Goodbye 2012 (and Good Riddance)

First, of course, a caveat.  Overall 2012 was a fine year for our family.  We are all healthy.  The older boys are useful members of society doing good work and paying their own rent all year.  The pumpkin is a smart, funny, challenging person who makes every day brighter than it could ever have been without him.  (C'mon when your child was originally known as "Oops" you have to look at the big picture all the time.) 

Having acknowledged the overall, big picture, okayness of 2012, I can now express my own thoughts re the end of this miserable year.  (Tell us what you really think Lauren.)  I have never been so delighted to wake up to a new number on the calendar.  I have been under some kind of crazy dark cloud since July and I am so glad this miserable year is over.  A short recap:

Early July, writing a grocery list to make some fabulous lobster rolls made by Bobby Flay, minding my own business, thinking about cooking something great for my family... eating something delicious and leftover that I can no longer recall specifically... out of the blue a molar broke in half.  Agony.  4th of July and the dentist was closed... Not a tragedy really but two weeks of incessant tooth pain.  Just a crown not a root canal.  I am a big baby about the dentist and it was two weeks.

At the end of the tooth thing I went to Connecticut to visit Jamie and the family.  Great visit.  Much fun had by all.  Very excellent food including lobster twice.  Decandent and fun.  And when I got home I dropped my 48 pound suitcase onto my sandaled foot.  Screeched a very bad word in public.  Hobbled to my car crying.  Went to the ER the next day and was told I had a "classic corner fracture" and put into some wierd cast with inflatable supports.  Hobbled and sweated around for ten days.  Went for the follow up and discovered that the actual radiologist (not the PA) did not see a fracture at all and instead of masses of narcotic pain releavers I should have been having a nice anti-inflammatory and my tennis shoes.  Very releived to be rid of the cast but that was 10 days of fairly wretched pain when I was supposed to be getting ready for vacation...

End of August, annual trip to the Shenendoah River (second time but that still makes it annual).  Our friends the Judys and the Rogers went with us.  Three cabins.  Three families.  Lots of kids and water and dogs.  Super fun.  Except on day two (the first full day) I took the two girl children (my neice Kennedy and my neighbor Kate - both nine) tubing.  One of my favorite outdoor activities.  After all, you sit back in the sun sipping beer and being lazily transported down the river by the current.  That's a sport I can get behind. 

Due to some major miscalculations on the part of me and Prince Charming (caused in large part by a map that didn't actually include our location) what was meant to be a three hour float turned into a ten hour trip long after dark with very frightened childrend who were way too cold.  The sheriff tried to find us and at one point we could see them behind us on the bluff.  Eventually we floated into our camp at 10:45 p.m.  Cold, tired, hungry, but completely safe.  We actually pulled in about two hours earlier than the sherrif expected because I spent the last six hours of the trip "paddling."  Paddling in an oversized tube without paddles involved hanging over the tube with my head underwater and backstroking.  It moved us a lot quicker.  I don't normally exercise.  At all.  To say I was sore would be a vast understatement.  Beyond that there was an emotional toll associated with this.  We were fine.  But we could so easily not have been.  My neice asked me constantly if we were really going to get back to the camp.  I kept telling her that me and God and Uncle Mike were not going to let her die on that river but I don't think she believed me.  It was scary and I was totally responsible for two little girls.  I'm still carrying some emotional baggage from this one.

September, October, November all good.  Great Thanksgiving with Mike's Dad and Stepmom here.  Kennedy stayed the week after Thanksgiving because she was off-track (year round school) and she wanted to go to Great Wolf Lodge with us the following Sunday.  She went to work with me every day and is known in the office as the "miracle child" because she was so well behaved while she was there.

