A Weird Week

We had a lovely, relaxing Thanksgiving with friends, but tragedy struck just once-removed the next day and I've felt useless and sad ever since. It's not my tragedy, but I love my friend and I hate how sad she is and how helpless I am to do anything to make her feel better.

And (much less importantly), my husband is out of town on business tonight and I hate that. He should always be within fetching distance (as in, please fetch me ice cream, please fetch me a blanket, please fetch me a valium). My children have been shockingly unloathesome while he's been gone, so that's one bright spot. And here's another...

Today, I was doing a phone interview with some people who used my 4 year old son in a research study recently (I have a lot of kids, might as well loan them out as lab rats, right?). The woman asked if my boy knew what to do in case of an emergency.

Me: I don't know, let me ask him. Buddy, what do you do if there's an emergency?
Boy: Call the police.
Me: Yes, but how do you call the police?
Boy (emphatically): You dial SIX SIX SIX.

If ever I needed proof that my children are more than usually wicked, here it is.

I'm officially lazy. Also, I still hate George Bush.

My bloodwork from last week finally came back (and I only had to call the office three times - anyone have a primary care physician recommendation for me?), and everything was completely fine. I still feel like the victim of a slow-motion underwater mugging, but apparently I'm just really really lazy. I can live with that, I guess. This whole adventure has reminded me just how much I can't stand doctors, by and large. Kind of masochistic to want to be one, huh?

My big boy had a political discussion with two of his friends during carpool today - they were comparing notes on why George Bush is a bad guy. It's a little sad that the 6 year old set has it more together than the 30% of Americans still giving this yahoo an approval rating, isn't it? The latest in my personal loathing has to do with the opening of military airspace to facilitate holiday travel. It offends me that the White House doesn't even pretend to hide their own hypocrisy. We're in constant and imminent danger from terrorism, to a degree that requires us to suspend the Geneva convention, wage preemptive war, and invade citizens' privacy, but Thanksgiving travel transcends our need for secure airspace? It's like the last vestige of an actual defensive military has now been removed - our military is now officially only for offense. As long as no one's late for dinner tomorrow, I guess our security doesn't matter that much after all. And of course, we have to advertise the opening of the airspace. I sometimes get the feeling that the whole crowd running the country right now are thumbing their collective nose at the rest of the world, including and maybe especially American citizens.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sappy

I can always think of a lot to say when things are going wrong. When life is good, though, how many ways can you say that? The twins still don't sleep, but I think I've given up on it - I actually can't imagine sleeping through the night any more. I'm still crazy tired, but I should get the lab results back next week, and in the meantime I'm eating a lot of meat in case of anemia and giving myself more than the usual license for laziness. Except for those two chronic items (which may just be two sides of the same coin - I suppose not sleeping for years could lead to fatigue), my life feels really comfortable right now. Bad things happen all the time, across the world and right in the neighborhood, but I have family and friends, everything I need and most of what I really want. Everywhere I look I feel lucky.

More about my so-called life

I loved that show. Still love Claire Danes. Dumbest network cancellation ever. But, as usual, I digress.

When I'm driving around or working at the hospital or sitting in class, I think of general interest topics to blog about, but when I have a few minutes to type, all I can think of is my own daily crap. I should rename my blog that - my daily crap. Although that sounds more scatalogical than I intended.

On the school front, I have yet another new master plan. I really like this one, actually. I figured out that since I have to do all the pre-requisites again anyway, I'll only be 6 classes from a second bachelor's degree (in chemistry), so I'm going to go ahead and enroll as a degree-seeking student and follow that track. The advantages are preferential registration and the appearance (I hope) to medical school admissions staff that I have goal-seeking abilities. Or something. Plus, more degrees! It's a little weird, because I started out college a million years ago wanting to major in chemistry, and now I've come back around to it. In one sense, it feels like completion or some circle of life crap, and on the other hand it feels like I kind of just wasted 15 years. I guess I'll try to focus on the former.

