The Lucky One
It’s good to be home. It’s good to be able to be home. It’s good to be able to just be.
I had another bout with a blood clot. This time in my right leg. I had severe leg pain and went to the doctor just to be x-rayed, ultra-sound-ed, and told that I needed surgery to remove the clot. I was afraid I was going to miss Christmas. I was absent during my own SITS period, and I’m sure that people out there think I abandoned the site or lied when I said I was going to return comments. I got over sixty comments, and I am trying my best to return them today. I’m just so tired, even after being home a full day. The surgery required a little incision in my chest, which then required sutures to close up. Infection spread within a day of the sutures, causing my delay in getting home, and escalating my sadness for possibly missing Christmas with my family.
I sorely underestimated how much love my family has for me.
They waited for me to get home just to clear a space for the Christmas tree to be put up. For over a week, Dennis fed, clothed, washed and entertained the little ones, going so far as to cancel a meeting with his mates to be at home with the kids. One of the activities they did was make cards and drawings for me, nearly every day, which Dennis brought to me on his daily visits. I did cry when I saw Chloe’s drawing. It was of me, as an angel, with the words: “Don’t spend Christmas with Jesus this year!” at the bottom. I’m not sure why she is so certain that I will not be around to see her grow up. I am going to be around for a very long time, I am planning on that. Something I set my mind to.
Coming home yesterday was a relief. I am thankful all over again for what I have and how I have been blessed in this life. I was thankful for every little thing I had, from my cell phone, to my bed, to being able to watch TV on my own set. I missed so much by being in the hospital, yet I gained so much in perspective on how much I am loved, appreciated, and thought of by my family. Though there wasn’t really anything that made me think otherwise. *all smiles*
As for my health, my doctor doesn’t know what is wrong with me, or how to “fix” me. He’s actually told me that I will never be cured, and I should make arrangements to reflect that. But why? I don’t feel worse, except for after dinner tonight, I felt as if I was going to throw up, though that may be because I’m not used to eating much lately.
In the end, I feel incredibly lucky to have the family and support that I do. Even in the comments and emails I get from this page, people are so wonderful to me most of the time. Big thank you if you were one of the people who have left me support, humor, and general happiness.
For now, I’m off to bed, to sleep off this nausea and just dream. G’Nite everyone!
Listen to the Wind Blow, Down Comes the Night
We’re having some kind of a weird wind storm tonight, and the wind is rattling the windows, as well as it is howling fiercely outside. Kind of scary. My mind is elsewhere tonight, and I don’t know why I opened up my site to update. My family has been driving me nuts, and it started with Dennis bringing home a copy of Skyward Sword. He was so sure that he was going to beat in the first day he had it, that he just had to play it all day since Thanksgiving morning. Which left me to do laundry, cook the last couple of days’ worth of meals, and finally, tend to the kids. The boys were ok to tend; they just needed love, supervision, food, sleep, and clean clothes. It was Chloe who was difficult.
The kids ganged around their Hero of Time father, hoping to watch him succeed in beating a video game. All he really managed to succeed in doing was keeping the bed from being made for the past few days, twisting his ankle, and breaking a window, on top of hitting the potted plants in the bedroom, causing them to crash down to the floor. I was glad we don’t have carpeting in the bedroom. It was easy to sweep up the potting soil, but then I had to stop what I was doing and re-pot the plants. Three of which were thorny cacti and my thumb is still burning.
This morning, Chloe announced that she did, indeed, have homework this Thanksgiving weekend. Ok, so maybe she wouldn’t have had any if she had sat down three weeks ago and did it or even started on it. She has a diorama due on Monday, but there is nothing done! I gathered up the supplies for her, and an hour later, she wasn’t doing anything with it. Still watching daddy play his game. I read the directions for the diorama and fine-tuned her supplies, and still she did not touch it. I offered to help her with the cutting and placement. Nope, didn’t interest her.
After dinner tonight, she had the audacity to ask me if I could do the diorama for her! Um, no! She asked Dennis, and he lovingly introduced her to super glue. Yes, super glue! All that accomplished was Chloe gluing my desk drawer shut.
*snarl*
I gathered up her supplies, then gathered her up, and put her in her room and told her she was going to do the project tonight and tomorrow, or she was going to suffer the zero on the assignment. No help from momma or daddy, now. Her reaction was to cry, and scream that I was a bad, abusive mother, then scream for help from her daddy. When I saw the boys giggling about the ordeal where she could see them, I told them to either go back and watch the Link game or go to their room and shut the door. I then closed Chloe’s door and went back to working on sorting laundry. The boys scattered. I haven’t saw them since and I have a feeling I won’t see them until breakfast.
