As I have shared with everybody, recently I “lost it” for a few days.  Yes, I was a quivering bunch of goo and only my MOBs were able to bring me back out of the abyss.  After that, Joan suggested I speak to someone about dealing with the stresses in my life.  She gave me the name of a doctor who I called for an appointment.

The doctor called me back and left a number and indicated that there was an upcoming appointment open.  Wanting to get on the fast track to ensure that my mental health was taken care of, I called the number and made an appointment.  Not having ever seen this doctor before, I asked for an address and was told where to go and specifics on insurance information I would need.

On the appointed day and time I went to the office.  I signed in, produced the requested proof of insurance and sat in the waiting room with a book I had been looking forward to purusing.  I wasn’t more than one or two chapters along, when they called me in to see the doctor.  I was a little puzzled when they took me into an exam room, as opposed to some nice room like you see in the movies with a long couch and a table with a box of tissues.  I had been ready to stretch out and share my burdens with someone who would diligently take notes, probably with glasses perched on their nose (yes, the doctor in my mind wore glasses and a concerned look!) and would share with me the wisdom of the ages and map out a plan for getting my life together.

As you can really imagine, I was utterly shocked when they gave me a paper gown and said to get completely undressed, put this on and the doctor would see me shortly.  I sputtered that there had to be some sort of mistake, this wasn’t right!  They said that I should speak to the doctor momentarily.  

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Heard while waking up the other day.
Does this mean
1) My kids are learning to save?
or 2) Letting one single catalog into your house, in this case of the LEGO variety, leads to unstoppable toy lust, as well as the belief that you can only build things with kits, and never using basic parts and your own imagination?

Ted: How much is that one?
Lee: $200. Are you crazy? I'm not spending $200 on that!!
Ted: How about the Eiffel Tower? How much is it?
Lee: $199.99.
Ted: That's only one less! This page is too es-spensive!
(Flip, flip)
Ted: How about this page? These are cheap!
Lee: Remember, we also have to save up $53.50 for the Littlest Pet Shop toy.
Ted: Will we have enough to get them aw?
Lee: Yes.
Ted: Well if you say we have enough, we can just press, Sewect Aw!!!!

  

As I got ready this morning, I debated whether I should wear my brown suit since it was Kyle's graduation from preschool today or, go with the business casual attire I normally wear to work.  I opted for the latter so I could wear more comfortable shoes.  I was drying my hair when Hank walked in, took one look at my outfit and said, "You're wearing that!?!  It's Kyle's graduation! You should wear something more dressy."  I promptly changed.  I am now wearing the brown suit with the cute brown heels and, yes, my feet hurt. 

  

I don’t recall if I shared this with you all already, but recently Hannah told me that she loved me, even if I was really fat.  Thanks, kiddo.  Just what your mommy needed to hear.  But it was said with true love, not malice and accompanied by a big hug and kiss.  My little girl, a straight shooter.  And yes, as soon as I get my medical clearance, I will begin that exercise regime!

  

Today Hannah said she was bored.  We had been in the car for not too long when she asked if I minded if she did some math in her summer workbook.  Of course not, I replied.  What’s to mind?  So my child who has been out of school for less than a week, sat while I drove for almost an hour doing sums and problems, happy as can be.  Go figure!

  

Summer has begun and today it truly hit home.  As much as I have said about Hannah going to camp, for our first week out of school, she and I have come to my parent’s beach house on the Atlantic.  Weeks of rain have blown away leaving a day that started off cloudy and cool and ended up sunny and warm.  Carl will be joining us at the end of the week, but for now it is just the two of us.  I drove here Friday evening with Hannah.  I love to leave at night because then when you wake up the next morning, you are there.  You have a full day ahead of you.  

Hannah got up and had that wonderful sleepy I just woke up daze about her when she announced it was time to go to the beach.  No need to tell me twice.  We decided to take bags to collect treasures in and practically ran the less than a block distance to the beach.  We marveled at the crowds already assembled worshipping the sun and playing in the rather cold surf  ~ we usually come off season when we see only a few people.

