Stoned

Yesterday was spent in the ER having my first CAT scan. My husband made a silly joke about feeling like the jelly in a doughnut. I thought I was going to leave the hospital with frostbite, the ER was so cold.

It turns out I had a kidney stone.

I say had, because as of this morning, I no longer have a kidney stone. But for the last four days, it was all that I could think about. All I can say is "Ouch!". Don't get one of these if you can help it.

I've had my gallbladder removed, I've endured labor pains, and I've gone through a scary hemorrhaging miscarriage. This was less fun than all three.

But now things are fine and my bladder isn't making me do the twelve-trips-to-the-bathroom dance all night long.

Now if I could only get my daughter to be as considerate about my sleep.

Short Vowels and Miracles

This has been the week of "Zac the Rat". Next week it will be "Peg the Hen".

Yes, we are working our way through the short vowels.

It's funny, but I expected this to be the most boring part of our homeschooling years. I thought that the interminable repetition and struggle that comes with laying down the foundations of reading would frustrate me, but it just isn't the case.

Seeing my daughter's eyes when she realizes that all of those sounds that I have been forcing her to learn actually make words when she says them out loud together is priceless. Walking through the grocery store and noticing that she is actually reading the signs for "milk" and "eggs", carefully sounding out each letter, is such a thrill.

I love that I get to be here for those moments and that they are not wasted on some exhausted teacher with 38 other minds to mold who has seen it so many times before that it is no longer miraculous to her.

I love that the miracle is mine.

Autumn

The first Canadian geese were sounding their call over the house tonight on their way south. My heart heard them and instantly thought, "Ahhhh, Autumn!" My favorite season of the year is nearly upon us. I am so thankful that we live in a place where we actually have a change of seasons to enjoy, instead of where my husband would love to be (Utah anyone?). The changing leaves and crisper air just call to me.

Also, that other inevitable is upon us, the new school year. Peanut and I have officially started kindergarten this week. I'm being blown away by how much that little mind can retain when it's something she enjoys (Reading, Yay!) and how stubborn she can be when it's something she feels challenged by (Handwriting). I don't know if it is because I fill double duty as Teacher and Mother or if it's just that my child is stubborn as mule, but when it is time for something that she considers work, the excuses and the guilt trip come trotting out.

"My tooth hurts."
"I'm thirsty."
"My pencil is too small."
"My pencil is too big"
"I already know that, Mama."

And the child hates to practice. Unlike a lot of children, repetition is not her strong suit.

Except when it comes to her favorite books. Now, those I have to read over and over and over.

So I feel safe in saying that I think I have a reader on my hands. Which comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me. In fact, it was probably inevitable. But my heart is joyful at the thought!

Hello! I'm Back!

Well, I'm back!

If there is still anyone around to care, lol.

It was the strangest thing. I was sitting around tonight, wading through my oceans of email and I had a sudden longing for my blog. "I wonder if you have anything to say?" piped a little voice in my head. "It's been so long. Should you bother?"

I decided that I should. I've missed my blog many times over the last year-plus, but everything else in my life has been so double-helix-crazy that I guess I just couldn't make sense enough of my thoughts to share them out there in the big, wide, webiverse. Things that were very scary, dark, and bad just couldn't find a voice here. But now it is time to emerge from the cave and allow the sun to warm my pasty frame.


Let's see...

We are now settled in the new house. I could sing to you "The Ballad of the Septic System That the EPA Just Couldn't Love" and regale you with "The Tale of 15 Months With the In-Laws". I could move your heart with "Termite Damage Tales From Beyond" and bring you to tears with the rollicking ditty, "Your Boxspring's Just Too Big, and It Ain't Gonna Go Up Those Stairs", but I won't. We wouldn't want to add too much entertainment value to the blog too fast.

But we are here and we are getting comfortable. The new house is perfect. Not in looks (goodness no) or in an impressive way, but it is the most homey place I've ever lived, including my childhood homes (which weren't very homey, by the by). It's as if all the horrible, rotten delays and set backs that we had to endure were bringing us to this house at this time. It's truly our 'home', the home that Brian and I have been waiting for our whole married lives.

I can't wait for the discoveries to be made in this new house. I can't wait to see our lovely wood turn blazing soon. I look forward to winter's coziness. Next spring's garden will be so much fun with all of our new-found room. And raising my Peanut here, watching her grow and learn, will be the sweetest gift of all!


So. I'm back. And I think I'll be around for awhile.