Great Wolf was the usual good time.  Kennedy had never been before and we all had fun.  On the drive home we got in a horrible car accident.  We were not hurt.  The motorcyclist who rear-ended us was badly injured and is facing a very long recovery.  My car was totaled.  I had an Expedition.  A guy on a motorcycle ruined it with his body and his bike.  He lost one leg below the knee, broke both his hips, and one of his arms.  He is my age.  I could hardly manage the pain of some dental work and backstroking.  I cannot imagine the physical and mental resources needed for this man to recover.  We were in our car while the passerby (including an off-duty police officer who actually had and knew how to use a tourniquet - the like reason the man survived) and eventually the paramedics worked on him.  When he was taken away there was a large puddle of blood left behind.  The kids saw all of this.  We're all still dealing with this.  What we have to deal with is so much less than the man who hit us but it is still, for me, nearly overwhelming.  Still, I have a plan for some professional help (I'm very lucky to have a neighbor who can direct me to good resources) and I am somewhat excited about some upcoming sewing projects.  I got a much-longed for quilting frame for Christmas.  I have a super fabulous new Expedition (I had planned to downsize my car when I got a new one but in the end I just wasn't comfortable in anything else I drove).

On to 2013.  Hopefully the black cloud has blown away.

The Fourth Friday in November

Ahhh, wiggle your toes with joy.  It's over.  Fait accompli.  I cooked my way through all the food groups yesterday (fat and sugar being very well represented).  All the usual suspects and a few new recipes:  Pumpkin pie made from (you guessed it) a pumpkin; Cranberry sauce with a little kick of rum, an orange juice base, and two kinds of sugar; Sweet Potatoes roasted instead of pureed with a butter/maple syrup sauce and toasted pecans.  Yum.  I guess (I didn't actually eat anything).  All served only one hour after the target time while I was wear a dress.  (You didn't see that one coming, did you?)  My remaining fabulous MIL, Gene, allowed me to skip the gravy making finale and removed my pajamas and hair tie to get dressed.  We all did.  It was lovely.  Maybe at your house everyone dresses up for holiday dinners.  That's a lovely idea.  I, however, began cooking at 4:30 a.m. and didn't sit down until 5:30 p.m.  I was tired.  And given gravy making, et al., somewhat apprehensive that I would actually sit down to Thanksgiving Dinner in my PJs.  Like I said, I was dismissed to "get ready."  It was lovely. 
And yet...  When I looked in the mirror after a quick face wash, toothbrush, mascara application, and hair brushing - all I could hear was my dad's voice saying "You're not Pretty [when you drink]."  Well.  I did have two glasses of wine right at the end of the cooking frenzy.   Does that mean there wasn't a sparkle in my eyes?  Did my hair not actually come out pretty great considering it's due to be washed and It was tied up in an Aunt Jemima style kerchief all day?  When I remembered to hold in my stomach wasn't my dress pretty?
This is the way I live my life, always second guessing.  Everything.  Why, why, why, why, why?
My dad has been dead longer than I had a dad (meaning I've spent more than half my life without a father). 
This little diddy that replays constantly in my head is only the tip of my personal iceberg.  And I want to let the global warming begin.  Really.
So, I'm investigating something called EMDR.  It sounds so useful.  To put the past to rest.  Heaven.  I'll let you know how it goes.

I coulda been a contender

For about four hours this week I was definitely in the running for the Mother of the Year award.  Since I am more typically a slacker mom, I was very pleased.  PC left for about a month on Monday morning.  I told the Pumpkin that we would do a few extra "fun" things this week to help us not miss Daddy.  It started off big...  I took the Pumpkin to school on time, then returned home Monday morning to take PC to the airport.  All was well and I was at work by 11:00.
Just before I left the office at 5:40 (daycare closes at 6:00), I heated up another serving of my lunch, and fixed a hot dog for the Pumpkin.  A quick scan of the office fridge revealed baby carrots (expired, but barely) and water bottles.  A picnic was born.  In the morning I had stashed the Pumpkin's new kite and a picnic mat I purchased from QVC in the back of the car.

So, I picked him up at school (he was the last kid as usual) and drove the 100 yards to the park next door with the "tall mountain."  The tall mountain is a very small hill but it is the only hill in town.  We spread out our mat, ate a little, then set up the kite.  Kite flying has come a long way since I was a child.  It isn't hard.  Yay.  I've never had a successful kite flying experience before so I was a little worried.  (I did have a backup plan in the event there was a kit disaster - there is a very large playground on the other side of the hill, the Pumpkin would have been content to leave the kite in its package and play there all evening.)
However, no backup plan was required.  The kite flying was successful.

To continue in my super mom guise, after we went home and had a bath I let him eat a Banana Royale in my bed.  And he ate every bite which means he ate half a banana.

