And so it Continues

PC's appointment Thursday went well. The physicians at Duke were not on board with our brilliant plan to have the radiation treatments locally. So they'll give us the final treatment plan on Thursday but the treatment will take place at Duke. PC's brother lives near there so he'll stay with them. The tentative plan looks like six weeks of radiation Monday through Friday and PC should be able to come home on weekends. Then a four week rest, then surgery and recovery. They did a lot of tests this week (including a biopsy) and the test results could change the tentative plan. We like plans. We can deal with this one.

And so it Begins

PC has an appointment with an Orthorpedic Oncologist at Duke University tomorrow morning. He should come home Friday or Saturday with a treatment plan for his radiation and/or chemotherapy that can be administered by our local Navy hospital. So that's good. But scary. He is starting cancer treatment. He has cancer. Thank you sincerely to all of the people who commented with good wishes and advice. I'm sure I'll keep you all "posted." OMG that is so lame. I swear I used to be funny.

The C Word (not that one - get your mind out of the gutter)

I had to take my middle son T to traffic court on Friday. Legally, being 18, he didn't need me. But I'm a lawyer and his mommy so I went. We sort of enjoyed watching the parade of defendants before us (we were the last case heard). I was amazed at how many people say they had to drive 80 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone because they were unfamiliar with the area. It amused us both and required that the bailiff shush us a couple of times. The result was perfect - traffic school followed by a dismissal of all charges. We left the courthouse in a very good mood, chatting annd laughing in a way that doesn't happen all that often between me and that particular child.



On the way to the courthouse T had been trying to explain to me that, for him, Virginia is cursed. He claims that every time something good happens to him here it is immediately followed up by something ten times worse. I don't think Virginia itself is cursed but Friday certainly followed that pattern.



After court, we went downtown to my office, our plan was for T to help me move some boxes and then to go to lunch somewhere away from the house where he hadn't been before. Mom and son bonding.



We called PC on the way to give him the good court results and he interrupted me to say he'd received the results of the MRI he'd had the day before on his knee. (The results were not supposed to be availabe for two weeks.) All indications are that PC has a very large cancerous mass on his leg. Possible diagnosis are sarcoma and nerve sheath tumor. I'm not sure what we did in the world before google. There are only two Navy Orthopedic Oncologists on the East Coast and they are both deployed so we'll find out today whether he'll be going to Richmond (two hours north) or Duke (around three hours south) for his treatments. The treatment will be radiation and/or chemotherapy to shrink the tumor followed by surgery. There are two schools of thought on whether or not they'll biopsy first - one school of thought is that the rapid growth (it has been eight weeks at the most since he noticed it and it is about the size of half of a brick) indicates it is cancerous and it should not be messed with at all until the surgery; the other school of though it that a needle biopsy won't disturb it. The only good thing about this tumor is that it appears to be "well-circumscribed" so I'm for not messing with it.



PC is the kind of person who simply puts something bad out of his mind. He left for work before dark where he no doubt did his daily two hour workout. He says this is going to be fine although the rehab will be "a pain." He thinks if his treatment is in Richmond he'll just drive himself up there two or three times a week. If its at Duke he'll stay with his brother. No big deal. Except for all his googling I don't think he gets what radiation and/or chemotherapy can do. Superman is about to run into Kryptonite.



And then there's me. I am the type of person who must think through the worst option all the way to its bitter end. All the way through. Its how I deal with things. They hardly ever turn out as bad as I've imagined and that's a comfort. Except for the times that they do...

Edited at 11:34 p.m. to add: Today the efficient Navy medical machine was able to get PC a consult in DC for NOVEMBER. Excuse me - what do they need, a whole brick. I've been madly googling looking for an Orthopedic Oncologist who accepts Tricare (PC, as an active duty military person is not allowed to leave the network of Tricare physicians). I found ONE. Granted, I was only looking in our Tricare region (the North region which doesn't make much sense but I didn't draw the boundaries). His doctor has calls in to two other doctors who haven't called back. WTF. His referral uses words like "urgent" and "paramount." But he can't get an appointment.

Oh yeah, and this type of cancer... it often comes from exposure to radiation. All those years he spent repairing nuclear subs don't appear to have done much for him. But he was defending our country... keep your flags waiving. Mine is beginning to droop.

The Rabbit Lived (and that's a good thing)

I have spent the majority of the past three weeks noting my mounting symptoms of early pregnancy. Not with joy and anticipation but more like resignation and dread. I know how these things happen. Although it would have been my fourth unplanned pregnancy. It doesn't really matter how; it happened. (In my defense though someone took my last pack of birth control pills out of my bathroom. I suspect one of my son's friends. I don't know - I only look in the stupid box once a month to pull out a new pack. And then, voila, the new pack was gone. Along with its handy dispensing device.) Damn it. It took nearly a week for the cracker jack Navy Medical system to provide me with my six month refill. So I warned PC. This one was all on him. He could choose to abstain, buy some condoms, be a selfish bastard for a whole month, it was all up to him. I've never considered any form of permanent birth control because there has never been a day I could truly say never again. Including today. PC's take on the whole thing is that we only had one accident in 16 years and are therefore unlikely to have another.

I never had a positive pregnancy test - I had several negative urine tests. And the symptoms kept mounting. Constant nausea (no vomiting as long as I ate pretty much 24 hours per day), breast tenderness, fatigue (I fell asleep every day from 2:00 until 3:15 or so - and yes I am at work then), leg cramps that made me wake up screaming in the night, constant urination, unbearable lower back pain... I had it all. Thursday, though, the bleeding started. Light at first, maybe implantation? But I knew. I am 46 years old. The Pumpkin is a miracle that is unlikely to recur. That's okay for us. We don't need (or really even want) any more kids. So heavy bleeding, dreadful stabbing pains, the end. In the olden days this happened all the time. People didn't know they were pregnant so soon. They'd suspect, and they'd bleed, and they would assume they were wrong. Lucky them.


