Focused

Okay, so maybe not focused in the same way....

But I am focused.  On getting better, on beating this depression again, on getting my life back on track.  The first steps are done.  Emily is weaned (sniff, sniff) and I'm on my meds again.  It was a rocky first couple of weeks getting back on the meds.  Dizziness, anyone?  But now that I've been taking them for a few weeks that's abated and I can focus on getting life going. 

Right now I'm at the point of, "so what if my house is a mess?  So what if I'm not a super mom?"  Did you know that the sun is shining and it's a beautiful, cool, fall day?  Okay, so the messy house is bothering me a bit, but that will resolve itself over the weekend.  I'm having more fun with conversations and finding joy in them.  It's always a good time when a conversation about a flier a county commissioner candidate gives you goes something like this:
Matt: Hey, where did this Steve Storck thing come from?
Me: Steve Storck.
Matt: I know that, but where did it come from?
Me: No, seriously, Steve Storck came by and dropped it off.
Matt: Oh!  What'd that know you then?

Sometimes you may just need to know Matt and me to know how funny that would come off. 
I've also focused on other small things, like watching the neighbor's cat stalking a slimy, yucky salamander.  Orange tabby tail straight in the air, and Schwan pounces, only to run away very soon after licking like crazy.  Silly kitty!

One of the bigger things I've focused on is eating better and losing the baby fat.  I've lost the weight (actually, more than the weight), just not the shape.  I know round is a shape, but I miss seeing my hips when I lie down.  I'm not looking for my high school body or anything like that, but just something a little more toned. 

I got over the high school body thing this summer.  We were at Matt's folks' place and went swimming in the pit.  It was an incredibly hot day and a swim felt so good.  Soon the intimacy was jarred by a bunch of high school kids running down to the water.  All the girls were in little bikinis with their perfect, youthful bodies.  And I felt old, used up, and soft.  I left soon after with the excuse that Emily wasn't handling the heat well.  As I showered soon after going back up to the house, I had a quick cry, and then I pulled myself back up.  Their bodies hadn't done what mine had.  My body grew two babies and brought them into the world.  My body nursed and nurtured those babies.  My body chased after one of those babies so far, and will chase after the next one all too soon.  So yeah, I may be soft around the edges, but damn it! My body is beautiful because it has done beautiful things!  That and in ten years, those with the little bikinis may be feeling the same thing. 

That personal pep talk has gone a long way toward bolstering my self image.  Are there days I'd like to change things about me?  Yes, most every day.  Then I remember the talk I gave myself, and say, "I'm beautiful to those who matter, everyone else can go..."

So now that I've had my rant on something completely not on the topic, go focus on something worthy today.  Don't worry about your own looks, don't worry about the little stuff, but celebrate the good.

Crash and Burn

I know I've been very remiss about writing lately.  There's been so much going on this month, and here I've written about very little.  I do have one post that I've hand written.  I just have to type it up and post it.  This post won't be that one though. 

I've been having some rather large problems with my depression again.  If a day goes by without crying right now, I can mark it on the calendar and have a celebration.  And I truly thank the Lord for good friends.  Without them I'd be incredibly lost right now. 

I don't know what happened last weekend, but something must have.  On Monday, instead of following my usual routine for the morning, I just sat on the couch.  Then around 10:30 or so I realized I had some pretty high anxiety and I couldn't control it.  I couldn't control my breathing, I was crying, I was shaking. And because of that,I thought I was going to pass out.  What a joy that would be for Kirstin to find me on the floor or something.   After a lot of online messaging with Matt, I finally called Angie.  She came and helped me screw my head on straight and keep it there.  I was barely able to take care of my girls.  I had Kirstin give Emily a bottle after I put Emily in her high chair. Kirstin's lunch consisted of crackers, peanut butter, and beef jerky.  It was the best I could do.  I had planned on making eggs and toast, but I didn't feel I could handle even something as simple as that.

