Twinkle Little Star

You People Are Keeping Me Up At Night

I am going to write a post regarding disabled kids and therapies/interventions. It is a hard topic, but I'll note right off the bat that I never indicated that children with disabilities should NOT receive therapy. But more thoughts on that later.

Okay, so this email I got a week or so ago, and my attempts to ignore it have not worked. Its not that I think the question is so wrong or that it made me angry or anything like that, it is just a touchy subject. But it is keeping me awake tonight so I guess I'll give it a go.

From "thebeck":

...I have spent the past few days going through your archive. Your weblog is sucking me in and I am enthralled with your story. I may be splitting hairs, but there is one thing you said that I just don't understand and can't get my head around. You talked about a horrible day that was something you just needed to get over in your post about the song "Ordinary World" being your theme song. And I assumed you were referring to your rape incident that you wrote about just a few posts before that. And you said that the song's line about "ours is just a little sorrowed talk" was meant to somehow minimize or diminish the crime. And you should just get over it. This is none of my business, but I'm confused about this. I found your site actually searching for "date rape" because my girlfriend was also raped in college. And she would go ballistic on me if I said that she should just get over it or that it was just a little sorrowed talk compared to the problems of the world. I guess I'm asking, how can two people with similar experiences think about it in such completely opposite ways?

...

Okay, first of all, I am very sorry about what happened to your girlfriend and please extend my sympathies.

And now, second of all, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on for a second while I pry apart the pretzel that is my brain and go back and find out what in God's name I said. (This actually took awhile.) He (I'm going to assume you are a he) is referring to this silly throw away post that you'se all weren't supposed to read that I am so going to take down now.

I say this:

I will continue to use "Ordinary World," which has become my cheesy summer anthem, as my rubber band around my wrist to snap when I get stuck in a forloop and need reminding to just get on with it.

and this:

"... forgiveness is a verb that you have to actively decide to do, it doesn't just come along and fall into your lap by itself via osmosis. Many years ago on a Thursday no less, we had an awful day, and that is what it was, an awful day. We can still remember S while getting on with it. "Ours is just a little sorrowed talk."

In reference to these lyrics:

Papers in the roadside
Tell of suffering and greed
Here today, forgot tomorrow
Ooh, here besides the news
Of holy war and holy need
Ours is just a little sorrowed talk

in this song:

Ordinary World

Okay, first of all, you are wrong about that being about what you think it is about. "We can still remember S" does not refer at all to the TCGRS (Typical College Girl Rape Scenario) experience that I wrote about. Actually, I can find where I wrote a bit about it after that post, but not previous to it. So either you read my posts backwards or I did write about it before and I can't find it now. Anyway. "S" is something I can't talk about here. Because it involves other people than me, and I was only on the periphery of the "S" situation so it is not my story to tell. But, it does involve a crime and loss and grieving, and that, coupled with my experiences around the TCGRS of my own, leads me to want to tell you these things:

No two people are going to handle being victims of a crime the same way. And there is no wrong way to handle it. If your girlfriend is telling you she can't get over it, she can't forgive, and that it is a big deal...guess what? She's right. You didn't say how long ago her experience occurred. I will tell you that my TCGRS was 19 years ago. My involvement in the "S" situation? Started 29 years ago. That makes a helluva big difference as to where you are in the process of grieving and getting over it. I'm going to guess that her crime took place within the last few years? But even if I'm wrong, who am I to say how anyone else should handle their own situation. Everyone is different.

What I meant by "Ordinary World" being my theme song involves how you can be going along, minding your own business, going down your own life's path with 19 or 29 years distance between you and a traumatic incident. And something can come along and totally blindside you, knocking you off your path and back to where you were  decades ago. It happens  to the best of us. It happened to me, and it happened to my friend, A, last summer. And how you have to drag yourself back to your chosen road, your ordinary world, before it gets all out of hand.  You can call this flashbacks or post traumatic stress or triggering or whatever. But when you have this issue, you have to develop your "drag yourself back to where you want to be" muscle. And this can take years to develop. And you can think you are so far beyond all that crap and guess what? You're not. So, out comes the muscle. Lift a few weights with it and get it back in shape. Have a little rubber-band around your wrist to help you if necessary, a theme song, whatever works, and you will get back there. If your girlfriend has issues like these, she may have not developed this muscle yet. Or she may just handle these things differently than me. Maybe she just is still and lets it all pass through her. Maybe she gets really angry. Maybe she needs to relive it for a while. Whatever. I hope she finds a way to find some kind of effective way to live with it. Whatever way she finds, it is the right one for her.

What I meant by "ours is just a little sorrowed talk" is that we (A and I, not anyone else) are so far removed from it. And we worked hard to get here. So every once in a while, we can have our little sad time flashback thingy, but that's it. We do our thing and then we are done. It is not our lives, it does not define us, it is just something we need to get "tuned-up" every few years or so. We talk to each other, have our little sorrowed talk about it, do a little emotional maintenance, and then we get back to our lives. This is our thing. Doesn't need to be anyone else's. And the whole "holy war and holy need" thing is that our discussions always end up talking about the bigger picture. Why is there so much violence and need in the world? Why is there a need to dominate and hate? Why so much hate against women...the supposed "weaker" sex? What is the definition of evil and is there good in everyone or are some people just evil? And if so, why? How did they get that way? Is it innate or environmental? What can be done to help good win out over evil?

These questions of the ages are where our conversations always seem to end up. And these are issues that are far bigger than what happened to A or what happened to me. We are, unfortunately, just little insignificant dots in the bigger world problem of violence and oppression. Which doesn't mean that our experiences are insignificant, just that unfortunately, we are only two people who have been victimized by crime in a sea of millions and millions throughout history since the dawn of time. For us, and I'm not talking about anyone else here, in a weird way it helps to think that the problem is universal. Not that we, A and myself, were somehow targeted because of something implicit about who we are. That we've done something wrong. It is just saying, look. domination and oppression and violence looms large in our world. This happened to us, but it is so not about us. This is bigger than us and there is nothing we could have done. The only thing we can do now is stay in our chosen "Ordinary World." This is the world of good over evil and kindness over violence. That's all we can do.

Boyfriends of rape victims can either be class A assholes (and if that is your choice, you should probably just gracefully back out) or can be fundamental in recovery. I am EXTREMELY lucky* to have really only ever had experience with the latter type of guy. Even the relationships that didn't work out for whatever reason were actually really cool about this issue. If you want to be one of the good guys and do the right thing; take a step back, learn about rape and its ramifications, get help from a victim's advocate or counselor, do whatever it takes to be supportive. You can click to RAINN (Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network and they can offer information and refer you to confidential hot-lines, counselors and victim's advocates in your area.

*D notes that my extreme luck has more to do with my infamously extreme screening process. I once got picked up for a first date from work. Not five blocks away the guy says that he can't "sleep with a girl without SLEEPING with a girl." I got out of the car at the next intersection, walked back to my office, and announced to my coworker, "date's over!"

Eeeexxxxhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallle

My dad left for Kansas on the 8th, and he took his little dog, too.

Despite the fact that now I have to clean my own kitchen--which really sucks--and run my own errands--which only slightly sucks because he didn't really do a whole lot of that--I am always amazed at how much better things go when he is not here. It takes about a week for things to click again, and then it is fairly smooth sailing.

It isn't so much that he DOES anything so terribly wrong, he does a lot of little things that just don't jive with cooperating as a family. We are so disconnected that once we both rented the exact same Netflix movie within days of each other and both watched them separately. That kind of amused me. And I could do the separate lives thing, like I've done with roommates in the past, where you just sort of coexist. But at least for the most part roommates try to be considerate and know that they are coming into the arrangement from equal positions. My father thinks his needs trump everyone else's. As I've said before, I can take it--I just ignore it--but it becomes really hard on D and the kids.

I could bullet point a bunch of things that are little that he does. No one thing is that big of deal, but together they make my life much, much more complicated that necessary. Like:

• He leaves very dangerous things around the house, garage and yard. He once left a sharp pair of hedge clippers in the babies' stroller. I found them again out in our patio on a chair. He left electric hedge clippers (the kind that look like a chainsaw) on a low shelf in the garage. He leaves knives and the cheese shredder and things down low. He leaves his heart medication where the kids can get it. I am constantly having to on the spot baby proof and I get nervous leaving the kids in another room unless I've inspected it.
• He leaves the garage in a complete mess. electrical cords, tools, whatever, just thrown any which way. I've tried to keep some things together like the Christmas stuff or my gardening tools. Christmas stuff gets dissipated everywhere. Gardening tools, gone.
• Along those lines, people say to me that it must make me feel better to have my dad in the house so I'm not alone with small children. Well, it might...except he often leaves the doors unlocked all night long. I have to always double check it before I go to bed.
• He crabs at me at least monthly that I need to pick up the dog poop and make the dog poop across the street in regards to a future, potential guide dog that I don't even own yet. But! The kids and I were out planting some annuals the other day (with kitchen spoons since my gardening stuff is gone) and there was Abbey poop EVERY THREE TO FIVE FEET. It was EVERYWHERE. The kids kept saying "mama! dog poopies!" and spooning them up for me to see. Lovely.
• Every time he leaves I go around and match the lids to the pots and the storage containers with their lids and have all the baking stuff together and the silverware together, etc. And we go along like that, happily. Naim (and Aaron on occasion) help me empty out the dishwasher and put most of the stuff away that goes on the bottom shelves and drawers. They manage to put it all in the right place, but my dad messes up everything. And not always the same way, either. So one day I can find the measuring cups over in this drawer and the next day I can find them in another, neither of which are where I always put them. I spend A LOT of time simply finding things. And I'm blind, so I have very little patience for that shit.
• He complains if I give the kids a small cup of his orange juice or if we eat anything he has bought at the grocery store. However, he eats my peanut butter, my crackers, any and all condiments, any food that I make for dinner if he is around, potato chips, any kind of snacky food, etc. Now, I don't really care because I think feuding over food is asinine, but since he can and does go to the store ANY TIME HE WANTS, and I have to plan ahead and order online, it gets really irritating that I can't use his things when he has eating all of mine.
• Then he says just purely asshole-ish things like, "maybe you could get a little refrigerator to keep in the garage for some of your stuff so I can fit my food in the fridge better." Um, excuuuuse me? First of all, I am the one who is feeding at least three, sometimes four and sometimes five people three meals a day. Second, if you would share food like a normal human being, then we wouldn't have to have doubles of everything and we would have more space in the fridge.
• Oh, and he gets mad at me for cooking. For cooking for my children and I and D. He likes the nights when I make sandwiches or just feed the kids canned ravioli. If I cook anything at all, he flips out. And first of all, I am no gourmet cook, so it isn't like I'm doing complicated recipes with 500 ingredients and 50 pots and pans. One night it was because I used a frying pan and a small sauce pan. Another because I used a 9X13 baking dish. I keep telling him that I cannot feed his grandkids chefboyardee every night and still fulfill his wish that they become big, strapping tall men. (Nor can I afford it when someone is eating my food without contributing. My grocery bill goes up around $100/mo. when he is here.)  Secondly, when we were growing up, My mom (sometimes my dad) usually cooked and my sister and I alternately cleaned the kitchen each night. Methinks he has selective memory of all the crap my sister and I cleaned up after their cooking. They (gasp!) actually used pots and pans too!
• He bitches about the potty training status of my boys (which I haven't had the inclination to blog about...because uuuuggggh, it isn't even something I'm comfortable working that much on when my dad is in the house.) yet he brings the little dog out here who he has had for ten years. And that dog is not anywhere close to being housebroken. Daily, DAILY accidents. And if I find them, or if the kids have found them by walking in dog shit, he doesn't even offer to come clean it up. He will clean them if he finds it first, but it all involves a string of irrational yelling and cussing and threatening to kill the dog and wishing upon her a speedy death. And my kids actually hear this stuff. And sometimes repeat it. And let me just say, the f word coming out of your three year old's mouth is not near as hard to explain to strangers as is your three year old saying "Abbey! I wish you would die," to the little girl in tumbling class who happens to also be named Abbey.
• He does that archaic thing that men do sometimes where he basically says to the boys "ah, you aren't hurt/there's nothing wrong with you/boys don't cry." Or he says things like "they need to learn to be competitive! You need to get them into sports or something where they can compete!" Yeah, dad. Competition is all around us. I'm more worried that they learn to cooperate and share and be generous, compassionate individuals thankyouverymuch. Not only is that unhealthy, but it also gives boys a bad view of women, as what they are often derogatorily compared to is some form of the feminine if they act with any emotion (or express interest in anything feminine or pink.) It also breeds that asshole type of guy who feels the need to prove that he is a "real man" every five seconds by putting women and gays down. This drives D so nuts that at some point I think he might call CFS on my father...or pack me up and move us all into his one and a half bedroom apartment.
• He insults D's role as a father often by saying things to the effect that they need a male role model around to teach them to play ball or act more manly. He suggested that I get the boys involved in "Big Brothers." Well, great program. But first of all, I know there is a long waiting list for boys who actually don't have fathers to get a big brother, and second, if he wants a man to play ball with the boys, he can get his damned ass off the couch and play ball with them.
• He watches TV ALL. THE. TIME. He doesn't even bother to turn it off when he leaves. And it is loud. (and if I think it is loud, then it is LOUD.) He has an obvious hearing loss, probably due to working around heavy machinery his whole life. But he won't do anything about it. I at least have the courtesy to put on my hearing aids when I 'm going to talk to him.
• You can't even just have an hour to yourself sometimes. Because he will just all the sudden have some sort of need or crisis that you have to help him fix NOW!!! Or he'll just want to tell you something arbitrary. He barged into my room one morning at 7am, waking me up in my non-hearing aided state to tell me that the TV wasn't working or something.
• He is completely oblivious to the disrespect he has for me, D and the kids. I have too much on my plate with not enough support to deal with that shit.

The things is, the boys really love him and he can be good with them. And we could have a cool little intergenerational family thing going. But the energy it takes from me to monitor everything and enforce any sort of rules with him is exhausting. You practically have to strap him into a chair forcibly to have a conversation with him. And even then, he is looking the other way and not even paying attention.  I almost feel like I need mediation to deal with this.

Something happened the other night that sort of woke me up. I made an honest and unintentional mistake where I caused some damage to the house. And I hate to say this but it was blindness related. If I could have seen, it wouldn't have happened, or to the extent that it did. I'm already in the process of getting it repaired and it is going to cost me a few hundred dollars to fix it. Which I would do no matter what my relationship was with my father. But the night it happened, I literally FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. The fact that if he saw it, he was going to fucking kill me and I would never hear the end of it. And the fact that I, as a newbie "homeowner" don't know anything about house things, I couldn't just call him up and say, "hey, I made a mistake, I'll pay for the damage, but I don't know who to call or what to do to fix it" really pissed me off. I have had to basically go around and interview everyone I know about it to get advice and referrals. And then, the next day, I was in the kids bedroom putting away laundry and I don't think I had my hearing aids on. Naim came around the corner suddenly and did a loud growl at me because he was pretending to be a monster or a dinosaur or something. And for a split second, I thought it was my dad and he had found the damage. And I was hit with such a panic that it practically blew me over. Over some damage to the house. This is a nonproblem, or a mere irritating annoyance. No one is dying here. Nothing is doomed forever. No civilizations are being brought down. I have to call a repair person and shell out a few hundred bucks. What is living here doing to me? It is the same panic I had growing up. The childish panic of being the loser screwup that I thought I had gotten away from.

The kids are getting older and more impressionable. My tolerance for what he did around them as unaware babies  has dwindled  significantly.  Here is the thing  he is going to have to understand: NOTHING. Not his coffee cups or his poopy dog or his TV or his dancing or his damned house are more important to me than the well-being of my boys. NOTHING. The level of disrespect he has shown for me, D and the boys and the level of disrespect he models in general is unacceptable as the boys grow older and start to understand what is going on. Between now and his next visit in summer, I'm going to come up with a concrete plan and rules that need to be followed in the house...and also hopefully just foster a more cooperative, loving family and household in general. (I may have to seek mediation or someone to help me out with this, I'm too "blinded" by the close ties to see it objectively for what it is sometimes.) And if he doesn't improve significantly, I am going to have to leave this arrangement. I have strong, strong emotional ties to this house. To this neighborhood. And to the idea that my mother wished for when she died that my father and sister and I would stay close and care about each other. But both D and I feel that being good parents, having a positive family life, not having to run up and down the street to see each other and care for each other, having our kids and our kids parents be respected, is worth more BY FAR than a nice house with cheap rent.

Okay, I think I needed to write all that out, but that was totally not what this post was supposed to be about. I was going to say how nice it is to be healthy again. I have had what was probably bronchitis for the last two months. I was coughing nonstop. The kind of coughing that makes your abdominals ache, and keeps you up all night and makes you feel like gagging and just is exhausting. The kind of coughing where people start to look at you funny and edge away. I didn't go to church for two months simply because I knew I would cough all the way through the service. It was often hard to have conversations with people.

I tried humidifiers and cough drops and tea and cloroseptic and gargling with hydrogen peroxide and zinc tablets and sitting in the steam room at the gym and cough suppressants of every kind and everything. Nothing seemed to work for more that a few hours. Finally, I tried live probiotics, the kind you have to refrigerate. I am not 100% sure that this is what did it, but within a week after starting them, my cough improved about 50%. Now, two weeks out, I think I'm about 85% there. I have maybe one or two coughing attacks a day rather than 10 an hour. It is SOOOO NIIIICE to not have to cough all the time. It is the kind of sick where you are not so sick that you can just lay down and quit life for two months or check yourself into the hospital, but you are sick enough that it makes every day about sludging through and just trying to get the basic things done. I was so tired all day I can't even describe. Every minute I thought about sleeping and the smallest tasks seemed huge. The kids watched WAAAY to much TV.

