Tag: Parenting

  • The Deed is Done

    Friday was the day. Our only child moved into her dorm room. The mixture and intensity of emotions is overwhelming. There is mental conflict and turmoil.

    We spent 18.5 years working toward this goal. We did not have her in order to own her. We raised her with the goal of sending her out into the world to live her own life successfully, and this is a very important phase of that eventual goal. It is a Good(tm) thing, so why does it feel so craptacular?

    The voices inside my head are fighting. There is one that keeps wailing, “This is the worst thing EVER!” while the other voices stare with disdain and correct the wailing voice harshly.

    It isn’t a bad thing. Not at all. But it is a big, big change, and I am not very comfortable with it yet.

    It took 18.5 years, but it also only took a minute, and my entire life.

    Now we are at home, and she is in another city, 300 miles away, and life feels unsteady for all of us. It is a new frontier.

    Willow is not amused.

  • I’m Living

    Today in the car my daughter and I were discussing an assignment she needs to do, a series of photos based around poem or book, with a theme of “family”.

    I told her, “Oh, you could do that famous children’s book.”

    “I don’t know which book you mean,” she replied.

    I couldn’t respond because I had burst into tears.

    Okay… so THAT was stable.

    I pulled myself together and attempted to continue the conversation and immediately burst into tears again.

    WTF?  Back off emotional breakdown, I don’t have time for this.

    The book I was referring to is Love You Forever, by Robert Munsh.  Clearly the recent events with my father are shoving my parents’ mortality down my throat until I am choking on it.

    Things continue to be emotionally and mentally difficult in my life for a variety of reasons, and the health of my father is just one of those.  The recent heat wave has also been brutal on me, of course.  On the good news front, my frequency and severity of migraines is getting better under control.  Working hard on remembering and appreciating the bits that are going well.

    Deep breaths.

    But all day and into the night, a verse keeps echoing in my mind.

    “I’ll love you forever,
    I’ll like you for always,
    as long as I’m living
    my daddy you’ll be.”

  • Friday, December 4th, 2009

    Almost every night of my life I go to bed with a plan as to what I will be doing the next day. Almost every single day, something goes awry.

    Thursday, December 3rd, I went to bed, and my Friday looked like this:

    • get up
    • have breakfast
    • go to hand therapy
    • get out of hand therapy and go to the vet to pick up medicine
    • get gas
    • go home to have lunch
    • go to see Little Women (The Musical)
    • go home to drop the kid off
    • run to Costco
    • take kid to the show she is assistant stage managing for
    • go home and get more work done
    • pick kid up from the show
    • eat dinner
    • go home

     

    On Friday I got up and I had breakfast and went to hand therapy. Hey, so far, so good.

    I sat and waited and waited. Hand therapy has never started late before, but I used the time to contact the person who had my play tickets. I had forgotten to get them from her when I saw her on Saturday, so the new plan had been she would hand them off to somebody else who was going to the play. I wanted to find out who had the tickets.

    She still had the tickets.

    Hand therapy finally started, late, and of course, ended late. Instead of heading to the vet, I needed to go pick up the tickets. At breakfast the kid had suggested we could go out for lunch, but on the way back from getting the tickets (ticket holder and I don’t live near each other) I called and told the kid to just eat. We were going to be very tight getting to the play.

    Got home and looked up the address from the place the play was held, because the tickets just said the name of the theater, assuming I’d know. I got the address and went out to the car. The nav system was unfamiliar with the address. It knew the street, but the construction was too new to have the address listed. That got me close. We sorted out the rest and pulled into the parking lot 5 minutes before the show was scheduled to start.

    Little Women happened. It ran A LOT longer than I was expecting. We rushed home so she could get ready to leave for the show. I wanted her to go with me to gas, Costco, and the vet because I didn’t think I’d have time to come back for her and still get her downtown for her show.

    I went upstairs to use the computer for a few minutes while she gathered her snack and stuff for the show. I was sitting at my computer when I heard crashing and thudding. I yelled out to her… got up and started moving, and yelled out again.