The next day I was pretty much back to myself.  And I had to water all the plants PC put in before he left.  At one point in the evening the Pumpkin, in a fit of rage, stomped out the front door and yelled, from the porch, "Mom, I just hate you".  Oh well.  I was in the running for a while.

That was scary

I had a mildly terrifying experience this week.  I arrived home from work Monday to discover three telephone messages that were NOT from telemarketers.  That wasn't the scary part but it wasn't a bright spot either.  One message was from a nurse at the clinic where I recently had my annual screening mammogram.  Two were from the hospital telling me I needed to schedule a follow up diagnostic mammogram.

Bottom line, end of the story.  I'm fine it was just a glitch in the film.

Back to the terror.  I scheduled the appointment for Thursday.  And I spent four days wondering if, just when we are beginning to relax about cancer around here, it was my turn.  I am not one of those people who could just wait and see what happens for four days.  In my mind, I have to go through all the possible terrible outcomes all the way to the bitter finish of the story.  You know, the bitter finish in which I was "gone" and PC was left to finish raising our kids alone.  Its just how my mind works.  There is a technical term for it but it wasn't a psych major and I would have to look it up on Google.  My good friend Lawyer Mama was a psych major and she knows the term.  We've discussed it.

Beyond the terror.  Its not the fourth Thursday in November but I am very thankful for many things in my life that I don't always take the time to appreciate.  Here's a partial list:

• PC, the good and the bad, I would only have a shell of a life, would only be a shell of a person, without him.  
• The sweet snuggly body of our nearly five year old Pumpkin nearly pushing me off the edge of the bed nearly every night and the great little person who he is
• My grown sons (who, they read this, will be very irritated at being combined instead of each getting their own sentence); they drive me crazy but I love them just as much as I did when they were sweet and snuggly
• My extended family on the other edge of the continent, I don't talk to them much, I see them even less, but I'm glad they're there when the opportunity arises
• PC's extended family.  After nearly 20 years they're my family too. 
• The time and place I was born (you may place your right hand over your heart ready begin, because really, I'm so lucky)
• My friends, I suck at keeping in touch but that doesn't mean I don't fully appreciate the ability to pick up the phone after days or weeks or months and pick up just where we left off the last conversation

I appreciate lots of things too (my iPhone, my fabulous fabric stash, televisions, laptops, etc.) but I could manage without them.  That seems so obvious when you look at it from this perspective but I'm glad I sat in the mammography suite, waiting for the radiologist to read my films, and thought about it.  Now if I can only remember it every day I'll probably be a lot more cheerful.

What do you do?

After nearly 13 months of unemployment I am, once again, working full time.  Outside the home.  You know, a regular person with a job.  Me again.  After the first few months of panic and nausea, when I realized we were okay financially and the stress was not likely to cause a divorce, I actually enjoyed being home this year.  Not enough to ever really relax into it.  After all, the job search was a constant, nagging, depressing, fruitless, presence.  In those 13 months I had exactly five first interviews, one second interview, finally one offer (after only a first interview).

I reinvented myself several times mentally over the year:

 I would offer myself up to non-profits, slave away administratively for a relatively low salary and help to save the [planet] [mistreated animals] [abused children] [battered women] [the DNC] insert the cause of the appropriate agency here.  I did not receive any responses to my spiffy resume and well crafted cover letters.

I would (finally) pass the Virginia Bar and rather than slave away putting more money into insurance companies' pockets (the unfortunate place where I've spent the bulk of my professional life) I would go work for a public entity and help to save the [abused children] [battered women] [poor and the meek] [people who can't afford a high priced defense lawyer] [the Commonwealth] [the Country].  I didn't take the Virginia bar and thus eliminated the prospect of passing it.

I would offer myself as an independent contractor to assist law firms getting ready for a trial (this doesn't actually happen very often, most cases settle in the civil litigation world, so there is an enormous amount of work to do to prepare when in does happen - I'm good at that work) and intermittently work 90 hours a week for relatively large sums of money, accompanied by enormous stress and anxiety and a complete relinquishment of all parental obligations and pleasures.  Didn't happen - just writing the words gives me a stomach ache and PC is gone all the time so I don't actually have 90 child free hours a week to offer.