So, I'm back to doing Weight Watchers and planning meals and cooking! (Without someone monitoring my dish usage!) Tonight the kids and I made a really good homemade pizza with pineapple and canadian bacon and lots of stealth veggies for the kids to eat and only 5 WW point for me. Fresh food again!  I'm sleeping 8 hours a night. I've started exercising again. D and I have set up a schedule where I go over there to work fairly early so I can get out of there early and have the whole rest of the day to do stuff with the kids or exercises or do "school" or whatever needs to be done...and I'm actually getting stuff done. I can tell that I still have a ways to go and still need to take it slowly and get lots of rest (I did 20 minutes on an exercises bike my first day back to working out and had to quit early because my chest was tightening up something awful and I was coughing up an embarrassing amount of yuck that I could no longer hide.) But I'm just trying to do 20 minutes a day now and work my way back and make sure I get to bed early. I have limited myself (and made myself) do an hour of housework a day after the kids go to bed. Whatever I can get done in an hour is great, then I just forget about the rest. In the long run, I get more done this way because I am doing it every day instead of being so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of work. (Very flylady of me, huh?)

We are STILL in the throws of potty training and Aaron and I are struggling through some tough behavior issues. But I feel like we are pushing through them as best we can. I've become a much more patient and loving mom lately. I've been able to give Aaron some extra one on one attention and a bit of babying that he seems to really need right now. (I'm sure I'll write more about this later.) D is status quo at the moment. So it isn't as if there aren't problems to deal with, but it is so much easier to deal with problems when you have energy and are not coughing up a lung. And you are not forced to worry about hedge clippers and dirty frying pans.

Bouncy Bitchy Bullet Blogging

• Ebbs and Flows. The first six months of parenting were torture, the next year and a half was relatively smooth sailing, the last six months have sucked ass, but I think the tide is receding and it is getting fun (and slightly less messy) again. I have a feeling this will be the pattern for the next 20 years.
• His and Hers surgeries. D and I are both up for surgeries in the near future. D is having his next Tuesday. He is getting his medtronic infusion pump replaced before he starts beeping (literally, it beeps after seven years and if you don't replace it, you just have a beep emanating from your stomach. It is a little hard to explain to airport security.) I have the return of my friend, the kidney stone. The same one they couldn't get to seven years ago (seven again. A pattern?). They removed the big ping pong ball one and said to come back when this one reached ping pong ball sized. I think we are on the verge. The challenge? Can I figure out what to do with my kids before I keel over in pain? Right now the pain is livable and comes and goes, but it is increasing. The race is on! But I hope to make it until after Christmas. Who wants to come stay with my kids for a week? Anyone? Anyone? I have a fast Internet connection and cable! And I promise you'll probably only have to clean up two or three disastrous messes in any given week. Huh? The Northwest in January? The cold and stormy gray Pacific? Doesn't that sound inviting?
• Belated Trick or Treat. I forgot to blog about Halloween. We had a fun week. Naim was a Thomas Train (or was it Aaron?) and the other one? was a firetruck. We went to two Halloween parties that were okay, but trick-or-treating was really fun. I didn't think they would get into it and I thought they'd be shy, but after they figured out the pattern (pattern = talking to strangers will get you candy) they loved it. Naim talked up a storm to every one we met. We only went to about 10 houses before I lost my motivation to walk at twin speed and they had enough candy, but next year I'm sure we will be able to go longer.
• Antecedent ->Behavior->Consequence. If I could figure out how to do it, I would give D a big box of foresight for Christmas...because he has none. None. No ability to estimate how long something might take, what contingencies may occur, and what consequences will happen when you choose to do Choice A as opposed to Choice B or C. It is seriously like that part of your brain that monitors time is missing. And that part of your brain that can foresee what will happen next? Gone. I don't know what happened to it. Was it ever there? Did it get knocked out of him in the accident? He will seriously sit there and tell me at 4:30 that yes, he is coming over at 5:30 after he makes three phone calls, puts up a sale on ebay, has his bath aide come over and help him shower, feeds the cat, charge his wheelchair, and waits for his dad to drop something off. Like in all seriousness. He seems to have no clue that he just promised to do 3 and a half hours worth of stuff in under an hour. He seems to have no means to guide him to reality in what he can actually commit to. And don't get me started on the pictures. The professional pictures he wanted to take this summer, but when I made the appointment (for two weeks later) he seemed startled that I had done it when it came upon him, before he got his hair cut, got new glasses, and cleaned up his wheelchair. So we went by ourselves and I got pictures of the kids. He wanted to try again, so I said, ok, made the appointment again. Got mine and the kids' hair cut, gave everyone baths and washed the nice matching clothes for everyone. Including D. I asked him 2 weeks ago if the pants he was going to wear fit over his prosthetic leg. Yes. You've worn them? Yes. Do you want me to help you try them on? No. They are big enough, he says. Until 15 minutes until we are supposed to leave. He calls me. Uh, they don't fit. He is stuck in them and can't get them off and has no other pairs clean to wear. We end up having to cancel. After I got everyone up early and bathed and cleaned and shiny and even (gasp!) straightened my hair and put on make-up. Made sure the kids didn't get food or god knows what on their clothes. Does he know how hard it is to get the stars and planets to align to make that happen? And can he align a few stars for himself? Not a clue.
• That's way too long of a bullet point. So I'll say it again. Foresight. Is that bottled somewhere? Can I get it at Walmart? Amazon? Really. How does one live without it? Okay, I'm done with that, now.
• More than being a man in a skirt.When I was young, my mother used to use the line, "just wait until you have children..." And she was right. I do understand a lot of things better now that I have children. And one of the things I am discovering is that 75% of what I learned from her about women's issues and feminism is entirely false. Not in a "She was so wrong" way. More in a "Our understanding of how the patriarchy works has evolved a lot from back then when she was forced to "pass" to get a shot at a career." But that is a post I've got percolating in my head that won't take to bullet points.
• Points. Points. Points. Here I come. I blew WW for the last several weeks. I've started again.
• Dioramaggedon. My webuddy, John Scalzi, is killing me this week with a funny post about the Creation Museum. Several months ago, someone dared him to go visit it because it is a few hours drive from where he lives. He didn't want to go. So people offered to pay him. Then he said he'd go but only if people donated a collective total of $500 to an organization that supported separation of church and state. He ended up getting over $5000 in donations. (He has just a few more readers than I do, I'm sure.) So he went, and made a slide show and a post about it, but best of all...now he is having a lolcat photo captioning contest about it that is just cracking D and I up. Go check it out if you're bored.
• I Could Respond If My Head Weren't Exploding. This is not directed at anyone here or online, but I just have to get this off my chest. If you are going to compare homeschoolers joking around about snarky comments they dream of saying to strangers who make judgmental drive-by comments about homeschooling with being white and not having a safe place to make black jokes? Even if it was "just a metaphor" and not what you truly believe? Then I cannot even form words to even respond to that it is so asinine. The stupid? It burns.
• Big Misogyny, Small.... And another thing that has to escape my mind into the ether that is not directed at anyone here. If you are going to mock some courageous and hard-working women who you saw training in Marine boot camp on TV, imitating their high-pitched hoorahs and how funny their little delicate bodies look while they hold their big, manly guns? Well, then I don't think you really understand the principles on which this country is founded that your precious marines purport to defend. And the follow-up with the backhanded compliment about how now that there is a woman space shuttle pilot so we can't make fun of women drivers anymore? I know you mean well, but just give yourself a little nudge, a teeny weeny push into the 21st century. Read a book by a woman instead of misogynistic overzealous military generals. Look around and see that women have been basically kicking the asses of men for the last 20 years in education, salary increases, upward mobility, etc. while still being forced to raise the next generation and clean up after the menz. You should be on your knees, thanking those women marines for being willing to serve and basically volunteer to help clean up this mess that all the rich white dudes created. That is all.
• Noodlebugs. God! Blogs are for Bitchin' aren't they? I'm just spewing all over the place here. I need a bucket and a mop! That wasn't my intention. My intention was to say, hey! Despite these annoyances, things are better! The kids are happy and fun and doing great. I do feel like we are perhaps moving into a bit of an easier patch where we have a good routine down and have balanced my changing the environment to them following the rules. The work is exhausting still and I am still perpetually behind, but I really enjoy my kids every day. They are so funny! Every morning, Naim has to get his sillies out. He runs all over and wriggles around like a nutball and then he suddenly freezes. I have to ask him, "Are you all out of sillies? I think I see some more!" This causes him to wiggle into a fit of giggles and start running around and wiggling all over again. We have to do that about 10 times. Aaron is all into space shuttles and space ships and rockets and UFOs. Anything, and I mean ANYTHING, turns into a rocket that has to count down and be blasted off. They say rockets and dinosaurs and vehicles are the gateway drugs to science careers. He obsesses over all three so perhaps he will really get into science. We'll see. He is getting so fun to talk to, now. He even is telling me things that I don't know. Today he told me he played with dominoes with Jose. This was from the gym daycare. He told me a thing that happened in the past, while I wasn't there. I didn't even know he knew what dominoes are. We don't have any here. When I went to pick them up, they were both in full conversation mode with the daycare folks. Just chatting about all kinds of things. I think it is so cool that they have relationships outside of me. They are expanding their world.
• No white, english speaking, middle class, christian, average-acheiving male Child Left Behind. I read an article in US News about NCLB. It was the stupidest article ever. It was like, with a straight journalisticy reporty face, all "gee, kids who don't speak native English are not doing well on English standardized tests. All the schools with  a predominant ESL population are not meeting the NCLB standards. What SHOOOOOUUUUULD be done? Oh, perhaps punishing the schools and teachers with more negative consequences will help. Yeah! Lets take their funding, their special programs for ESL kids, and their autonomy away and replace it with a standardized English/eurocentric national curriculum. That will teach those ESL kids to do better on those English Anglo-Saxon luvin' standardized tests!" That article was like reading about how to fix your air conditioning by bludgeoning it repeatedly with a sledgehammer, then when that doesn't work--your next big idea is to go turn up your furnace.
• ¿Lengua materna? ¿Sabe usted Cherokee? Okay, now I quickly reverted to bitchy-spewy mode, didn't I? But that reminds me of another thing. A couple of weeks ago D got one of those stupid forwarded email things from the Relative-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless-But-Who-Has-Violently-Different-Views-than-He-Does. The email itself was praising some jackass that was having a hissy fit because some Mexican restaurant owner had a flag-pole and dared to put the Mexican Flag above the American one. Well, that was bad enough, but what really got me wasn't the main gist of the email, it was the senders forwarding comment. It said something to the effect of, "This reminds me of how annoyed I get when I have to push "1" on the ATM for English (as opposed to Spanish)." I shouldn't be shocked about this kind of stuff, but I always am. Someone is such a hater, such a petty person, such a small-minded individual that pushing "1" for English is bothersome? Really? Is it so hard? Is it such an affront to your white American ass? I had never, ever thought about ATMs having Spanish and pushing 1 for English except to say, cool. Spanish for Spanish speakers. You know, the Latinos that have been here since before the 1400s? The ones who were here before the Europeans? The ones who owned Most of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California before we destroyed them? And their progeny who come up here and who work their asses off doing all of our crap work? Yeah, those people shouldn't be able to deposit their paycheck. uh uh. Again, the stupid? It burns and burns and burns.
• Welbutrin: $50, Psychotherapy: $150, Surgery to reconstruct imploding head: $500,000, Blogging: Priceless. Okay, so there seems to be a theme here. Which is, in between surgeries and having fun with my kids and totally loving homeschooling and laughing my ass off at the creation museum and all the other fun stuff we are doing...I've dealt with several incidences of assholery this week. But the good news is, I didn't even go off on them and lose my temper and tact! I just politely stated my opinion or in some instances, just left the situation. And thought to myself, oh! but this is all gettin' blogged. That's the only way I can pull off nice sometimes, is to blog it later on. I know, I should pay all of you a therapy fee for reading this.

