mydarlingcurse.com

yeah, you sure do. or at least i think you did.

i was in sunny arizona for 10 days, i know, i know. i totally suck. but we had some massive family time that was much needed and that’s really all i have to say about that.

catching up….

had ultrasound the day i left - they check the length of the femur bone for dwarfism. for some people this is a major concern, but for me and my over three foot tall daughter and my over six foot tall hubbin, not so much. we kinda laughed when they told us that’s what they were doing. BTW, the length of bunny’s femur bone puts him about 5 days older as to what we now him to be.

yeah, i call bunny a him, don’t read into it, we DON’T KNOW THE SEX OF THE BABY!

bunny is very active in my belly, it’s neat. but at three in the morning, nope.

baby A is doing well. holding steady, little trooper. he had a hole in his heart that they tried treating with neoprophin, this didn’t work, so they had to go in surgically and fix it. apparently, this type of thing is really common in preemies, but surgery on something that small frightens the hell out of me. he sailed through it though, didn’t bleed as much as they expected him too and every drop counts with that little guy.

i have a strong need to go to church on sunday and put him on the prayer list.

my dad’s 70th birthday is happening on tuesday. we (annie oakly and i) are planning a huge bash for him. this planning took up two whole days of my time in AZ. i know, poor me. but it’s giving me a stomach ache. thankfully, it will all over on tuesday. last year, at this time, we were making plans to put my mom into the ground. we buried her on his 69th birthday. i promised her then and there and i would make this year more of a birthday to remember and celebrate. i don’t want him to use that day as the day he remembers as his birthday.

i’d like to accept this Daughter Of The Year award on behalf of my self. if only adrien brody were there to hand me the statue and make out with me.

so thank god the throwing up thing was short lived. but let me tell you, puking in your car, with a two year old in the backseat and your neighbours watching - not so much.

throwing up is just plain gross. it’s funny in cartoons, but that’s about it. it’s not like farting - which always gets a laugh. no, puke is just stanky and gross.

so after all that, i crawled into bed whipering and slept and slept and slept and felt somewhat better. slootie and psycho jen both told me to get my ass into the doctor. and they are right. at 20 weeks pregnant - i should not be so stubborn about my own health.

i called the OB nurse line this morning and they were like, go to urgent care, go! NOW! so i went and got some antibiotics.

the lovely SIL came over to bbsit the boo, which was nice. she needed to get out of that mad-house over there for a bit.

then, ten minutes after i got home, boo woke up from a nap with a fever and her third poppy diaper of the day.

I KNOW! i can’t catch a break! i just can’t.

and i want so badly to go see baby A - he’s not doing that well - but i am fucking germ factory and i think that walking into a NICU at this point would not only be irresponsible, but would probably get me nominated for asshole of the year.

and,
And,
AND…

i missed class last night. i so so so so wanted to go and hang with adults and make moon-eyes at the vodo, but nope. i was under the covers whimpering.

throwing up is gross.

Mitch: You know, um, something strange happened to me this morning…
Chris Knight: Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?
Mitch: No…
Chris Knight: Why am I the only one who has that dream?

so during a very bizarre dream last night - involving naked time with hubbin in a creepy basement - this huge explosion went off. it was so vivid, i woke up panicked. i was breathing heavy (not from naked time) and listening for boo’s cries and sirens and the dog to bark or something. but nothing happened.

so either i have completely snapped and the explosion was the last of my sanity being blown to oblivion, or naked time with hubbin is a lot more exciting than i remember.

as you know, i’ve had a hard time dealing with baby A being in the NICU and his parents’ reaction, or lack of action to it. today i had an oppertunity to be in the NICU for a while with the Crazy SIL. and while i feel like she’s not as detached as i initially thought, i’m still having a hard time relating to how things are going.

i’m not the type of person who can abide in some state of ingnorant bliss. i need to know stuff. the ventilator alarm is going off…her reaction “oh it does that all the time”. my reaction “why is it going off and what does it mean for baby?” the nurses come and go, they tweak stuff and watch the monitors and then leave. what are they doing? what are they looking at and what does it mean for baby? Crazy SIL can just let it all gloss over, shrug and say, if it was major, they’d tell me.

in some ways i envy her that.

in other ways - i feel like she needs to be there - and when she’s there she needs to be present.

medically, baby A could be doing better. they had to put a PIC line in his little twig arm, and an IV port in his little twig leg. he now has a chest tube, due to an air bubble in his little chest. he could be doing worse, but he is looking less like a baby and more like a stereo with all the tubes going into him. and the new ventilator is so loud he has to wear ear-muffs, and he was under the bili-light so he had a eye-mask on. and for the first time ever today i thought - at what point would i say, enough?

the DML is my dream make-out list. people who have shown up in my dreams and have made out with me. not people i would like to make out with.

already a standard on my list, Adrien Brody made another appearance last night. the original list is on the old site, which is lost to me, but hopefully not lost forever. others on the list include noah levy and constantine maroulis, you should see a theme.

things went something like this…. mr. brody was playing hard to get, but he’s too much of a stone cold fox for me to play that game very long. so i pounced in pure bad kitty form. short of swallowing him whole, i nibbled on his lower lip. he stopped and put a finger to his lips in a thoughtful gesture and said very softly, but firmly, you can’t do that.

why not?

because i like it too much….

and here my darlings is when things turned utterly pornographic. but that’s just for me. sorry.

