Bed Rest

Bed rest. Bed rest. Bed REST. Not finding it restful. If you've picked up on my personality at all, I'm not a passive person. Make the plan, do the plan, shove the obstructions out of the way of the plan, look-out-people-I'm-on-a-mission-don't-get-in-my-WAY-I'm-working-my-plan. Bed rest is NOT on my plan.

How did I get here? It started with bronchitis, in February. Lots of coughing. Went to the doctor when the rest of my family had upper respiratory infections. I had that, too, of course, coupled with my annual bout of deep, chest-rattling, feels like you're going to hack up your innards, scare the people around you kind of cough. A cough that sometimes led me to toss my cookies at the end, leaving me panicked, breathless, and spent. Nice, eh? I did warn you in my first post, that I'm not exactly shy, and this sort of honesty (i.e not for the squeamish medical details) would occasionally come up (pun intended of course). So I went back to the doc. Got loaded up with prednisone to "jump start the healing in your lungs" and the pneumonia anti-biotic (which the FDA so kindly makes sure you know all about by requiring a separate pamphlet be handed out with your nasty medication) and sent on my way to get better.

So let's get to those side-effects so calmly described in said pamphlet. "Limited cognitive abilities". I'm on the phone with the engineer discussing boys' night plans. YellowBoy wants to work on the _______________. And I can't find the word. The project which has become a bone of contention among the four of us in that it's an example of what happens when an engineer/inventor has ADD. And the children with whom he's doing a project have the attention span of, well, children. And said project goes on for YEARS. And there really isn't a good spot to work on it, so it has to be put away each time, thus getting it set UP to work on it sometimes takes 50% of the time available for working on it, thus limiting the motivation for said work. And I just want it DONE. It is currently 90% done. For pete's sake FINISH THE THING. But the word is just gone. Cannot come up with it. This is not some Swedish word I haven't used since I was nine and lived there, this is a common, ordinary word that is used almost daily around here. "No, you can't build that until we finish the ________" "I think that's downstairs on the table where you're building the ____________________" "Last boys' night Dad had you, I remember because you guys went to Home Depot to get bolts for the ______________" It was frightening not finding the word.

"Hallucinations". Never thought I'd actually get those. I mean, those are for drug addicts and mental patients. Yet there I am, trying desperately to go to sleep with a cocktail of chemicals (enough for your own pharmacy I believe, what with the rest of the stuff I take for my chronic pain, high blood pressure, stomach issues, etc.) floating around in my bloodstream. And with my eyes closed I see purple. Purple floaty things. Purple floaty things with pointy edges. And long necks? Purple, floaty things with necks and heads and eyes? OMG. I'm seeing DRAGONS. There are actual cartoon dragons when I close my eyes. Is this possible? Can't be. Open my eyes. THEY ARE STILL THERE. Floating around on my ceiling. Or superimposed on whatever I gaze at. Wow. I'm losing it.

And I've saved the best for last. Good ole' prednisone. My favorite. I've been on it before so I knew what to expect, and Diamond, bless his little puberty heart, has been on it WHILE I've also been on it. What a combination we made those three, long days. Prednisone makes me tense. Ok, tense is too tame. It makes me cranky. No, cranky isn't quite right. Combative? Testy? Quick on the trigger? Bitchy. Moody. Unreasonably argumentative. Want to crawl out my skin and slap myself for being so mean and rude. Yeah, I think you get the picture. Now people, COMBINE these things. Put the cranky, argumentative girl on levaquin, limit her cognitive abilities (I'll spare you the details, but it got worse than forgetting "go-kart") and make her see dragons. Yup, it's been fun.

And the fun continues. Now I'm on the nebulizer, even more prednisone, and am threatened with the hospital. Guess I'd better stay in bed. And find something to savor about it.

Things You Don't Say to Your God

My kids love Tim Hawkins, and especially his absolutely spot-on funny "Things You Don't Say To Your Wife". In just under two minutes, Tim manages to get in most of the blunders husbands make in communicating with their wives. I've been a Christian most of my life, 35 out of 44 years. I've learned most of the things you don't say to God. "Please teach me patience." "Lord, can it get any worse?" And I used to giggle at the Randy Stonehill song, "Please Don't Send me to Africa." But apparently I didn't learn the complete lesson of that song. I had the audacity of saying to God, "I'll serve you in any way you want, just don't make me home school." Guess what. He's asking me to home school.

For all of their schooling thus far, my boys have been in Christian schools. For pre-school, my searching and researching and visiting and interviewing teachers and principals led me to a wonderful, casual Lutheran pre-school. You might recall I'm a former middle school math/English teacher, so I know a bit about what I want and don't want and I'm pretty good at recognizing the red flags and avoiding them. I didn't want anything super-structured. I wanted my boys to begin to understand being in a group, and following directions, and to hear more stories about Jesus, and to learn to "play well with others." They did. And the cabbage burgers were great, too.