Once Angie got there, she didn't expect me to talk about what was going on, but just went with the flow of things.  She kept reminding me of what I was starting to do so that I could accomplish things.  She took care of my girls for a little bit until I felt competent again.  I got a shower, some laundry done, and got the bottles filled (I usually do that right away in the morning).  Once I felt able, I talked to Angie about it.  I told her I just didn't know what exactly happened.  Then to hear Kirstin say, "Mommy is crying a lot today."  It just about broke my heart.  We got things figured out, and my Matt brought her Matt out (they're the Matts of Computing Services on campus) and we had a nice supper and some time with friends.  I still don't know exactly what happened.  I'm pretty boggled about it all still.

I did have an appointment with my psychiatrist on Wednesday.  I described it to her, and she said it sounds like a real panic attack.  I walked out of there with a prescription for Xanax and Cymbalta.  The Xanax I'm supposed to take at night for help to sleep and to take during the day for anxiety as needed.  I start the Cymbalta tomorrow.  I can probably expect about two weeks of dizziness until my body gets used to the meds again.  That should really help me out.  I'm hoping the Cymbalta takes care of some of the anxiety as well.  It's still sky high, and I can't force myself to leave the house all the time.  My mental cheerleader has just thrown down her pom poms and left for a little bit.  I'm making my way back though. 

So, where to from here?  I figure I can only go up.  I had everything together as well as I possibly could for so long.  I guess it was only a matter of time before something happened.  I think I slipped back about halfway again.  So, up we go, and the climbing continues!

Just a Day

We've been having interesting times around here lately.  Not that anything huge has happened, but just that everything seems huge as it approaches.  I've been having a tough time of just going about daily business lately.  That really makes me scared.  I know I probably should go on the pills again, but I'm trying to fight my way through instead.  I have to force myself to leave the house and be among people again.  That's never good.  That was one of the main signs of depression for me earlier on.  And now that Vacation Bible School is going on, I have no choice but to leave my little "queendom" and go.  Unfortunately, Xanax and nursing don't go together very well, or else I'd have something to take the edge off the anxiety.  Instead, I have to curb the nausea, force myself to eat something, and just make myself go and do what I need to do.  And this is to go out among friends at the church. I do have the office to retreat to there, so I can hide a little bit.  Not that hiding helps anything, but I do get a little refuge to pull myself together. There is one night this week that I'm not going in, and the neighbor will pick up Kirstin and bring her there for me. I plan on doing some mental health exercises whilst she's gone and Matt has Emily.  Hopefully I can get myself back together for a while.

It's something else entirely when I have to face being among strangers.  Heck, just going to the grocery store is becoming a huge mental chore.  I have to cheer myself on just to get through it.  Then I wonder why I'm getting knots in my back again.  Ugh.  But I look at the girls' smiles and I know I have to just keep going.  I can't seclude myself.  I WON'T be one of those people.  But yeah, I may wind up on the pills again.  But first, I have to wean Emily, and I'm just not willing to do that quite yet.  In the meantime, I'm rereading a book, "Get it Done When You're Depressed" by Julie A Fast and John D. Preston and trying to do what it says.  I have to, so I can be a better mom to my girls.  I'm the female role model around here, and I sure don't want Matt teaching them some of the things about being a girl.  That's just a scary thought in general.  I wonder how he would react to Kirstin asking about bras like she did the other day...

But on a positive note, I've been a breast milk queen.  I pump once a day and freeze it special bags.  I have almost 4 gallons frozen now.  I just took a tally the other day.  I was amazed.  I've been pumping once a day from the very beginning.  I wasn't going to start pumping till Emily was about a month old, but then she wound up in the NICU.  This is one of those positive things to come from that.  That and the fact that we had to apply for Medical Assistance to cover part of the bill (insurance has since covered it) and that put us on WIC again.  Free food is always good.  And now we get fresh fruits and veggies, brown rice, bread or tortillas and the like too.  We never got that kind of stuff when I was on it with Kirstin.  It's a wonderful program and I recommend it to anyone who may be able to be on it. 

