better living through blogging

This ridiculous Thanksgiving leftover dish I just created. Turkey tetrazzini mmmm! I made stuffed mushrooms for thanksgiving, and used the Melting Pot recipe for their green goddess dip, which is basically sour cream and cream cheese and milk with chives and herbs and spices. I accidentally made way too much but it made the PERFECT pasta sauce base. Sautéed a few more sliced mushrooms in garlic and leftover Chardonnay from our thanksgiving meal, and added the leftover peas + pearl onions, shredded dark turkey meat, a box of gemelli noodles, and mixed well, topped with shredded Parm and baked for 20 mins. Omfg. Comfort food? Yes please.

My mom died. 

It was sudden, unexpected, without warning.  There was no brace for emotional impact, no moment for it to sink in.  She was gone before we knew she was gone. My mom died 24 days ago.

She was having a good day.  It was wednesday, we had just come home from a week of Labor Day fun in Lake Chelan.  She was doing pretty well all things considered, its been a hard year for her emotionally.  Her brother committed suicide in February.  Her beloved aunt died tragically from her injuries a week after a terrible car accident in March.  Her dad died slowly but surely on Father’s day. She’s been coping with major depression backslides for 2 years.  But over Labor Day, she was ok.  We had tension at times, and I got frustrated with her alot, but we ate ice cream, swam at the beach, buried each other in the sand, and enjoyed one last taste of summer before Fall kicked in full swing, and the boys started their first day of school at their awesome new preschool.  I called her up that morning to tell her how easy dropoff was, how happy they were to be there, how I had to beg them to come back to kiss me goodbye before they ran off to play.  I spoke to her at 9:09am, for three whole minutes.  I was happy, she sounded happy.  She was banging around in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher, getting ready to run errands and go to the Y.  She met with a window replacement guy at the house, got a bid for new windows, and left the house at a little after 11:30.  At 11:39, for reasons we will never fully understand, her car crossed the center lane of a busy, historically fatal 2-lane highway, and she collided head-on with a double-bucket Cadman dump truck carrying loads of sand.   Her car careened, flipped, rolled and came to rest farther down the highway.  The truck caught fire, rolled, and burned for hours along a hillside, causing a major wildfire threat.  It took 10 fire engines from 5 departments over 7 hours to contain before they could reopen the road.  

My family drives on that road often, so when my sister heard about a truck fire/accident that closed the road, she sent a group text to me, my dad, and my mom.  Dad and I both responded with thanks, but mom never saw the message.  Her phone was in the floorboards of her crumpled car. She had died on impact from blunt force trauma.  Dad, upon seeing Bridget’s text, sent a blast  email to his work group at Microsoft notifying them about a bad accident nearby and to be cautious about their commutes home, and to plan to leave early if necessary.  A few moments after hitting send, his Ring doorbell notification alarmed on his phone.  He opened up the app and saw two state Troopers at his doorstep.  He knew immediately.  He asked, was it my wife? Was it Marian?  They asked him to come meet him at home, and he disconnected.  He left work in hysterics, in distress.  It was in that moment when he was driving that I suddenly felt compelled to text and ask if they went to see that movie last night they were joking about going to see.  And in some weird way, I was going to joke that mom didn’t want to see it but I did, and I’d take him to go see it tonight if he wanted, just me and him.  He texted, Shannon are you home?  Me: Yes… Him: Stay there.

He called me a few moments later, sobbing, and through his tears told me she had died in the accident.  He told me to stay where I was, and that he was coming over.  All I said was ‘okay’.  Like this was some kind of weird, twisted joke, and I was waiting for a punchline.  My kids were home, totally oblivious, and quietly playing on their kindles/watching tv.  I snuck outside to the front porch, called Tyler and told him, with zero tone in my voice, and waited for dad.  Tyler beat him home, said very little, and he knew he needed to go inside and keep the kids occupied, so he disappeared into the house.  It must have been 30 minutes before dad finally pulled up. He had no details, just what he barely heard from the Ring camera.  I asked if they were waiting for him back at the house, and he had no idea.  We called around a bunch of phone numbers, whatever we could find online, and finally a dispatcher was able to patch us through to the Trooper at his house.  They asked where he was, my address, and let us know they would be right over as quickly as possible.  We sat on the tailgate of my truck in the driveway, waiting for the worst news of our lives.  We talked about what we knew, where was she going, who had seen her last, and tried to piece together any semblance of an explanation. 