For elementary, my searching, as described above, led me to the charter academy in town. Seemed perfect for what I wanted. I'm a believer in public schools. I was a public school teacher. There needs to be light and salt out there. I'd met wonderful, dedicated, Christian teachers in the public school where I taught. I knew there were more of the same not only in on staff at this school, but on the board as well. Some of them attend my church. So we went through the application process. Did the lottery drawing. 37th on the waiting list. I'm thinking that's a big, fat NO from God. When the class takes 25, and you're sitting there hoping ALL of them change their minds and then your'e still number 12 after that...yeah, mathematically, not bloody likely. So back to my search I went, and God led us to the last place I thought I'd ever consider. But it turned out to be a great fit, and of course it was, because it's what God chose for us. Until now.

This year has been a very hard year for both boys. YellowBoy has struggled all year, as you know from a previous post. Diamond has not really enjoyed the antics that are a junior high locker room, Christian school or not. And ever since my abrupt U-turn, it was getting squeakier and squeakier to make that hefty tuition payment. Then came the illnesses. One after another. I joked with our doctors receptionist that I had her on speed dial and as I handed her our debit card for the fourth time in a single week (NOT kidding) I asked if they had auto withdrawal. It got that bad. I'll spare you the details but we had multiple rounds of antibiotics and inhalers and steroids and diagnoses and it was no fun. The boys were home from school sick more than they were there. I was practically homeschooling already. So we took the leap.

I am now homeschooling. A bit sooner than we had planned. It's a steep learning curve stepping in for another teacher (7+ teachers actually) with all those preps, in the middle of a quarter, and finding my way amidst all the, "But Mrs.MyFavoriteTeacher didn't do it that way" coming from YellowBoy and, "I thought I wouldn't have to do that anymore" coming from Diamond. I had thought I had the summer to get myself in gear, and that we were going with the online virtual academy where I just supervised, but that's not how it went. Of course not.

After all, His ways aren't my ways. You'd think I had learned that by now.

Grandma Vivian

Grandma

It's my privilege to share about Grandma on behalf of her five grandchildren. Ryan Ford could not be here today, he's an ER nurse in NC. This is my little brother Tom Bilen, from Waterford, VA and this is my little sis from Thornton, CO and my cousin Lindsay Ford from Damascus, MD.

We have many fond memories of Grandma, but one that sticks out for all of us was that Grandma loved to play cards, and she taught us all. She was a great bridge player, and was in two different bridge clubs. She really wanted me to learn bridge because “it's a smart person's game, and you're very smart, you'd be good at it.” So I'd play two hands of honeymoon bridge with her to make her happy, and then I'd have her teach me poker. We played lots of poker. She taught me a lot of different poker games, she had a lot of chips that we kids got to play with as we wanted to, but with me, we used them for their intended purpose. We got to take turns spending the night alone at Grandma's house on weekends, and that was such a special treat. Her apartment was so elegant and different from our house, and she treated us like little adults. We got to drink coke not milk with dinner, and we got to sleep in her king size bed with her.

Grandma was a ferocious knitter. She knitted probably a hundred sweaters over the years. She kept track of whose turn it was, and then it would be a special trip to the knitting shop to pick out a pattern and the yarn. Then it seemed like only a week would go by and there would be your sweater, looking just like the picture! No matter how complicated, she could do it. It was only as I got older and paid attention that I realized how much the yarn cost as they rang us up, and how much it cost to have the sweaters assembled by the knitting shop. She spoiled us this way.

Grandma also made sure that we had the skills we needed for success in life. She taught me to balance a checkbook at the age of ten, and insisted that I learn to type as soon as it was offered in school, but graciously typed all my research papers until I could do it myself. She had taken secretarial classes and could type over 100 words a minute with amazing accuracy. She was a very frugal spender (well except for the sweaters...) and stressed the importance of savings and budgeting. She was a financial whiz and fairly well off, but didn't flaunt it.

I do remember one extravagance though, and Melinda and I were the recipients of and amazing vacation. She took us on a cruise when we were in college and it was a trip to remember.

Grandma was a gracious hostess and always put on a great buffet. She loved to experiment with jello and made some very interesting concoctions. I know that some of them came from actual recipes, like Pacific Lime Mold (the name “mold” always scared me...) but personally, I don't like cottage cheese, and certainly NOT in my jello. The running joke was always, “What would Grandma put in the jello this time.” Well, we really weren't expecting what we encountered that one famous time. We had learned to approach her jello mold with caution, and this particular time it was a good thing. From the kitchen we hear, “Where is my band-aid?” almost in unison with, “What is that in the jello this time?” Sure enough, her band-aid had somehow made itself Jello!!!!!!!