It is strange. Many of the blogs I am semi-addicted are written by women who would have been overjoyed by the apparent pregnancy and then devastated by the end. I am neither. I usually feel a vague sense of guilt to be so ridiculously fertile when other women have to try so hard to conceive. Today I feel only relief that we don't have to deal with a pregnancy just now. It is quite difficult enough to deal with a very strong willed 2-1/2 year old. And then Friday we found out that we're in for some tough times that have nothing to do with the kids (other than continuing to raise them during said tough times) and so I am finally just relieved.

Fall Fun Continues

The Saturday Fall Fun continued this weekend. The entire LM family joined me and the Pumpkin at the Fall Harvest Festival at the local Farmer's Market. The Pumpkin was so tired when we finished that he was asleep before I started the car. He usually at least makes it to the parking lot but not this time. There was a band, farm animals, grown and baby ducks, roosters, a pig calling contest (the Pumpkins entry was a rather pathetic growl - I thought he could manage an oink oink but apparently not). I need to show video of my sweet baby's energetic dancing so here is my first try at embedding You Tube video. This will have to do for a post today since I have two separate very bad things to deal with before I can post about them. (Mom, if I wanted to talk to you about it I would have called you.)

In the meantime enjoy the antics of the kids (I am so lame that I didn't do the links right so the best way to see the video is to right click and then choose "Open in a New Window" otherwise you get kicked out of my kingdom and into You Tube):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kc6BWlTibY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSilHiliuMo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax4Q_z50ANc

Fall Fun

Fall has, at least temporarily, arrived in Virginia Beach, Virginia. It is a brisk 52 degrees right now and the high Saturday was around 70. Yumm. I love fall here. The Pumpkin and I celebrated the season change with LawyerMama and her progeny. PC doesn't participate in seasonal activities, and LM's T was working. So, my brilliant (it worked out okay - so I can still refer to it as brilliant) idea was to go to the local garden center with our boys and build LIFESIZE scarecrows. All the money ($20 each) benefited the local children's hospital. Win/win right? Well actually yes. I think all the kids had a good time. LM's Hollis is the best behaved three year old I know and he participated carefully; her Little H - not so much. He ended up strapped into the stroller and we still had a perfect stranger point out to us that he was eating a pumpkin/gourd. Hey, it wasn't a rock. The Pumpkin ran amuk in Pumpkin fashion. He removed/rearragned several seasonal displays of gourds (Little H was permitted to help until he tried to leave the premises); found "the back" where all the old lattices leaned precariously against the wall and tried to climb them; handed me the tons of hay we need to stuff our scarecrow and participated marginally in the choosing of the appropriate scarecrow clothing. He also found the glue bottle and so our scarecrow is decked out with an alarming array of fuzzy green round things. Still our scarecrow is outside scaring nothing, except apparently me when he catches the corner of my eye, and our dogs. And disgracing PC who doesn't think he suits the meticulous front yard that PC cultivates.

We also took all three kids to their first movie, Ratatouille. Caleb didn't make it through the last ten minutes but they were generally well behaved and a good time was had by all. We cheated, we took them to Cinema Cafe so they were served Pizza, French Fries, and Sprite, at a table while watching the move. All the kids were young enough to get in free so it only cost $1.50 each for me and LM.

So for all this cute fun you might wonder why there are no photos. Because LM and I both forgot our cameras - oops. Still here is one of the Pumpkin with his pumpkins and one with his scarecrow.

Hump Day Hmmm - Learning from Challenges

Emily from Wheels on the Bus is subbing for Julie Pippert today. Her Hump Day Hmmm assignment is to write about a challenge we have faced and how we have learned from it. Before I turn to that... Jenn, at Serving the Queens, has asked for help in sending words of support to a family that desperately needs them. Go here to help.


Knowing the challenges that Emily has overcome in her life, any challenges I have faced seem lame, tame and totally inconsequential. Still, I'll try this one...


My parents separated for the last time when I was four years old. They had managed, in those four years to separate thirteen times and to produce three children. They had a head start - I was born (two months early) five and a half months after they were married. We were all so little when they stopped living together that I don't think we sat around longing for reconciliations. We couldn't remember them ever being happy to be in the same room together. For various reasons, I usually lived with my dad. My mom had me from 6th grade until 9th grade and then I moved in with my dad semi-permanently.


At that time, when I fourteen, my dad was a one year survivor of lung cancer (which included the removal of most of his right lung). He was working again then. He worked nights. The first year I was there (it was still the summer before tenth grade) he told me that money was tight and if I wanted any new clothes for school I'd need to get a job to pay for them. I don't think he was being mean. I was a smart girl. I lied about my age and became a telemarketer. I earned my school clothes money and started 10th grade pretty happily. Over my 10th grade year things changed a lot at our house. My dad was declared permanently disabled and quit working. He took a lot of medications to help with his pain, he wasn't shy about sharing his medications with his friends, and our house became a sort of party place. My dad was only 34 or so at the time. He developed a frugal but fun life of lying in the sun, having friends visit constnantly, and partying. He didn't become a "bad" dad but he was different. Dinner was still made every night but he seemed to want playmates more than children. And there began the challenge... He didn't care if I went to school or not. He never graduated from high school and he'd lived a perfectly nice life (he never paid a dime in child support but he usually had a nice apartment with nice furniture, cool clothes, etc.). Maybe it had to do with the grim statistics at that time for surviving lung cancer. I don't know. In any event school was no longer a priority in our home. My only requirement for 10th grade was to pass driver's education. I had occurred to him that having a driver would be handy. I passed with a D and never really attended after the second semester.


So, as you can see, initially I failed the challenge. I did not insist on getting even a minimal education. But, like I said, I was smart. I passed the California equivalent of the GED without studying for it when I was 16 (the minimum age). I was free from any fears of truancy etc. By the time I was sixteen I had a job that paid more ($8.00 and hour) than many of the adults I knew (it was, by the way, the job my Dad had been too disabled to do anymore - data entry in a hospital on the night shift). I moved in and out of my dad's house a few times (with roommates and once, as a protest that he wouldn't make my youngest brother go to school, back to my mother's where there was a new step dad in residence - that didn't last long).