I am glad I took the super glue away from Chloe. She was going to glue my laptop shut and glue my phone’s charging cord to the wall. Little brat! All because I was ‘bothering” her to do her homework. Dennis asked me in mid-battle with some kind of strange monster on the game, if I was sure I had made the right choice in making Chloe do the assignment right that second. “Well, she’s had all month to do it, just now told me that she had an assignment, and so, yeah. I think I made the right choice in making her at least start the project,” I replied.
Upon checking up on her, Chloe had about 70% of the diorama done, and she was sleeping on the covers of her bed. See? It wasn’t that hard!
I have my NanoWriMo to finish and then I have my court on Wednesday. I have to call the judge Monday and tell him that I will be there. I thought the lawyer was going to do that. Oh well. I plan on being there, no matter what.
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving, and that your Christmas shopping is going smoothly! Have a good night and a good weekend!
Bubble, Bubble
Another stressful day. Trevor washed all the dirty laundry he could find around the house to avoid me all day. I spent the day working, replacing the cable box, and taking care of the kids. Now, when Trevor does the laundry, he washes it and dries it, probably on the hottest settings possible to get it done quickly, and then he has to wash it two or three times, and leave it in the dryer for several hours, so my clothes are about three sizes too small when I wear them the next time and he can make fat jokes, but he never seems able to put the laundry away. I was up the other night putting away clothes, sheets and towels, until two in the morning. When I finally passed out, Dennis asked me what I was doing washing laundry all night long. *snarl* I said Trevor washed the laundry, but didn’t put it away. He asked me if I was sure, and I didn’t reply. Trevor did it again today.
After hooking up the new cable box, and this new one doesn’t fit my wireless cable router, so I had to snake a ten-foot fiber optic cable across the bedroom floor that I know is going to end up as a dog chew toy or stepped/stomped on, and broken, I then had the pleasure of setting up the universal remote and setting then figuring out the codes for the TV and DVD recorder. All that on top of finally being approved for a doctor appointment that I am going to have to go to next week before our anniversary. I’m slightly happy about the appointment because attempting to switch doctors has proven to do nothing more than waste my money.
Taking my bath tonight, Chloe came into the bathroom to pee, and saw me snoozing in the tub. She didn’t know one could sleep in the bathtub! She asked me what I was doing, and when I said I was trying to relax, she unscrewed the top off the Mr. Bubble bubble bath and dumped about half the bottle in the bath water, then turned on the faucet! What?! “Feel better? Daddy always says that bubble baths make him feel better,” she said. At first I was in slight shock, but then as the aloe began to penetrate my skin and the bubbles began to feather out over the water, I started to feel less tense. “This is good. Thanks!” I said. Chloe giggled. “I wish I could relax this well in bed,” I commented. “Okay then! I’ll go put the rest of this in you bed’s water!” she said. I snapped back to reality. “Chloe! No!” I called, as I attempted to jump out of the water. I slipped on the floor of the tub and banged my chin on the tub side. I had to crawl out of the tub, and then slipped on the linoleum bathroom floor. Another bang to my face. I managed to capture Nurse Chloe in the hallway and take the bubble bath away from her. I somehow made it back to the bathroom to wash the bits of dog hair and other strange objects from my body, without my father in law getting a peep show of my naked body in the bathroom or the hallway.
Chloe’s heart was in the right place. I wish I could have finished that bubble bath. Just drying myself off was pleasurable. The silent little snaps of the bubbles as they popped, drying them onto my skin, still warm from the water. I think I need a bubble bath night every week. That should be my new thing. Just for relaxation. A time to get away from life for a while. I can’t do it often, but I can try to do it at least once a week. I deserve some me time, right?
I bought the Godiva bear with Chocolate coins for Chloe’s Halloween present this year:
Looks almost just like a bear that I bought and photographed 366 days ago! Oh wait. As per the words of the Godiva rep, there’s no date on the left foot of this year’s Halloween bear, and the bag is of mesh material instead of the silky orange with black embroidery that was on last year’s candy bag. That photo could have been taken today. Same computer. Same desk. Same small calendar. Same Halloween bear. Here’s hoping that Chloe doesn’t realise that until waaaaay after Halloween.