When the troopers finally rolled up, my tears followed. I stared at their feet, trying to hear their words, their condolences, and the guidance about what to do next. I asked if she had her seatbelt on, as if somehow it mattered.  I asked if she was still in the car when they found her.  They said they weren’t able to answer that for me at this time, but I was certain they told me her seatbelt was on.  I may have misunderstood, or maybe there was some confusion, but I left that conversation sure that her seat belt must have been on. 

My head raced as I tried to come up with a way to tell my kids. I needed time, to collect my own emotions, to calm down a bit, and decided I would tell them tomorrow.  Who needed to be informed? Who else already knew? My sister was on her way over to my house.  She was in a meeting at work when she got the call.  I can’t even imagine what was going through her head that whole drive over here.  

The troopers gave us her wallet, which they were able to use to ID her body and confirm who she was, and notify my dad.  Her purse had spilled all over the crash site, along with library books for the boys, her gym bag, her typical always-in-stock box of car-kleenex and water bottles for her passengers.  I felt strongly compelled to see the crash site, see her car, not necessarily her body because I wasn’t sure what that might entail, but I needed more information.  What the fuck happened. 

Dad was instead obsessed with what he could control.  The other driver.  Was he ok?  Can we meet him? Is there anything we can do for him? Dad’s focus was locked on the driver, and he was drawn to him for the next two weeks.  We tried to relay to dad that liability and privacy needed to keep him away for now.  

As we often tend to do when someone dies, we planned to gather at Grandpa Ken’s/Aunt Kathy’s house just a few minutes away from me.  We sat outside in the cool fall air while they passed around some Costco pizza, the thought of eating made my stomach rip apart, and mulled through our emotions. Folks started spewing supportive phrases at me, looking to me with pity in their eyes, holding me tightly that they knew my pain and suffering, and all I could do was stand there and absorb it, since very little of the reality had actually worked its way under my skin and into my mind and heart.  The idea of losing her was just starting to surface, what would life look like without mom? I had literally never really pictured it, not now, not like this.  We imagined life without dad, what we would do to help mom long term.  I tried to keep it lighthearted and do whatever I could to share information, gather my feelings, and lean on my loved ones when I needed to sob when the waves overcame me.

That evening I knew sleep was going to be difficult, so I took something to help and tried to clear my mind as best I could, but it felt useless.  I woke sometime around 3am and started scouring the internet for news and articles about the accident.  The driver’s name was released, and reading mom’s name over and over made me feel like there was some terrible secret I was being let in on, and that everyone else knew before me.  I felt cheated, blindsided, confused.  We had just talked.  She was having a good day.  She should be here. What the fuck happened.

The next days were a chaotic blur of appointments, visits from pastors and meetings with florists and calling caterers and sorting through a lifetime of pictures and standing in rooms filled with her treasured things and trying to sort out how to process this absurd new truth.  There is no possible way to do all of this, and feel it all, without bursting into an emotional ball of fire and self-destructing.  My mind was closed, and my heart was weak.  I felt very little of the misery all at once.  Just trickles would filter in and consume me, but only enough to get me through the dark moment and then fade away again, threatening to come back without warning.  I still, I think fortunately, feel only pieces of it.  Like I have a very thick, very protective filter around me right now, in the form of my children, my husband, my home, that is bandaging my wound before it sees the light of day.  Yet when I leave their presence and emerge from my home, I feel like i’m wearing my open wound out in the open, vulnerable to the world to see and remark and pity and pause for a moment to acknowledge, but carry on the way we all must.  The carrying on, that is the most disturbing part of all.  That we still need to eat, and sleep, and work, do our chores and tend to our lives to stay here and keep living.  Even though we’re upside down and inside out, something keeps us ticking like we always have.  Out of muscle memory or habit or even for the cathartic monotony of the familiar, to scratch the itch of the the before- feeling.  

Somehow next week will be a month already without having a mom on earth.  I don’t understand that measurement of time, it does not translate at all with what I have ever known about time.  Somehow soon it will be the holidays, and we will be navigating a new set of firsts that we never, ever imagined coping with.  Trying to support my dad, keep the lines of communication open with my kids, trying to keep love in the front of my mind, and celebrate my marriage with my husband, to let this draw us closer together rather than let my closing heart pull me away… those are my challenges, my choices, my decisions for now.  It is all I feel that I can control.  Otherwise, the same truths still stand firmly in my mind; that life is painfully and tragically short; that we must do what we can with what we have where we are, to live the fullest lives we can and leave no room for regret in the afterlife; and to communicate to everyone we love in our lives as best as we can, so that everyone knows how loved, appreciated, admired, and special we all are to each other.  The impacts we have on each other here in these lives, the connections we make, should be recognized fully and often so we can always live in the front of our seats with a sharp perspective of what we have while we have it.  Because this loss has reminded me of the morbid reality my dad preached at every opportunity since i was a kid, that life can be taken away in the blink of an eye, and one of the greatest things we can leave behind is to be sorely and painfully missed by all the lives we loved before.