I enrolled in Community College several times (it is so cheap in California that you really don't have to have a comittment you can just sort of try it out when you feel like it). I never finished a course until I became pregnant with R. My dad had died by then. I was working full time and paying the rent and I had a paid off car and I decided to have the baby. Knowing I would be completely alone. And then I became serious about Community College. I took a couple of accounting classes (to help with my then job) and got As while pregnant. When he was a baby and I was on unemployment (my company fired me during my extended maternity leave) I passed a math class.

So after way too much introduction - my challenge was this. How do you a) value and b) achieve an education in an environment where it is not a priority, or a necessity, or even a goal?

I overcame this challenge by not really trying until it was important to me (ie. until I had kids to raise and finally realized that $10 an hour wasn't going to cut it). When it became important to me I did lots of things I would never have suspected I was capable of:
1. Collected welfare for two years while the State of California put me through my lower division college classes;
2. Resigned from the pilot welfare program that guaranteed my four year degree at no charge (including childcare expenses for both kids - with an allowance for study time) because I met a too young man who wanted to be a husband to me and a father to my fatherless children;
3. Left my kids and my husband to fend for themselves every Friday night and all day Saturday (after working full time Monday through Friday) while I pursued my paralegal certificate (BTW my husband learned to cook something other than mac and cheese from the blue box during this time - for that alone it was worth it);
4. Found a "lifetime learning" degree program from an accredited university that would help me to achieve a bachelors degree without too many attendance requirements;
5. After coming within 9 units of the bachelors degree described above just stopped caring/attending;
6. Entered law school (sans bachelor degree the very last year that was allowed in California);
7. Scored high enough on the LSAT to win a scholarship which covered 2/3 of my first year tuition in law school;
8. Took out a total of about $160,000 in student loans anyway;
9. Here is the big surprise (the only thing I really ever finished in my life) I graduated from law school and PASSED the California bar exam the first time I took it;
10. Nearly two years later (I am, after all, still the same person) filled out the final paperwork and was admitted to the State Bar of California.

So, here's the thing... if the challenge was overcoming any value placed on education in my home when I was a teenager did I really overcome this challenge by deciding (in my latish 20s) that an education was in fact extremely valuable? Usually I think so - and then my good friend LawyerMama will reference an author I'm unfamiliar with and I have to confess that, given my unorthodox education, I have absolutely no Humanities and have therefore never read said author. She usually replies that it wasn't a class assignment but LawyerMama was raised to be an overachiever. She is brilliant. When I first knew her I was certain that it was only a matter of time until she saw through whatever she thought I was and realized I was the uneducated girl I am. (She isn't at all like that but I didn't know it at first.)

At any rate, I am probably still overcoming this challenge, and failing to learn enough from it, since I have yet - four years after moving here - to successfully sit for Virginia Bar Exam. In the meantime, I am reasonably content in my work, I love my unexpected Pumpkin more than anything, and I am very happy in my home life. If that isn't overcoming a challenge I don't know what is... I just can't think of an adorable picture to go with this post so I'm afraid its all words tonight...

Who Knows Where the Time Goes

I am 46 years old today. We won't do much. I've purchased several fabulous presents for myself in the last few weeks and, as PC would be the first to point out, I don't need anything. That is true. (I want to completely re-do my sewing room but that is not likely to happen.) There is a difference, PC tells me, between need and want. I do understand it and I don't need anything. There are some personal things, of no global importance and in no particular order


That I want:

1. To lose 20 (ok 35) pounds. PC would put this in the need column. I joined weight watchers, my firm generously paid for a 17 week membership, and yet I've had a net gain of 2.2 pounds. This is a direct result of not following the plan. Hmmm. I could give myself permission to eat expensive but healthy lunches until Thanksgiving. Oh goody. Yet another gift.



2. My oldest son to be happy. (I want all three sons to be happy but I think, for the most part, the younger two already are.) I can't give either one of us a gift to help achieve it but I sure want it.



3. My back, which I wrenched somehow while tucking in the Pumpkin on August 18, to quit hurting and spasming. I take the prescribed anti-inflammatories and I take the muscle relaxer (prescribed for four times a day) at bedtime since it caused me to fall asleep at my desk and while driving on the interstate no matter how much I ate or how much caffeine I consumed to try to counteract it. So, the gift of chiropractic care. The whole concept of chiropractic care makes me very nervous but I have heard several stories from women of how it helped their chronic back problems so I'll give it a try. [Edited on September 27 to add - I never got around to the chiropractor but it seems to have finally healed.]



4. To somehow balance my work, my passion for quilting, my Pumpkin's need to spend LOTS of one on one time with me, and the other important facets of my life (my marriage, my older children, etc.) I am lucky in my marriage in that my husband expects me to sleep with him each night, spend a few evenings a week with the baby, spend all weekend with the baby, and do the deed three or four times a week. That is not a lot as far as expectations go: he does all the cleaning, most of the cooking, takes care of the yards and the dogs. I take care of the baby. My middle son, T, likes it just fine (he claims) that he is under my radar. He doesn't cause any trouble and I don't spend too much time fretting about him or, more importantly to him, quizzing him about his life. I think my oldest son, R, would prefer that I be more hands on even though we live on opposite side of the continent. R is 21 now and sometimes he calls and we have great conversations and sometimes he calls and I end up flinging my cell phone across the office.

PC is right I really don't need a thing (except possibly number 1 above). That said, with all my silly wants and fully met needs what do I have to show for the last 46 years:

1. 3 healthy sons. 2 of them officially adults, one still a toddler.


2. A 17 year marriage to a man I love beyond words.


3. 24 completed quilts, many quilts in progress, and my recent inheritance, from the Queen, of about a thousand yards of fabric (all in color coded bins) and at least 60 quilts in progress. She went through the quilts in progress with me when she first found out she was sick and explained who she was making each quilt for and how she wanted me to finish them.


