Capacious

By The Way, Mama...

Last week Tyson told me at bedtime that he needed pictures of himself from every year of his life for his "memoir" at school which was already way overdue.

Yesterday, Toby woke up and said, "Oh, I forgot.  I have to be at school a half hour early so we can do our show for the school."

When Toe got home yesterday afternoon, he gave me a costume list for the show to be held that very evening.  He was one of the three little pigs and needed "brown pants and a pink shirt or all white with a pig nose and ears."  I was all, like, "They just gave you this TODAY?  Are you sure?  Was it in your desk for a couple of weeks?  Really?  They just gave it to you TODAY?"  Apparently, there was some mix-up and they really did just give it to him yesterday.  Whatever.  I am amazing and I can deal with it.

He really is the most talented little pig, I think.  Not to disparage the other little pigs.  There was word that one of the other pigs had rebelled and was not going to take part in the play but there did end up being three in the end. 

I have to go to work.

Looking Again

I got laid off today.  My boss told me that the company is no longer going to do the business that is my job, and that they really want me to stay but can only offer me a couple of days a week.  I knew it was coming, and at first I was okay with it.  I actually felt kind of buoyant, like I was free to discover a new way to go.  But now it has sunk in and I am low.  Here we go again.

How many times have I been in this position, trying to figure out how to make money and still be available for my children when they're done with school or on vacation or sick?  I don't want to put them in day camp for the summer, besides which by the time we pay for it, my salary will be more than disappeared.  I know, other people do it all the time.  But I haven't done it, haven't found a way to do it.  Am I just dense?  I'm not sure if I'm just thick or this is really as difficult as I think it is.  Sometimes I think I should just bite the bullet and put my kids in day care but I've never done it and they're so OLD now.  It will be at LEAST 3 years (by law) before I can even think about leaving them on their own for any length of time.

I thought about going back to school for something useful that never gets tired or useless, like computers.  I could do anything but it's proving it to others that is difficult.  But going back to school means money that we don't have and loss of time that I could spend making money, even if it might be less.

My job was so flexible.  I will mourn it and then move on.

Funny, the difference a day makes.  Last night, I was a school Volunteer of the Year at a special dinner, feeling happy and pretty and positive about giving more of my time in the future, and tonight I feel useless and ugly despite knowing that's completely ridiculous.  Give me a stripling so I can beat myself!  Tonight was the first time in ages that I whined through a workout.  Shut up, and get on with it.  Focus on the positive.  Stop eating like that.  Put the ice cream down and back away from the freezer.  (I didn't.)  Hm, who on this blog is an emotional eater?   What?  I'm not raising my hand.  You will just have to guess.

Stephen doesn't seem to care much.  We've been here so many times.  I was amazed when he failed to mention it to his sister on the phone this evening.  Uh, big news in our household?  He said he wasn't sure I would want him to tell her.  Earlier, he said, "Soon I'll be in this position and you'll be telling me that everything will be okay."  Yeah, but honey?  That's not really helping me right now.  In fact, you're freaking me out a little bit.  His company just keeps laying people off.  He will hopefully get a package after his 22 (23?) years but at this point, Wall Street is tanking and there are just no guarantees and we are in such debt and once again, I am really frightened about how we will make it.   It's not the first time and it could always be worse and we have each other.  We will make it, we always do.  But yeah, I'm a little panicky tonight.

The children definitely sense when I'm feeling tense and gather round, twining themselves around me.

Good news!  Ty doesn't have to take the medicine anymore.  We went to the lab this morning before school to get bloodwork and to the doctor after school and he said that the boy is DONE for now.  We joyfully threw the prescription bottle into the garbage - three times for extra special throwed-awayness.  GoodBYE to you, wretched antibiotics.  May you never darken our door again.

There are all those medical bills trickling in, so much extra, but thank God we have insurance, thank you.  How do parents with chronically ill children do it?  How do parents with terminally ill children do it?  How do people without insurance do it?  Let's hope I never have to know.  It's so much extra time and worry and expense on top of regular life, I can only too easily imagine the horror of it all.  I'm exhausted just from this relatively tiny experience of Ty's appendix and Toby's constant minor illness.  What if my job hadn't been there?  What if I was fired after the first week of being out?  What if we had no insurance?

My friend since 2nd grade who now lives in VA made homemade bagels.  I was impressed and excited and entertained that notion for a few days and then one of Stephen's cooking shows made me do this insane thing:

Weight loss be damned!  Why make bagels when I can make the most fattening and fabulous thing on the planet?!  Fabu-lash!  As in, whip me with that stripling now!  Everyone liked the cinnamon ones better, go figure.  I am like Emeril in my presentation, and that means bad.  But that don't matta because these things taste so fine.

Ween, send me bagels.  Sorry, but there are no doughnuts for you.  It's my selfish children, I just didn't raise them right.

One last thing.  We won these coasters in a grab bag on year at Christmas.  They have held photos of leaves and flowers and all of us.  But now that it's spring, they are holding lovely real flowers:

It's the pretty things that make life worth living.

Progress

I wrote a long post last week and it was lost when the program unexpectedly shut down and I was so peeved.  I wrote some of this makeup post last week and Typepad will not let me edit today.  I'm not sure why but I've wasted enough time trying at this point.  Toby is home sick again today.  I couldn't bring myself to call work again so I sent an e-mail because I am a coward.