Here’s a little braindump of non-depressing shit.

I have finished a 6-week long project of building the most beautifully over-engineered raised garden beds known to the PNW.  I will be growing sub-par fruits and veggies all summer long.  Get in line for questionable tomatoes, carrots, onions, scallions, garlic, peppers, english peas, snap peas, edamame, gourds, howden (big) pumpkins, baby boo (mini) pumpkins, acorn squash, butternut squash, asparagus (eventually), basil, cilantro, cucumbers, and im sure some others that I am currently forgetting.  I’m sure its gonna be a shitshow.

We’re on day 5ish of using the Lully, which is a device designed to break the cycle of night terrors in kids.  Dropping naps has put poor Joe into a tailspin of brutal night terrors that include kicking, screaming, yelling NOOO, haunting stares right through you and into vacant spaces as if he is seeing ghosts, calling for me when I’m right there holding him, and 15-20 minutes of general parenting Hell each night anywhere from 40-90 minutes post-bed time.  The device vibrates under his bed to wake him gently before he has the night terror, should break up the circadian rhythm cycle that causes them to get essentially stuck like a record skipping between REM cycles.  It takes the brain about 15 minutes of horrifying limbo, not quite awake and not fully asleep, to snap out of it, and NOTHING you can do will speed up or interrupt the process.  Most folks discover this sad reality of night terrors the first time by visiting the ER, because it is that scary that you can only assume your kid is having some form of a seizure or some other medical emergency.  Hoping this helps this kiddo who has suffered from spells of night terrors at every major growth spurt and change in his sleep routine since he was 18 months old.  Being the only 4 year olds in the county who still nap, we knew we were going to have to tackle the issue head on without using naps, which has previously been our only way to keep him from having them.  Overtired kiddos are almost always to blame for night terrors.  So, we’re bedtime nazis strictly at 7pm now and no fun is to be had in our household after 6:40pm.  

<lully just worked perfectly and we might have a night-terror free evening on our hands!!>

All the other happy things might  need to wait for another post… Mad Men binge watching beckons in the basement and I need a glass or seven of TJ’s finest grape-fermented libations.  

Because god bless the woman but watching her take care of her dying father is traumatic for all involved.  Last month, which admittedly was a month of hell with losing her brother Mike and watching grandpa slide down the scale of barely able-bodied to confined to hospice at home, she was full of positivity and endearing words for her loving father who was a “survivor” with nine lives.  Fast forward a month, and suddenly the conversation has turned harsh, cruel and dismissive for his life.  Granted she is sharing these streams of consciousness with me in more or less confidence, but hearing her vent like that cuts me deeply.  I know he wasn’t the perfect father, he was hard on the kids and abusive at times, and left them all in a difficult position with juggling his end of life care with little money at their disposal and a ton of personal sacrifice.  

She is saying things now like “pull the plug” and “let him get sick, who cares” and “we hope he just drops dead already” and how his house is dirty and disgusting and making her physically ill, how he asks for lemonade at 4am GOD FORBID and how several times already he has been soaked in his own pee because they made some horrific makeshift external cath so he can stay laying down during the night.  He is on his last leg, however we have said this for months and years even.  We’ve expected the call honestly since I was in college or even before that.  He wants quality of life, to watch his TV (at god forbid an OBSCENE VOLUME according to my mom) and for a few final moments of dignity, privacy and comfort after a life full of pain.  The man survived polio, fought in a war, fathered 8 children and a legacy of 18 grandchildren, and 7 great grandchildren so far.  I know what she is going through is one of the most difficult phases of her life, and her mental state is a complete disaster, but watching this from an elbow’s length is uncomfortable, painful, exhausting and a brutal reminder that we do not all get the luxury of a peaceful transition to whatever lies beyond.  I do not want this for her. Or for myself, when the time comes.  I will not want to go slowly, still there inside.  For my kids to feel this burden, or for anyone to wish me gone any sooner.  Somehow, he is still fighting for his life even when there is so little left to fight for.  He wants to go on, and he seems content to wait it out, even for the long haul.  I’ve had to remind my mom that you cannot make these comments in front of the hospice workers, and you are obligated to care for him to your fullest capacity until the bitter end, because elderly neglect is a real thing and there are a lot of siblings left standing to point fingers if something goes wrong on someone else’s watch.  It is horrible, and while I do not wish for him to die, I wish for everyone to feel complete and healing closure when the time is right.