4. The certain knowledge that I helped my father to die well, the way he wanted to.


5. A law degree.


6. Membership in the State Bar of California (too bad I happen to live in Virginia... that is certainly a topic for another post.)


7. Nearly $200,000 in student loans. At $800 per month they'll be paid off in 20 years. (I just think of them as my vacation home - when I'm 66 and finally finished paying for them - I probably won't even want a vacation home anymore.)

Not too bad I guess. Nothing that helps to further world peace or anything. Just a regular family living a regular life. I do have a deep appreciation for the time and place I was born. My lists above would probably be really different, and not in a good way, had either one of those things been different.

Am I "That Kind of Mother"

I am apparently the kind of mother who will let her barely two year old use his favorite shubbel(shovel) to collect the hideous dead cricket off the garage floor and dump it into the trash can. I did hold the lid of the can open for him. Do I get points for that? Or was I just making sure that the creature actually landed in the can? Probably the latter. On the other hand, he likes to be useful. And he was... I can once again enter the garage (aka my sewing and laundry room) without fear.


The whole "that kind of mother" thing is on my mind because of some acquaintances of ours. They've been married about two and a half years. She has an eighteen year old daughter and a fourteen year old son. He has a ten year old son. Her son lives with them. His son lives in another state with his mother. He is active duty Navy and was recently given the choice of either going to Iraq (unacompanied by his family for a year) or to Hawaii with his family for three years. Not his whole family of course. He will see his own son even less than he does now. He makes the nine hour drive to his son's house fairly often for long weekends, school vacations, etc. Her daughter will not be going. They've arranged for her to share a house with a young sailor they know pretty well. The thing is her son (who simply doesn't have any other father) will be going with them. A smallish caucasion boy who is a little bit geeky and wears glasses. Into Hawaiian public schools. I am a military wife and we have never considered Hawaii as an acceptable duty station unless we had the budget for private school. Therefore, we've never even considererd Hawaii.

These newly married folks are HOT for each other. I've known them for over four years and they can hardly keep their hands off each other and their clothes on when their together. They telephone and email each other constantly. They hate to be apart. But come on...


I love PC; he really is my prince. But I can assure you he would NEVER question whether him alone in Iraq versus any of our kids in Hawaiian public schools was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He simply wouldn't consider it. And I'll tell you something else, if it was PC's friend's biological son - the one in the other state - they wouldn't be going to Hawaii. How very judgmental of me. But I KNOW this is true.


So then, I've established I'm not THAT kind of mother. I don't send my kids to public schools where they are destined to get the shit kicked out of them every day for the crime of being Haulie (sp?). We chose to purchase our smallish homes in excellent school districts (although I admit I secretly long for a McMansion) and I am certain we'll continue that tradition. We were supposed to be able to live anywhere now that T has graduated but along came the Pumpkin so we're in for another 18 years or so of choosing a house based on its schools rather than its charm.


On the other hand I do let any of the three pick up creepy bugs so I don't have to. I have been known to dose a possibly sick baby with Motrin or Tylenol (or their generic equivalents) so that they can be dropped off at daycare (aka "school") and I can get at least a half day of work in before the school calls to inform me that my baby is sick.


I am also the mother who refused to bail her oldest son out of jail when he was arrested for selling narcotics. I'm sure it was a hideous lesson - but I suspect he truly learned it.


I held the middle one close to me on the day, in his senior year of high school, when he was expelled for having a knife in his car. I know it sounds awful - the knife - but we have them in each of our cars, they're very handy for opening packages, making small repairs, etc. Since the school police officers also found remnants of marijuana in the back seat pocket of T's car that is what I was concentrating on... And then the school principal explained that he had no choice but to expel T for having a weapon on school property. I am a licensed attorney but the fact that the school thought my boy brought a weapon onto school property had never crossed my mind. Except once he said it, based on my skilled legal background, I realized that there was no way out for my boy. In the end that middle boy somehow managed to remain in school, complete all his required classes and actually graduate in June. I am now the kind of mother who is so grateful for the graduation that the fact that neither of the "big kids" were prepared to attend even community college (they COULD have, they just wouldn't - although R now attends full time) hardly even registered on my panic scale.


I am a mother who works hard for her money (with a husband who works harder still). Neither of us was ready for college immediately after high school (PC's parents sent him but he has a transcript full of Fs to show for thier investment in one year of partying). We each eventually went to college as adults, at night, while raising these same kids and we paid for the privilege. In my case, we'll be paying for the next 20 years. We're paying for R's college now because he finally seems to be serious about going (we've actually paid several times but he never completed any courses until this summer). When its time for him to move on from the Community College (VERY inexpensive in California where R lives) he may be on his own for the expense. We haven't really talked about what will happen next because we're still watching what happens now.

I am THIS kind of mother:

1. I love them all fiercely;


2. I make them face the consequences of their actions (well, perhaps not so much with the Pumpkin);


3. I send them to excellent public schools (again, the Pumpkin - being two, doesn't qualify so he goes to a lovely private daycare center);


4. I help them with college but I don't think I owe it to them - I think they owe it to themselves;


5. I would die for them but I won't bail them out of jail;


6. I will watch ridiculous TV shows with the older kids, if they invite me, just because I'm flattered to be asked;


7. I will watch endless repeats of the Pumpkin's favorite shows and movies just because he like to know I'm there repeating "oh no" at the thrilling parts and pat, pat, patting to get rocket to fly faster;


8. I have asthma but I will inflate up to ten ballons a day because the Pumpkin loves them; and


9. I tell them every day how much I love them and I try to explain that being their mother is the best thing I've ever been.