Progress, and a rantastical late night tangent of some sort.

Oh, how I love you people who live in my computer. Thanks for all of your suggestions regarding Aaron the Hurricane, and for making me laugh about it all! I think what I really needed was to take a step back and let someone else think about it for a while. There have been no major disasters the last few days. (Well, except for the destruction of a cute little growth chart I had just hung up, and hadn't even written any of the heights on yet. But, it was only a three buck thing, so...whatever.)

I have taken a bit of all of your advice. First, I went baby proofing crazy. I got a gate that is quite large and goes across our kitchen entry way. I can't leave it there because otherwise D could not get past my garage door, but it helps for when I am sleeping. Next, I got these things that make it hard to open our lever door knobs. We put lever door knobs on the house so that D would have an easier time opening the doors, and now of course, like all the things we did to make it easier for D, also makes it easier for toddlers so its biting me in the ass. We have a pantry door that has been a huge problem area. Naim has already figured out the baby proofing thing on that door knob, but he is a little more crafty mechanically speaking than Aaron, so hopefully he won't spill the secret. In any case, it makes it harder and takes longer to open the door, so it may buy me 30 extra seconds when peeing.

Also, the sticky tape suggestion is a good one. I haven't tried it yet, but Aaron always likes to have something in his hands. I did recently give him a small foam cow that is made out of the squishy stuff that those foam stress balls are made out of. He liked that a lot, that is until he decapitated it and amputated its legs (leaving little bits of foam cow gut every where.) Stuff like that horrifies me. I think killing the toy animals will lead to killing the cat and then becoming a wife beater and then graduating to a serial killer. But D just laughs and says that when he was little he wanted to take everything apart and see the inside and figure out how it worked and what it was made out of. So, lets hope it is just his scientific mind at work on his varied experiments.

I have tried giving him things to destroy, but it is something that really has to be supervised and isolated. Leaving him with a "destruction corner" does not bode well. He really doesn't understand the difference between what is okay to destroy and what isn't. It is all so confusing, isn't it? I tell him not to rip the books, but I really don't care if he rips old catalogs and we even rip paper on purpose for certain art projects. Consistent rules are harder than you think when thinking in two year old terms.

I think the advice that really resonated with me and was what I needed to hear was Linda's, who told me that her twin girls either clean up the mess or sit. Well she said it better than that. But I think I have been really lax about that and I am finally getting on the stick, no exceptions. One problem is that Aaron would sit while Naim gladly cleaned everything up, but then I actually started assigning Aaron specific jobs or sections of the room that I don't let Naim touch. So that, and organizing the day a bit better so there is always something exciting around the next turn, if the mess is cleaned up, has helped a lot. My GOD it takes a ton of energy to get that kid going sometimes, though.

I think Alfie Kohn really screwed me up some this year. You may remember that I read his book, Unconditional Parenting, early in the year. (Here is what I blathered about it, then.) It has been reinforced by a family in my church covenant group, who are very pro-alfie. That's fine for them, and I still think he has a lot of good points, but when it comes right down to it, I cannot get on that bandwagon wholeheartedly. At least not as an Alfie "purist." And I think I've felt a bit guilty about that. To me, it is a matter of respect. If I am going to, as Kohn suggests, respect my kids and treat them as I would adults, then I expect the respect in return. Well, not literally. I do understand that 2 year-olds do not have the maturity to show respect the same way as adults. If my little kid hits me, or destroys property or whatever, sure...try to figure out why. See what you can do to support him and understand him. Don't withhold your love or acceptance. But the bottom line is, He is not going to hit me or anyone else. And his is going to know that in no uncertain terms and there will be consequences, just like there would be if he was an adult. (My kids in general don't hit, push or bite, but we did have a bit of a play-kicking problem briefly.) Point being, I still get to have boundaries. I still get to draw the line. I am not these kids' sacrificial servant to be tread upon just because I am the "mother" (cue angel halo music) and I am putting their needs before my own. I have seen people who have kids that are disrespectful to them by hitting, destroying things, whatever, and they go up and give them a hug and try to understand unconditionally why the kid is acting this way. Well, sometimes there is a legitimate underlying reason that needs to be examined. But at two, many times the reason is BECAUSE THEY CAN. You all are right. He destroys things because it is fun. Because he wants to see what will happen. Because it is the bees knees to be able to make your room rain goldfish crackers or picture book confetti. So, as I would not put up with this type of thing with adults (as Kohn says I am supposed to be respecting my kids in like ways) WHY would I accept this from my kid? So, I am not going to drop kick him out of the second story window, and I am not going to stop loving him, but I also am not going to put up with this crap anymore.

So, along with some schedule adjusting and baby proofing, its hard-ass mom who makes her kid help clean every horrid mess before doing anything else is the plan.

All this brings me to a related topic that I have been thinking on for a while. Despite our current challenges, I don't think of Aaron as the "bad twin." I bring this up because it doesn't seem like my father and sister can stop comparing my twins. It is so easy to fall into that pattern with twins especially. I understand Aaron, because in a lot of ways, he is like me. He is extremely independent and knows what he wants. He is very diligent and focused on something he is interested in and hard to pull away. He knows what he wants and he is not happy about being told otherwise. I get Aaron because in many ways, I was him. And I don't want the family dynamic that I had to put up with to happen to them.

Naim is dependable. Naim helps me get through my day sometimes. I can have him do little things for me. Run errands and fetch things for me. When I need to pay the clerk at the store, I know Naim will stay with me, while I have to keep my eye on Aaron so he doesn't run off. Naim is usually fun, while Aaron is moody. Naim is mostly smooth sailing, while Aaron is guaranteed to bump heads with me many times a day. It would be very easy to call Naim "the good twin" and my "favorite." But I recognize that just because Naim is (right now at least) easy to parent, doesn't really mean all that much about who he or Aaron really are. Naim's behavior just happens to be more compatible with my lifestyle right now. This is more of a coincidence that a great virtuous character that Naim has vs. a moral breakdown of Aaron.

I'm going off on this because I don't want them labeled like I was. I was the bad kid. My sister was the good kid. Now, I did get into some minor trouble growing up. I had a truancy problem. My grades were mediocre. I could be slow and distractable when my parents wanted something done. My sister was probably very easy to parent. She studied hard and got good grades. She was never in a lick of trouble. She was the model of efficiency around the house. I can see how her personality was probably more compatible with my mother's. The traits she had lined up with the ones my mother valued. The good traits I had were and still are not valued. And the problems I was having were supposedly just because I was lazy, irresponsible, the bad kid, wrong. I could have used a little Alfie Kohn. I could have used someone to really try to help me examine the underlying causes of my mediocre grades and truancy. (I now see a lot of it having to do with my disability issues that were almost virtually ignored if not denied by my parents. I mean, why show up for math class if no one, for 12 years, cares whether or not you learn or could even see and hear to learn. Easier to call you stupid and lazy.)