We played catch with the waves, gathered quite a few seagull feathers, shells and seaweed, made a sandcastle and did a bit of twirling. Hannah looked at me and said, “You can’t have a better day than we are having!  It is AWESOME!!!!”.
Happy child…happy mommy.  Yea me!

  

Hannah is out of school for the summer.  Where did the fall, winter and spring go?  Is it that time already????!!!  I look forward to summer, I really do.  I love having long stretches of time with my daughter and family vacations and relaxed time without the added pressure of school to be at early each day.

But really!  Why does her school have to get out one or two weeks ahead of everyone else?!  I am not prepared.  Joan and I have both posted about summer camps and our options and choices.  I send Hannah to camp while Joan chooses to come up with other alternatives.  Both of our choices fit our circumstances and theories.  For me though, I have Hannah in several camps, not just one or two, in the theory that I want her to have some different experiences this summer and what if she didn’t like one of the camps.  If I only picked one place for her to be all summer and she wasn’t happy there, then she would be stuck for the entire summer somewhere she didn’t want to be.  That is not what summer is about.  Even though she attended a couple of the same camps before, the dynamics change with different kids and staff.

So I have her at an art camp, two camps sponsored by the Smithsonian (I wish I could go!), a gymnastics camp, vacation bible school and one general camp with tons of summer campy fun – water play, arts and crafts, singing, hiking, sports and tons of activities.  When Hannah went to the general camp last year she would come home dirtier than I have ever seen her, happy as a lark and so tired that she would fall asleep early.  YEA all around.  Is it too much?  Maybe, but we have 13 ½ weeks of summer break.  13 ½ weeks!!!  With only 7 or 8 weeks of camp planned and our family trip to Yellowstone postponed until next summer, there is still plenty of relaxed, sleep late, lazy or fun-filled exciting days ahead with completely unstructured time.  Yes, my work schedule will be crazy with long odd hours before she gets up in the morning, some squeezed in during the day and much done after she goes to sleep at night.  But I am truly looking forward to it. 


My little butterfly - time to spread her wings!

Summer brings about such a change in my child.  She will grow into that third grader that will begin school in September with a blank slate, fresh notebooks, new backpack, sharpened pencils and a willingness to learn infused into her being.  For now, we will take it easy and unwind.  Each of us.  

  

Usually I am organized....usually I juggle home, family, work and life in a fairly competent manner (ok, maybe competent is stretching it), but usually I am not constantly on the brink.

You may have wondered why I haven't posted regularly.  The surgery I had in mid-March has taken me awhile to recover from and the recovery is ongoing.  A complete hysterectomy and all sorts of plumbing repairs are nothing to take lightly.  I had imagined sure it would take me some time to get back on my feet, but I am super woman hear me roar!  I will be back up to speed in no time - defying all odds.  Reality is that ten weeks later, I am EXHAUSTED all the time.  I still hurt.  A lot.  I can't pick up anything that weighs more than five pounds and that means not much.  I break that rule all the time, but can feel the pain when I do.  You try to limit yourself to five pounds and see how hard that is!  It isn't easy.  Laundry alone is almost impossible given those limits.

GOOD NEWS: The washing machine that broke the weekend prior to my surgery has FINALLY been replaced, removing the necessity of late night visits to the laundromat (in a sketchy environment) or emergency trips to a fellow mother-on-the-brinker when the urgency of needing clean undies outweighed my desire not to inconvenience anyone.  The new washer also gives me my "doing laundry in the middle of the night" outlet I have been deprived of.  (The other MOBs can attest to the fact that I kind of have a clean fetish when it comes to laundry, toys and linens!)

GREAT NEWS: My mother-in-law is recovering from her heart attack, heart surgery and other problems that developed during week two and a half of my recovery.  She has left rehab and is now in a new independent living situation where I think she will thrive.