Good Neighbor/Bad Neighbor

Ah Neighbors. We've had many. I'm pretty much a wave as I drive by neighbor. Here in Virginia Beach we live in a real neighborhood of ranch houses built 40 years ago. Our block has several original owners, two rentals, a few childless couples around my age, and a few families including young children or teenagers (ours is, of course, the only family with both). I am a good neighbor in the sense that I clean up my yard, don't play loud music, put away my trash cans, usually bring in my newspaper, and NEVER park any of our four cars on the grass.

I'm not so great in that I know the names of exactly three of the families on my block. I know the first names of two other women. And I've forgotton the name of the very nice woman who introduced herself to me at the high school graduation in June (she lives across the street and two doors down - I recognized her immediately because the day they put new mulch down their 16 year old son threw a cigarette out his bedroom window and it ignited - PC ran to the assistance of her very irate husband).

I'm busy. I know I'm not the only one.

Good Neighbor Points: When my friend across the street had a baby in June I was on vacation, when I got back I was sick, the first day I felt completely well I bought his present and took it to her. I explained I'd been too sick to come over before and she seemed to understand and appreciate it. I've never complained about the next door neighbor's band. Probably because I like it. I used to dance on the deck with the Pumpkin when he was a baby and now we run around the yard like wild things during practice.

Bad Neighbor Points: I don't pay attention to them. My dogs bark A LOT (if they bark at night I do lock them in the house). My husband built a new wood fence, using the posts of the neighbors existing chain link fences for support. Their side isn't very attractive (in my defense I was extremely opposed to the fence). I sometimes let the baby hold the car keys and the red button that sets off the alarm is his favorite.


Which brings me to a funny story. I've noticed that my blog is a complete downer house of gloom and doom. I actually consider myself sort of funny (the Pumpkin always agrees, PC not so much). One of my good points is that I am never too vain to tell a terrible story about myself if it is funny. Don't worry, this all wraps up into the baby setting off the car alarm thing....


Ever since T (the 18 year old) was born, I have had slight to moderate bladder control issues. Heavy sigh. My friend who is a doctor frequently tells me that "it's never too late to build a muscle" and I kegel away for a couple of days and then I lose interest. So anyway, by the time I get home in the afternoon I am frequently RUSHING to get to the bathroom. One day a few months ago was such a day. So I pull to a screeching halt in front of the house, race around the car, wrench the Pumpkin from his carseat, and haul ass to the front door. So far I have placed stress on my very full bladder when halting, racing, wrenching, and carrying... So I fling the door open, leaving the keys in it and race off to the bathroom. The pumpkin, left alone in the entryway, is delighted that he can just reach the keys. I get to the bathroom and discover that - oh no! - not only did I not quite make it - it wasn't only my bladder that was full. I know, TMI, but how else can I get the point across. So I'm trapped in the bathroom... finishing up, cleaning up, finding clean play clothes etc. In the meantime, I hear the car horn occasionally honking, the alarm going off then stopping, the beeps of the car being locked and unlocked and I'm just not paying that much attention to it. Then, just as I struggle into clean undies, I hear the car alarm go off and it doesn't stop. Not good. So I race to the entryway in my underwear to discover that all of the neighbors across the street (three or four houses worth) are on their porches or in their driveways approaching my house to see what the ruckus is about... And there I am to fix it all IN MY UNDERWEAR.


As gracefully as possible while crouching in a ridiculous position to try to hide the fact that I'm wearing only underwear, I removed the keys, slammed and locked the door, and tried to explain to the pumpkin that he should NEVER hit the red button. Oh the shame and horror.


Another bad neighbor point: I am occasionally seen in my underwear. Ugh.

What if ....

I have been thinking a lot lately about people I couldn't live without. Its not a long list. It was prompted by a few conversations I've had lately with my friend A. A's husband is one of the Navy divers who recovered the bodies of the people who died in the Minneapolis bridge collapse. We grieved and agonized over the woman who was five months pregnant and had her two year old in the car with her. All gone. But what we thought would have been worse is if the mother had somehow fought her way out but had to leave her baby behind. We also can't imagine the life of a two year old who is left without her mother. The father of that little family probably doesn't agree with us. There was also a mother who died with her 20 year old son who had Down syndrome. Apparently they were never apart. Again, how could one have managed without the other. And yet, she had two daughters who almost certainly wouldn't agree with us.

When I hear of the death of a child I think "I could never get out of bed again". Yet I know that people do... If you have other kids you must. But if something happened to the Pumpkin I don't think I would even want to get out of bed ever again. I don't know if I could do it to be strong for my big sons who don't need me for much anymore. PC would expect me to but he is so strong, so stoic, that I don't think he could even relate to what it would feel like to be me.

I am many things more than the Pumpkin's mother but, right now, there is nothing as important, nothing as all encompassing as that role. PC and the Pumpkin are going away for the weekend to PC's brother's house. An easy three hour drive. I was supposed to go but I've missed some work this week due to a back injury (and yes, it is quite possible, that the medication I'm taking has accellerated this morbid train of thought). And so, until they get back next Sunday, I will periodically test the hypothetical devastation that would follow IF SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED. Its how my mind works. I have to think up all the awful permutations of a situation and run all the way through them in my mind.

The truth is almost certainly: They'll be fine; PC will discover that traveling alone with the Pumpkin is not quite as easy or as difficult as he anticipated; I'll get caught up on a lot of my work; I may get to put in some time in my sewing room; I'll try to have a couple of chats with T about his current plan to not enroll in college this fall; I'll miss them in a background sort of way because I'll be very busy; I'll be so glad when they're back to monopolize every second of my time.

Now You're Scaring Me

Last Saturday I told my very close friend Amber that I felt a little hurt that I didn't "feel" my Mother in Law near me since she died in July. Now before you click away, please understand even though I'm from California I'm not a freaky kind of mystical weirdo. (But if you are a freaky kind of mystical weirdo I can totally accept that. Not that you need my acceptance - good Lord this is complicated.) What I meant was, when my Dad died and I missed him unbearably he would come to me in dreams. One of the dreams I remember most vividly was shortly after he passed, when I was still crying myself to sleep every night, and in the dream I was telling him how lonely I was without him and he looked at me and said "Don't you think I'm lonely too". It made sense to me. I believe that he was reunited with his parents, his brother, his beloved grandmother, and the rest of the loved ones he lost once he passed. But I know he would have missed me and my brothers no matter how many loving souls were there for him. Its been 24 years since my dad died but his was the only death of someone truly close to me that I've experienced.


