Some weeks are better than others – this ain’t one of them.
My attempts to celebrate All Saints Day and Raphael’s Birthday didn’t turn out as nice as I had wanted them to. The kids still dressed up and had a good time on All Hallow’s Eve, but on All Saints Day it was kinda cold and rainy, so we ate Raphael’s birthday cake at home instead of out at the cemetery. I ended up taking my birthday balloons out there alone, and carefully tiptoeing through the goose poop, to the baby’s grave side and leaving them. Yuck.
At home my little daughter asked if we were going to sing “Happy Birthday.” We didn’t. I’ve accepted this loss and have prayed and thought about it for 3 years, but I didn’t think I could get through a round of Happy Birthday without a tear or two, so I took a pass. The cake was still delicious though – pumpkin cake with some kind of buttery icing. I hope my kids always remember their brother’s birthday as something fun and uplifting and not sad and morbid.
We had two bits of bad luck yesterday. Noah started complaining around lunch time that he had a headache. Now, Noah is very sensitive and has a flare for the dramatic. He screams and cries as much for a small sliver in his finger as some would for a severed brachial artery! It’s hard to judge sometimes what’s real with him and what’s an exaggeration. But then when he started complaining of the light, and when he wouldn’t eat his lunch even though we had French Fries, and when he said he was nauseous I became suspicious that maybe he was having a migraine!
Nothing can throw off My Domestic Schedule like an unexpected run go the doctor’s office! I debated whether to take the baby or not. Did I want to wake her up? Did I want to expose her to office germs if I didn’t have to? I opted to leave her behind with the kids, but of course my breasts started leaking on the way there just thinking about it. Meanwhile Noah was puking in the back seat. This will be one of our more memorable car rides!
The doctor checked him and didn’t think he was having a migraine, but he did think he was having a very bad tension headache and gave me Tylenol #3, a narcotic, to knock it out of him and give him some relief. He was a new kid this morning. I sure hope that was just a fluke.
Rounding out a crappy week, my oldest got ripped off twice this week at swimming. The first time, he left his swimming suit out at the locker room to dry and someone took it. Since he has to swim a marathon this weekend, he needs his suit! So I found the swim catalogue and had one over nighted to the tune of $48. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the next day someone went through his wallet and stole $40. It was his own money that he had earned reffing soccer games this fall. In terms of blood, sweat and tears, it was 2 soccer games, or about 3 hours of his time that they stole. This time, my brave teen was visibly shaken and so angry there were tears in his eyes. It is the first time he has been violated like that. I’ve been ripped off before, so I could relate. Every year someone steals one of the kid’s bikes that they leave laying around and this summer someone brazenly came and got one right out of the garage! So the feeling of sucking up a theft is a familiar one but damn, it hurts more when you see your kid experience it. I hope Calvin is more religious about using his lock from now on.
The debate from JCecil’s blog is still on my mind. Other worries are as well which can only mean one thing – my menstrual cycle is getting back on track! Easy –go-lucky first part of the month/ weight of the world the second half. Yep sounds right.
I have found something that works wonders in giving me relief though. Science has proven that there are chemicals released in the brain of the nursing mother to give her a sense of wellbeing. If I nurse AND say the rosary, even if just in my mind, I can almost hit THE ZONE! I wonder if this is what people who practice meditation feel? It’s better than a Calgon moment.
I’ve got a TON of work to dictate tonight and tomorrow. I’ll be back to share my thoughts on some of this weeks events later. Now, I’m off to get those rosary beads and my baby.