I've Always Known I Was Born in the Wrong Era

88 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Vintage Lust

I so heart this velvet cloche. I've been staring at it for days now, trying to talk myself into buying it. It looks so Lizzie Bennet to me :)

Read It!

Wonderful Pink Fun For a Good Cause And Sorely Needed Backup

Scoot on over to 5 Minutes for Mom and enter for your chance to win a cute new Dyson or a snazzy new Western Digital Passport External Hard Drive.

What I've Been Up To-Continued

Brian came home the second week of June, very weak and still very sick but improving daily. We were getting very frustrated with the deal on our house, but I was ecstatic that Brian seemed to be feeling better. The bigger struggle was for him. He had lost 50 pounds in one month, most of it muscle. He was barely strong enough to walk down the hall. Being unable to do even the simplest things made my usually active, go-getting husband grouchy and depressed.

Then during the last week of June, Brian began running fevers in the 103 range. The fluids in his still healing abdomen had become infected. It was back to the hospital. Our local hospital was unable to work out what was wrong, so they transferred him to the big city hospital 30 minutes away. Brian spent 10 more days in the hospital, less than happy with the situation.

When my husband came home, he had two drains and an IV line. We had to administer high doses of antibiotics intravenously every morning. He was also continuing to lose weight at the rate of about a pound a day, despite drinking nutritional supplements between every meal. And guess what was happening with our house during this time.

Nothing.

Still Nothing.

Every week there was a new excuse as to why things weren't closing. The new buyers couldn't find insurance, their broker was sick, a water line broke in the lender's office and they had to close for a week, the list was unending. And so was our frustration.

But at home (well, actually my in-laws' home) Brian was getting better. Slowly he was able to do more and more. He was still on a barrage of antibiotics and other medicines, and now has to take daily shots of insulin(his pancreas was irreparably damaged by the pancreatitus, so it no longer functions correctly), but he was getting stronger and better every day. And that leads to the here and now.

Brian is so much better. He has put back on 20 pounds of the 65 total that he lost. He's happily back to work and we are swinging into our normal routine. Well, as close as we can come while living in the back bedroom of my PIL's house. Because yes, you guessed it...

OUR HOUSE STILL HASN'T CLOSED!

We have been scheduled to sign paperwork 4 times now. Each time, we get within hours of the meeting and something goes awry on the buyers end. Mystery paperwork that has a 48 hour waiting period, emergency trip to the hospital, grandmother passes away, broker goes into the hospital, the lending bank's sister bank goes out of business. Unbelievable.

With all of our personal turmoil this summer, we have never once played the "sick card". The buyers seem to think there is nothing weird in taking 5 months to close a deal on a house that costs less than $100,000. They seem content to let this thing drag on to infinity. While I'm here pulling my hair out, waiting to buy a new house!


ARRRRGGGGGGGGG!

What I've Been Up To

I've been putting off this post for a long time and I'm not sure why.

We've had a very bad summer. It started out so promising. It looked like things were finally moving our way and that we were about to have quite a few dreams come true, and then...

Back on May 4th, we finally found a buyer for our house. Brian and I were euphoric. After years of unsuccessful on-again-off-again marketing of our house, it was going to be sold. The new owners wanted a quick closing, so we agreed to have everything wrapped up by June 12th.

Over the next seven days we happily began packing, rented storage space, and put in a bid on a new house with which we were very pleased and that also had the additional bonus of being about $70,000 less than the other houses we had been considering. We were finally going to have enough room and enough quiet.

In the early hours of May 12, my husband woke me up to say that he needed to go to the emergency room and that his parents were on their way to take care of our daughter. He had been vomiting for about an hour, and I hadn't heard anything.
So I rushed into clothes, stumbling around in the dark, worried and imagining the worst.

Our local hospital is only ten minutes away, but we still had to pull over several times so that Brian could be sick. The more we drove, the more afraid I became. I helped Brian inside and they lay him down on a gurney. By this time he was writhing in pain so the nurses took his info and started administering morphine.

The doctor who initially saw him was convinced it was just an acute appendicitis, and as they whisked Brian off for an ultrasound, he assured me that there was no reason to worry. So I sat there alone, ratty t-shirt, last night's skirt, no bra, grungy ER surroundings, trying to take comfort in the doctor's words but unable to get the sight of my husband's pale pain-filled face out of my mind.

After spending three hours in the ER, watching my husband's breathing get more and more shallow, they finally came back with a diagnosis of Pancreatitus. He was moved upstairs and yet again I was assured that everything would be fine. The vigil continued, the whole time listening to my husband's shallow breaths and moans.