At least the Christmas bear does not disappoint:
There’s even a dark chocolate and peppermint candy attached to the sweater! Awesome-ness!
I did some work on the site. I deleted some of the plugins that I didn’t use or need, I optimised the database and tables, and guess what came back? My archive page! Like anyone cares. Most people come here for that little yellow bar, click it and leave until the next day they have to come back to earn them self another point from that site, to pile up to how ever many they need to advertise on other’s sites so that their PR will climb. I doubt that anyone really reads my content anymore. The only comments I get are spammers and “Link backers”. Nothing really worth keeping the site open as a blog anymore.
I’m wondering what to do with this place. Nothing exciting happens on here anymore, not even comments. I guess that’s a sign that my blogging days are over. I’m going to be thinking on this more. Till next time.
Before I get to posting all that has been going down with life, I want to apologise to anyone who is having trouble with this site. I think I need to optimize the data bases and then do a clean install of WordPress. I noticed that my archives are missing, but people are still able to see the entries. I think I need to cut back on the Plugins.
Last night, Chloe lost her first tooth. She was just as excited as I was about this, and I told her that the Tooth Fairy would be bringing her something awesome in exchange for her tooth. I wasn’t sure what to get her. She talks as though she wants her daddy to come home. That’s something that just can’t happen. I was saddened by her request, and fell asleep fitfully, and partially in tears. I woke up late this morning and had to rush around and get ready for work, and to drop her off at school. Getting home later than I thought, since I had to stay an extra hour at work to grade mid terms that were today, I didn’t have time to pick up anything for Chloe. She really laid on the guilt trip about how the Tooth Fairy was a huge disappointment. I almost regretted telling her about it, when we were pulling into the drive way, and there was a box on the front porch.
Inside the box was a professional digital camera for me and a $50 iTunes gift card. Dennis had sent us a care box! I handed Chloe the iTunes gift card and told her it was from the Tooth Fairy. She gave me a big hug, and hurried inside to start downloading things to her iPod. Nice save, dear. 
The new camera I have is supposed to have an 18x zoom, 14 mega pixels, Super Macro, and an HD video recorder. In other words, pure awesome-ness. I finally have a high-definition video camera! I have wanted a professional camera for so long! However, in the words of my friend Josh, there’s always the after thought that the reason my photos and videos suck has nothing to do with the camera I shoot with. Much like why my graphics and HTML is awful, neither Photoshop nor Dreamweaver and ultimately Creative Suite, did not help me any there, a professional camera will not help my photography and video skills. I am just neither creative nor talented in any of the five aspects that the more successful people online are. I have played around with the camera a little bit, and I was able to take a perfect panoramic photo with it, and some good Super Macro shots, some extreme zoomed shots. The quality of the images are a little low. I like the quality of my CoolPix better, but maybe I just need to play around with this one a little more.
The shapes of the photos are not like the CoolPix. They are a little more wider. I have some samples that I am going to post at the end of the entry.
I decided to test it out on the dogs and the boys as they played today. I also tested the zoom on the machine at the end of our back yard. There are so few photos that are actually good enough for me to post online. I can’t wait to try out the video recorder!
After Chloe got her iTunes downloads and I had played with my camera a little, I went out shopping to buy some new clothes for work. I bought three new blouses: a long-sleeved green blouse, a short-sleeved blue blouse and a pink mole-skin blouse. I also picked up two new pairs of jeans, three sizes smaller than I remember needing. I picked up all of this at JC Penny, and spent nearly three hundred dollars, but I enjoyed the shopping trip. I also picked up Chloe’s Halloween and Christmas bears while I was at the mall. I think the new clothes look good on me. I have to wash them soon, before my mother ties up the washing machine again. I always like to wash my clothes before I wear them the first time. I think I am going to look really good when I go to work next week.
The weather was so nice out while I was shopping. It should stay this nice out all the time. My sinuses were clear, the air was a bit chilly, but not ice cold, and the skies were clear blue. Tonight the stars are out dancing in the black velvet sky. I am not really sleepy, but I am going to bed soon. I want to stay awake and try out different patterns with my new clothes and have Nick take photos of me in them! But then what could I do with the photos? It’s not like I can put them online, my harasser would steal them. Well, maybe I could put them on Facebook…
Okay, on with the pics so I can clean up tonight and get ready for bed. I bought a new Asian cherry blossom and ginseng shampoo and conditioner set at JC Penny while I was clothes shopping, and I’m really eager to try it out, even if my hair is just ultra-short and spiky. I need to sit down and bleach my hair again. When my hair is this short, it looks better bleached. I don’t know why. Red hair just doesn’t look good spiked on me. I’m thankful that it has stopped falling out..
