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.

she's baaaaaack!

I didn't expect to say that, ever.

Four days of putting up flyers, calling shelters, checking Craigslist and generally telling myself that she was never coming back, and Knut came home.

I was sitting on the recliner, reading, and Spagett and Sid were out in the garage doing Spagett and Sid things, when I heard scraping at the door.  And then again.  And when I got up to see what it was, fully expecting it to be the fucking raccoon I've seen around here lately, there was Knut.

Whatever else she's done in the past four days, she got into a fight with something at some point: there are bite marks, scrapes and punctures, all over her neck and shoulders.  Her ear was bitten.  One of her claws got ripped out.  A fly had laid eggs around some of the wounds.  She was dirty and smelly and tired, but so glad to be home!  I picked her up and took her out to the garage, because Sid didn't hear me yelling for him.  The look on his face was priceless.  Shock and joy and disbelief.  It was Knut!

We got some food and water in her and carted her off to Banfield Pet Hospital.  She was cleaned up and shaved and checked head to toe.  She's beat up, but otherwise healthy, and hopefully there will be no complications with those bites.

I hadn't expected to see her again.  Honestly, I thought she had died, or someone had picked her up.  I didn't think she was going to come home.  That she did seems like nothing short of amazing.

when it rains, it pours

Truly.

Friday, first thing in the morning, I had my wisdom teeth out.  The bottom two were sideways, and all four were impacted.  The surgery went fine, all I remember was they were having a hard time finding a vein for the IV, they gave me nitrous, and once the IV was in everything went wonky.  Right before I passed out, I remember thinking I was never going to pass out, that I would just feel dizzy and sleepy forever. Next thing I know, I'm waking up with gauze in my mouth and being herded out the door.

That afternoon, I looked like Bethenny Frankel.  The next day, my face was unrecognizable from the cheekbones down.  I blew up.  The swelling was worse the next day, if such a thing could be possible.  I cried.  Spagett was scared of me.  It was horrible.  The Vicodin I'd been prescribed didn't seem to take a dent out of the pain I was in.  I can't say it enough: it was horrible.

While the swelling has gone down, my face is all bruised along my jaw, and I still can't open my mouth very far.  It isn't pain stopping me; I literally cannot open my mouth.  While I understand this is normal and will resolve in time, it fucking sucks trying to eat.

But.  That's not even the worst of it.

Yesterday Knut disappeared.  I spent all day today walking around with Spagett on my back, or biking with Spagett in his seat, putting up flyers with Sid and looking for that bitch cat.  And she is nowhere to be found.  We lost Knut.

Holy shit, we lost Knut.  We may never get her back.  I don't even want to talk about it anymore right now, just thinking about it, just typing the words, leaves me with this hollow, sick feeling.  Even though I know, I fucking know anything could have happened to her, I can't even bring myself to consider that she might be dead.  Eaten or otherwise killed by another animal.  It simply is not a thought I am willing to entertain.  Even though I know she is old, missing teeth, not as spry or able to defend herself, following that train of thought to it's conclusion is unfathomable.

I have to believe she'll come back.  That someone will find her, someone will pick her up and call me.  Or that I'll open the door one morning and there she'll be on the porch, having gotten tired of her adventures and found her way home.  This has to happen, because if it doesn't, the implications are more than I can take.