Even now, my main title is "the person who can't get up in the morning." Being an early riser is next to godliness in my family. It is the answer to all problems. It is the character trait that shows how hard working and ambitious you are. My circadian rhythms were always off. I was never, and will never be, an early riser. I can do it if I have to, but my natural biorhythms won't get there naturally. It is only by force. In general, I have about 5 times more energy at night than in the first 4 to 5 hours in the morning. And it really doesn't matter when I fall asleep or wake up. Anyway, and I'm just going off on a little peeve right now, I have been lectured this week (and my whole life) about how if I would ONLY get up earlier all my problems would be solved. Aaron wouldn't destroy things, I would be able to exercise more, the angels would sing, and pennies of gold would fall from the sky each morning, if I could only get up earlier.

My kids go to bed at 9:00. What other 2 year olds do that? And the reasons are many. One is due to my work schedule with D and his visitation schedule with us. If the kids are up that late, they get maximum opportunity to be with dad. And the other is because generally they will then sleep till 8 or 9 o'clock. So that means I get maximum use of their in bed hours when my energy is high, and then can get maximum amounts of sleep before they get up. The hours between 9-midnight are the only ONLY hours I have to myself. And that is when I can get things done. Writing, working, extra housework and laundry, whatever. When my dad comes to visit, things sometimes get a bit screwy because he gets up at 6 or 7 and is not at all respectful of the rest of us who are sleeping. I don't hear it because I'm deaf, but the kids do. He turns on the TV loud. He turns on his computer, he is loud in the kitchen and manages to make very burnt smelling toast that fills the house every single morning. He opens the garage door and slams the doors. The kids wake up early, and if they don't come get me, they end up just wandering around the house. (Its not like he is going to watch them or play with them or feed them.) So then I have to get up earlier, and the kids get grumpy earlier and fall asleep during dinner. I don't like it, it makes for rushed and grumpy mornings for us all. When he isn't here, Naim usually comes into my room and gets in bed with me about 8:30. Aaron gets up and comes in but moves out fast and plays around. Yes, this is one of the many destructive periods that I've baby proofed and rearranged for. But after about 15 minutes, Naim and I are ready to get up and then we quietly go downstairs and have breakfast and get dressed and start our day.

It works for us. It doesn't have to work for anyone else. It doesn't really affect anyone else. I used to work flex time from 10-6 and others came in from 7 to 3. Guess what? It worked for me. It didn't really affect anyone else. So after 37 years, you'd think they would be mature enough and a bit less self absorbed enough to understand that it is NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS. I have heard about this my entire life, and most annoyingly since I've had kids. It was always, what are you going to do when the babies wake up early and need to be fed? And what are you going to do when the kids get out of cribs and wake up early? And oh my god, if you didn't sleep so late your life would be so wonderful and all of your problems would be solved. You'd think I had a major heroin habit the way they talk about it.

Anyway, this is just one of many things I have been labeled as over the years. And why I try so hard to reject whatever labeling my family or others do with Naim and Aaron. It can be such a self-fulfilling prophecy. It can keep you from figuring out how to really problem solve a challenge you have in life because you just assume that it is because you are stupid, lazy, bad, wrong, irresponsible, a night owl, worthless, or whatever else they tell you that you can't control, rather that being supported in having the ability to find causes and solutions for problems. How nice it would have been for someone, somewhere, to care enough and sit down with me and have enough faith in me to help me figure out what exactly was going on with me at school and what could be done about it instead of writing me off as stupid and lazy.

I was telling my sister about the 30 year old rule I have. Unless you were significantly abused, you can no longer blame your family for your current flaws after the age of 30. And I really don't. I am me and I have to deal with my own stuff and my parents did the best they knew how to at the time. So this isn't about that. This is about learning from your mistakes. They are off the hook in regards to me. It is water under the bridge and all is forgiven. However, I'll be damned if I'm going to let them do the exact same shit to my kids.

Part of the problem is that they can't change their behavior unless they admit there is something that needs changing. Both D and I have discussed this. Perhaps it is generational. Our parents have done some extremely hurtful things to us. And perhaps they didn't mean to, but they did. And we are supposed to make ammends and apologize profusely for whatever transgressions we have done, but they never, ever will. And what would be so nice, what would make it all so much better, is if they could just admit that, hey, I did the best I could--but what I did there obviously didn't work out the way I wanted it too, and I was wrong and I'm sorry. I will try not to do something like that again. And both of us would be like, OK, wonderful. Thanks so much for caring enough about us above and beyond having to preserve your ego. But it will never happen. D's father, to his credit, is a very good listener and even though I disagree with a lot of his opinions, he does make an effort to see our side of things and will apologize to us (and accept our apologies) when we have had disagreements in the past. But my family and D's mother? We have to accept that it ain't gonna ever happen and just move on.

But when you have kids, where do you draw the line? Where do you say that the behavior your family members are exhibiting are not acceptable to you as a parent? Its not like cut and dry physical abuse. It is just like a large degree of lack of respect. MIL has already taken care of that for us by just ignoring us altogether. (Even though she and D still talk occasionally, he says he just nods while she talks about herself and he doesn't really get in to his life or his family with her.) But my dad is a harder problem. He does some things that are easy for me to ignore because I am used to it and just space it off, but that D finds absolutely disrespectful and abhorant. D is afraid that when the kids get older and understand more and are affected by it more, it is going to cause major problems. He says I am so much more relaxed and happy and a much more fun and better mom during the months when my dad isn't here. And I feel it too, sometimes. How much of this is going to rub off on the kids?

My dad is good with the kids in some ways. I go back and forth between thinking it is great to have an intergenerational household to thinking I'm screwing up their lives with this living arrangement.

Aaron will probably get past this destructive phase in a week or a month or a year. Will my family still be talking about how he wrecks everything when he is 37? Will he, with all of his wonderful qualities, be made to feel like the black sheep? He will probably always be strong-willed, but instead of using that to his advantage, will he always be made to feel like a failure for it? And Naim, who is easy to parent but obsesses over the vacuum cleaner and order and routine (highly valued in my family, but I worry about it making life hard for him to be that inflexible, so I try to curb it while they root it on)--will he become so pressured by the expectation of perfection that he will not take any risks and miss out on all of the vast colorfulness of life? I know I can't shield them from everything and everyone who doesn't respect their humanity in the same way I think they deserve, but how far do I need to go to save them from this which made much of my childhood miserable and took years to move on from? Or am I just worrying over nothing, and my family will not have near the influence over them as the positive roles of D and I and our other friends and their friends that they will meet along the way? Aaron's destructiveness is so easy. Parenting is hard.

I am going to have to change the category on this post because it meandered out of control into the field of cheap therapy and sanity questioning. Sorry, folks. I wrote this in about 40 minutes and that's too fast even for me. I became incoherent somewhere along the 85th paragraph.

Damn These Internets!

(I've been wishy-washy about whether it was appropriate to post this, but Snickollet has read it and she was the only one I was worried about, so I'm reposting it from when I wrote it yesterday.)

The death of Snick's husband has hit me surprisingly hard. I'm not even sure it is a good idea to write about it, because I don't want it to seem like it is all about me when it is so obviously NOT. Sometimes I just think it is amazing what these blogs can do. What bloggers manage to accomplish in such a strange medium. The way people with such unique stories that no one in their own tri-state area can relate to, and then you can go and find a whole little community of people who are in your same or similar boat. Snick and I have emailed each other several times and have tentative plans to meet sometime in the future, but she and I are just two strangers in the milieu of the internets. The waves of grace, strength, and grief that she has sent across the network are very real, and yet she is just one of a million bloggers on the internet who has just graced us all with bravely telling her story.

My situation and hers are not alike, and because of that and because of the nature of how it is to "know" people through the internet, I know that I cannot conceit to know anything about how she feels or what she is going through. But I think it has gotten to me so deeply because I easily could have been her, and still might be her in the future. A single mom of twins whose father has died. D's health problems and that of Snick's husband are a different animal from each other. Pancreatic cancer is pretty much a ticking time bomb while spinal cord injury is more akin to walking (or wheeling with a clumsy 600 lb broken down wheelchair) through a minefield. Your head is in a different place with each, but all the time you are alive you are dancing closer to the edge of death than most people have to. It has powerful consequences for the relationship. It is like a blackmailing, stalking mistress in the relationship that neither of you can get to leave you alone. You try to stave it off in all kinds of creative ways, but you know she'll get him in the end. You bargain with her--negotiating how much time you will give him to her now so that she may let you have a few more days or months or years in the long run. It fundamentally changes the relationship.

As Snick wrote about very eloquently, it doesn't always change it for the worse. It makes you stronger, more honest, more grateful and more appreciative of the little ways you can love each other. I watch other couples have these seemingly insurmountable problems that I know D and I could solve in about 5 seconds flat. Because we know we don't have the luxury of denying the problem or being dishonest or wasting time with passive aggressive antics. There just isn't any time to waste. And this is also why, when you can't go out and take trips to Cancun or climb mountains together, you learn to enjoy the very small beauty in life that other people let pass by unnoticed. You learn to set your own standards and calculate your own risks no matter what others think. You learn that the nobility in trying for those happy times, both large and small, is what life is about and you'll know how to deal with the challenges when you get there. You to suck the marrow out of life for all its worth.