    In response, I hear, “It hurts.”

    Fuck. So, I’m moving faster, but not sure where she is. It sounded like something tumbling down the stairs. She wasn’t at the bottom of the first set of stairs. “Where are you?” I yell, as I am about to open the basement door to look, but she made a groaning noise from the kitchen so I went in there, to find her sprawled on the floor, kind of sitting, with her legs akimbo and tangled in the barstools. “What did you do?”

    “I fell, and my hand is stuck.”

    “What?”

    “I tried to stop myself from falling, and I can’t get my hand out.”

    I got closer to her and moved the barstools out of the way. Her legs were REALLY tangled up in them. Then I took a look to see what she was talking about. Her right arm was up and twisted around and her hand was palm flat against the fridge with the hand through the refrigerator handle. Her fingers were through the freezer handle (side by side).

    “You have to get up, you can’t move your arm from that position. You’ll have to lift with your body.”

    “I can’t. I’m stuck. It hurts.”

    “What hurts? Your elbow?” (things are twisted around really awkwardly)

    “No. My hand.”

    I try to lift her off the floor by her armpits to give her a better angle on moving her hand. She shrieks at me. I let go. I move a barstool and tell her to use it to lift herself up. She tries but collapses in pain.

    I look at her hand again. It seems… fine really, just in the door handle. It went in there. Take it out.

    I tell her I’ll try to move it. I touch it. She shrieks. I try to slide it. She shrieks. I poke at her shoulder and elbow again and ask where it hurts, and again she tells me her hand. I get some ice out of the in door dispenser and put it in a baggy to put on her arm.

    “Look, you’ve got to get your hand out before it swells up and really gets stuck.”

    “Believe me. I’d LOVE to,” she snarls.

    I begin looking at the door handle to figure out how to remove it.

    Now I may as well take a minute to point out something you might already know. I’m not soft and cuddly. It isn’t that I am bad in a crisis. I’m just not very comforting. This makes me bad for some people. I like information. Then I want more information. Then I want a plan of action. Then I want action. I’d like all this extremely rapidly. I’m not warm and nurturing, and I don’t do “everything will be just fine” unless I have some kind of proof that things are going to be fine.

    My kid tends to get a little anxiety filled in a crisis, and with the anxiety comes a lack of clear communication. I want a description of the pain so I can try to figure out what is happening. She just keeps letting me know there is pain. We’ve been having this same thing happen since she was little.

    It isn’t that I am completely lacking in maternal instincts, but… it is kind of overrun by my instinct to, “leave the squawking one before the noise and weakness and fear draws predators to the rest of the pack”.

    So, because I cannot get a good assessment of pain out of her, I try threatening her. “Do I need to call 911?” One of the things I passed onto my daughter through a lovely combination of nature and nurture is a complete dislike for strange people invading our home, and any medical person ever touching us, ever, but especially when they are unknown, and we are in pain and feeling vulnerable.

    “Well I can’t stay like this!” she snaps.

    Oh. Interesting. She is open to the concept of needing to call 911. That has NEVER been her response.

    I decide it is time to call her father. He’s nicer in situations like these and has more of a calming effect. I do this while digging out the refrigerator manual in hopes of finding some instructions on how to remove the door handle, but my initial examination of the handle has not left me feeling hopeful.

    Him: Hello?
    Me: I think you need to come home. I’ve got a bit of a problem here, and I actually think I’m going to have to call 911.
    Him: What?
    Me: It’s fine, but Z fell and is in pain and she’s kind of stuck… you should just come home.
    Him: Okay. But, what’s going on?
    Me: I don’t know! She fell and she got her hand (I start laughing) stuck in the refrigerator door (I say, laughing all the way HOHOHO).
    Kid/Regan MacNeil (and yes, I think her head might have spun around) screams: Yeah it sounds fucking funny, but it fucking hurts!
    Him (who cannot actually hear WHAT she is screaming): Stop saying 911, you are freaking her out.
    Me: Just come home.