I would start keeping the house really clean and cooking low cost healthy meals every night and put on makeup and clean clothes before PC got home from work and fetch his slippers after he walked in the door to show him how great it would be if we just agreed that I'd stay home forever.  Didn't even really try that one.  I'm so not June Cleaver.

And here I am.  An admin bitch (that's an affectionate term used by me and PC not by my employers) for a technology company.  Pay:  Okay.  Stress:  None.  Dress Code:  None (jeans and tennis shoes mostly).  Benefits:  Great.  Level of Contentment:  Pretty High.  Makeover in Future:  Nah.

I Changed My Mind

Just a quick note.  I'm not doing it.  I'm not taking the Virginia Bar Exam tomorrow.  I made the decision about two weeks ago.  I am never walking through those doors - the Norfolk Marriott in February or the Roanoke Convention Center in July - again.  Unless.  Unless I change my mind someday.  Unless I can walk in confident that I have the information to actually pass the test.
I'm not actually certain I'm capable of storing up the information potentially required to pass that test.  Having failed three times I'm not comfortable attempting the test without the ability to produce a short outline of all 26 subjects.
The bottom line is I just don't want to.  And two weeks ago I didn't feel ready and didn't feel I could get ready.  So I explained to PC.  And he didn't explode.  He wasn't furious.  I suppose he was disappointed but he didn't say so.  So I stopped studying.  I put the books aside.  The relief was tremendous.
Today, the day before the test, I'm feeling some noticeable anxiety.  If I made the wrong decision its too late this time.  But not really.  I know I was correct in my assessment that I wasn't going to be ready this time.  So we'll see if I decide to attempt a "next time."  If I make the decision I think I need a solid six month lead time.  And a solid commitment to find three to five hours a day to stuff those 26 subjects into my brain for the full six months.  And to figure out how to hold those things in my aging brain.  And then properly discuss them on command.
In the meantime, I'm second guessing myself a little bit today.  But I won't be trying to "guess" any correct answers tomorrow.  The relief is tremendous.

I'm doing it again

That, apparently endless, awful horrible very bad thing... Studying for the Virginia Bar Exam.  Ugh.  This will be my fourth attempt at the exam.  That's right.  I've failed three times.  In my defense (and I'm very defensive on this subject) I was close.  All three times.  You need 140 points to pass.  In February 2004 I got 135 points.  In July 2004 127.  In July 2008 136.  And now, after nearly a full year of being unemployed, with only three job interviews and no offers, I'm doing it again.

Oh wait, I forgot to say I passed the California Bar Exam on my first try.  In 2000.  (I told you, I'm defensive.)

I've had fairly good excuses for not quite making it all three times.  But, as PC pointed out, this time no one is distracted by horrid personal problems that are not discussed on this, or any other, blog; no one is pregnant; no one has cancer.  So I should be able to just grab those four extra points with no problem.  Right.  I'll get right on that.

My California, Environmentalist, Birkenstock Wearing, Side

I bravely (or perhaps foolishly) declared myself committed to eating locally on this blog a long time ago. Since that time, I have not said (or done) much of anything regarding that committment. However, I am currently obsessed with the concept. Let's face it. I'm not working. I have plenty of time for obsessions.

I have also been avidly reading Ree Drummond's blog http://thepioneerwoman.com/ and am now very interested in blogging about recipes with accompanying dazzling photos. I realize it is highly unlikely that my photos will be dazzling but the camera now lives in the kitchen.

So, with both of these things in mind, I have started a second blog. Crazy I know. I hardly ever post on this blog. I'm planning to change that. But when I am blogging about eating locally I will post on my new blog Virginia Beach Locavore http://vblocavore.blogspot.com/. Posts regarding my life in general and what I'm currently cooking will remain here (unless I'm currently canning - I guess - having two blogs is complicated).

I hope you have a chance to check out my new blog and that you like it - even if you wouldn't be caught dead in a pair of Birkenstocks.