And talk about taking risks. What Snick and her husband did, to go through IVF after his diagnosis so that he could have a chance at fatherhood, if even for a little while--Well that took...well, real balls. That is sucking the marrow out of life. And look at the rewards! Two beautiful children that helped them through this last painful year. One of GH's last memories was likely the sound of his own babies laughing. And now Snick has part of him with her always, and she will have two very captive children to share all of her memories with. I can imagine how scary it must of been for her to do that and to contemplate the inevitable single motherhood she would have to face, because I've had those same fears. But I also feel that she will always be grateful that they took that risk.

Whenever I hear other people have doubts about me and D and our kids, or whenever I get the "What are you going to do when?" questions, which sometimes end up being, "when he dies?" it is scary to think about. But I also know that having them and having D be able to take on the role as their father is probably the best thing I've ever done in my life. I may not be able to look into their eyes and physically see D in their faces like Snick can with her children. But every day that they spend together creates another way that he has imprinted himself into their souls. They do have his mannerisms, they do imitate his voice and his words. They will internalize his ideas.  They are a part of him. Every day that goes by and year that goes by that we can all hang on as a family, however weirdly structured, is time that we use to share each other's spirit and love. We carry each other on. The coolest thing about having children is that besides producing human beings, you actually are able to produce more love in exponential quantities. I still have my mother's love, even though she died. Having kids just allows you to expand your capacity for it, not replace it.

Sometimes in real life, people look at us with some sort of pity. We can't keep up with everybody else. Drive around to 50 million social activities or whatnot. We do often spend our time in hospitals and incapacitated at home. But we know how to find the joys and the humor there. Snick's family found that as well. And maybe that is why I could identify with her so much.

I have a weird theology. It doesn't really involve God as dude in the sky. I guess it involves being humbled to all that is unknown. We grasp such very little pieces of whatever the universe is. I do find evidence that we are all affected by each other psychically somewhat interesting. There are some really interesting studies about this. How measurable energy is changed when unconnected people are having the same emotions about the same things. D is more well read on this than I am. I know its very new age-y. But sometimes I wonder if, when something so terrible happens that one person can't bear it alone, if the pain gets distributed to all those around who are open to taking it on. Yesterday, between 4:30 and 5:00 my time, I was just walking across my living room to go out and get my mail. Suddenly, I was hit with a terrible emotional brick out of nowhere about the whole thing, and I just started bawling. I went into my dad's room, which I hardly ever do, and I looked to the east and I just was overcome with grief for her. It reminded me of when my mother died. I talked to my family on the phone and she wasn't doing well. I went outside to get a newspaper. I specifically remember reaching in the newspaper machine to get a newspaper and it hit me. She just died. When I came back in the house, not ten minutes later they called and told me she died. Maybe it is all just coincidence and in my head, but I feel these connections sometimes.

If we are somehow able to help people take the burdens, they help us with the gifts that can sometimes grow out of such tragedy. This is why so many people have that "hug my children a little tighter today" feeling, I guess. I don't mean to make sunshiny cliche's about what happened to GH; Cancer sucks. What happened was awful and cruel and sad. There is no way around that. But when many people who haven't faced these times of deep sorrow go off on their merry life, they don't recognize the joy and happiness that is there all around them in a million ways every day. As hard as it is for D and I to live with our own comparatively little tragedies and uncertainties about life and the future, we have learned also to be able to recognize all the joy in everything life has to offer us, which is quite a lot. We are very, very lucky. If D dies tomorrow, we will still be very lucky. We have had almost 13 years together and 2 years and 5 months with the kids. This is way more than Snick and GH got. If D dies tomorrow, the kids and I will go on knowing this. Knowing how lucky we were. Knowing that we can continue. Snick's story helps me to realize that.

This morning, the kids were still sleeping and I went in and crawled in the crib with Aaron, like I've been known to do from time to time. With my head using Tigger for a pillow, I watched him sleep, with Naim just behind me asleep in the other crib. Love is amazing and overwhelming and in such abundance that even if time is cut short, we are lucky to have a chance at it at all. Tears again. For Naim and Aaron and the sorrows they will surely face and for Riley and Maddie, who lost a father yesterday. I am deeply sad for them. When the kids woke up, I didn't want them to see me upset to I switched gears quickly and we got up and went downstairs and we played and danced around to one of our favorite little kid songs. Only from deep sorrow do you recognize the amazing bliss of moments like these. I know that Snick will find it again with her children likely showing her the way.

So for them, I'll share with you this goofy and annoying song that will drive you nuts if it hasn't already. Get your little kiddos and dance like idiots to it for me. It really pretty much sums it all up.

(video link)

days are the sunniest
jokes are the funniest
rabbits are the bunnyiest
hives are the honeyest
elephants are the tonniest
troubles - they're the none-iest

everywhere I go!

straws are the bendiest
time is the spendiest
cards are the sendiest
books are the lendiest
fun is the pretendiest
friends are the friendliest

everwhere I go!

berries are the fruitiest
shoes are the bootiest
puppies are the cutiest
treasure is the lootiest
teams are the rootiest
horns are the tootiest

everywhere I go!

birds are the tweetiest
candy is the sweetiest
socks are the feetiest
tricks are the treatiest
drums are the beatiest
lunch is the eatiest

everyhwere I go!

flowers are the smelliest
jams are the jelliest
rain's the umbrelliest
tales are the telliest
wishing is the welliest
buttons are the belliest

everwhere I go!

skies are the bluiest
cows are the mooiest
gum is the chewiest
ghost are the booiest
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everywhere I go!

Forgiveness: noun, End of Blame.

Shoved back in the archives from 2/25/07.

A friend and I were talking recently about forgiveness. Specifically, how do you forgive someone who is dead or otherwise not present or who is unwilling to work it out with you in your presence. And does it do any good. I won't tell her story, which really made me think but it isn't my story to tell. For me, the obvious example is my mother, who died three years ago. And our relationship was not all bad and tormented. And she was not a bad mother. But there were specific things that I had to forgive her for. Things like telling me when I was thirteen that no one was going to hire me to babysit because my glasses scare people. And thus making me wear contact lenses that kept me in a constant state of pain for 6 years, even hiding said scary (yet painless) glasses. Things like that.

Mostly, I forgave her for these things long ago when she was alive. Because I understood her intentions were good if not misguided. I also had to forgive myself for not so much maybe telling her straight out that I forgave her for these things. I should have done better at that. So both of our intentions were good, and our 'sins' kind of canceled each other out, I guess. When she was dying, I tried my best to make amends with her. I don't know if I did it well enough for her to understand it, but I gave it all I had and tried my best as did she and so I think we made our peace together.

Forgiving is easiest to do when someone is willing to meet you halfway. Many times, we judge ourselves by our intentions but others by their behavior. Sometimes if we just sit down and learn what each others intentions were, and why what each others behaviors were didn't portray that to the other person, it is easy to forgive and straighten out. Sometimes our intentions aren't always the best. We all have jealous, selfish or greedy moments. In these cases, sometimes you just have to fess up and say, I was an idiot and I'm sorry. If the other person has died or something, sometimes we have to assume that for them. He was an asshole, I don't know why he did the things that he did, maybe I'll never know, but I'm going to stop being angry now and be done with this. If only for our own sanity.

For the last two or so years, I have off and on been struggling to deal with my anger towards my in-laws. Specifically my mother and sister in law. I have been working hard to forgive them. It has been hard because they have chosen not to meet me halfway or any way. My mother in law had surgery yesterday. And I guess it is all going well and I was sincerely happy about that because as I understand it, a chronic problem that she has been having finally has been cured and she should feel much better. I've never wished her harm, but I'm glad that I'm glad for her. I feel like I'm just inches from forgiveness. So, I'm just going to write some stuff out and see if I can push myself all the way to the finish line. This post is categorized under cheap therapy. So read or don't read, its up to you. I don't know what it is going to say yet.

I'm kind of thinking back to what got us to 2004, where it all kind of went to hell. I generally never liked spending much time with her. This is not to say that I did not like her or that I thought she was a bad person. I thought she had brains, and a certain toughness about her. She is very capable and I respected that. She's been through some shit and I respected that she survived that, too. But we were just very different people with totally different outlooks on life.

The first time I met her, which was before I even met D, she horrified me. She first started talking about her son and how he needed to make friends as he started college just two years post spinal cord injury. Okay. Then she went off on his bowel issues. Like, in detail. It wasn't that I was shocked or grossed out, I knew people with spinal cord injuries and nothing really grosses me out much. It was just so disrespectful and invasive of his privacy. I was just thinking, you want him to make friends and this is how you help him? Geez, lady, he's going to have enough troubles without you freaking people out with bowel horror stories. It was so all about her, too. Like how hard everything was for her. I'm not saying it wasn't or that she shouldn't vent about that. It was just that every time I talked to her it felt like a counseling session. It was draining.

But we went on. She annoyed me with her MIL Swoop of our apartment every time she visited and her constant need to wear D's clothes for no reason like a high school girlfriend pissing on her boyfriend's territory, but I could handle that. Lots of MIL types do the passive-aggressive MIL Swoop. She would piss me off at times by making decisions for D as if she had talked to him, but I would find out later that she never had. (i.e. one time I came over with a movie to see if D wanted to watch it. She barred the door and went and pretended to ask D if he wanted to. She came back and told me he didn't. Later, D said he never knew I came by with a movie.) I was annoyed by her a lot, but I tried to be understanding. This was her youngest son, just leaving the nest after a serious accident. I guess she can be excused for hovering a bit. One thing I liked about her at that time was that she really tried to make you feel like you belonged. She gave me Christmas presents and invited me to her house and treated me like family.