    I look through the manual, but it has no instructions for the door handle. I continue to encourage her to keep trying to get out. This continues to annoy the shit out of her. I tell her I that I didn’t bring any of my saws from California, so I think I’ll need to call 911 so they can saw it off. “But, I still need my hand,” she informs me. I try to reassure my suffering from shock child that the saw would be for the handle, and not her arm, and I laugh at her a bit more. She tells me she needs to call her stage manager, because she won’t be able to do the sound board like this.

    I again try to ascertain what type of pain she is feeling, is it deep bone pain, or surface pain. She tells me she can’t feel her hand at all anymore.

    Well, fuck.

    I explain to her that I think it is time to call 911, and she doesn’t argue in the slightest. I pick up my phone to call, but there is an incoming call.

    Me: Hello? Where are you?
    Him: I’m on my way. WHERE is she again?
    Me: In the kitchen.
    Him: I don’t understand. What’s going on?
    Me: Look, you are just going to have to see it. I need to call 911 now. Are you almost here?
    Him: Are you sure?
    Me: I’ll see you in a few minutes.

    I call 911, and start my call with “This is going to sound really strange, but…” and proceed to explain that my daughter is stuck in the refrigerator door handle. Blah blah blah. Help. She tells me she is sending the police and paramedics and that they will get her out.

    I look through the manual again. Troubleshooting does not cover this issue. At all. Fuckers.

    Her father arrives home, gives me a WTF look, and I wave him toward the kitchen. I hear him trying to convince her to, you know, just take her hand out. More anger and pain and frustration (and possibly pea soup) spurt out of her. He laughs at her less than I do, because he is much nicer.

    I go out to look for the cavalry. The first to arrive is a police officer. He tells me to give him a couple of screwdrivers, and he’ll get her out. He asks how she is doing. I tell him she is freaking out. He tells me to take care of her, and he’ll take care of the handle. I don’t bother to explain to him that it would actually be more efficient to switch roles. I give him the requested screwdrivers and go out to meet the pulling up EMTs.

    The police officer is totally unable to get her out.

    The EMTs (3 of them) come in and check her shoulder and elbow and then poke at her fingers a bit. They slather lubricant all over the bits of her hand they can reach, the door, and the handle. Then one guy tries to brace the door and pull on the handle, to flex it and give her a bit more space. He slips and just opens the door a bit instead. More screaming. Later she told me it took everything she had not to kick him. He got the door shut again, pushed his fist against it with more force, and pulled on the handle again. Another guy grabbed her arm and hand and forced it up, and she was free. There was a valley in the back of her hand, near her thumb. At the deepest part it was about 1/2 inch in.

    They tested everything and determined that it wasn’t broken, and we all chatted as the officer worked on the police report. They’d never seen anything quite like it before. They admitted to being very curious when the call description came up on their screen (maybe that’s why they sent 4 guys?). One lamented not getting a photo of it with his cell phone before they got her unstuck. Uh huh. Internet, anyone?

    Anyhow, soon the emergency services crew were gone, and the family tried to salvage what we could out of our day.

    By Monday we did end up needing to take her in to have her hand checked because she was complaining so much of cold intolerance, and her hand was often physically colder than the other one. The doctor ordered x-rays which verified the previous determination that nothing was broken. She said the cold intolerance was due to crushed nerves and capillaries. Supposedly she should be in good shape in about two months.

    So, yeah, neither one of us have proper use of our right hands.

    Give me a fucking break.

    I had to invite strangers into my house.

    To rescue my teenager from the fridge.

    Seriously.

    This is my life.

     

    ETA: I did get the handle off later. It would not have helped. Actually, it just would have injured her more.

  • Ways to annoy your teen #143953

    Teen: Can you get out the milk?
    Me: *gets milk out of the fridge and holds it up for teen to see* Yes. *puts milk back in fridge*
    Teen: *makes disgusted noise*

  • Underthings… tumbling

    Not only is today my daughter’s 14th birthday, it is also laundry day.