Grandma Vivian, you were amazing, and I miss you. Thanks for loving us so well.

Blogger Newbie Grows Up

I got some good advice from a friend, so here's my try at linking. For those of you who don't know who Sarah Ban Breathnach is, now you can find her! Go ahead, check me out! I made a link! This goes with my savor post, but I'm not only a perfectionist, I'm also a big show-off, so I made a separate post to draw attention to the fact that I learned linking! Go me!

After all, if you can't brag and boast, then who'll know what you learned today?

Trying Something New!

Still don't know how to do the link thing...but I'm trying to win a free purse...

@kellymooreclark is giving away a bag! Go enter to win! http://kellymoorebagblog.com/

A Word to Savor for a Year

I'm not a "first to jump on the bandwagon" kind of girl. You may recall this from my Pandora post. Or the whole facebook thing. I got dragged there kicking and screaming. In fact, I'll let you in on a secret...my password is a goof on "I give up". Hackers have at it. If you can crack my fb page, feel free to mess with it. Fb does all the time...but I digress. As I usually do. Back to the word thing. The word for the year idea came to me through a dear friend's blog link, and the idea took hold. But this perfectionist took some time in choosing her word. What if I choose the wrong word? What if I want to change my word? But in the spirit of starting over after God got my attention in SUCH a dramatic way back in November (see Abrupt U-Turn if you don't know what I'm talking about), I took a leap and picked a word. Drum roll please! SAVOR. My word for the year is savor.

After reading a list of suggested words, there were several that popped, but SAVOR popped especially brightly for me. I've spent some time with Sarah Ban Breathnach and her amazing ideas of Simple Abundance and Excavating Your Authentic Self  and the idea of taking the time to enjoy what you have and appreciate the moment, struck me as appropriate for where I am right NOW. Which certainly isn't where I thought I'd be. And certainly not where I wanted to be on 12/1/09. But here on 2/8/10 with a little time gone by and a few (ok, a lot) of tears shed, and some prayer and contemplation, and howling at the moon, and good talks with the friends who not only listen, but help you process, I'm thinking THIS gig ain't bad. I've decided to savor it.

So for some examples:

I've savored cleaning the boys bathroom. Yes, actually, I have. It took some figuring out...but here's how. Bruce Springsteen, REALLY loud. And you need some back story. I have a bum wrist. It's fused. Due to constant pain that I've only a few short months ago FINALLY found the answer to, I am now able to actually clean! For the last ten years I haven't been able to. I've had to find money in the budget to pay for cleaning help. (Now, I will confess, this didn't bother me one bit. I LOVED MY CLEANING GIRLS. I DIDN'T MISS CLEANING.) But, if savor is your word, and you are scrubbing dried pee off a toilet yourself for the first time in ten years, then what you tell yourself is wow, my wrist doesn't hurt anymore, and wow, I can actually do this, and gee, I now have that money to spend on something else. (Which when you're laid off it's going to be exciting things like the mortgage and groceries, but still.) And since I had the time, I emptied all the cabinets and drawers and gave them a working over, because you know, once every ten years, whether you need to or not, you just should. And then I smiled over a job well done. And Diamond saying, "You did a kickass job on the bathroom, Mom!" And I didn't correct his language. I savored the praise instead.

I savored the dinner I made the other night. All the steps of making it. Even knowing that YellowBoy would take one look and go fix himself his usual ramen. I swear that boy is going to turn into a bowl of noodle soup. I savored the glass of chardonnay I drank while chopping veggies. I savored the lovely aromas as it cooked. I savored that three of us would enjoy it. I love cooking, but I usually fret over what one will say, forgetting what the other three of us will think. I've turned it around.

I've even figured out (almost at least) how to savor carline. You'd think that at a Christian school the parents would follow the rules (and they're really quite simple people)(and designed for easy traffic flow and with common courtesy in mind) but alas, this is not always the case. So I've abdicated car line completely and just park. In the lot. And my children come to the car. But I'm still there waiting and it gets annoying so I still need to savor. So I savor the last few moments of peace. I play a favorite song on my iPod (and savor the fact that I can still pay the bill) and bring something to read (lately my sister's cast off People magazines which are so highly entertaining in such an inappropriate way) and just try to enjoy the moment.

So for 2010, I'm going to be concentrating on this one thing. SAVOR. In all areas of my life. Savoring life. The life God has given me. The family He has given me.

After all, I'm always in His hands, wouldn't He want me to savor that?

Under Construction

As you can see I'm messing around with the layout...and I have NO clue what I'm doing...patience. Patience. I need patience.