acknowledgement and allowances
to-do lists fill my desk. notes and reminders and phone calls to be made. there’s not enough time… there’s too much time… there’s time that you wish you were spending differently than you currently are…
and in amongst the holiday stress, the cooking, the NOISE, shopping and entertaining and prepping, the UPS man at your front door, the holiday cards that still have not been sent… you find a way to breathe, if only for a moment. something occurs that allows you to make peace with the chaos and inhale a bit of joy.
the clock keeps ticking, moments continue to pass by with gusto and ferocity, and out of nowhere you hear laughter.
it takes a brief second for you to realize that the laughter is your own… which is so strange because just moments prior, you were certain that your head was going to explode and ooze out your ugly stress and angst and panic.
you pause and acknowledge the moment. your laughter quiets just a bit. you find you’re still smiling. it’s not that you have forgotten the hectic things that cloud your mind. they certainly haven’t gone anywhere, gotten any better, changed their status in any way. stress is still very much there, but the all-consuming nature of it has lifted… if only for a moment.
and for that snippet of time, you are free. you allow yourself to feel ok. good even.
it’s as though your brain reconciles with itself. it doesn’t let go of your stress, the stresses around you. it doesn’t allow you to forget the things that keep you up at night. but it loosens its grip.
and you happily acknowledge the momentary release of pain.
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if you could spare some words of encouragement, maybe light a candle, send some good juju to our dear friends, acknowledging their heroic strength, it would be so greatly appreciated. if i could take just a moment of their anguish away, i would. and if you could take a moment to offer them some love, i know it would lessen their pain just a bit. you can read their latest update here.
slipping away
over the last few weeks, i have felt my brain slowly slipping away to the land of panic and tension and fear. some days i worry that it’s the pregnancy screwing with my head, and other days it’s circumstantial things that have nothing to do with me but everything to do with me. and i take it all on as my own.
the sleeplessness has returned. the tears are RIGHT THERE. the heaviness and weight of it all feels paralyzing at times.
do you ever find that you are surrounded by people, loving people, well-intentioned people, and yet you feel utterly alone?
logic tells me this is a difficult time of year. the holidays are rough on everyone for varying reasons. the end of a new year and beginning of another brings on feelings and emotions that i am not yet ready to deal with. so i’ve been stuffing. i’ve been swallowing and stuffing and pushing these feelings down in the hopes that they bury themselves somewhere. i don’t know where exactly but somewhere. should they surface, i’ll have to deal with them and i simply don’t want to do that right now.
paul worked late last night, so i took jackson on a dinner date to panera. i watched him play with his batman and joker super heros, enjoy his grilled cheese, make faces at another little boy who i think wanted his batman and joker super heros, and just enjoy a change of pace.
as much as i relished some one-on-one time with my quickly growing little man, i couldn’t help but think of the dinner dates jackson and i have ahead of us come spring time when paul deploys. and then i couldn’t help but think about the fact that HOLY SHIT I’M HAVING A BABY WITHOUT HIM come april. and then i thought about how quickly time passes and how i am half way through this pregnancy… half way to delivering this little girl without my partner by my side.
how do you bring a life into a world without the love of your life being there?
and yes, it could be worse. i could be in the shoes of my 33 year old friend who is awaiting a double mastectomy next week for breast cancer that was luckily found with early detection. i could be in the shoes of our dearest friends, jackson’s godparents, who are awaiting results on their 2 year old daughter’s MRI and lumbar puncture to determine her course of treatment. because that’s what you do after your twin daughter has a brain tumor removed… you wait.
there is always someone who has it worse off than you do, just in the same way that there is always someone who has it better off than you do. it’s what you do with what you have been given that i’m trying to figure out. and given my brain and what it has a tendency to do, i’m struggling with that at this moment in time.
i’m hopeful. most days, i’m hopeful. and i do have support. but i feel it.
i feel myself slipping away from myself.
my solution for the dog has people questioning my sanity (no surprise)
red has behaved so horribly since we moved. honestly, he’s been awful and i have even referred to him as “a marley dog” on more than one occasion. and yes, i know he’s a lab and high-energy and needs a lot of attention and and and… but he’s trained. he is five years old and he’s trained.
he knows better. and he’s still being a bastard.
nothing is enough for him. no amount of attention, outside time, treats, walks, play time, none of it is ever enough. and ya know what? it needs to be enough, because while i love animals and think they’re fantastic, the bottom line is, they’re animals. my dog is not going to take priority over the humans in my life.
we treat him well. red is very loved. even on the days when he takes out his anger on us by leaving surprise turds throughout the house because we left him for a few hours, we still love him. he pisses us off, but we love him. he annoys the hell out of us, but we love him.
it dawned on me this weekend, when discussing red’s abundant attention-grabbing antics, that i may have a solution to this problem. i have figured out how to occupy the dog while still being able to live our lives.
we need a second dog.
i’ve mentioned it to a few people and have gotten mixed responses. some people think it’s a great idea and that red having a companion would help out his current shitty behavior. and other people think my pregnant status has caused me to multiply everything in my life, including canines, which is just crazy.
here’s the thing though… i am crazy. i was crazy enough to go along with paul and pick out red to bring home 3 days before paul left for japan for months. i’m crazy enough to add kids to this wack-a-doo world that we live in. pretty sure i’m crazy enough to seriously consider getting a dog for the dog.
red needs a friend. and i may just be crazy enough to find one for him… thereby filling our lives with more shit than i ever thought possible.