    Not the scheduled sort of laundry day, but that “Oh fuck, if I don’t do some laundry NOW, clothing won’t even be an option anymore” kind of laundry day.

    This is why I look like some sort of… goth wench pirate with argyle tights.

    Luckily she has a high threshold of tolerance before the “my mother is too embarrassing to be seen out in public with her” cutoff kicks in, and apparently this outfit doesn’t do it.

    It probably would if I wore it on one of the homeschool meeting days.

    Hmmm… Now there’s a thought.

  • I Have Teen Angst

    As in, the angst I feel because I am the parent to a teenager.

    I do not enjoy this angst.

  • it takes a village

    Today we left the house.

    *shudder*

    We were driving along and passed a street called Friendship Village Rd.

    kid: Do you want to go to Friendship Village?
    me: No.
    kid: But it sounds nice and friendly.
    me: I want to visit Mind Your Own Fucking Business Village.
    kid: THAT really wouldn’t be a “village” then.
    me: Mind your own business.
    kid: *silence*

  • My Maternal Instincts

    I do not feel great.

    Sinus Pressure

    Achy

    Icky

    *sigh*

    Kid also does not feel great.

    Kid shuffles over to me, looking sleepy and puffy and blah.

    kid: Am I hot?
    me: I’m not sure. There’s a website. We could post a photo and let people vote.
    kid: *gives me a look* No.
    me: *feels kid’s forehead* No. You seem normal.
    kid: I feel hot.
    me: You sure about the photo?
    kid: Please, no.
    me: hrmph

    Even when I am feeling icky, it is the little things that keep me going.

  • More Whining

    I sort of more or less chilled this weekend and tried to relax, but today came and the overwhelming stress of all I need to get done hit and I could not stop kicking myself for not staying on task. I was so busy kicking myself, I couldn’t really manage to get back on task. It was a shit day.

    I did make a small batch of chicken stock, which is now cooling. I much prefer homemade stock to store bought, because I control what goes in it, and it is more cost effective too. Chicken stock is a staple item in my kitchen. I think that is pretty much the extent of my accomplishments today, and it was a small batch.

    I did a little bit of grocery shopping today, but that was also an exercise in stress. Basically anything that I cannot find, that was a regular thing for me to purchase “back home” sends me into a fit of feeling sorry for myself, as if I need any extra help with that. I am really just pathetic and annoying at this point, even to myself, and I know I am a pain in the ass for other people to deal with.

    It is no help that I am leaving in a few days on one trip, and then getting back and leaving almost right away on another trip (but having to cram in a work party in between). This will be basically another whole month without my husband and I am just already so done with being apart.

    I also just utterly do not have the energy or patience to be the mother to a teenager. Yet, there she is, every day. It isn’t just the act of parenting that takes so much energy, it is being near the orbit of all that teenage baggage. It just sucks the life out of me.

    Tomorrow I get to go be around dozens of teenagers. Also I get to go to a church. That is where an area homeschool teen group has their monthly meetings. If I never post again, assume I burst into flames, from one or the other. Or perhaps it will be having to meet the homeschooling parents that will do me in.

    We are also supposed to bring some sort of potluck dish for lunch (which I failed to remember about while grocery shopping), a tray of cookies to share, which I think I am just going to refuse (Holy shit, a TRAY of cookies from every family? I don’t even want to be around that many teens when they haven’t consumed 4 pounds of sugar each), plus a can or two for the church food pantry (which I also failed to remember while grocery shopping). Tomorrow morning I will go to the grocery store and sort something out for that meeting, and no doubt have another pity party over not finding what I want and am familiar with.

    Is there a magic potluck dish that will make them like my daughter and make her feel welcome and happy here? Is there one which will make them hate her and make her so miserable that I never have to go to one of these damn meetings again? Can I just bring a bunch of eggplant and okra? I suppose what I really need to do is the same thing I do at every potluck. Eat before I go.

    I feel like shit.