The story of how I lost my dear Uncle Mike last weekend.

Keep reading

I really jinxed myself now!!! I am never writing an upbeat tumblr recap ever again lol.

The boys’ preschool was 100% wiped out by the croup virus this past week.  Joe stayed home Monday-Friday with no chance of being close to healthy enough to go. His second FULL WEEK of missed *VERYFUCKINGEXPENSIVE* preschool since Jan 1. 

Hank was the last man standing all the way til Thursday when we arrived, two other sick kids showed up, the only three expected that day since everyone else was home sick, and she promptly turned us all away to go home and that school would be cancelled.  She went ahead and “courtesy cancelled” Friday too since everyone needed more time to recover, and swapped it with an extra day off in May (HOWKINDOFHER), which I hadn’t noticed on the calendar until now that she had planned to close for Memorial Day weekend by friday for a 4 day weekend instead of 3.

I was in a groove a little bit at the beginning of the week but it just got harder and harder every day.  Today was my breaking point and I did wayyyy too much yelling and I mayyyy have gotten too mad but I had .0001% of patience left in me, and with Joe starting to feel better and Hank not feeling sick enough yet (he officially *JUST* started coughing, for the record) they were rowdy, stir crazy and sick of me telling them to stay apart.  They won today.  I lost.  The house is a disaster and I had to miss dinner and bedtime while dad manhandled them through the night so I could get my very overdue work deposits entered.  

I even tried to take them outside for some fresh air while it was still daylight and miraculously not raining for a short time.  Hank who usually LOVES to be outside on his scooter or running or playing, instead found a folding kids chair, asked if he could sit, and stared into space in my general direction for 20 minutes before deciding to call it a day and go back inside.  They wore their jammies (footie, no less) and their rainboots and helmets back in the house, and I followed… very slowly… letting them be unsupervised for a delayed length of time… mostly to put myself in a time out and just give each other a minute to BREATHE… I’m in earshot from where they are, see a delivery truck pull up the driveway, don’t think anything of it and assume they’ll leave the package and take off in the same hurry they arrived, and wonder why the truck is still there after a minute or two.  Yeah. Joe answered the door for the delivery guy because stranger danger doesn’t exist in our house yet… and he offered to SIGN for the package.  And spelled his name. J-O-E. That spells Joe.  Thanks mister delivery guy!  I come around the corner catching the closing scene of his little package delivery interlude and scare the living daylights out of him by accident, but he had absolutely no idea why I was upset that he had answered the door.  Or why I’ve been upset any of the 26,000 other times he’s answered the door when he wasn’t supposed to.  This kid is a fucking SHOWMAN and his guests are apparently his audience.  Come in! Thank you for coming! Come in! Won’t you join us?! (I don’t know what show or which friend influenced their greeting skills but they are literally one level away from asking if they’d like a spot of tea, they’re such goobers.

Anyway I still haven’t had dinner yet and I’m 99% sure I’m about to have a lady situation problem that no grown woman has time or patience to deal with at a time like this and I’m DEEEFINATELY crossed over into the oversharing category for the night.

Posting about things settling in. LOL! 

Yesterday at preschool parent/teacher conferences (YES YOU HEARD ME THIS IS A REAL FUCKING THING) she dropped the bomb on me that she’s closing the school June 15th. 

Shocked/not shocked.  She’s been seriously off this year.  I can’t say I’m terribly disappointed but I’m REAL not excited about trying to find a new preschool.  

Extra grateful that i’m home full time now so I have some wiggle room to make a new arrangement work.  The boys don’t know yet, so making phone calls and scheduling preschool tours has been awkward to say the least.  So far I found two that are actually shockingly cheaper (!) AND closer (!!!) to us than the previous one.  We felt like this preschool has been a good value, but when you’re paying everything x2, it really helps to get a price break here and there, and she has never offered us a sibling discount.  Come to think of it, she literally never acknowledges them as twins, just siblings.  

I will not miss a lot of things about her school.  But they will miss it.  They will miss her.  They will be sad, but change is ok and they will adapt.  I’m actually oddly looking forward to an open house tomorrow, one of the schools we’re looking at is highly Art-focused and I KNOW Hank is gonna love that.  He is really proud of his art and cares so much about vivid colors! Its all he wants to do and almost all he talks about enjoying at school.  Both locations have great reviews from past and current students so I feel good about this.