Randomness: Can anyone else tell that I had a pain-free day and I am happy to be alive? Well I did and I am. There are so many days that I have gone through with either chronic, everlasting pain, and/or sickness that all I can do is get up, go to work, come home, and lounge in bed for a few hours, interacting with my family from the bed. It was getting worse and worse, and then I broke my toe, and then today I had a good day. A good day and some sunshine!
I worked on improving this theme, which made a brief appearance in 2008 during the Presidential Elections, for nearly four years. The theme was originally thought up in 2005 by my nephew and given to me as a MovableType layout in 2007. Except I was getting ready to merge to WordPress then, and, well, we all know that WordPress themes are nothing like the simple layouts we were used to making for the past eight years.
I want to thank everyone who leaves personal support and love for me here. I appreciate it. As for those of you concerned about the personality stealer (which is all that I will refer to her as), I don’t care what she does. If she wants to claim that she and I have the same interests and likes, that’s fine with me. I know that she does not, and in doing so, she isn’t impressing me or anyone out there because I don’t like myself in the state that I am. I feel there is room for improvement and nothing that she says or does will make that any different. It scares me a little to think that she feels that she is a perfect person in mimicking me, and I feel bad for the next person that she pretends to be, but what can one say? I’m annoyed about it a little, and a bit amused, but that is all. Again, thanks for telling me. I appreciate it.
I haven’t been feeling well these past couple of days. I don’t know what it is. I am going to try to clean things up around here and see if I feel any better. I feel pretty bad tonight. Bad enough that I flushed my supper down the toilet rather than eat it. I wasn’t that hungry anyway, and spent a good part of the day trying to sleep. I still feel pretty bad. Back pain. Leg pain. Calf pain. Head aches. I was put on Coumadin a few days ago, and since then I have been a little dizzy. I am thinking of going off of it. I also want to get my act together and see a doctor, even if it is the asshole that I despise, because I need some of my old meds back. I need them to get my life back on track. Or maybe it’s the idea that my mother has been living with us for a year now with no signs of moving out or reconciling with dad? That has always made me feel exhausted because she harps on everything I do, and she can always do so much better than me. On top of that all, she hates Chloe. Yes, she hates her granddaughter for two reasons: One, the girl was born out of wedlock (as if my mother was even married before I was born, and even then, I belonged to another man) and two, I “baby” her too much by getting her a pristine education, won’t let her walk and run the streets at night, and on Halloween I (GASP!) won’t let her trick-or-treat at the registered sex offended (pedophile)’s house! What the hell kind of mom am I, not letting a child who hasn’t hit puberty get molested?!
Okay, I’m being sarcastic and witty. Time to publish my post, close my browser and get to bed!
I don’t want to write how I’m feeling right now. I don’t want to say I’m feeling anger. I don’t want to feel anything, but the Fentanyl can only numb so much. It’s downright terrible at numbing emotional pain.
This is going to be one of the hardest posts I have ever written, but it shouldn’t be cooped up inside me. There is a good possibility that I am wrong and that I am over-reacting. But there is an even better chance that I am not wrong and I will be facing one of the hardest things I will ever have to go through.
Late Saturday night/early Sunday morning, I had had some drinks, was feeling giggly, and cleaned out some of my drawers in the bathroom. It’s easier for me to throw away clutter and junk that I would otherwise keep, for sentimental reasons and nothing more. Like my collection of empty containers in the bathroom. Yes, at one time, I had the first bottle of contact lens solution that I ever used. It has since been tossed out on my tipsy late-night cleaning. Which brings me to Saturday night. I found the box of pregnancy tests that my nephew and his friends bought back in 2007, as a joke, and had him take a pregnancy test. When the results came back positive, we got him screened further only to find out that his cancer had spread to his testicles. There were two more tests in the box. Giggly, and shrugging it off as “no way”, I went ahead and took out a test, hiked up my night shirt, hovered over the toilet, and peed on the stick. Shock of all shocks when it came back positive.
Or was that a shocker?
To the untrained eye, yes it was. On October 31, 2007, I had a hysterectomy when I had my boys. So that would make the test defective, right? Possibly. There are many other things that a pregnancy test can detect other than pregnancy. In men it can detect testicle cancer, if the test comes back positive. In women, it can detect hormone imbalances. In a woman who has had a hysterectomy and sex in the last four to six months, it can detect a tubal pregnancy.
