crucible of ennui

Yay! Glenn is coming home this Thursday! He’s been in training at Southwest since May 10. He was able to come home for Catherine’s birthday, but that’s it. It’ll be nice to have him home again.

I’ve been neglecting this blog for a while now… just got too wrapped up in mundane everyday crap. Once I get Catherine to bed, it’s my time to usually log into WoW and slaughter make believe monsters and enemy players – quite relaxing.

It’s HOT! It’s just a wonderful, lazy start to summer!

My focus for the upcoming year will be reinvention. It’s a milestone year – not for any superficial reasons. But the feeling that this year will be different. For Glenn. For myself. For Catherine – she will have so much to learn and experience.

Reinvention. How can I apply this concept in my own life to generate the most possibilities? I need to look at my career/job. I need to focus on getting my company off the ground. I need to be able to spend as much time as possible with my daughter. I need to win the lottery. I need to mastermind a plan to take over the world and it’s rich supply of chocolate.

Oh yes… it will all come together this year.

My heart goes out to all the people, families and communities devastated by the earthquake-generated tsunamis that have hit may coastal areas across the Pacific. The stories are horrific.

We made tamales last night – all the womenfolk got together and assembled. We finished in record time last night due to our new folding technique – it was a snap. I go the traditional route – pork. One red, one green. Basic and delicious.

Catherine was a sweetheart and kept on schedule last night, but still I’m pretty tired. I think that I may need to take a nap when she goes down. Then we can finish up our Christmas shopping.

I’ve had the past five days off. It’s been marvelous. It takes three days to unwind from the week, then another two days to have a weekend. Thankfully I have this Friday off too, for another long weekend after a two day work week. I have to take Monday off so it’s a four day weekend. Then a three day work week, then another three day weekend. Then a four day work week. Then another three day weekend.

I could so get used to this schedule.

This year has been exciting and at the same time comforting. We all start to wax nostalgic this time of year, and I am no different.

More and more time passes by so quickly. I look around and I try to realize my place in a grand scheme of life. It’s hard for me to do, as I feel like I am contantly changing, evolving. The facets to my life increase everyday – mother, worker, wife, wanna-be entrepeneaur, woman, American, intellectual. Each new challenge affords me the opportunity to alter my life in some way. I try to keep my mind open, not hold hard and fast to previous conceptions of people, events and theories. The world changes too fast to set down a truth in concrete and refuse to accept a new view.

And I’ve had my baby.

So much has gone on and I should have been keeping up with entries, but hey. Life is like that. You blink and an entire year has gone.

But, both Catherine and I are sick. Her with her first cold. Me right there with her. I’ve had to suction goop out of her nose and give her extra special lovins’. Cause I’m cool like that.

I never expected to fall into the motherhood pattern like I did. Cat’s been extremely easy so far, other than the club feet, casts, surgery and special shoes. But honestly, that’s been easy too. It just so happens that a pediatric othropedic surgeon, most learned in the Ponsetti method for correcting club feet had an office 500 YARDS away from the hospital where I delivered. He came to see her on day 2, cast her feeties and then changed the casts every week. No problem. Catherine was a dream every time. She laughed when they had to take the casts off with the stryker saw, only cried when he had to bend her feet, and pretty much didn’t have any problems. Then the surgery – which was worse for us than for her. Although it was pretty bad. A story for another time. But she was a dream. Now the casts are off and she has these cute little white shoes with a thick clear plastic “bar” between them she wears 23/7 until she starts to walk. Then at night until she’s 3. And to put it into perspective – we were lucky. What she had was totally correctable. She’ll be able to play sports and everything. No problem.

So back to the snot. It’s everywhere. I can hear it rattling in her nose. She has a dry little cough. I’ve got some monster post nasal drip. We’re quite the family. And Glenn headed off to work with what I thought was an IRRITATING throat-clearing allergy thing. No wonder my patience was running thin last night.

Ok. So why is it that when things are tough, I withdraw. I haven’t wanted to write about it until the 1st trimester was over, but it doesn’t look good at this point. I just got back from the doctor today. The term “inevitable miscarriage” came up – nothing I can do about it. Just sit back and wait for it to happen. If it doesn’t happen by the end of this weekend, she wants to schedule me for a D&C on Monday. The first ultrasound last week should have showed something, so we did another one today. Before “the sac” was at a 7 week size, today it was down to a 5 week size, without any indication of anything inside it. Just an empty sac. Nothing I could have done about it. But at this point, the doctor’s says we should have been able to seen something in there moving around, maybe even see the heartbeat on the ultrasound. But again – just an empty sac. I really should wait for my blood work to come back tomorrow. If the pregnancy hormorne levels are lower than last week, I’m definitely going to have to have the procedure on Monday since there is no way the pregnancy can be healthy.

But here’s the deal. For some weird reason I’m determined to deal with this alone. I don’t want Glenn to have to see me miscarrying or in the hospital. I want to protect him from that. Which is really stupid because he was so excited and of course is upset by the fact that 1) I’m probably going to lose this baby and 2) he isn’t home to be here with me in case something happens this weekend.

So now I sit back and wait. The doctor wanted me to go across the road and get a “procedure” right after my appointment, but I’d rather just wait to see what happens this weekend. Who knows? Whatever happens, I hope everything turns for the best.

I’ve been thinking about my dad a lot today.

It’s been a year since I’ve spoke or seen him. And I’m wondering how asking to be on an equal respect level can equate to this banishment.

It would be totally easy to walk away from, other than the times when I KNEW in my heart of hearts that he wouldn’t let me down, that he would be that buffer between me and mom, that he was just as much of a fuck-up as me.

But now mom is dead and Donna is in the picture, my definitions of past relationships don’t amount to a hill of proverbial beans.

So of course I called my sister, Andrea, to get grounded and some perspective. Andie says that God sees every tear I shed and knows my pain, which in some way is comforting.

But there’s still this hole in my life that I can’t fill with my husband or anyone else. I so wanted my Dad to want a relationship with me, now that I finally love myself.

And I know that I’ll need to shorten this at one time with a link, cuz this is going to be a long one. Continue reading

When I got out of the shower this morning and looked in the mirror the first thing I noticed were dark circles under my eyes. I haven’t looked this bad after a weekend in a long time.

And I did nothing this weekend but relax and work around the house.

Obviously I need to stop sleeping so much and take up crack.