Bad news is our backup schools SUCK.  They are super expensive, not very convenient, and/or not sure if they are properly licensed.  I sent one email out last night and got a reply back in very (kind, thoughtul, albeit) broken english.  Its a bilingual school and all the teachers are from South America.

Crossing fingers that we find a good fit for the boys for next year and that I can fill their summer with good camps, baby sitters and plenty of vacations to keep them occupied til Fall.

This major life change was actually forced upon me with 10 days notice.  I said thanks but no thanks.  The powers that be said yes, do it anyway, and you will make it work.  So, during my busiest time of the year (all my work was due by 12/31) and everyone else in the office was relaxing (their deadlines are 10/15) I packed up my computer after Thanksgiving break and went to one final happy hour to celebrate a birthday/the holidays/unbeknownst to my fellow coworkers a goodbye party too.  I was VERY sad to be saying goodbye to my work friends.  These people genuinely made me feel special every time I set foot in the office.  They loved me, not only because I ordered all the tasty snacks for the break room (and took special requests under the table) but they lol’d at all my parenting stories, praised my hard work, and were genuinely good friends.  I was mostly sad to be leaving the most adult contact I have on a weekly basis with people who understand what I am going through at home and in my marriage (my husband is their boss, after all, so they “know him” in a special way). Now, they send me emails asking me to come visit, and tell me they miss me.  I miss those daily interactions but it will make office visits that much more special. 

Anyway, I’m a solid 8 weeks in to this new routine and I’ve learned to enjoy some of the perks that overshadow the isolation of being home.

• Food.  I was SO sad to lose access to a food court, a Starbucks one elevator ride away, and my daily lunch date with my hubby.  I miss the stir fry place the MOST.  BUT! I am saving money! I can still eat out! I can eat yummy leftovers! I don’t have to pack my lunches if I want to eat guilt free! I can have lunch at 10:30 with no judgement! The option to go grab a quick lunch somewhere is always an option, but having to drive to get it is a great incentive to stay home, eat healthier, use the groceries we spend a small fortune on and make better choices.
  