Another positive thing that's been happening is getting a schedule going for the girls again.  It took a while, but now we've got a routine down, and it's absolutely wonderful.  The money I spent on that blanket for Emily was very well spent.  She has yet to break out of it, even when she travels the crib during the night.  She sleeps later in the morning, so that means I can sleep too.  So now she eats at 7:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m., and 9:00 p.m.  She sleeps in the morning from about 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and then sleeps again from about 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., and then goes to bed at 9:00 p.m.  Very rarely does she vary from this when we're home.  So that helps me plan for more activities with Kirstin.  I can sit down with her and just read a book again, and be able to cuddle her more as I do it.  And I know all this will get easier as time goes on.  Kirstin is learning to read a little bit now too, so we have fun picking out words that she knows in her books. 

So there is a lot going on right now, but none of it big.  I just have to remember that.

Survival of the fittest?

Survival of the fittest or just plain stupidity?  I'm opting for the latter.  In the past week I've come across two "news" stories of people being stupid when it comes to wild animals.  The first one is this:

Baby skunk with rabies

Okay, so some people think skunks are cute, and they wanted to help out.  I get that.  But, this is not a tame animal! Skunks are known carriers of rabies!  At what point in time does someone NOT think, "Oh, maybe I should just leave it alone and let animal control take over?"  Seriously.  Now because of those actions, many people have to go through what I've heard is a very painful process of injections so they don't have to suffer the effects of rabies. 
Honestly.  No one even thought of a quarantine period for said skunk?  Nope, let's just invite all our friends and family to come meet the animal. Isn't it a cute little thing?  Look at it, stomping toward us.  Oh, hey, it's sick.  Maybe we should go to the vet.  What? Rabies?   Hope it's a fun reunion at the doc's office while you're getting the injections.

The second story is this one (video):

Bison Attack

What were these people thinking?  "Oh, they're like cows grazing in a field- how pastoral!"  Umm, no.  First of all, cows can be dangerous too.  You have a large creature get in a mood to run you down, and see how you do.  Yeah. Not fun.  Been there, done that.  I watched Matt get run over by a calf (and worried about our chances of having children afterward, but luckily the calf stepped on his thigh instead). There's a reason farm stores sell cattle prods. It's not a fun thing. Yeah, for the most part cows just go on chewing their cud when you're in the pasture, because they have been tamed. But there are times...

However, bison are wild.  If you piss one off your chances of getting away are slim.   Why were these people out of their vehicle?  They would have had a better chance to get away then.  Just roll down the window and take the footage.  The zoom function on cameras work wonders when you want a closer shot.  I just plainly don't understand.

Then I think about it more.  Are we as a nation so insulated from the "wild" that when we see it we have no idea what's safe?  I realize I'm lucky, as are my kids.  We live in the country.  We have access to animals.  We have a wildlife area right across the road.  We get any number of birds, mammals, etc. coming through our yard.  And as a child, I was taught to respect nature.  I was taught what God gave the animals for their protection and to respect it.  I was taught to be wise and weary.  Because of that, I will never be the one running for my life from a bison, or the one to take a skunk into my home. 

My girls too, are going to learn the same.  For us, it's part of being a parent.  But then there are the kids-and adults- who never see anything other than the occasional robin in their yards.  I believe that's sad.  And it's these people who will believe taking a wild animal into their homes is fine.  It's these people who won't use common sense. 

Now, I'm not too pleased by my tame animals right now either.  Our cats were out of food.  Therefore they tried to eat the plants.  The result is less than pleasing, and takes some carpet cleaner to fix.  Ugh.  So, I'm going to sit back, relax (now that I cleaned up the cat puke), watch the animals come in from across the road, and tell Kirstin and Emily all about them. 

Why? Why? Why?

"Tell me why the stars do shine

Tell me why the ivy twines

Tell me why the sky is blue

And I'll tell you just why I love you."