So I expected my Mother in Law to visit. To maybe tell me to watch out for the boys and for PC. Something. And my feelings were a little bit hurt that she didn't. Okay. Now I'm over it. She is haunting manifesting through my desktop computer. Not in a bad way. My desktop always boots up slowly. The clue that it is finally finished is when the weatherbug and AIM pop up. I don't use AIM but my older sons do. It pops up every day and expects my oldest son, R., to log in. I close the login screen and thats it. Every day. Until now. Now it pops up with Linda's buddy list. I'm sure she logged in to AIM when she was staying at my house after the Pumpkin was born but I certainly didn't change the last person to log in. I don't mind. I find it weirdly comforting. Yesterday though was creepy. In addition to her buddy list my computer froze on a picture of her husband. Now although the picture does reside somewhere in the My Pictures folder I have never deliberately accessed it - at least until I decided to show YOU. It is hideous. I see it flash by occasionally when the screen saver is on and the slideshow of all my pictures plays. But that is the screen saver. There should never be a picture along with the regular opening stuff. She only recently passed maybe she only has enough energy to cause an electrical disturbance rather than a dream visit. I don't know the rules. Before you rush to judgment (see note above re freaky mystical weirdo - NOT) I can see I'm going to have to explain similar things that have happened to Me or to People I Actually Know. Here goes:


Other than the aforementioned dreams of Dad, my personal experience with "spiritual" weirdness is this: My oldest son R was conceived when a good friend of mine and I had a brief sexual encounter. It wasn't the first time, we were old friends. Nonetheless once he learned of my pregnancy - through a friend - he never spoke to me again (R is 21 years old). This occurred in the same year that my dad died, shortly after my brother joined the Army, when I was living alone in the house where only recently I had lived with my family.... So, I'm pregnant and I'm alone. I'm actually good with that because in my mind I already had R and therefore was no longer alone - I was in fact a walking family. I happen to be one of those people who is terrified of being alone in a house. I imagine sounds and creatures and serial killers under the beds and REALLY have a hard time being alone in a house. So, asleep in my pitiful twin bed I roll over one night and glance around the room for intruders (as I did, in those days, 20 or 30 times a night) and I see, hovering over me, a face. At first, I was completely petrified given that someone in the house is what I was so afraid of. After a few minutes though, I realized that this "person" was not whole - at least not standing at my bedside - only sort of hovering over me. And, more importantly, that this "person" meant me no harm. It was an elderly lady that I didn't recognize. When trying to reason it out I decided it must be my dad's Granny, whom I'd never met, but who, I reasoned, had been gone long enough to "check on me" for him. Like I said - I don't know the rules. We watched each other for a while. I had a clear sense of being "measured up" and then I went back to sleep. The next day when visiting a friend I learned that R's biological father's mother died that night. I think she was checking out her future grandchild's mother. Weird. It didn't change anything. R's NF (not a father?) never did consent to see us again. But that's my story and I'm sticking to it.


My only other "direct" encounter: My cousin Barb's (I think she's my second cousin - she and my dad were first cousins) husband died a couple of years before I moved away from California. After he passed, the remote control car that was his - and was not permitted to be touched by his innumerable grandsons - kept going on when nobody was manning the controls. Replacing the batteries didn't help. Removing the batteries didn't help. My cousin finally gave it to one of her sons so he would get it out of her house because it creeped her out. A lot. In the drawer of her dresser it would start up at night. Yuck.


To get back to Linda (my Mother in Law), I tried to think what she might be telling me, with her list of friends and her creepy husband's pciture, if anything. Maybe she was just trying not to hurt my feelings. Maybe dreams are too hard. Maybe she knows that PC and the boys/men are fine. I decided (in what may have been a phenomenal example of thinking what you want to think) that she wanted me to try to use my trusty, albeit rusty, lawyer skills to persuade her husband to drop the lawsuit he has filed against my sister in law. (Note to readers: You thought I gave a little TMI but you were wrong....) So I wrote him a letter. Not my best effort, I was mostly putting in words the actions I want to take - shake him until his teeth rattle and he gets a clue.


Anyway, mission completed, when I got home tonight there was nothing peculiar frozen on my screen. Its just my lame old desktop computer in the bedroom (the Pumpkin got the office when he was mysteriously conceived). I don't want her to give up. I don't want her to leave me. I miss her so much.... I love you Linda.

Signature Dish

I avidly watched this season of The Next Food Network Star. As I watched the competitions I went over the assignments and the timelines and wondered how I would stack up against the contestants (I wouldn’t – I can’t even breathe, much less talk and cook, if there is a camera pointed in my direction). The problem I had is: what is my signature dish? What is my “approach” to food. Hmmm. I love Italian food. I make great Chicken Cacciatore. My brother in law loves my Beef Stroganoff, I can make, and love to eat, really great tacos. But a Signature Dish? I don’t think I have one. At the stadium food remake I’d have done Frito Pies (homemade chili, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, and/or guacamole on top of fritos) yum. I’m sure I’d have won. But what about the rest of it?