Unfortunately for the new master plan or any activity at all, I've been feeling really horribly run down the last few weeks, even for me. Yes, I'm busy, and no, I don't sleep, but this is ridiculous. I'm tired while I'm sleeping. It's bad enough that I actually went to the doctor today (for someone who wants to be a doctor, I'm very doctor-averse). I have a raft of bloodwork to do tomorrow (have to do it fasting). Hopefully it's just anemia or my thyroid gone wonky or mono and not something hideous.

So, that's the update. I'm full of ambition and exhaustion. Weird combination, not exactly designed for success.

Discouraged and cranky

I'm having a very grumpy day, kick-started by a very long night of screaming by wretched boy twin, who is implementing his own brand of daylight savings in the form of staying up all night. In addition, big boy was off school today because of the election and was on my very. last. nerve. all day. PMS may also be a factor in the mood extravaganza. The biggest piece of the grumpy-ass pie, though, has to be the information I got today from the med school where I want to go, which indicates that I need to retake 3 classes I was told a few months ago I do NOT need to retake, due to their (and my) advanced age. Crappity crap crap crap. So now I have to revise my whole plan again, and my dream is starting to feel more like a hallucination (an hallucination?), like a fading mirage.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, sometimes there just isn't enough chocolate.

A much better week

I'm feeling much better, the kids are almost entirely well, my good friend's birthday is Sunday (woohoo, the big 30!), and I got to observe a surgery today. I love love love working at the hospital, and the tech I report to said Wednesday that I should look into getting on the payroll. How cool is that? As excited as I am about the whole doctoring thing, though, I've decided to go back to my original plan of applying for entrance in 2010 - yeek, that sounds far away. It's for the best, though, will allow me to take prereqs more gradually (and hopefully do better at them), prepare more for the MCAT, volunteer more, teach more, oh, and spend more time with my kids. I like them a lot lately. Weird, huh? Oh, and the clincher - if I take an extra year with the prereqs, I'll graduate from med school in 2014 instead of 2013. So clearly it's meant to be.

Halloween was a lot of fun, courtesy of friends who rise to the occasion of holidays and don't just act stunned when the holidays appear as if with no warning like I do. Now to figure out Thanksgiving. You'd think after 31 years, I wouldn't be so shocked by the regular progression of time.

I've had all these bloggy thoughts lately but haven't been on the computer much. Mostly I've been studying organic chemistry, to the point that I'm dreaming of molecular formulas and thinking of human relationships in terms of parallel hydrocarbons. That can't be healthy, right? I actually like the class, though. I swear I can feel synapses firing in parts of my brain that were atrophied from disuse.

Candy

I was just struck by the contrast between my youthful dreams and my current, middle-agey ones. I found myself wishing, with real fervency, that I could eat limitless numbers of Reese's cups without becoming ill or obese. I think if a genie came to me right now, I'd be torn between using my one wish for world peace and using it for a Reese's cup free-for-all.

It's been a weird, kind of awful week. Yesterday I ended up in an ambulance with girl twin after her croup caused respiratory distress. That was probably the single worst moment of my whole life. Tonight, I spent three hours at the doctor's office myself to find out I have pneumonia. No wonder I feel like death. At least now I have the justification I needed to sit on the couch and eat junk food for the next couple days. Mmmm, Reese's cups.

I may already be dead

It's funny that when my kids have runny noses, I get annoyed by the constant drip and ick and whine and think they should just suck it up it's just a damn cold get over it already, but when I have a cold, it really does seem like a fairly serious matter capable of moderate to severe life-disruption. I'm not sure if this is a cold or the flu, but the symptoms include severe headache, inability to breathe, joints hurting, feeling of extreme heat, and incessant bitching about the aforementioned everything.

Oh, and that feeling of extreme heat? My regular body temperature is pretty low (around 97), and I almost never get fevers, but I feel like such complete crap that I was sure THIS time I'd broken triple digits. Took my temp, and it's 96.6. If I were a cadaver, they'd estimate my time of death as hours ago.