"Why?" has become the word used most often by Kirstin as of late.  And to tell the truth; she's driving me insane. "Why do we have hands and arms?"

"Why do we have stairs?"

"Why do we need electricity?"

"Why?"  

"Why?"

"Why?"

It's enough to drive anyone crazy!  And the general answers aren't enough for her either.  

"Why do we have hands and arms?"

"Because God made us that way honey."
"But WHY?"

"Because that's what he wanted to do."

"WHY?" This said with a little more insistence. She gets a look from me as I'm trying to finish changing a diaper, get supper started, or just take a breather.

"Go ask your father."

Yes, sometimes I pass it off onto other people.  Sometimes she's just too smart for some of the answers I give.  

"Why do we have stairs?"
"How else would we get upstairs?"

A roll of the eyes, a hand on the hip as she sticks it out and a very sarcastic response: "Well, there ARE elevators, you know."  

Silly me, I didn't think of that. Other times I just give her something to really think about when she asks "why" too many times. 

"Why do we need electricity?" asked as we were in the car on the way to Alexandria.  We passed some wind turbines. She knows that they give us electricity and that electricity runs pretty much everything in our house.  This is a question I've answered many times before.  Hence my long winded reply.

"Well, Kirstin, it's called the progress of man.  Man is always looking for new and/or safer ways of doing work.  Before man harnessed electricity and made it do the work for us, everything was much more difficult and took much more time for us to accomplish our tasks.  Electricity helps with many of the tasks we do in our daily lives."

"Oh."

Meanwhile, Matt is driving and snickering at my response.  I gave him a look, and asked the reason for his laughter.  His response: "You just answered in a way that I would have answered."

See, the difference is that he isn't home with her 24/7 and I am.  I take the brunt of the questions.  After a while I have to insert a snarky long winded reply just so I don't have to constantly hear Kirstin's voice during the day.  

There are times when I think I just can't take all the questions anymore.  Every time I even take two second to run to the bathroom, I get asked, "Why do you have to go to the bathroom, mom?" And to think I have another child that will go through all this in a few years.  Yikes!  I guess I can just take it day to day and try not to get too frustrated at having my every move analyzed by a three year old asking "Why?" 

And tomorrow I'm sure I will have to answer many new questions beginning with "why." 

Domesiticity gone masochistic

Today I did what Matt calls "going all domestic and stuff".  Essentially that means I either A) got out the sewing machine to do more than just general repair; B) tried an entirely new recipe just to see what would happen; C) baked a bunch of stuff; or D) cleaned the house from top to bottom, including reorganizing everything. 

Today's domesticity revolved around the sewing machine.  I wanted to make Emily a new swaddling blanket of a type she wouldn't kick off in the middle of the night.  I made the pattern on Wednesday, and bought the fabric yesterday.  Today I sat down and made the blanket.  It turned out pretty well for a random attempt at making something of which I've only seen pictures.  I made the pattern myself, and had it all in my mind as to how I wanted it to turn out.  And for once, it really did turn out the way I had envisioned. 

Basically, the blanket has two arms to it-- one short and one long. 
The baby is laid down in the middle section, and the short arm wraps around first to tuck him/her in. 

Then the long arm wraps around from the other side and goes completely around the baby. 

I've seen this type of blanket elsewhere selling for more money than I was willing to spend.  A lot of blankets like this also have a little "footie sac" in them to put the baby's feet and legs into.  I didn't make one for Emily's blanket, however, because I just plainly couldn't wrap my head around how to do that and still have it be a reversible blanket.  Of course, now I have an idea as to how that could work, but I'm still not sure of the practicality of it. 

So, after pinning the pattern on, I saw I would have plenty of fabric left over.  I decided to make a smaller version of the blanket for Kirstin to use with her baby doll.  No problem, I just did the math to get the ratios correct after taking a few measurements of her doll.  Her blanket turned out better than Emily's because now I was really getting into the sewing stuff.  I still had little bits of fabric left over.  I just couldn't let those go to waste, either in the garbage, or sitting in the attic waiting for future use.  I eyed up Kirstin's doll.  Hmm...I can make pajamas for this doll.  It shouldn't be very hard, especially as it doesn't move when I'm trying to get any measurements.