Tyson is doing very well, he got his drain out and the catheter out of his arm and he made it through a whole school day for the first time last week.  The taking-of-the-medicine problem still exists but he will be done on Wednesday if the blood tests go well.  He learned to swallow pills but before then I (stupidly, can I just punch myself now?) threw out the $60.00 pills because they were too bitter when ground into pudding and ordered the also expensive liquid.  So now at least one antibiotic can get swallowed as a pill and the other is swallowed as a liquid with a grape flavor which is HORRID.  Two more days, four more doses.  Bleah.  He likes to put the taking of the medicine as long as possible.  It's fun.  He's been a real trouper but it will be great when it's done.  How many times have I wished I could just swallow the poison for him? 

We talked about the hospital experience tonight (and we haven't really revisited it much).  It seems like another world, so far away and alien.  He said, "I can't believe I was in bed for all that time too sick to feel bored!"  He is himself again, so different from that unhappy, angry, in-pain child.  He is completely in love with our cats and has started feeding them on his own so they will love him best.  We watched him today in the yard, the cat following him like a dog, helping his brother down from a tree.  He is loveable to the nth degree, there is just no denying it, he is smart and good and kind. He and his brother are everything I could want them to be.  They make me laugh and surprise me with the things they know.  We are so lucky, Stephen and I, to have these darling boys.  I'm gushing.  Sorry.  I will go back to worrying about CT scans and cancer in children now.

Stephen was really sick at the beginning of the week.  I came home on Monday and couldn't rouse him from sleep.  He is normally a light sleeper but he had been up the night before on the toilet with the endless stomach virus.  Hours later I had been through all the death scenarios when he awoke and said he felt better.  He was still shaky for another day and even now doesn't seem quite himself.

My whole theory is that when we're sick, we keep visiting places (hospitals, doctor's offices, labs) where other people are sick and we keep getting new things.  Although we're probably picking it all up at the grocery store.  Whatever it is, it's a bore, and stressful.

Toby was home most of the week with a stuffy nose and sore throat but I dragged him out anyway because I am a true believer in fresh air:

I would love it if this stream had water in it in the summer and we could go out there in our bathing suits and sit in it.  We could bring beverages and peel grapes for each other.  Come over!  In reality we'll be sitting in the dirt, sweating and brushing away the mosquitoes and deer ticks.  Sounds like a good time, right?  You know you love Lyme disease, just admit it.

Getting groceries from the car, Toby says the bag I handed him is too heavy.  I hand him another, "Don't drop it, it's the..." He drops it, by accident. "...eggs."  They were all broken, every single one.  We laughed.

I'm reading Vogue on my stomach the couch and Toby is lying on top of me, looking over my shoulder.

Toe: "Mama, why do you read that magazine?"

Me: "It's pretty."

Toe: "It's boring."

Tyson: "Pretty boring."

Ba dum bump.

Stephen and I were discussing corned beef and how the Irish didn't actually eat it but used their cows for milk and butter.  Except I said "eggs" instead.  You know, those cow eggs, they're HUGE, who needs beef?

 

He got the staples out last Thursday, and the drain was shortened.  The surgeon said he could go to school on Monday, so he did.  He made it through half a day but was very tired. 

Yesterday I had to wake him up which is pretty much unheard of unless he's sick.  He started crying at breakfast because I gave him yogurt (he needs the acidopholous to counteract the antibiotics) instead of the bagel he did not tell me he wanted.  He was not himself.  He didn't have a fever and insisted he wanted to go to school so I walked him in.  The nurse and his teacher both said he did not look right and I should take him home.  He didn't seem too bad the rest of the day.

Today he has three different appointments, 10:40 a.m, Noon and 4:00 p.m., despite my trying to get them streamlined.  Doctors and their schedules, I tell you. 

I can't wait until I never have to make him take another pill in pudding or go to the Infusion Center daily or change that dressing or wash his hair over the sink ever again.  I originally scheduled the IV treatments at 4:00 p.m. so Ty could go to school, but now that hasn't happened and Toby HATES going to the hospital every day.  He had McDonalds on Monday and doughnuts yesterday, bribes to get him to stop whining and also he is so so thin, he must be growing again my little stick boy.  A friend kindly agreed to take him after school today. 

I feel terrible for missing so much work but I have been doing my best to keep up from home.  My bosses are exemplary.  Times are tough and it must have been torture to have to spend money on someone who wasn't even working.

I have not read a single blog in ages.  Time just flies.

Stephen and I started the P90X workouts, 13 DVDs and 90 days of extreme exercise.  We had begun to do it before Tyson's appendix "exploded" (this is what a lot of the letters said that he received from kids at school, also that he had the "appendix disease," so cute) but that didn't happen.  Last night, poor Stephen got stuck on the train when a building collapsed on the tracks so he wasn't able to do Plyometrics.  I assured him that the Plyos will still be there tonight.  Will they ever.  One thing to which I have been introduced is the 98-minute Yoga workout which I absolutely LOVED.  Miss Liv, I want your job, not that I could ever do it. 

My weight loss is currently stuck at 30 pounds down.  I lost 3 pounds while Ty was in the hospital (yes, there is a situation during which I do not want to eat but thanks, I would rather not ever do that again).  Then he came home and the treats started arriving.  The boys take a couple of bites and forget.  The memory of the chocolate in the kitchen burns my mind with a searing intensity.  I am unable to forget.  I finally had to move it so I couldn't see it...the 3 pounds were back last week so I am hoping I have worked some of that off.  Honestly, it doesn't seem as important these days.