Xenophobia

I almost never watch the news, because...well, partially because I almost never control the remote, and partially because my attention span is really short. Tonight was an exception, and two of the stories during the half hour broadcast were about people freaking about about the dilution of their culture by immigration and tourism. One story focused on Switzerland and one on Tibet. In both cases, the representative xenophobes waxed on, in English, about how all the foreigners were marginalizing their culture (which, if I am not mistaken, does not include English primarily in its purest form in either case), and worrying that their way of life would be lost forever.

It seems to me that a static culture is doomed as surely as a static language - if you don't want your country to be the national equivalent of Latin, you may want to start embracing change. What is the obsession with preserving the status quo? Is this time and place so complete and perfect that keeping it immutable is of more value than honoring the rights of others? Literacy seems to be the answer here - if you love the here and now, preserve its memory in writing and pictures, but don't try to fix it in time.

When I do watch the news, I frequently find myself saying what I all too often resort to saying the boys - "don't be a jerk." How many of the world's problems would be resolved if people could just pull the sticks from their asses and mind their own business?

They like me, they really like me

I have this vague feeling I've used this title before, but I'm always up for some positive reinforcement, so I'll let it stand. I'm halfway through my first semester teaching an Intro to Computing class at a local community college, and I feel like I've finally hit my stride. I really enjoy my students, and today one of them told me that mine is his favorite class. He said it in a very non-Eddie Haskell way, too. I'm pitifully easy to please - I've been replaying it all day. Yay me, I don't suck!

Should have known better

I've been doing well with my stupid organic chemistry class, but chapter 5 wasn't making any sense to me. Since I'm a logical person (ha!), I made the considered choice to just take the chapter quiz even though I had no idea what the fuck the insane incoherent asshole who wrote the textbook was even talking about. Because at least if the quiz was over, I could move on to something else, something that just could. not. suck as much as alkene/alkyne reactions and transition states and rate-determining bullshit. Predictably, I did not do very well on the quiz, and now my mood has shifted from post-good-weekend happy to maybe-I-can't-do-this-after-all despair. Lame, lame, lame.

It was a good weekend, though. When I'm over this bitterness, I'll tell you more about it.

Wow, time flies

I've been a little preoccupied lately. Boy twin had a double-ear infection followed by a new molar and girly got FOUR teeth and the number of pained bits mentioned there (um, 2+1+4?) is more than the hours of sleep I've had during the same time period. I actually dozed off a little during the masterful crafting of that gem of a sentence. What was I saying? Oh, right. My father-in-law sent me this email, which prompted me to realize that the date of my last post, 10/3, was 8 days ago and not, like, half an hour ago, like I thought it was:

When one begins a blog, doesn't that come with an implied contract that one will keep that blog (somewhat) up to date?

Twice daily is probably unrealistic to expect – but – daily updates are/or should be the norm.
Going three days without updating your personal blog is akin to a child not brushing his/her teeth for three days. Going a week without posting something is just beyond most people's ability to comprehend. What kind of example are you putting forth for your kids? Has anyone thought about contacting child protective services?

Is there a Blog Master to whom this complaint should be directed? Can one get their blogging privileges revoked? Is there a penalty associated with blog-lacking-updates? Does one hear from the Blog Master that they must go back and retroactively update all days for a rolling month period that were missed?

Things I wonder about when I am so busy at work that my head is spinning.

So, since my poor, clearly-overworked father-in-law has put so much thought into it, and since it's his birthday, I will try to step up my game. Step up to the plate. Step...oh, I don't know. Thought I had more stepping cliches in my bag o' tricks. Thought I had a bag o' tricks. May really need some sleep.

So, here's a super-fast, very tired, distracted-by-The-Office update. I should rename this blog "random disjointed updates on my exhausted life." That may be redundant, though, as if you looked into my head, that's about what you'd see. Me trying to even remember what has happened recently. Here it is:

-I love love love volunteering at the hospital. I think I may finally, at the age of 31, have figured out what I really want to do when I grow up.
-I really like teaching my computing class, too. I am a little concerned, though, that I'm either a really bad teacher or my students are really dumb, because I gave the midterm today and they did not do well. Hmm.
-I'm really loving my kids these days. Think there's some correlation between me spending less time at home and liking them more? Another hmm.
-Organic chemistry is hard. When the twins let me doze off for more than ten minutes, I dream of hydrocarbon stereoisomers. I suspect this is not the key to good mental health.
-I've seen two hilarious comedies this week. I almost never see a comedy I like, or any movie all the way through for that matter, so this is a high point for me. The first is Stuck on You, which looked absolutely awful (the premise is that Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear are conjoined twins), but turned out to be not only funny but really sweet. And the other was Knocked Up, which I think we were the last people in America to see but which lived up to its hype.