But she ran hot and cold with me. One time, she told me, very sweetly, that D nor Q (who I was sorta dating at the time) needed to be around any women. And I needed to give them space. Okay. I was annoyed, but wasn't too upset since at that time I had met two or three or D's past girlfriends and they all told the same stories about her. They all liked D's father, but they all had the same troubles with D's mother. I chalked it up to nothing personal and didn't worry too much about it.

We went on like that for a couple of years. I was polite and tried to make the best of things and just let go some of the brush off I got sometimes. Part of it was that we just were VERY different people. I'm more radical about disability issues, womens issues, pacifism, religious freedom, etc. She is very traditional in terms of women's roles, being a military wife, Catholicism, etc. I liked to talk with the men about politics, she liked to talk with the women about Oprah and Martha Stewart. We were just different. Neither right or wrong, just different. My take was that we could get along and respect each other, but we were never going to likely be the best of friends. I don't know if they ever realized or gave me credit for the extent to which I tried to be polite. I mean...okay...they are kind of bigotted. (In that "Not that I'm racist, but..." kind of way.) I kept my mouth shut around them with more restraint than I ever thought possible from myself. I am not a keep my mouth shut kind of person. I actually remember one time when FIL said that the victim in the Kobe Bryan rape case should have just never went into his room. D actually came rolling out of his room at top speed to hold me back from jumping across the table and squishing his little patriarchic, misogynistic head to the floor. But I restrained myself enough to just shoot dagger eyes at him. I mean, they don't REALIZE the degree to which I let stuff go around them to keep the peace. No one else would ever get away with some of the crap they spewed.

I know that one of the things they sort of blame me for is influencing D. I met D when he was only 19 and had just moved away from home. He was a Church going, Catholic, republican, hoo-rah, marine wanna-be. He's a different person now. Did I influence him? Sure I did. And he influenced me. But you can only let someone influence you by your own choice. He was newly disabled; he just changed from a white male to a minority. He was going to change with me or without me. Things were bothering him already, like the Marines making him "honorary" instead of finding an appropriate place for disabled people who wanted to serve. I just gave him the words I had heard before. He took them and went with them. And other parts of him, like his interest in conspiracy theories, UFOs, out of body experiences, new age-y religion and paganism...that's all him. They can't blame that on me. If anything, that is where he has influenced me. He listens to Art Bell, not me. I just hear all about it. I think daughters in law take the brunt of the blame that mothers seem to have to dish out when they figure out that their babies are their own adult people know. God help me that I won't be that bad when my kids are adults.

Things came to a head for me once on a plane trip to Oregon. D and I (with a guide dog at the time) have to make specific arrangements for our air travel. I'm not going to go into the details of this, but D and I had called the airline ahead of time, and then when we got there we asked for what we needed both at the ticket counter and the gate. Then she would go up to the counter and just fuck it all up with unreasonable and rude demands. She changed and overrode what we had asked for, and had her own needs that were supposed to trump all of mine. She couldn't sit in a center seat because she was claustrophobic, yet she HAD to sit next to D. Lisa and Dog be damned. Other passengers be damned. The problem was that one of the bulkheads where D could sit (and was better, but not absolutely necessary for me and dog) was also an exit row. And they won't put people with disabilities in exit rows. So there was no possible way to get D in the A seat, me in the B or C seat, her not in the middle but sitting next to D. I can't remember how it went exactly now. I may have the details wrong. I can't even begin to describe to you how I was going on 5+ hours of her incessant whining and worrying and need for reassurance and ability to muck up everything D and I tried to fix. It was as if someone was driving giant screws into my ears and twisting them ever so slowly but incessantly into my brain. I mean, I can handle 15 kids with autism, behavior disorders and mental retardation. But I couldn't handle this. Let me just say this. I have traveled extensively with people with all kinds of disabilities. People on oxygen, in wheelchairs, deafblind folks, cognitively disabled folks, people who needed assistance eating, people who had very specialized medical equipment, people who needed very specific help transferring, etc., all with my own deafblind self and my guide dog. Sometimes it works out great, sometimes you have problems with the airlines. But I have NEVER had as much stress, confusion, rudeness, and chaos as I had this trip with her. I was SO MAD by the time we got on our second plane, that I felt like I would absolutely throw up in the face of one more second of it. And the thought of spending two weeks with this women filled me with so much anxiety and dread that I literally panicked. I cracked. Big time. I told D that this was a mistake, I was going back to Kansas, and I walked off the plane. I knew I'd have to pay a penalty fee, but I didn't care. I wanted to get as far away from that woman as possible.

I honestly did not know that you can't walk off a plane easily once you get on. This was way before 9/11, and I just didn't know. When I went up to the ticket counter and told them what I had done, all hell broke lose. Apparently, this was a security breach and if I didn't get back on the plane, they would have to unboard everyone, search the plane, and then re-board it. An airline guy literally yanked my arm and pulled me to the side and said, "I don't know what your problem is, little girl, but you are going to GET.BACK.ON.THAT.PLANE or I will have 300 people pissing furious and I'm not going to put up with that." Needless to say, I got back on the plane. When I got on the plane, ironically, I was sat next to MIL, who was seated in THE MIDDLE SEAT!!! and just burst into tears. She tried to comfort me and was nice then. It was really embarrassing, and definitely not one of my finer moments. D and her had some fight the next day about it all, but I wasn't there for it. Since D's brother and sister-in-law were hosting us and innocents in all this, we all sucked it up for their sake and made the best of the trip. When I got home, I sent her flowers and apologized for my plane behavior, and she never acknowledged my apology or anything, so I just let it go.

Shortly after, D and I moved to Oregon and I had very little contact with her for several years. I saw her a few times and that was nice and fine. Then they decided to move here as well and it made everyone apprehensive. It wasn't a personal thing against them moving here, everyone just worried about whether it was the right decision for them and whether his dad would be happy and the added responsibility of having them here and the time commitment, etc. Everyone kind of tried to hint that maybe a move to a town a few hours away would be good because it is more in the country that they were used to and catered to retired people. But to no avail. They wanted to move in right next to D. Almost literally. This happened near the time that I also moved in with D, so they were right up the street.

In those years, I saw them more, mainly D's father. Even though we still weren't especially best friends, I started to slowly get more used to them being here and accept them as my extended family. I still could only handle MIL in small doses, but we did have some enjoyable talks and I was resolved in the fact that we were different, and not close but were always friendly and respectful of each other.

I thought things were okay. But here is where I was wrong and should have checked in with them more. First, I was happy with the arrangement where we respected each other and were friendly to each other but knew that we had our differences. I think she felt like I never tried to be her friend. I grew up in a family that was not big on traditions, entertaining, and events. So I did not put a big priority on them. I think she got a lot of her self-esteem from her cooking and entertaining and stuff. My family is ultra efficient. I would sit there and marvel at how she would use 20 pots and 50 utensils to make a meal that I could make with two pots and one spoon. I didn't say this out loud, but I think that I was more confused by her entertaining style than impressed, and she probably got that vibe. The other thing was that I was lousy help. First, it is hard for me to help in other people's kitchens, especially when there are lots of people doing lots of things. Second, I always wanted to hang with the guys and talk about real stuff instead of what the women in the kitchen were talking about. I just wasn't interested... and kind of resented that this was what I was supposed to do. I did clear my plate and usually D's stuff, and help clear the table, but then I was done. I'm sure that this was perceived to be rude.

With her during this time, I think that was I perceived as little differences in our personalities, she perceived as a big deal. In disabled community, people's needs and abilities are so different that little social graces are really downplayed and ignored. If someone doesn't help with the dishes, you don't worry about it, you just assume they are doing the best they can to participate. If someone's verbal/social skills are a bit off, you just go with the flow and accept it. What I perceived as nothing, I think she and SIL perceived as me rejecting them or being rude. This is all stuff I've looked back and realized now. I should have realized it then. I heard how they talked about other people. They would say stuff that astonished me. Like so-and-so didn't make eye contact when they passed in the street, so that must mean that that  person is totally selfish and rude. Once, they talked about how her stepson's wife was working (at a hospital in pediatric respiratory therapy) when they stopped by and she only came out and said hi for a second. This must mean that she didn't care that they were there and she didn't want to try to have a relationship with them. Um, HELLO! Some people can't stop everything (especially hospital work!) when you stop by. Take things too personally, no? Stuff like that. I should have realized that if they were that sensitive about other peoples little bitty actions that mine were probably outer limits bad to them. I mean, I never graduated from finishing school, for craps sake. I mean, we're lucky I can eat with a fork for all the attention I pay to social graces. It has nothing to do with YOU.

But here is where the big problem happened. And it happened for two years, unbeknownst to me at the time. 2002 and 2003 were really bad years for both D and I. First D had a months long life-threatening illness, and then immediately after, my mother had a ten month losing battle with cancer. Not to mention losing my job and having my own health problems. During these two years, D's father was visiting us several times a week. Often helping out with household chores, shopping, rides etc. That time was just a blur for me and I was distracted and depressed. But I should have checked in more with D's family. I was just getting by day by day, though, and I just trusted D to handle his family.