I recently read “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver and her family. Ms. Kingsolver (one of my favorite authors) deplored the “food culture” of America as something like – and this is ABSOLUTELY paraphrasing – what you can eat in your car between appointments. I want to adopt the “local” food culture but it requires a LOT of planning. You may have heard of the “100 mile food” initiative or something like it. I probably won’t adopt it this year but I am making efforts. I have been buying masses of “salad” size tomatoes (not quite as big as a golf ball, but too big for one bite) and drying them in the oven. In a couple of weeks, when tomatoes become dirt cheap at the Farmer’s Market I plan to buy 100 pounds (4 largish boxes) and make and freeze sauce – when I moved here, pre-Pumpkin in 2003, I made 25 pounds into sauce for no reason at all so I’m certain I can manage 100 pounds when I DO have a reason. I DON’T CAN. But I might next year. Also this month I must buy masses of zucchini (you know, when people will pay you to take it) and shred and freeze it. If you go to AnimalVegetableMiracle.com you can find the Fabulous, Amazing, Incredibly Delicious recipe for Disappearing Zucchini Orzo and you’ll know why. Yes, you can make it in winter with zucchini grown somewhere other than Virginia but I’m doing my very small part to eat things when they grow here and do without them when they don’t. Since I have a toddler and this would require that I never again buy bananas this is clearly NOT a firm commitment but I’m trying.

Do I have a signature anything? What do I stand for? When people think about me – what do they think? What do I think about when I think about me? (Yes, I think Toby Keith did write a song about that…) I agonized over this for several days, in part with this post in mind. Most nights, my sweet baby Pumpkin reminds me that if I’m around all is right with his world and that is how it should be. But what about the rest of the world? I think I expend a lot of effort to not care too much about anything that doesn’t directly impact my family. But if you start to think about things like how much energy (read: foreign oil) it takes for me to buy lovely pre-washed California Lettuce in December in Virginia you have to go a little farther - is it possible that I could eat lettuce only in the Spring and Fall – when it actually grows here? Is this where I draw the line? Do I stand for this? If I do, I’d better get cracking; according to Ms. Kingsolver, the time to think about what you’re going to eat in February is in August.

What I’m really trying to get at through this whole food analogy thing is: Do I say anything of enough general interest to say it to the general public on this blog? I want to be a person with enough belief in SOMETHING that I can pour my heart out to the world at large in an effort – not to exactly sway anybody – but to show that even if your gut instinct is to disagree with me totally, maybe I have a sliver of an idea that you agree with and perhaps, even though you don’t agree with most of my thought processes, my point is valid enough to address.

Hmmm. That seems kind of whiny… I am essentially a very private person. I received a phone call from Jack Webb’s campaign committee shortly before the election in – was it November: I can’t even remember, I am a formerly intelligent sleep deprived person with no memory – well anyway, fairly recent election when Virginia surprisingly voted in a Democrat to the Senate – asking if, as a registered Democrat, I wanted any campaign materials for my lawn. I told the very nice man that although his candidate definitely had my vote, it was my quiet, private, vote since if I put Mr. Webb’s signs on the lawn, that would require that my PC put the other guy’s signs on the lawn, then the neighbors might get involved and, most importantly PC might actually remember to vote and then my vote would be canceled out, etc….

Now, I’m throwing myself out there for public perusal. Ick. Still, before I state a conviction out loud I think it through pretty thoroughly, so here I go. I believe in local food (with the apparent exception of bananas which all toddlers seem to feel are a god-given right). I’m trying to live up to my belief. I believe that I have a duty to do my best to pass on the planet to all of my children and to their children and so I am committed to recycling (this is new – I pretty much ignore recycling and landfills whenever I have a child in diapers).

I hope that as I continue with this blogging adventure I will become confident enough to express more of what I believe in. I am more of a listener than a leader but I think I might try to talk a little more. Maybe I can become a persuader. What a concept…

Requiem

We are back from our trip to El Paso. As funerals go, it was nice. It was really great to see our oldest son (we haven’t seen him since Thanksgiving) and the Pumpkin had a great time with his brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents . There are two good things about El Paso: Boots and Burritos. I ate an unbelievable quantity of really good Mexican food and bought the Pumpkin a pair of Justin cowboy boots and a “real” cowboy hat.

We spent too much time in the lobby of the Embassy Suites watching the SEVEN kids under eleven run like wild things. They swam, got kicked out of the fitness center, played “elevator tag” and were generally unsupervised and out of control. We forbade the cousins to take the Pumpkin on the elevator (because looking up to the open 8th floor corridor and seeing his head peeking out of the railings was too terrifying for words) but other than that he ran with the worst of them.

The Pumpkin and his oldest brother R

running amok in the Lobby of the hotel

The Pumpkin escaped from my clutches TWICE during the service and ran across the front of the chapel yelling “and beyond” (as in “To Infinity and…). The minister, who was wonderful, bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the guys in Flight of the Conchords (the one on the right)and so I was seized by an absurd impulse to hold up my lighter when he sang “Praise God” over and over to the tune of Amazing Grace because he only knew the words to the first verse. It is one of my least attractive traits – I tend to giggle uncontrollably at funerals. If my youngest brother is with me I virtually have to get down on the floor to smother the gales of laughter that inevitably overcome my good sense. I did NOT actually laugh at the service this time but I thought silly thoughts and wished we weren’t all too sad to tell the funny stories she wanted us to tell.

I went back to work today but was feeling weepy and out of sorts. Between Mrs. Chicky’s loss of her Gram, LawyerMama’s loss of her Grandma-in-law, my own loss of my MIL, and Robin Roberts’ breast cancer I’ve been fighting tears all day. I am hoping that after I slog through tomorrow the weekend will cure me of my blues. I’m planning to work on some quilts this weekend – there is no better way to pay homage to my MIL. Maybe LawyerMama will come back and we can go to the beach and baste the kids.

Breast Cancer - Just Because You Don't Have a Lump Doesn't Mean You Don't Have It

I'm new to blogging but I've been lurking in the blogosphere for about six month. Why Mommy over at Toddler Planet has asked everyone to post this very scary information about a form of breast cancer most of us don't know about. If you've already read this on another blog, please read it again or send it to some women you love.

Edited on August 3 to add: Note: These are Why Mommy's words, not mine. (My mother called sobbing after she read this post.)

"We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.


Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer."

Madre Dos

PC's mother, the Queen, died yesterday. She was 58 years old. She was diagnosed with liver cancer in October of 2006 and she fought longer and harder than anyone expected.