So, with this smattering of positive things, why exactly did I go over the brink????  A good question.  One I have spent some time thinking about.  Here are some of the stresses in my life as of late: 

• My health and that fact that I still have some big health hurdles to conquer
• My daughter at times acting like an angel and other times possessed by the spirit of the some deranged maniac intent on being vile only to me.  LETS NOT UNDER-EMPHASIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS CRITICAL BEHAVIOR AND ITS AFFECT ON MY MENTAL HEALTH!
• My mother-in-law - her brush with death, recovery and re-location
• My husband Carl dealing wtih me, my daughter (taking care of both of us!), major work stress and his mom - with me trying to be respectful of his stress level, but somehow causing more
• The fact that 98% of my wardrobe doesn't fit because I have become just plain fat!
• The state of my house, including home office - horrible
• The state of my yard - an embarrassment to the whole neighborhood.  Even Joan came over recently and spent a couple of hours weeding because it was so out of hand and I had yet to begin to get things in shape this year.
• Hannah's school gets out in ONE WEEK and I am not ready for the constant togetherness that will bring!

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A different rose.

I got an email from Lee's teacher the other day, letting me know that she was in tears at that moment, had burst into them first thing in the morning in fact, because she misses her Grandma. There have been other tears of late, over more mundane things like math problems, so I wondered if perhaps it was a math problem gone bad, followed by a downward spiral. But no. There was no math, only the fact that my daughter is missing her Grandma, who started in loving her before she was born, witnessed her birth, and did almost all the diaper changing and cooking for the first two months, because, somewhat handily, I had managed to break my arm shortly before delivery.

It breaks my heart to think of Lee so torn up. Most of the time she is happy and can talk about the things we all loved about Grandma bravely, and mention how she misses her and leave it at that. I had actually thought that she had gotten over Grandma's death amazingly. Now I know that these things percolate much longer than we think.

As it turns out, Lee was looking forward to a huge family canoe trip this weekend - she has actually been dreaming that she's already on the trip, surrounded by doting aunts, uncles and cousins, and her aunt and uncle's beloved stuff mice, who show up on many family vacations. She explained this to me in the car, later that day. How when she was thinking about everybody being there ... and then her face crumbled. Do you know what I mean?

Yesterday, as we sat on the patio, she decided to use the last of her ice water to water a plant. There wasn't much left, so I suggested one of the potted roses might benefit. She dumped it into the littlest one, which one of Grandma's oldest friend sent to us - she sent one to all the siblings - to plant in memory of Grandma. Here it is:

  

Yes, we are among the few, and the proud, with formica countertops. OK, not so proud.


How could Mothers on the Brink have not even given a passing nod to Mother's Day? I think I refrained because it seems so competitive. Well my kid cooked a 10-course meal for me, and cleaned the house, and then planted the garden and wrote 10 pages of sonnets You know, stuff like that. Which is not to say that Lee did any of those things, or that I wish she had. I had a fine Mother's Day. She made me scrambled eggs, which I taught her to do a few weeks ago, and she loves making them so much that now she wants to make them for us every day. in fact, Ted has declared that I'm sowwy, mommy , but he likes Lee's eggs better. Lee also quite a bit of jewelry made out of paper, and Ted endowed me with several lovely drawings. That afternoon, we went to see Heidi with half-priced tickets.It was a wonderful day. Of course, as I type this, Lee is screaming, I'm having the worst day ever! because she cannot get her computer games to work.

Which leads me to the title of this post. We are whipped in this household! A combination of life, work, PTA and all four of us getting bad colds - no, not the swine flu - and days on end of 103- to 104-degree fevers, followed by parents with no energy, and a lost front tooth - and the fact that the tooth fairy's visit was delayed by 24 hours because Lee's screaming scared the tooth fairy away from her normal visiting hours that night - led us to a point where neither parent relishes being upright for more than 30 minutes at a time. This morning, we brought out daddy's old laptop, and daddy's work laptop, and set the kids up with computer games. So yes, I admit it. no Wii's here, but just to prove we are nomral parents, see here. We are not above plugging our children into mindless entertainment in a pinch:


Ahh, Peace.