Like a dip shit, I posted to my Twitter and people were congratulating me all weekend. I felt guilty Sunday morning and a little annoyed since more than one person who congratulated me also sent me “Get Well Soon!” and “It’s A Pair of Boys!” cards to me when I had the hysterectomy. I’d say that since I opened up my Twitter just two months after the hysterectomy, and that I had made it public in my journal, where many of my Twitter friends came from, they either just weren’t paying attention, or I really do blend in with all the other bricks in the wall.
Pregnancy would explain the vomiting within a few minutes of waking up, the frequent urination that woke me up in the middle of the night more than one night in a row, the constant nausea, the getting sick to my stomach when I think of certain foods, the annoying and constant hiccuping that is only stopped with quick gulps of water.
The pregnancy tests were expired, but I know there was a small chance something was wrong, and I have been on strike from seeing my regular doctor for about a year, so I was not getting my regular check ups. After dropping Chloe off at school this morning, and making my way to work, I sat in my car for a few minutes, and then called my doctor. I told the receptionist what had been going on, minus the drinking and house cleaning, and she said that I would need both a blood test and ultra sound, to make sure it was pregnancy and not just a hormone imbalance. I agreed to a Friday appointment, hung up, and went inside to get my schedule for the work week. Luckily, I am not scheduled to work Fridays, and I seemed to relax a little.
Until tonight.
While I was undressing for my bath, I thought I felt something flutter in my stomach. It wasn’t gas, but almost like a baby shifted. I played it off as my imagination running away with me. After the bath, I glanced down at what very well could be a little person growing inside of me. A little person who would not make it past the weekend, at best. For the first time in a long time, I wished that I could get pregnant. I wished I could be able to carry the pregnancy to term. There were so many things I wished I could do then, that I teared up. I couldn’t look at myself anymore. I turned away from the mirror to dry off and get dressed for bed. For me, a tubal pregnancy wouldn’t end in a live birth, with all of three out of millions of tubals recorded in medical history, and I believe that life begins at conception. I believe a life inside someone, even if that life is not medically normal, is still a life and when it is ended, a life is ended. I then thought of PoRo and how she wanted to live more than anything. I was silently crying, tears falling heavily from my eyes and into the bathroom rug, as I dried off my feet.
Ending a pregnancy, even if it were to be ended on its own, is hard for me. I have gone through this before, and just as before, my doctor will not remove the ovary responsible for the egg releases that continue to become fertilized. It’s not right. Not morally, not physically, not emotionally. My doctor continues to tell me that he cannot have the ovary removed until I am forty years old. That’s another nine years I have to be wary of when I have sex.
I put off posting about this because I have told no one, face to face, or even over the phone. Dennis has yet to know. I don’t know how I could keep something like this from him, but here I am. I know it’s wrong to keep secrets like this, and I felt horrible that I was making a decision like this while he was away, but the selfish part of me keeps saying termination would be the best path to take so my little ones with me, who made it through birth, could survive as well. As the kids get older and discover what has happened, I dread the questions this will raise in them. The “Whys” and “How Comes” do not settle well with this. How do you explain that you terminated a child, disowned and gave up on it, on a real, living person, before you ever met them? Before you were even examined to confirm that you were healthy enough to carry the baby to full term? That same part of me tells me that after what I have gone through this spring and summer, it would be best to terminate, if for no other reason than the date of conception must have beed during or shortly after my transplant. I was exposed to things that no expecting mother should be exposed to, and who’s to say the baby would turn out healthy? I am simply torn in deciding what to do, and I know that no matter what I do, there will always be the “what ifs” that will haunt me for a long time afterwards.
As I sat on the edge of my bed in my clean, soft jammies, I did something I have not done in a long time. I prayed. I prayed to not be pregnant. I have never prayed for anything like that before, feeling that I would just be wasting God’s time by praying when all I have ever needed I could make due myself, but that time. That time, I did not give up my space to a teenager coming home from the prom or a frat night. That time, I took the time slot. I prayed to not be pregnant, for the test to be faulty, and for a peaceful nine years, reproductive-wise. I told God I was sorry for all that I had done in failing as a parent, but there was no need to punish me further with a tubal. I asked for forgiveness, with the promise to follow up by seeing a priest Wednesday night.
I hope my prayers were heard.
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