After a few more hours, my husband seemed to quiet. It was nearly noon at this point and the nurses urged me to go home to rest and refresh. They assured me that the amount of pain meds they had given Brian would have him asleep for quite some time. So, thinking of my poor parents-in-law waiting at home with my daughter, I went home feeling a little relieved that Brian seemed to be doing better.

About 6 PM My MIL called to say that my FIL was coming to get Peanut and I was to come to the hospital immediately. At some point during the afternoon, they had moved my husband to intensive care and, because my PIL were there, the hospital hadn't notified me. I knew something was extremely wrong.

Pancreatitus is a disease that affects the pancreas (hence the name). Simply put, the pancreas has two functions, controlling insulin production and producing digestive enzymes. Though, unlike the liver, when these enzymes are produced they have nowhere to be stored. They must go immediately into the digestive system or they will damage the pancreas. With pancreatitus, the small ducts that transfer the enzymes become clogged and the digestive secretions, with nowhere to go start to digest the pancreas itself and the other surrounding organs. The disease is usually linked with a history of alcohol abuse but can also, in some rare cases, be cause by other factors. My husband was one of those rare cases. His high cholesterol was the cause and also why the attack was so sudden with no warning.

When I arrived at the hospital, my MIL led me into a small, darkened alcove that was my husband's room in the ICU. I did not recognise him. The man that I had left sleeping quietly only a few hours before was now attached to a myriad of machines and fighting through the pain for every breath. The nurses told me that some of his organs were shutting down due to shock because of the pain, which he was still feeling through the massive amounts of morphine they were giving him.

My strong, 32 year-old husband, who just the day before had been happily hefting boxes on to the moving truck and joking with his daughter, was dying. You could look at him and see him slipping away. I was horrified. How did this happen?

Why did this happen?

I stayed at the ICU waiting room until the wee hours of morning, unable to watch my husband fighting for every painful breath, but also unable to bear being more than a few steps away. "What if he died and I wasn't there? What would I tell my sweet little daughter if her Daddy died? How could our lives go on?" So there I sat, knitting blindly to the end of the skein of yarn in my purse, ripping it out, and starting all over, desperate to keep my hands and mind busy.

Brian made it through the night, but did not improve. In fact his condition stayed the same for nearly a week. He spent two weeks in Intensive Care before he was moved upstairs to the hospital proper. He then spent another two weeks on the noisy main floor with not only the usual hustle and bustle of a teaching hospital, but also the nuisance of renovation.(he was moved three times in two weeks, to accommodate the construction) All this time unable to eat anything.

Meanwhile, back at home, I was trying to keep things together. My PIL were such a help with the Peanut, but between caring for her and daily trips to the hospital and enough worry to give me a constant stomach ache, I couldn't really focus on packing and moving. Then I got a call...

The buyers wanted to take possession of the house early. They were renting an apartment and didn't want to have to pay for another month, so could we please be ready to close two weeks earlier than expected? Our realtor advised us to not mention Brian's illness, fearing they would use the info to leverage for a lower price, thinking we were desperate to sell.(which we were, lol) But speeding things up would give me NINE DAYS to move out of my house with a husband in the hospital and a three year old to care for. Unable to discuss things over with anyone, but knowing that Brian unequivocally wanted rid of this house, I agreed.

Let me just say that we are blessed with wonderful friends and helpful family, without whom, I would have ended up lying in a bed next to my husband, a babbling crazy-person. My MIL kept watch on Peanut while my FIL came daily to help pack up everything in my husband's garage and wood workshop. The guys that my husband works with and some of our friends from high school gave up their holiday weekend to clear out the house and put everything in storage (which they managed in an amazingly short few hours. THANK YOU GUYS!) We were all cleaned up and moved into my PIL's house with a day to spare. And then...

No word from the buyers or their broker. The title company had called to confirm some deed info and have a few documents faxed (the last thing I did before packing up the computer). We had a copy of the closing statement mailed to us that the buyer's bank had requested. We had all of our ducks in a row, in spite of some serious goings-on in our lives.

Nothing.

For three weeks.

These people who were so anxious to take possession of their new home that they forced me to pack up in nine days, this broker who ensured us that there would be no problem wrapping up the legal aspects of the deal before the first of June, would not return our agent's calls. June first came and went and we still heard nothing from their camp. The housing market in our state was going down the tubes and it looked like we were it's next victims.

(To Be Continued On Monday)