*EDITED TO ADD* comments below are awesome and give me a lot to think about… but i should mention that a cat is not an option for us as i am DEATHLY allergic to them. so thanks to those of you who have offered another type of animal as a suggestion, but a cat would literally kill me. kthxbye!
a couple quick things
last weekend, when my fabu-larious family was in town, we went to our favorite local breakfast joint. with 6 of us sitting at the counter, enjoying pancakes and bacon and eggs and cheese grits OHMY, a woman with video equipment approached us and asked if she could film us eating our breakfast.
UM NO. THIS BREAKFAST IS MINE. ALL MINE!
but we said “ok, no prob,” because really all she wanted was cutie pie jackson on film, dancing to the oldies with his pointer fingers in the air. we signed off on some paperwork and i really thought i’d never hear from her again… or at least not for a while.
then i checked my inbox this morning and saw that she had tracked me down to let me know when the local show that cameos local businesses is going to air (tomorrow at 11 pm, thank you DVR. OHMYGOD WE ARE OLD AND JUST WANT TO SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!)
i’ll get another email from her when the clips have been uploaded online so i can share them with you here, but rest assured, cutie pie jackson will keep you entertained. to be continued…
in other news, my appetite is cray-cray these days and i cannot get enough food in mah belleh.
what? you don't like a gooey and delish choc chip and walnut cookie right out of the oven so hot that it burns the insides of your mouth so good?
chicken pad thai so legit that even my husband who has been to thailand LOVES IT. no? don't like that either?
baskin robbins mint choc chip ice cream (no i was not paid to say that). see how quickly that double scoop turned into an almost single?
food is gooooooooood, y’all. this baby really really likes some food. bring on thanksgiving.
jackson hit a mega milestone this week, allowing paul to CUT HIS HAIR. he’s gotten so shaggy, esp since we haven’t had his hair cut since before the move. there’s reason why we let our kid walk around looking like a hairy hobo though, y’all. if you could witness what this child does at the little haircut joint, you would weep along with him and be all “OMG, OK, WE WILL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. I PROMISE” too.
paul, with the patience of something i will never come to understand because patience and i are not friends, sat with jackson on the floor in our living room FOR OVER AN HOUR and taught him the wonderful way of the hair clippers.
since jackson was not keen on the noise the clippers make, paul just had jackson comb his hair while holding the clippers. and then he got a baby doll of jackson’s and jackson gave her a little hair do. then we were kinda on a roll. paul tested the clippers with jackson a few hundred thousand times to get him used to how it felt and how it sounded… then they took eleventy and forty gazillion breaks… and then…
don't worry. it looks bad but jackson is giggling at the noise. NOT CRYING. i repeat, NOT CRYING.
i told paul to shave it all until jackson was as much of a fuzz head as he is so that we don’t have to do this again until 2012. so, he did.
ZOMG LOOK AT THOSE EYEBROWS.
and we surprisingly lived happily ever after. i believe this qualifies as a miracle and thus puts paul one step closer to sainthood.
phew… moving right along… over at babble this week, i posted about paul and i researching baby names via our family tree. seriously, this process is more fun than i could’ve imagined. we get to laugh at our ancestors names while trying to name a fetus who hopefully won’t hold his/her name against us for the remainder of our lives. (ps: i believe i find out the gender in the near future. more on that soon.)
since we were already sauntering down memory lane, i decided to take a gander at the beginning stages of this blog of mine. this little place of mine on the interwebz came to exist when i announced my pregnancy with jackson some 4 + years ago, and here i am now, blogging through another pregnancy. (it’s ok if you have ‘the circle of life’ playing in your head right now. i do too.)
and last, but most certainly not least, i admitted to myself and the internet world at large that i want to be a breast feeding champ this time around. i know! i know! it’s madness and i NEVER thought i would say that again after our trip through the 18,639 layers of hell we went through with jackson. but it’s true. i want to rock out with my… ok, maybe not quite like that, but i’m gearing up to give this boob thing another shot.
ok, that’s all. happy weekend! go eat some good food. read some good stuff. be sweet.
i got nuthin but pics for ya
and love. always love.
i shot different events for the jacksonville film festival this weekend. as of yesterday, i pulled something not fun in my back and have felt like i have the body of an 85 year old who needs calcium supplements and a chiropractor.
there are a couple of vagina doctor appointments on my schedule this week, and stories about jackson are never ending, so hopefully i will be back to my normal mommy blogging self soon. until then, feel free to scope out these shots and many others on the jacksonville film festival flickr page.
imma go fix myself an ensure milkshake and lay on a heating pad.
Have a Sip
