someone who does your laundry for you (*see college home visits and/or wealthy) be very very grateful.  I, for one, would rather do my own dental work than laundry.  That being said, I seem to have developed something of a prison mentality about the whole thing.  I'm not sure MacGyver would approve, seeing as my new de facto hobby doesn't blow anything up, but, it does amuse me. 

Because there is SO VERY MUCH laundry that accumulates around here, a while back I noticed the side effect of washing color-sorted loads was colored dryer lint.  Now, I know, I could make something useful like paper out of it, but why do that when I could just play with it while I am babysitting our washer which perennially seems to fail to understand it can spin WITHOUT all the dramatics if it really tries.

From humble beginnings... "Sqaushed Lint Angel" (done originally to confuse and bewilder my poor husband, which it did, because he squashed it a week after I just left it without comment on the dryer)

To my Doctor Who obsession moment... "Fezes are Fuzzy"

 

To this weekend's... "Pursed LInts"  (which lacked a true red component, handle not withstanding, because there weren't enough red clothes to justify the washer full of water so I had to just muddle through with all these blue clothes my family seems to NEED to acquire in life)

So, I'm thinking that maybe making various craftlike objects from dryer lint is a new low for me intellectually.  If anyone saw the Malcolm in the Middle espisodes where Lois is making pigs out of Clorox bottles, you get the idea.

Maybe I'll start the costuming projects as soon as da Firstborn leaves for da Employment.  Boredom and I do NOT get along well.

Toodles!
-me

Birthday Actual, Blurry Bowling, Brasov, and Botanicals

There will be many disparate things in this, many of which deserved their own post, but were not allowed said thing because I have been super crazy doing alliterative things with "B"...

We did, in fact, celebrate his birthday.  We went bowling.  We had fun.  da Grampa and da Grandma came and I forgot my socks so I stood around and took pictures pretending like that was what I planned to do all along (eyeroll at me).

However, I noticed my super fancy camera was suddently not auto-focusing.  Much discussion ensued as to what happened to the camera in Romania, and during said discussions, da Grampa casually said...there's a button somewhere that switches it to manual focus, to which I insisted there was not....

...if you know my father and me even a little, you know how this ended...

There's a button.

I found it after twenty minutes of trying to figure out where to take the broken camera and feeling disheartened that the fancy camera I love so much was destroyed and it was probably somehow my fault.  Oh, the catastrophizing...

The captions are the story, and you will get no further comments from me on either topic: NB--this is where I would have had a lovely, easy to use slideshow embedded on the blog itself, but....now you're just going to have to click on the link, then click on the first picture to load the individual ones so you can even see the captions at all...etc., and GROWL....

Strangely, Google has screwed us bloggers over again and you cannot put slideshows on your blog posts anymore.  I hate Google.  I hate FB, but here we are...

The pictures are here but they would have been nicer as a slideshow

So, because Google pissed me off just now...da Firstborn's Romania adventure can be found at the following links:

Beginning the Real Tour
Alba Julia and Sibiu
Bran Castle and Brasov Day One
Hiking and Castleing Brasov Day Two
Brasov to Sigisoara

Once you've found all of those, you can find the others.  Just tool around in her pics.  It's not really FB stalking.  If you need to friend her, ask her.

Toodles,
me

I Remember Now....I Have a BLOG... Ooooops

And it's SUNDAY...

...and not just ANY Sunday...it's Corpus Christi!!!! Wooooo Hooooo!!!!  So, definitely find something beautiful and get behind it:

Photo Source

Photo Source

Regular Catastrophes to return as soon as da Firstborn is settled in Colorado for her first summer ever of EMPLOYMENT.  Go Firstborn!!! You make da moolah...you bring home da bacon...you pay da taxes...then VOTE like you mean it.  :) 

Mirabile visu...A.K.A. You might not want to watch...

It is now finally SUMMER.  That glorious time of year when living in Narnia really pays off...I have long maintained that you can practically throw candy out of your window and make candy trees here, though I do realize that's not true, seeing as how I've yet to actually grow Big Boy tomatoes successfully (shaming the generations that came before me greatly, but I just can't quite get it together well enough somehow; the plants grow, but nothing ever comes of it...sigh...). 

For his Birthday, he wanted watermelon.  You've never seen anything like it.  Even when he was 3 years old, and could barely speak and screamed most of the time as his only form of communication, he could eat watermelon by the plateful.  Plate after plate.  It's not natural.

So...happy summer.   There will be TOMATOES (YAY!) and watermelon and corn and cucumbers and squash and lots and lots of heppiness while we swim and ride horses and practice all the skills he will need in fourth grade.

Wish me luck!

Toodles,
me

*Mirabile visu is the snarky retort that the cows make after seeing the pigs eating their slop in our favorite Gregorian Chant CD EVAH... Grunt: Pigorian Chant by Sandra Boynton.  It is translated loosely as "what an astonishing sight"  :)