Thinking about eating local

I spent most of the weekend preparing, purchasing, or thinking about food. Local food. Food that is available to me, in Virginia Beach, now and what I can do to preserve that availability through the winter. But mostly how I can enjoy what is available now, now.
I made the entire 4th of July menu from Cooking Light magazine. I cruised several Farmer's Markets and farm stands to purchase the necessary fruits and vegetables for both the CL menu and the coming week.
Then, at C's insistence we went crabbing. We caught, cleaned, cooked, and picked 20 crabs (this resulted in a solid 3 cups of crab meat - yum!). I had a little help in the catching from C; he eschewed the cleaning, cooking, and picking.
I also oven dried 5 pints of grape tomatoes. I've done 5 pints twice this month and I now have a respectable half gallon of dried tomatoes in the freezer. I had to purchase these tomatoes at the Farmer's Market. My own cherry tomatoes still look like this...

not exactly ready to be dried.

Although I have a fairly large back yard (large from my California standards anyway); the yard is PC's and I am permitted to plant in the two raised beds he made for me. I did add three additional pots along a sunny wall.
I have requested three additional raised beds. We're currently negotiating the additional beds.
Next week, I plan to make 25 or 50 pounds of tomatoes into lovely fresh sauce to be frozen. I also want to start shredding and freezing zuchinni. I love shredded zuchinni in orzo and I want to be able to eat it all year long without buying zuchinni from Chile.
Since my vegetable beds are in a fairly sunless area, I can't grow much. I tried one bed with Roma tomatoes and a few herbs. In the other, I have a pepper patch. I planted nine tiny plants each of Jalapeno, Banana, and Cayenne peppers. They've done very well.

With my surfeit of crab and peppers (jalapeno and banana peppers - grown in my own nearly sunless yard) I made some really yummy stuffed peppers. I used about 2/3 of a cup of the crab with 8 ounces of vegetable cream cheese, about 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese. some parmesan and chili sauce. After I filled the chili halves I rolled the cream cheese side in some crushed croutons mixed with still more parmesan. These things were Yummy. Really yummy. I loved that I grew the peppers and caught the crabs. I am woman (hear me roar).

Did you know you have a roll back here?

Uh yeah. I did. That's why it took 3 days of agonized scratching on door jambs before I asked you to rub some lotion on my (badly sunburned) back. I'll be 47 in a few weeks. I've put on a few pounds (how much is a stone? I think I'll start counting them - maybe I've only put on a couple...) in the last few years. I am sad to report that I weigh around 35 pounds more than after I lost the "baby" weight associated with the Pumpkin.

Could 200 be the new 150? Do I here 135? Yikes. I am NOT saying that I weigh in excess of 200 pounds. I don't own a scale.

At any rate, I'm not at all certain that "Did you know you have a roll back here?" is acceptable marital communication. I suspect it is on the same page as "Is everything okay, because I've noticed you've put on a lot of weight lately?" Sadly, yes, that is an actual recent quote from the clearly misnamed PC. Just my little cross to bear. Grrr.

I thought I'd need some momentuous occasion to blog again after so long but I was wrong. I just needed to vent.

A Quarter Without Cancer

Prince Charming had the first of his post-surgery quarterly screening visits yesterday. The results were relayed to him today, by his surgeon. His lungs are clear. This is the news we need to hear every quarter for three years, biannually for two years, and annually thereafter. This is really good news. In my translation it means this: PC is cancer-free for this quarter. I need the cancer-free label (don't forget - this blog is all about me) I know he craves it as well. Until June we are once again permitted just to lead our normal lives. Who would have thought two intelligent adults could be so grateful for too much work, too little play, and one very small and spirited toddler. I, for one, am feeling an irrepressible bubble of well being. Right now, today, we are on track and all is well.

During my absence from the blogosphere my fabulous friend LawyerMama has taken many beautiful picture of the spirited toddler - most of them portray him as, literally, breathtakingly beautiful. Her pictures of my baby take my breath away.

So I am looking forward to easing back into the blog thing (reading and posting)... without a huge black storm cloud directly over my head. There may be a storm coming but its not even showing up on the Super Duper local news radar. That's just the way we like it around here.

New Year, No Topic

I have done nothing but work since December 30 and am now out of town for an arbitration proceeding. PC successfully completed his radiation treatments with absolutely NO side effects. His surgery is scheduled for February 1. Someday I start blogging regularly again, but this is not the day.

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.