We've moved on to My Name is Earl now, so I'll end this travesty of a post. I should be studying chemistry, but all the carbons are starting to swim together in front of my eyes.

This war has been brought to you by...

I registered for an online organic chemistry class last week (from the University of New England, randomly enough, as they were the only ones I found who offered it online), and I got my materials in the mail today and can't wait to get started. My husband is being very supportive. He got the kids to bed and is watching a really boring Ken Burns show so I won't be distracted (sleepy, maybe, but not distracted). The show did catch my attention for a moment, though, when the intro began with this line:

"Corporate funding for The War..."

I seriously thought for a moment that it was a news story and that the Iraq debacle was now being sponsored by AT&T or something, like all of the stupid renamed baseball and football stadiums. I mean, in a world where Candlestick Park is replaced as a name by 3M field, what isn't possible?

Back to my studying. And beating the big boy into submission - he's back in school and resuming his nightly refusal to go. to. bed.

Maybe not a mistake

Summer's pollution gauze has lifted and the clear blue of fall is far far above us as we sit outside without bitching about heat or bugs. The neighbor uses heavy machinery and yells in Spanish to his friends as they cut down leaves, branches, trunks high above the roofs. My mother watches earnestly, purporting an interest in botany and calling us often to watch as the men leap from branch to cherry-picker and wood crashes past them to the ground.

The babies lurch more quickly and talk to each other in guttural growls only they understand, punctuated more and more often with actual human language. The girl plays with shoes, the boy complains eloquently enough without many words. The little boy fills the vacuum of noise left by his brother's post-operative silence and loves the kitten until it says "me." The big boy is healed by his brother and sister's weekend visit and makes pizza from foam and titans from pixels. The biggest boy is quiet, enigmatic. The big girl is resilient and innocent, still cheerful despite bullying and uncertain supervision.

I read other mothers' blogs and the love shines from them, and I wonder what I'm missing, why my children so often seem like something to survive. This weekend, though, I see it. Sometimes they almost glow.

The tonsils have left the building

Big boy had his tonsils and adenoids out this morning, and he did better than I could have hoped. Thank goodness. He was brave as anything, and I tried for a brave face too, but I'm glad it's over. It's been less than 12 hours, and he's up and getting himself obscene amounts of ice cream, with much less whining than I feared.

Boy twin, on the other hand, who had no part of his body surgically altered today and who was cleared by the pediatrician just 2 days ago when I took him in because of his excessive freaking bitching and moaning has spent the day, predictably, bitching and moaning. I really do love him, I swear, but he is NOT a pleasant baby most of the time. I keep hoping it's something he'll outgrow, but I feel for his future teachers/spouses/children if this persists. At least I only have 16.5 years left of it, max. Because his butt's going to bounce when I throw him to the curb on his 18th birthday.

I am procrastinating - I need to plan for my class tomorrow (I've been planning a week in advance like Donna recommended, but I fell off the wagon). I'm loving the teaching thing. And my boss said I could have more sections next semester, so yay! I'm going to try to start taking my last four pre-med pre-requisites soon, too, if local colleges would get their butts in gear and post their winter schedules already. I love love love volunteering at the hospital. It's seriously addictive, I never want to leave when I'm there. Hmm, what else can I talk about that doesn't involve grading quizzes? Oh, i just read Water for Elephants, which was really really good. Between it and an elderly patient I worked with the other day, I keep thinking about novel ideas involving old men. Because I'm original like that.

Sigh. Fine, I'll work.