• Tumblr.  part of the reason I had to drop off my tumblr usage was because I had ZERO privacy in my old office arrangement.  My back was always facing someone else.  We outgrew our office space about three employee hires ago, but are waiting out our lease deal before we expand to a bigger location, so that means employees are stacked up in hallways and corners, and two to four to an inner office.  I was booted around from an inner office (mostly by myself, shared with an employee who primarily worked from home) but I worked at a fucking END TABLE/credenza that was hardly big enough to fit a computer monitor, keyboard and a single piece of mail… then in the middle of a conference call I was asked to move out to a folding table in a fucking hallway where I stayed for almost a year.  I loved that arrangement because I was closest to a good friend where we could chat, right by the copier which I used 400 times a day, but had my back to the entire office and couldn’t possibly screw off at all without being blatantly obvious.  THEN i got relocated to my husband’s office which was cool and not cool because I got a fancy new sit/stand desk, but had to wear ear plugs because he listens to horrible and LOUD radio shows with obnoxious and repetitive sound drops (Bubba the love sponge, if you are familiar) and I have to work more or less in silence.  [I highly recommend Howard Leight earplugs by the way, a lifetime supply case on amazon for $20. Take them in every suitcase and always leave a pair in your purse.  Trust me.]  I only got to enjoy that arrangement for a short time before the decision to move home happened.  So now my big beautiful sit/stand desk is sitting empty in tyler’s office, like someone got fired or something.  BUT! Now I can post on tumblr! And reconnect with all yous!
• Short work chunks.  One of the trickiest parts of the arrangement is finding enough hours in the day to get quality work done.  Luckily my work is all project oriented, and small daily tasks that can be done in 30 min increments usually.  So, I can sit down for as little as 45 mins, clock in and out, and actually accomplish something on my list without feeling like I have a ton left to do.  I can work weekends, during naps, while the kids are at school, early in the morning before the boys get up, while they’re vegging out and watching TV, and only every now and then do I feel like i need to be “left alone” to get my work done.  Almost everything I need to do I can get done in the time I have available.  That is, until November/December when the chaos of year end sets in, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.  My back is grateful to be sitting for shorter periods, and my coworkers think I’m so dedicated when they get emails from me at all hours and all weekend long.  Little do they know how erratic my timesheets look but I am so glad I can make it work with the time I have.
• No more office poops. Self-explanatory.  Take care of that situation in the comfort of my own home.  Yes please.
• Doggy time.  For those who don’t know, my sweet puppy Guster passed away suddenly over the summer.  The only comfort I could find from my sadness of losing him was in hunting for a new dog to fill his shoes.  I couldn’t believe how hard it was to put his beds away, to throw out the rest of his dog food, to wash his bowls and pack everything away into the garage.  Tyler came home while I was sobbing on a ladder holding a bin of his stuff trying to heave it on to a top shelf where I wouldn’t have to look at it all the time.  It took me three months to finally put it all away.  As soon as it was packed up, something inside me clicked and I desperately began looking for our new dog.  I became obsessed with it.  We brought Ranger home the day before Halloween and that hole in my heart has been refilled with this sweet animal who I know would have been Guster’s BFF for life.  Somehow I feel no guilt for getting a new dog so quickly when I swore to myself I never would do that.  In my own irrational idiotic way I am convinced that Guster would have wanted us to keep the puppy energy alive in this place, that somehow I had his blessing, and that he is proud of his new puppy brother from afar.  Anywho, Ranger has become a huge part of destressing my days.  He comes to every preschool dropoff, every gym/library/grocery store/barn trip.  He almost never sees the inside of his crate or gets left at home.  This dog has the BEST gig.  Every day after dropoff we romp around in the backyard and woods, he chases sticks in the ravine and races around at lightning speed.  We get the mail, think about summer gardening plans, and get wet every day.  I haven’t put him on a leash in weeks because his off leash control is already so strong.  He’s a really special dude, and 99% of the time I’m here on my work computer, he’s passed out on the couch, with a pillow and a blanket.  I shit you not.  Luckiest rescue ever.
• I am more organized than ever before. My calendars are up to date.  I have a meal planning list, groceries always stocked, the kids lunches are not the same 4 things every day anymore.  I’m getting more shit done in less time than I ever have in my life.  
• My kids seem happier.  They are thriving on the routine, and spending more time with me seems to be helping with their moods.  Visits with their grandparents or babysitters seem more special.  They are overall better behaved when dad gets home from work.  There isn’t this resentful attitude shift, or guilt trip from me when I get home to give them whatever they want since I feel bad that I was selfishly at work all day.  
• Saving money.  I haven’t had to write anyone a check for watching my kids outside of preschool in weeks.  THIS IS A GOOD FEELING.  We were spending my entire paycheck on childcare the last several months, so I was really enjoying working for free.
• Flexibility, choices, freedoms. I have an appointment to see my counselor today to check in and talk about strategies to cope with my mom.  And a recent blowup fight I had with Tyler.  I can go ride my horse 3-4x a week.  I can workout in the mornings when the gym is quiet, or wait until after school and bring the kids and score major brownie points with them.  I can go to the grocery store if I need to.  I have fucking TIME to do things, and somehow no time at all.  It is a huge perk to have the entire schedule open to my own decisions.

Ok enough of this ego-stroking exercise.  You get the jist.  I’m spoiled and fortunate and enjoying the opportunity and doing my best to make it the best.

jeez guys.  i mean at least show me something i wanna see, like lesbians or something, but like straight up butt stuff yeah no thanks 

I have really been missing this place and needed to reconnect with my brain, and typing/verbalizing/putting my vibes out there to the tumblr universe has always been some of the most therapeutic times for me.  

life update.

my boys just turned FOUR.  WTF.  Much celebration. Very loud. House messy. Always yelling.  Still napping.  No more diapers. Hooray hooray.

I just had to start working from home as of December and it is HARD slash amazing.  I always always always feel like I should be doing MORE.  I am really learning how to set boundaries for myself, keep my expectations realistic and make it clear to those around me that I physically cannot be everywhere at once even though somehow I am expected to be.  Somehow it is completely understood that dads can work full time and check in periodically, but moms need to forever be plugged in to their kids and notice every sniffle or pack more veggies in their lunches and somehow I am left feeling like I am carrying the weight of the whole family but should make it look/feel effortless.  It is effortfull.  It is hard, and sometimes I seriously suck at it.  Right now, I feel good at it and want to try to figure out how to make it feel like this as often as possible, and what tricks I need to adopt to keep my shit together when life spirals.

