confession

I am struggling.

My first semester of nursing school is coming to a close, and I have straight A's.  That's not the problem.

It's everything else that's the problem.

I think that Spagett has ADHD.

I can't deal with him.  I can't.  I can't mediate between him and Sid any longer.  I feel like I'm losing my mind.  I can't deal with being forced to side with my husband or my child in this bullshit drama that has become our home life.  I can't.

And yet, what choice do I have?

When the time outs have not worked, and neither have the spankings, and Spagett is throwing toys at my head because THAT is his definition of "playing with toys", when you tell him to play quietly and he starts throwing things at the ceiling fan, because hey, it's quiet, isn't it?  When it's mid afternoon and you can see his body is in need of rest and yet he can't lay still long enough to allow himself to nap, when it's midnight and he's still awake because he literally cannot stop running around and we have to be up at 7 am, but if you just lock him in his room and try to go to sleep yourself, he's going to tear everything apart and scream so loud that the whole neighborhood will hear...

What choice do I have?

When Sid has checked out, and all his contributions to the problem involve screaming "shut the fuck up, go away," what fucking choice do I as Spagett's mother HAVE?!

This is not what I wanted for my little boy.  This is not what I wanted for Sid and I as parents.  I feel like somewhere along the way, I have done something wrong, I have made a bad decision, and now every single one of us is paying the price.

So yeah.  Seriously, what do I do?  What choice do I have when I'm the only one left to handle the problem and I've been slogging away at school work for goddamn hours and I still have homework to do, and laundry and dishes, and everyone still needs dinner, and here's my kid who doesn't give a shit how many times you punish him for throwing things and climbing all over the furniture, he's just going to keep right the fuck on doing it, what the FUCK am I supposed to do?

sweet relief and a zombie run

While we still don't have solid answers, the MRI results are in and the doctors are saying the mass in Sid's neck is most likely not cancer, but a benign thyroglossal cyst.  While it will require surgery, from what I understand, it's a fairly simple procedure with minimal scarring, and the likelihood of it coming back is fairly small.  Sid also does not have MS, but a cervical osteophyte: in layman's terms, he's got a bone spur in his neck.  We are so relieved.  I can't even tell you how it feels to not have the weight of that worry constantly bogging me down.

So I ran my zombie race on Saturday unburdened by personal bullshit!  I actually didn't run much of it at all, the ground was way too rocky, uneven, and muddy.  The times I was running, I was full out sprinting and trying not to slip and fall.  I pulled something in my right ankle, which I totally didn't even feel until after the race was over, and my back got wrenched pretty well when I did some hard twists trying to keep my balance in the slick clay mud.  Overall, I enjoyed the shit out of that race and definitely intend to come back again next year.  It was worth every fucking penny: I had the time of my goddamn life out there, belly crawling through stinky mud, getting shocked, and crawling through mucky water up to my neck.  Dirty as hell at the finish, but so much fun.

being brave

The Mansons are facing some tough times right now.  Sid has a mass on his voice box, and is about to undergo testing to figure out if it's cancer.  His doctor is also testing him for Multiple Sclerosis, after years of weirdness.

Maybe it's not cancer (but maybe it is).  Maybe it's only benign nodules (but maybe it's not).  Maybe it's not MS (but maybe it is).  We'll have answers soon enough, and I think knowing has got to be so much less scary than this uncertainty.  I can't speak for Sid, but I know I'm going about my daily business feeling like I'm waiting to be hung: the noose is around my neck, and I know the floor is about to drop out from under me, but I don't know when.

Right now, running is what is keeping me sane.  What I've learned while outside sweating and plodding are keeping me from losing myself in anxiety, and until now, I had no idea there was anything at all to learn from putting one foot in front of the other, but that itself is the lesson: all you can do is put one foot in front of the other.  Keep moving, and eventually, it will be over.  It feels like it will last forever, but it ends.  It will end.

Plus, The Zone.  Oh, The Zone.  Fuck a runner's high, The Zone is where it's at.  There's nothing at all but the silence.  Nothing else.  No worries, no doubts, no voice in your head telling you shit you don't want to hear.  Just the rhythm of your breathing and your feet on the pavement.  I call it my brutal meditation, and it is glorious.

Sometimes I have to remind myself, I am doing this.  I am running, I am going to nursing school, I am going to sit in the waiting room while Sid has his surgery and wait to hear what the doctors say.  I am doing it.  I am brave, I am strong, I am doing this.

And it helps.

big changes at Manson Homestead IV

No, I'm not pregnant.  Good lord, perish the thought.

I'm starting nursing school in September.  This is a big deal!  HUGE!  This is something I have wanted to do for ages and couldn't work up the courage to go through with.  Because, you know, it would be difficult.  And maybe I wouldn't be good at it.  Just trust me when I say there were myriad reasons why I constantly talked myself out of taking the big step and actually applying.  And every single one of them was my anxiety talking.

The fact that I recognized it and talked myself out of being afraid is another big deal.  Because lets face it, I am a huge ball of worry.  I don't have full blown anxiety attacks anymore, but I still manage to give myself palpitations over silly shit.  In this instance, I had an epiphany.  There really is no other way to describe it.  I realized that I was letting my fear rule me.  I was letting my fear dictate the course that the rest of my life would take.  And goddamn if I didn't sit down that very day and apply to nursing school, because you know what?  Fuck that.