Boy, was I in for a surprise!  There is a fine line when something a person generally enjoys doing turns into a form of masochism. Masochism isn't quite the right word, as that connotes a level of enjoyment through the pain that just wasn't there at the end.  Whatever the correct word, I crossed that line tonight.

I was just going to do an easy shirt and pants for Kirstin's baby doll. I carefully measured everything I needed to measure on the doll.  I made the patterns, and cut them out.  I found portions of fabric onto which they fit, and cut the fabric.  I decided to do the shirt first.  I had just spent more than half an hour at calculations and drawing very carefully with the ruler to make sure this pattern would work.  Then I looked at the sleeves.  There was no way the doll's arms would fit through something that small!  Ugh. 

Well, that's okay.  I can just do up another pattern and make the sleeves bigger.   So, that's what I did, using the same careful measurements from before.  I also checked to make sure the head would fit through the hole just to be certain.  Everything was fine.  I was excited, because I could just imagine how excited Kirstin would be to get these doll clothes!  I pinned and hemmed and did the seams in this oh so simple shirt.  Then I held it up to the doll.  Wait a second!  What happened?  All my meticulous measurements!  All my math to make sure I had everything right for the seam allowances!  And I made something that MIGHT fit a Barbie doll. That doesn't include the time spent in fixing the bobbin, which decided to do a dance and get all tangled up, the countless times I had to thread the needle on the machine, --squinting and moving around to get it in just the right light--and the time spent cutting off all the end threads so the shirt didn't look like it sprouted hair.

After all that, and the shirt was certainly too small for her baby doll.  Now dejected, I just stopped working on it.  I didn't even attempt the pants.  I was done out by doll clothes today. 

Comfort Food Memories

After a hectic week, in which we celebrated our anniversary, my birthday, and a wedding, I was feeling a bit cranky.  I'm behind on sleep, Kirstin is still in the process of being "degrammatized", and Emily is going through a growth spurt as well, so only wants to be held and fed with an occasional diaper change.  So today, in one of the times in which I could put Emily down to sleep and not have her wake up and cry until she was held again, I made poached eggs on toast for Kirstin and me. 

Poached eggs are a comfort food from childhood.  Any time I was sick and had to stay home from school, that evening my dad would make me poached eggs.  I didn't have the knack of making them for a long time though.  The ones I made were edible, but not just like my dad's.  Then I learned the secret by watching my dad.  You have to swirl the water as you put the eggs in, then the whites stay with the yolks better.  Now I make them and they're like I remember.  I wonder if I didn't learn the secret because any time I was in the kitchen when he made them, he had me start the toast right as he was getting them in.  Nice little sneaky tactic, if that's so. 

Now I make them for Kirstin and me for lunch sometimes on days when I'm feeling especially cranky.  I get cheered up just in the making of them, because of the memories.  I would also sometimes get poached eggs on an occasional weekend morning, usually before going ice-fishing.  So of course, that brings back memories of wood smoke, decoys, older country music (not today's type, think Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash), the little "chink" sound the spear made as it was rested on the ice near the hole, and watching and waiting for a fish to come in the hole.

My dad taught me a lot about how to play the decoy, how to move the spear in quietly so the fish wouldn't be scared off, and how to manage a small wood stove.  He would listen to my inane chatter and play games with me.  Instead of I Spy, which wouldn't work in the dark house, we played 20 questions and Guess the Number.  If I got too bored, I would go out and play in the snow on the lake, only to ask to be readmitted to the warmth 10 minutes later.  I don't know if he saw fewer fish when I was around, but I was always a willing fishing companion for him.

So, if you feel out of sorts, make some of your own comfort foods.  It helps!