I am trying REALLY TRYING to get more fit.  I go through phases where I completely accept my body for how it is, and then I recognize a desire to do better and then its like switching a flip.  Its not about how I look as much as it is about preparing for what is coming this summer.  Big yard projects ahead, 4 weeks of horse shows and a difficult clinic, and I am finally riding at a level where I need to work at it on the ground and not just in the saddle.  Since switching barns when we moved, the bar has been raised to a very challenging but also totally reasonable level, and I feel silly that I haven’t been working this hard for the last 10 years.  I wish I had been, but I can forgive myself for taking it easy when I used to ride just as a place to relax.  Now, riding is a place where I can go to feel proud, accomplished, athletic and still young enough to hang with the young bucks :)

My mom is really suffering, and I’m not handling it well.  She is coming down off a manic bipolar episode triggered around thanksgiving (meds changed, her dad has been in and out of the hospital with end of life care stuff, home now but we’re just waiting…).  She is no longer able to watch my kids at all.  She can barely leave the house without a companion to go with her.  Her entire family is riddled with a mega diagnosis cocktail of all the trigger words, Anxiety/Depression/SAD/Mania/Psychosis/Dementia/Alzheimers.  If someone comes up with schizophrenia I wouldn’t be surprised.  Watching it from an arms length is scary, but getting within hugging range is scarier.  Seeing her aging before my eyes, the exhaustion on her face from crying, lack of sleep, over sleeping, being too disoriented to have a conversation.  She’s hard to talk to on the phone.  She can’t listen to details.  She will try to call to check in, but only because she feels guilty, and as soon as I have responded she’s ready to start hanging up and saying goodbye.  Her habits are eating me alive because she’s missing so much of the fun phases of my kids’ childhood, but I know if she could she would be present.  

Hoping to make these check ins a more consistent thing again because I need this place.  Missing my tumblr crew and hoping you all are well. xoxo ~Shan

This is where I’m at right now. The ebbs and the flows and ups and downs and good luck and bad luck. If I fixate on one too much, or convince myself that more is coming, I lose my mind. I just need to remember that with the good along comes the bad sometimes, and hopefully at the end of the day it all feels like it evens out. I am often criticized for being one of those silver-lining-to-death people where I always try to turn someone else’s venting into a “well the good news is…” conversation. The reality I’m learning to accept is that sometimes the bad doesn’t have to come with good news. They can be separate experiences, cause individual feelings and life is about bouncing from one emotional rock to the next in as fluid a stride as possible. Then falling ass over tea kettle and scrambling for the shoreline but eventually finding your footing again.

Here’s to picking up our scattered emotional pieces off the floor and making whatever fucking lemonade or sangria or hobo stew you fancy. Because life is good and sweet and harsh and cruel in one big emotional mess and the best thing we can do is live it up every goddamn day we’re given until our time on earth is through. Cheers to my lifelong forever pup Guster and for everything he taught me about being true, honest, willing, and endlessly loving.

Not gonna lie they are kind of my favorite… kids came down with sudden colds and I was not at all bummed to take today off to stay home with them. They needed the down time as much as I did. I’m taking care of odds and ends, letting life catch up a little from the ridiculous pace I’ve been maintaining. The cool weather and rainy days have also been welcomed because it’s forcing me to forgo more yard work when my back is telling me I need to rest/stretch/be careful. I’m hearing all the warning signs and blowing right through them.

Horse showing starts Monday (after my trailer gets a fancy $$$$ new set of tires that I didn’t want to buy) and I’m so nervous/excited/ready for the challenge. Nervous to show with a new barn and a new trainer for the first time in 10 years. Nervous the jumps will be intimidating and big and I’ll make mistakes and get myself in a bad spot. I don’t want to get hurt but you have to ride like you want to put your life on the line at a certain point. It shouldn’t feel dangerous but you just can’t ride scared. I feel like I’m scared on the ground and confident in the saddle so I just need to trust my instincts and try not to overthink it in advance, and know that my training should be able to override my mental state.

Happy Friday y'all.

I’m here again for what seems like all the wrong reasons… to vent.  To express whatever this garbage unhealthy diseased pattern of thinking that has infiltrated my otherwise “perfectly normal” mind.  Because here I feel safe, understood, unjudged, and this place got me through some pretty challenging times in the past. 

I’m starting to see a counselor for the first time in a long time, and I’d venture to say that I’ve never really truly gone for me before.  In the past, I’ve gone looking for a referee to justify that I was right in my relationship squabbles and I needed an educated third party to prove that HE was wrong (of course, I was never very forthcoming about that until now).  That I was fine and he was not.  Needless to say those episodes were unsuccessful and unproductive and never amounted to more than a few sessions, jumping around from one acronym’d professional to another without fully understanding their differences and how they could help me.