Tired

Something seems to be wrong with Boy Twin. He has been exceedingly fussy, even for him, all weekend, and now he has sworn off sleep. That's not strictly true, as he's actually asleep right now, across my arms as I type, but he flatly refuses to let me sleep. Tomorrow (today?) is my 3rd day volunteering at the hospital, and so far I don't think I've gotten more than 4 hours of sleep before any of my shifts. Makes it harder to memorize the gigantic amount of stuff I need to learn there when my mind is wrapped in cotton batting.

We had a great weekend, though. My husband has been working about a million hours a week, and I haven't been all that gracious about the whole single-parenthood thing, but this weekend we all hung out together and the weather was beautiful and except for one whiny-ass baby, things were good. I love it when the weather's so nice that the kids spend all day outside and the house is none the worse for wear (although it's still plenty "worse" from last week, sadly it still does not self-clean).

My hospital volunteering has me so excited about becoming a doctor that I don't want to wait three years to start medical school, as my original plan required, so I'm trying to relearn the science I once knew and start taking the remaining prerequisites this winter. I got a refresher chemistry book from the library (okay, my mother checked it out for me, I'm still persona non grata at the library) and read the whole thing this weekend - it was fun to observe my own brain dredging up old information, one ah-ha after another. How much of it I'll retain this time remains to be seen, especially since I only slept about 3 hours tonight (last night) and I think I read that you have to sleep after learning something for it to stick. Which means I've learned nothing in about 7 years. Which actually sounds about right.

Feeling like a real live girl

You know, like in Pinocchio (wow, I spelled that all kinds of wrong at first, thank goodness for google)? "I'm a real boy!" Well, that's me - a real girl, that is. The September ramp-up period is nearly over, and the family is in full schedule mode now, and it feels really good to have outside interests to break up some of the 24/7 giving that is life with small children. I'm settled into my class now and I think I'm actually doing a decent job. It's a lot more fun than I thought it would be - I hope they give me another section or two next semester, too. And I started my hospital volunteering this week. After a couple hours of running around for badges and paperwork and TB tests and scrubs and badges again and scrubs again and paperwork again, I finally got to start in the real live Trauma PACU today, and it was really cool. I'm volunteering at a teaching hospital, so they're used to having to explain things, and everyone was really nice, and I'm really looking forward to going again on Friday. Plus! I got to wear scrubs! (Picture, including extra chins and missing top-of-the-head, courtesy of little boy):

Also - little boy's birthday went splendidly, big boy is having his tonsils out next Wednesday (gulp), and gorgeous fall weather has arrived. The best part of the fall weather has to be the new outfits for the babies (not the best expressions, but check out the shoes!):

Little boy got some awesome new hand-me-downs, too:

And yes, the still-nameless kitten is still alive! I think he may be down a couple lives, though.

Doing better

I'm still here, and life feels less painful though still a little overwhelming. My mother is back, though, and my friend is in town and helping me catch up on the disaster that my house became in sympathy with my mind last week. Just in time, as little boy's birthday is tomorrow and I'm totally not ready and haven't slept much in a week or two to boot. To boot is a funny expression.

Updates in bullet form, as I must must must start cleaning and got about 4 hours of sleep and can only think in fragments:

• Boy twin got ear tubes in on Wednesday. One of them got a blood clot on it, which has resulted in some oogy looking blood-from-ear, but otherwise it went well and the change in his personality has been dramatic. He's SO pleasant. Poor baby must have been hurting more than we knew!
• Big boy was evaluated for tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy and is a go for surgery. The theory here is that his sleep issues stem in part from faulty anatomy and are contributing to behavior problems. Let's hope it works!
• Big boy again - he had a GREAT week at school this week, didn't cry once and went to bed like a champ every night. Thank. God. Apparently 2 weeks was the required adjusted period. It would be so handy if he'd post that kind of information ahead of time.
• Still no dryer. The one we ordered was delivered 2 days late and didn't fit down the stairs to the basement. Suck suck suck. Still working on ordering another, smaller dryer.
• We got a kitten. Because yes, a kitten is EXACTLY what I needed. It was more a mission of mercy, though, than a true mental aberration. Poor kitty was about to be dumped in the woods by a weird crackho with 5 kids in the car, and was so covered w/fleas he had fleabite anemia. The vet said he's only 4-6 weeks old and shouldn't even be away from his mama. He's SO tiny (the cat, not the vet), but really feisty and tough. Still nameless, since big boy can't commit, so I think he's probably going to end up stuck as Kitty.