Linda was the mother in law everyone should be lucky enough to have. When I married PC he was 22 and I was 29. I had two kids. She accepted our sons as her grandsons from day one, she never expressed any doubt that PC was lucky to have me (PC can be a challenge and who knows that better than his mother - she used to tell me that if there was ever a divorce she got me) and that the whole family was lucky to add us to it. I tried to tell her, years later, how grateful I was of that acceptance and she seemed truly astonished. It never occurred to her to do anything but accept and love us. What a woman. I loved her so much.

I caught the quilting bug in 1997 when I was in my second year of law school and I taught her the very little I knew over Thanksgiving break that year. It turned out I wasn't doing most of it right but she caught the bug too and then it multiplied exponentially with her as the host. My big kids used to say that I created a monster when I taught her to quilt; I didn't but she did become happily obsessed. She left around 30 quilts for me to finish but she has gifted innumerable friends and loved ones with her quilts already. Linda passed the bug along to her best friend, and PC's surrogate mother, Judy. Judy's kids also declared that I created a monster but I know the joy their mutual and separate quilting brought to Linda and will still bring to Judy and I beg to differ.

Linda asked us to make her memorial service a celebration of her life and the things she loved most: grandchildren and quilting. This photo is of Linda in July 2004 (shortly before the conception of the Pumpkin) surrounded by all, ten then, of her Grandchildren, happy.

Linda fought the cancer so long and hard that we never actually said goodbye. You couldn't say it since she still didn't believe it the last time I saw her. PC and his sister we able to say their goodbyes while she still was aware of herself and the people around her. I was with her in the hospital on Mother's Day and a commercial came on the television which featured an old lady skateboarding, Linda looked at me and said "I sure wish I was going to get old." I told her I really wished so too. That was as close as we came to goodbye. If I'd been able to I'd have said:

"I promise to take care of your son and his sons; I promise that no matter how much he irritates me, I'll be married to him always; I promise to stay close to your daughter, a sister isn't the same as a mother but I'll be there for her
when she needs me; I promise to take [your best friend] Judy into our lives as if you were still here - she can't come to visit us with you but she can still come; I promise to stay in touch with your sister, I did not really know her before you were ill but I have come to love her during your illness; Most of all, I promise to do everything in my power to make you real to Caleb - he won't know you the way the other kids do but we will talk about you, and tell stories about you, and point out your things and the quilts you made and we will MAKE him know who you were and how much you loved our pumpkin; I promise not to let him be forever known as "Pumpkin Head" even though he maybe should be, I know you didn't like it when I called him that; I promise to keep you in my heart and to remember everything you've taught me; I love you." .

I hardly have any picture of Grammy and her Pumpkin. This was taken in May. She's wearing the Brighton breast cancer awareness bracelet it has charms that say "be the inspiration" "heal" "hope" "accept" and a small locket
inscribed with "mothers, sisters, daughters, wives". I have one too and I've always planned to put her picture in it. I'll wear it and let the Pumpkin play with it and open it and tell him how much his Grammy loved him and how hard she fought to know him longer. I know we can make him see how wonderful she was.

We love you Mom

The Center of the Universe

LawyerMama recently allowed me to do a guest post on her blog while she was on vacation. I liked it so much that I've decided to see if I can fill my own spot every day or so. That doesn't mean I'm foolish enough to skip an opportunity to cross-post so - if you didn't catch me at Lawyer Mama - here's the story of how the Pumpkin came to be all over again.

Just in case you missed the bulletin the world now revolves around a young Virginian named Caleb. (Hereinafter the Pumpkin.) I am 45 years old. The Pumpkin’s brothers, R and T, are 21 and 18 YEARS old. The Pumpkin is two. He is the terrible, incorrigible, adorable, fabulous, funny, willful center of my world. I got pregnant (all three times actually) the old fashioned way: unexpectedly and unintentionally. Yes, I do know where they come from but according to my doctor no more babies should have come from me. He (Cute Dr. J) sent me for an ultrasound to see why I wasn’t having periods. He wasn’t particularly concerned and it took me a few months to get around to having it (hard to schedule at the Navy hospital, new job, missed the first one when my car was left too long in the valet lot and the keys went away with the attendant – you know I was BUSY). I eventually presented myself at the hospital and was chatting with the ultrasound technician about how I’d never seen an ultrasound without a baby in it when she squirted the gel, placed the thingamabob on my stomach and Oops – I still haven’t seen an ultrasound without a baby in it. Sixteen weeks along, all his fingers and toes clearly visible, the Pumpkin.

My equally busy husband, Prince Charming, was stationed on a ship the year the Pumpkin was conceived and was deployed when I found out. Not a long deployment just gone Monday through Friday most weeks to PREPARE to deploy for six months. I told him on a friend’s cell phone (Prince Charming NEVER hears his phone ring) as they were leaving Connecticut. Prince Charming had apparently spent the weekend in various bars with his friends extolling the virtues of being at the “finish line” – said friends all had young kids and we were nearly through raising ours. T was in high school and we could see the childless light at the end of our tunnel. He also had a dream about a fish (apparently a sure sign that a baby is on the way – who knew).

Stunned disbelief followed in short order by fear, amniocentesis, and finally overwhelming relief that the baby was a healthy boy. (I know, I only wanted a healthy baby but I REALLY didn’t want to have to face a 17 year old girl when I was 60.)
Prince Charming’s ship deployed, as scheduled, one week before the Pumpkin was born (nope, they don’t make special allowances for that in the Navy, and nope, the Navy physicians do not induce labor prior to 38 weeks just to allow Dad to meet the baby before he leaves). This was followed by ten days of exhaustion in the hospital while the Pumpkin had pneumonia, four months of exhaustion and loneliness while home alone with all three boys, and two months of exhaustion and exhilaration when I started work at a new job (which I still love). Then finally, the ship came home, Prince Charming met his Pumpkin, and we gradually settled into our present life.

That life, and all its side topics, will be the starting point of this blog. Who knows where it will lead....