This time, I’m going with a whole script in my head of how I’m doing.  I have it all perfectly spelled out and I feel like a textbook cliche vomit-inducing suburban narcissist with too much time, privilege, comfort and opportunity to actually have real problems to fuss over.  My horse is too expensive.  My groceries go bad before I can use them all up.  My IVF twins are turning my artificially darkened hair grey.  My giant house is so much work and my huge yard gives me a backache to maintain.  BARF.

The reality is, those are my tamest of thoughts when I’m in a dark place.  And lately, as I get to explain to my new counselor this weekend, I’m in a dark place more often than not.  For no reason.  When I get home from work.  When I’m getting ready for the day.  When I’m driving to an errand and lose all focus and motivation and inspiration and desire to do the task on the other end of the trip.  When my kids desperately asking me to offer them attention, intervention, support, and I stare blankly at them waiting for the dark moment to pass so I can give them a real and meaningful response.  But lately, and don’t ask me for how long because I’ve agonized over this and I can’t give a real pinpoint as to when this all started, these dark moments come on nearly every single day and I find myself reaching for anything to help cope.  Spend more money, retail therapy always helps.  Have another coffee, maybe I need some caffeine.  Take a nap, you must be tired.  Take some advil, you’re probably ouchy and not recognizing it (this is an old dead habit from years of pill-popping prior to my first back surgery, my solution to a bad mood was almost always resolved by a little extra anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxer cocktail).  Smoke some weed (after the kids are in bed), it will help you relax/unwind/sleep through the night/forget your troubles.

I’m fucking terrified to address this all.  I’m terrified of a looming diagnosis, that I’ll get lumped into the same damning categories as my mom and sister and aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins and next-door-neighbors and all those other people I felt so fortunate not to be suffering alongside them for my entire adult life.  I’ve always always always been grateful for my mental health, like it was a well-honed skill you could be fortunate enough to be born with, like a good memory or being good at learning new languages, or solving a Rubik’s cube. Everyone always commented on my ability to bounce back from adversity and find a sunny side and create energy from nowhere and be the shining star that my mom always thought I was for our family.  A “healthy, lucky normal” one, she would [accidentally] call me to describe how grateful she was that I wasn’t “like her”.  Hence, all the apprehension to come to terms with the fact that, as a mom, I’m no longer the person she thought I was as a young person. I suffer, somewhat silently… with a lump in my throat and tears almost always brewing, and I think about how I need to invest in more waterproof mascara because I feel like these days I’m going to cry all of it off before noon.  I don’t sit around crying though, because I have excellent avoidance skills.  I reorganize to occupy my mind.  I chip away at projects, I get things done, but now it feels like I do it to keep myself busy, the way you would after you lose a loved one, just to keep my mind off my sadness and my troubles, and then before you know it you’re back to thinking about the dark stuff again because it lurks around every corner and there isn’t a project in the world that can truly keep my mind out of that gutter.

There are a lot of words swirling around my mind lately.  Mania.  Bi-polar.  Highs.  Lows.  Mood swings.  Insomnia.  Fatigue.  Fortunately there is one word that hasn’t touched my mind - suicide.  But I can absolutely ABSOLUTELY see how people who feel this way for a long time can get there. I’m not thinking about divorce.  I’m not thinking about hurting my kids.  I’m not thinking about running away or making big changes or anything drastic.  I’m in a stupid endless loop of a pity-party until the next upswing kicks in, and they always do eventually, and then suddenly without warning it feels like the rug gets swept out from under me and I’m straddling a void of depression and negativity and it is unlike anything I’ve had to cope with til now.

I’m all ears for your tips, how you cope, how you are affected by those around you who behave/live this way.  My husband is aware, but has about a 60% comprehension level of mental health issues and thinks that having a sense of humor about it all is the most healthy way for me to address it, in addition to counseling.  He makes loving gestures and offers support however he can, but I can tell he’s even more in uncharted territory than I am.  I at least grew up with this stuff and he never even thought twice about depression until he was in his college years.  

It already feels good to be back here and sharing openly.  I have never had trouble talking to my friends and family about it, but I’m a person who has to put my thoughts down on paper to really understand and adapt and relate to what is going on in my head.  Almost like, once I admit it here, it can become a reality and I can work on acceptance and processing.  I’m expecting some form of medication in my future and I’m DREADING the idea of that, although I’m hoping it will help me feel a little more leveled out and help me be a better mom to my boys.  I just hate that I’m officially balls deep in this phase of my life, and that in the grand scheme of things I have to look back on these moments and recall this bullshit that got in the way of everything else that could have otherwise been picture perfect.

It is to sign you both up for a Naked 5k at a woodland nudist colony. Because YOLO.