Another thing I went ahead and did even though the thought made me vaguely nauseated is sign up for a Run For Your Lives race.  I'm gonna be chased by zombies!  On an obstacle course!  A couple of my friends have done it and said it was a blast, and I have planned on doing one for ages but never did because Landwhale.  Fuck that, too.  I've lost 15 pounds, I'm lighter than I was when I got pregnant with Spagett, and I'm in way better shape.  Still slow as fuck, but getting better.  I'm training for a half marathon, for gods sake, I can handle a good ol' fashioned apocalypse.

saying goodbye to Sammy

published March 19

I've waited a while to post this, not only because I needed to put some space between me and the actual event, but also because I needed this time to process all that has happened.

Sammy's last day was as peaceful as we could manage: we gave her a full dose of alprazolam, not the half we'd been giving her to keep her mellow. We fed her a can of wet food, and tuna when she wanted more and we had none. She spent most of the day outside, lying in the flowerbed where the sun was shining. Someone was with her all day: we took it in shifts, sitting with her in the grass, on the sofa, wherever she wanted to be. I actually didn't want to do it - didn't think I could bear it, because I knew that what I was going to do later that evening would be hard enough - but Sid insisted. We have a picture of me with Sammy, sitting in the sun, her head on my boot, sleepy and unaware.

The drive to the vet was terrible. I had intended to go alone, but Sid wanted to be there, too, and so we brought Spagett as well. Everyone at the vet was so nice, so understanding. I remember one of the techs telling me about when she had to euthanize her dog: "It's the hardest decision in the world, isn't it? Like, you don't want to know, but you know."

I don't clearly remember much about what happened. I remember they took her into the back to place a catheter in her leg, and she screamed. Sammy never had much voice, she always squeaked and squawked like she had laryngitis. When I heard that scream, I thought she knows. Perhaps she really did. They brought her back out, and then all I truly recall is holding her, wrapped in a blanket, and telling the vet to go ahead. I remember the hollow feeling in my chest as she injected the medicine into Sammy's leg. She was purring. I do remember feeling so grateful to hear her purr like that, because it had been ages and ages. She started nodding like she was falling asleep. Sid started to cry, and all I could manage was "don't," because I was barely holding it together, myself, and I didn't want to scare Sammy. And then she stopped purring, and that was it.

Afterward, when I carried her out of the vet's office wrapped in that same blanket, there was only relief. It was over. It was the odd peace I felt after Spagett was born, that total stillness of the soul after going through the circles of hell.

It's been almost five months since she died, and it has taken that long for me to tell the story of her last day. Five months, and I still sometimes see a little black shape out of the corner of my eye and turn, totally expecting to see her there.

when it rains, it pours II

We are moving in a week.  One week.

And tomorrow we are having one of our cats euthanized.

Fun times, right?  Sammy has been on a slow decline for a while now.  She paces, and poops on the floor, and isn't as friendly as she used to be.  We have taken her to vet after vet and there's nothing we can do for her.  For the past few days, she's been on a benzo and while it's made her loopy and she falls into her own poop, she is like a kitten again.  Seeing her so happy and mellow just emphasizes the point: It is time to let her go.

That doesn't make the decision any easier, even though I've felt in my heart for a while now that this would be the end result.

We have talked about it, and cried, and talked some more, and cried some more, and Sid agrees with me 100%.  Everyone I've talked to agrees, this is the best choice we can make.  And that doesn't make me feel any better about it at all.

So I have made the tearful call to the vet, and scheduled the death of a beloved family member.  And tomorrow, I will go with her - Sid can't bear the thought of being there - and watch her die.  I will hold her as she takes her last breath.  It is the very least I can do for the little black cat who has stuck by me for 14 years.  

a quarter for your vomit

Spagett loves money.  He calls it "doy" and every time he finds a penny on the sidewalk, you'd think he won the lottery, the way his face lights up.  He loves his money.  This is turning out to be problematic.

There was a quarter on the floor.  Fuck if I know where he found it, but it was keeping him occupied while I changed his diaper.  He was turning it in his fingers, looking at it, dropping it on his chest, and then he started to stick it in his mouth.  I used Mom Voice: don't you put that money in your mouth!

BLOOP, down the hatch it went.  Right down his throat.  My first reaction was one of panic.  Holy shit, my kid just swallowed a fucking quarter, is he going to choke to death?  But Spagett was screaming and crying too loud to be choking.  So then I started laughing.  Maybe that was mean of me, but I was envisioning a shit-coated quarter, and how I was going to make Sid get that diaper and just let him wonder what had happened.

So, I was laughing.  And Spagett was freaking out so badly it's pathetic, so I held my arms out to him and he flew at me for a hug.  But I was still laughing, and I couldn't stop.  I tried to tell him it's okay, you'll be fine between giggles and I'm pretty sure he couldn't understand what I was saying.

And then he started gagging.  I couldn't tell if it was gagging like choking, or gagging like puking, so I pulled him away from me and just then he bent over and sprayed a fantastic amount of vomit onto the rug in front of me.  Dinner and dessert and snack, all over the floor.

So then he was upset about that.  There were strings of vomit hanging off his face, he was sobbing, and I am officially going to hell because I was still laughing.

He calmed down once I stopped laughing and started cleaning, but I'd be lying if I said I could see straight through the tears in my eyes.  And as I scooped up chunks of cherries and tortilla chips from the carpet, I found the quarter.

I wiped it down with Lysol and clipped it onto the fridge.  It is officially a keepsake.