yesterday (11 november) was the one year anniversary of my Mom’s passing. i told hubbin at one point, i don’t even remember what i was doing a year ago. i know i packed up her things at the hospital (the bag is still packed, unopened in a spare room), i know i came home and slept. but as for specifics - i’m lost.

and in true Mother fashion, we went to church yesterday. she gets all the credit for bringing back into the flock. slootie and the kids and hubbin and boo and i all went. KK and Bubba are in Religious Ed. classes and they HATE it. but we all go together and then do brunch afterwards.

we headed to granite city for yummy cheesy hashbrowns and to watch the vikings get trounced. afterwards i dropped of hubbin and boo and went to the cemetery.

the headstones aren’t in yet, but that’s ok. i know where she is. and as i sat there, listening to crowes and watching squirrels, i could hear a familiar voice in my ear, saying “don’t make this my day”. i know for a fact that my mom doesn’t want us to do sad, mopey things on this day. she doesn’t want to be remembered for her death, but for her life. and i know that, but i still felt the need to go to the cemetery anyway. mainly so that if i was going to breakdown, i could do it safely and not have to explain anything.

so she loves the fact that we went to church, loves it. and she loves that hubbin and boo and i went outside to play for hours. we did things that, if she were here, she would have taken great simple pleasure in.

i still miss her terribly. but i didn’t cry yesterday. she kept telling me not to, that she didn’t want that - and with the holidays coming up, i’m sure i’ll have some random crying jag in the toy aisle in Target.

dear e-mail contacts,

while it is always a pleasure hearing from you, i am getting more than tired of massive forwards containing urban legends, outdated information, and stuff that just plain pisses you off. this week alone i received outdated cold medicine drug recall information, a notice about jury duty scams and an e-mail begging me to boycott The Golden Compass, because it’s about “killing God”. while i take full responsibility for opening these e-mails, i always try to forward back the correct information.

if you are going to laden me with useless bullshit, i’m going to zing you with the facts. might sound harsh, but i’d sick and tired of living in a uninformed world.

and here is the thing about The Golden Compass. both hubbin and i read the book, and in no way did i feel that it was about “killing God”, if it actally was about killing God, i would have enjoyed it much more. but this stupid knee-jerk reaction about anything that questions our faith, whatever it may be, is just ridiculous. but i guess now that Harry Potter is all wrapped up, militant christians need something to bitch about.

the e-mail asking me to boycott this movie was from one of hubbin’s relly’s that i’ve only met about twice. and i’m willing to bet that she’s just passing it along because “it’s the right thing to do”. and this, my darlings, is why i feel like society is breaking down.

i couldn’t help but feel like maybe i shouldn’t be there at all - that it was a private time, that it’s not my baby, that i might be stepping on toes - but there are no toes to step on. Crazy SIL called me this morning and left me a voicemail asking if i was going to the hospital today. and after about 45 minutes of doing everything but call her back, i did. and she asked me if i could stop by the nurses station of her old room (she was discharged yesterday) and see if they had her cell phone charger.

this was beyond odd to me.

i mean, i’m the one who eventually brought up my whole reason for going to the hospital - baby A. and then she’d talk about him, but it was super weird. and that is when i got the feeling like, should i even be doing this at all?

and the answer is yes, but i didn’t get that reassurance until i walked into baby A’s room in the NICU.

thankfully, Grandma and i are on the same page, feeling like someone needs to be there everyday. and there does, there absolutely does. and it should be his parents. but for reasons beyond my comprehension, his parents aren’t there. and that fact is what is causing a lot of problems for me.

Grandma was there too, and we ooo-ed and ahhh-ed over the little guy for a little while. he was super snuggled in today, which i think is good thing - and he’s safe and warm and was very comfortable looking. she and i chatted for a little bit and i said at one point, you know, i think it’s good just having him hear us talk. he knows we are here with him. she agreed.

i had brought some of boo’s lesser favorite books to read to the little bug. more story books which she no longer sits still for, rather than the picture books she now knows by heart. i suppose he wouldn’t care if i read him the wall street journal, but it’s got to be a least interesting for me. =)

i introduced myself to his nurses and asked about how he was doing. Crazy SIL was able to fill me too when i talked to her, but i think it’s always good to talk to the nurses too. yesterday’s ultrasound revealed a small “grade one” brain bleed. the nurse talked me through it, grade one being the most moderate, grade four the most severe. they will keep doing ultrasounds to watch it. the nurse said the bleed was tiny and most of the grade one bleeds resolve themselves on their own. so that was good news.

what is not so good is that he has a tiny hole in his heart, which i common probably for his gestational age, and in the womb it would be no big deal, but since he’s out they need to treat it. if it doesn’t start to close with drug treatment, they will have to do heart surgery to close it up. i can’t imagine heart surgery on something so tiny. do they make instruments that small? for animal tests maybe but christ, that choked me up.

i am so glad that i went though. i read him some stories and we talked for a bit. i told him i would be back on saturday and i’d read more to him then. i told him that i loved him, and that if i could reach and touch him i would. i’d hold him and smooch him, but that it can wait for now. but that he better hurry and get big so we could cuddle. and his little arm seemed to float up and reach for my voice, and then he snuggled back in.

sweet little guy.

here’s the thing about Vince Vaughn - i really wish he hadn’t done the remake of Psycho. everything else i’ve been ok with, but that just sticks in my craw. like if i were making out with him, i’d be thinking - this is the guy from that shitty remake of Psycho. and then i’d lie and tell him i had to use the bathroom, and then i’d sneak out and go home.