D and I either complement each other or clash due to how we were raised. D was never trusted with much responsibility, but he got lots of help. I was raised to be independent to a fault. Most of the time, I am so thankful that my mother taught me to be able to take care of myself and expected that I be responsible for myself. I can handle a lot of things that my more 'sheltered' counterparts cannot accomplish. This is because of the fierce independence that was expected of my both by my mother, and then later as an NFB trained blind person. The downfall of that is this: Sometimes you are going to need help. We are not islands. If you are so busy taking care of yourself, you don't know how to ask or accept help and you often don't have time to give it, either. As I was trying to encourage D to be more independent, he was trying to encourage me to get into the fold of his family. To accept and give help. I was trying to get better at the giving help. When MIL had brain surgery, I really tried to be there for her and do my part. I was trying to set aside time for them more. But accepting help made me reeeeaaaallly uncomfortable. I hated it. Every time D's father came in and cleaned up something I felt like crawling under a rock in shame. Why couldn't I get that done. (Well, I worked all day at two different jobs and I was up the night before helping D with a catheter emergency...but I still should have been able to clean the kitchen!) D was trying to get me to lighten up.

It was like trying to coax a wounded rabbit out from a hole. D reassured me countless times that his dad was bored. That he wanted to do this stuff for us. And it seemed the case because often he would call up and we would have nothing for him to do but he seemed bored so we found stuff for him. He would come over and bring sandwiches and groceries without our even asking. I would contemplate how to get to a doctor's appointment, and D would have already asked his dad to take me. It was hard for me to take, but D kept telling me that it was fine and I slowly started to get used to it.

And he WAS very helpful and I did appreciate it. I had never in my life had someone so willing to just almost be at my beck and call. At one point, I came back from my mother's brain surgery and the state of Oregon had passed a measure to drastically reduce attendant care. This would put both D and I in a horrible financial fix. We didn't know if we could even keep our apartment. D's father said that if the worst happened we could just all moved into his house. And although things would have to get pretty damned bad for me to get to that point...I remember just crying about it. Someone has actually got our backs. They care enough about us that we won't go homeless. That I won't go homeless. And he's actually just telling us that upfront to ease our minds. It turned out that they cut a lot of people, but not D's care, so we were OK. But the thought meant a lot to me. I began to really trust D's father.

So much so that later when I was hedging about moving into my father's house, I made a pros and cons list and shared it with FIL. One thing I put on the list was that living with my father was not as secure as living with D. My reasoning was that my father would not give me any guarantee for housing, but D's family would. I REALLY regret showing that to him now. I think it might have freaked him out. But during that time, I was really starting to see myself as a contributing member of his family and started to finally let myself depend on them a little bit to have my back. It would be a last, last, last resort, of course, but it still eased my mind. My own family was never that great at having my back or easing my mind. They are very much get your own self out of your own problems. This was something I never had before. Maybe I wasn't doing it exactly right, but I was trying.

One thing that is very different also about me and MIL is that I am extremely pragmatic and straight forward realistic. MIL is more of a projectionist. She tends to create her own reality. We laugh because she just refuses reality sometimes. Someone will say, "I smoked some pot in high school," and she will say, "no you didn't." and that is that. So I should have been warned that she was not prepared for my pregnancy. We talked about it with her several times and she just didn't hear it. D told her I was looking into IUI and she just said, "oh, she's not going to do that." Topic closed.

So because of her lack of interest and also because of the stress of IF, we didn't tell them the day-to-day nitty gritty of trying to conceive. We didn't intentionally hide it. We dropped hints, had books and brochures about IUI and donor insemination right out in the open. The subject was open for discussion by us, but denied by them. IF is funny in that people expect to know the play-by-play like they don't if you conceive naturally. No one (except maybe your closest friends) expects you to go, "I'm ovulating so we had sex last night!" But with IF, they seem to think they have the right to know every doctors appointment, every medication, every pregnancy test, everything. IF is extremely stressful. We only shared the day-by-day with each other and with the Fertile Thoughts message board friends.

Even though we had tried to talk to them about it before, I think they were pissed that we had this secret for months before we told them. I was worried about miscarriage and vanishing twin syndrome, so I waited to tell almost everybody until I was about 3 months pg. We told D's parents first, and we were really excited about it. We partly told them first because we thought they would be good examples of support for my dad when he came and I told him about it. We thought they would be the easy ones. We brought information about the donor and U/S pics and all kinds of stuff we thought they might want to see. But it was awful. I was the one that said "I'm pg! With twins!" She said, "with D's sperm?" When I said, "no" she left the room and apparently cried. D's father was much better about it. When she came back, she was better, but didn't talk much and when we asked her if she wanted to see the ultrasounds she flatly said "no." It was as if I had wanted all my life to win a gold medal in figure skating, and I finally won it, and then she spit on me during the national anthem. It was that bad. Ironically, my father, after a few minutes of deliberation, was much happier and much more supportive. So, shows what I know.

Then things got bazaar. Since I was carrying twins, I was already showing at 4 months. I saw her several times over the next several weeks. She did not mention my pregnancy hardly at all. And if she did, it was very indirectly. Here I was, in maternity clothes, meeting her other visiting family members from out of town, and NO ONE talked about my pg. Not like I needed to be the center of attention. But I was not 14 year-old high school girl that got shamefully knocked up (not that I think that, but you know what I mean, right?). I was a grown up, educated, career woman who made a responsible and well thought out and much desired decision. I mean, it was weird. They even took me out for my birthday and gave me a nice card and some cash and never once mentioned the pg. And if I mentioned it, they changed the subject like I hadn't even said anything. I don't know what to do with that. How can you take me out to dinner and then shit on me at the same time? WTF?

I told D that we needed to go talk to them because something was wrong and we needed to work it out. I mean, these were my kids' grandparents, right? This was actually a factor for me, that my kids would have local grandparents. Not that I expected free babysitting, I knew they were not healthy enough to take care of twins alone, but just...you know...support. I thought about how I would walk up with the kids in strollers to her house someday and visit and have a talk with her. If I was going to be a SAHM, maybe we would find more things in common now. So D thought that he would talk to them first, and maybe they would open up better with him.

It seemed the problem was that they were afraid they were going to have to give us a lot of support that they couldn't give. Okay, that's a legitimate thing to talk about. Lets talk it out. We reassured them that we didn't expect financial support. That we knew they couldn't babysit and that we were fine with whatever they thought they could do or not do. We wanted them in the babies lives. We all had a good talk and I felt a lot better about everything. It seemed everyone did. Whew! Over a little bump--lets move on now. The one and only thing I asked of them was that if there was a problem, or if we did something that didn't work for them, that they would come and talk to us about it right away so we could work it out and not give me the silent treatment again. This is the one thing I stressed. The only thing I wanted. And everyone agreed.

And then...

I have to be vague with what happened next. But something horrible happened. Let me put it like this: Say we were sitting in our own house minding our own business. Then, an envelope accidentally falls out of the sky and hits us in the head. We know we shouldn't open it, but then we happen to notice that on the front of the envelope it says in big letters:

PRIVATE CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION ABOUT LISA AND D AND THEIR BABIES THAT WE DON'T WANT THEM TO KNOW!!!!

So, yeah, we opened it. And unless you have a halo on your head, you would have to. What we found startled us. Again, I'm going to be vague, but in this envelope was basically what MIL really thought of me and my kids. It was really hurtful. It talked about how I had taken advantage of them all these years. How I asked for help tio much except when I didn't ask for help enough. How unhappy they were about my pg. How since I have health problems maybe I'll miscarry and they won't have to worry about it anymore. How they will be raising my babies and how she dreads their birth. How they have had to take over for what my family won't do. How I am a burden. How I am screwing up D's life. These are generalizations, the specifics were kind of worse in a way. It was the tone and language of how much disdain she had for me and for the fact that my kids were not D's biological kids. There were also lies, half-truths, and exsagerations about MIL and FIL's part in helping us. How I took FIL away from her for the last couple of years. etc. I could have taken all this and probably gotten over it if it wasn't for the date. It was well after all of our long talks where everything was supposed to be okay. I felt like the whole time I tried to talk it out with them and forgive them for their behavior and take the high road, they/she was totally playing me and lying. The wounded rabbit that D had tried so hard to coax out of the hole got tricked and was slammed in the trap.

So, still trying to take the high road and salvage things, I confessed to FIL what I did, and what I found. I told him how we found this on accident, but kept reading. And I apologized for the fact that we kept reading. But maybe it was all for the best and we could try again to talk things out. This was about the fourth weekend I had spent hashing it out with them. Not to mention the stress D and I had in-between. I was in my second trimester, D had a broken leg, we were getting ready to move, and I had spent literally hours and days working with D's parents to try and work things out. Always tactful, always apologetic for anything I had done wrong, always asking for suggestions on how to improve. MIL was out of town, but FIL and I talked for almost six hours that day.

What I found out, and tried to deal with, was their fundamental (but mostly unintentional prejudices about people with disabilities having children and being independent in general. I get it, they are old school, OK. But it was like they di