I think that's the highlights. Off to clean/stash stuff in closets.

Blue, baby, blue

So, I'm moving on from yesterday's silver-lining-seeking and entering the dwelling-on-it phase of this mood front. You know the stages of grief? I should document my own stages of falling-off-the-edge-for-no-freaking-reason. For example:

1) Denial (doesn't everything start with denial?). I get more preoccupied, more confused, more forgetful, but without really noticing at first. My world grows smaller and harder to handle, gradually and then faster and faster, until it's so small I'm forgetting the rest of the world and denial becomes impossible to sustain. I then move on to:
2) Determination to avoid, this time, the joy-sucking darkness of mind, the fear and anxiousness and paralysis of the next stage. Another stage in denial, really, where I look for things that don't suck (and sometimes post them in lists, see below). Inevitably, this does not work, and then comes:
3) Suck. The point at which I give up the pretense that life is livable under these mental/emotional conditions and wallow in the misery. Today, in other words. It's 8:45pm, I took 2 naps today, I'm still in last night's pjs, the kids have been left to the tender mercies of their father's loving but fairly distracted care all day, all meals have been leftovers, I've read an entire novel, and I just sobbed at a children's movie, prompting big boy to say "you're crying over a stupid movie?" Hello, daily-crying-about-school pot, I'm a kettle. Everything feels wrong, I feel wrong, words sound wrong, food tastes wrong, noises are loud and jangly and...wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
4) The stage that's hard to see from here. I know, intellectually, that stage 3 does not last forever. Believing it is tough at times. Medicine helps. Maybe this time it will be short.

So there you have it, falling apart in four easy steps.

TGIF

It's been a long while since I was this happy to get to a Friday. If that which does not kill us truly makes us stronger, we ought to be getting stronger any day now around here. So far, we have not had a single school day start without big boy in tears, and the twins are feeling better but are now terminally spoiled from being held through their illness and whine a hideous "eh eh eh" duet all the livelong day.

But! It's finally the weekend, so I am determined to try to find a bright side and dwell on it. Some options I've come up with for positive thinking:

1) Designing either mother's jewelry or a tattoo that somehow represents all of my kids, now that I'm damn certain I'm done having them.
2) Working on the computing class I'm teaching. It's both more fun and more difficult than I thought it would be, and is a good diversion from family life. Diversions are good. Anyway, my friend has challenged me to prepare for a WHOLE WEEK of class in advance, to be ready no later than Sunday night. I think it's madness (so far, I've felt pretty well prepared if I had everything set 12 hours before class started), but I'll give it a whirl.
3) House painting. My sister came to visit this week and ended up painting my bathroom and kitchen. Now I want to paint the other rooms on the first floor. And hey! A friend is coming to visit from out of town next week! I wonder if SHE would like to paint?
4) Pioneer living. With our dryer still out, I've been hanging clothes (and cloth diapers) to dry outside. The weather has been cooperating, so it's actually been really fun. Not that I won't welcome the new dryer that should be here Monday, of course.
5) Dreaming. I got almost no sleep last night, but DID have a great Hugh Laurie dream (although his name in my dream was John Book - wasn't that Harrison Ford's character in Witness?). No worries, I'm not pregnant, just having flashback dreams, apparently.

Also, I'm getting very excited about winning my father-in-law's Last Man Standing football pool again this year. I think my complete ignorance of all things football really helped me last year, as I was able to put my full confidence in a combination of my own psychic energy and the USA Today odds page with no interference at all from actual information or understanding. I've learned nothing at all about football in the interim, so I'm sure my cluelessness will serve me equally well this season.

Best of all, we have no real plans this weekend, so I can catch up on some sleep and occasionally go to the bathroom in peace. I hear that I'm going to miss these little ankle-biters when they're older, but I've also heard that women's sex drives peak in their early 30s. Obviously not universal.