I had to stop at the store tonight, on the way home from my work/Tommy's karate/picking up Scotty to pick up some feminine products. And apple juice. Anyway, I just barely had enough product to finish up my last cycle, and as I reminded myself in the store tonight, "Self, you don't want to be caught ass out on the next go 'round." And I was reminded of why I was so short last time.

We had a gentleman come by the house a couple of months ago, when we were still trying to decide between adding on to the house and fixing some stuff around the house. He was giving us an estimate for something, and as he sat at our kitchen table, Scotty was ferrying tampons to him, a handful at a time, from the box in my bathroom.

He politely thanked him, and awkwardly tried to decide what to do with his hands ~ grab the tampons? Shove them in his pocket? Sit on them? While Erik cringed and I helpfully explained to Scotty that maybe this man does not want tampons.

It was one of those ridiculous parenting moments that I love so much. There have been way too many moments lately that I don't love so much. That have left me to wake up Erik in the middle of the night, sobbing, and trying to explain that this is not the kind of mom I want to be. Not at all.

*heavy sigh*. The only part of mothering that comes naturally to me is loving my children. I love them both more than air. Everything else is a daily, humbling ritual.

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and it was a wonderful day. Poor Erik; Tommy seemed to have interpreted "mother's day" as "anti-dad day" and poor E couldn't do anything right! It took us 7 hours of stop and go action to finish the third installment of the Indiana Jones franchise. We're all up to date and ready to go for number four. Bring it.

We played the Indiana Jones version of the Life game with Tommy. We barbequed at my mom's. A racoon ate the mean-ass rooster that had us cowering in her yard for months. The amount of rejoicing that was had when we found the only part of him that the racoon didn't eat ~ his head ~ was downright obscene. I'm sure our children will not be completely twisted!

But my MOST favorite thing was that Erik helped me paper mulch my front yard (2 yards of mulch!) and he helped me fill the raised beds with dirt/compost and I got my vegetable garden put in.

Truly, it was the best Mother's Day present I've ever received! Erik really is not what I would call "outdoorsy". We spent $6000 putting a deck/patio on the front of our house, and instead of using it, I find him sitting in the garage, reading in a glider, with the rolling door up and the side door cracked to get a cross breeze. Seriously. So the fact that he actually built one of the beds, and hauled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of dirt through the side yard and into the back...well, it's love. True love.

I have made a few things.  I forget to take pictures of a lot of the things I make.  I'm one who will give it to you the moment it is completed...or slightly before that, even.  I just don't have the patience to wait a day or a week or a month!  It's why I spent most of December cranking away on one craft or another; had I wised up and started earlier, I would have been left with a bunch of nothing by the time the gift-giving season started.  I wore a little red hat I had made one day to Tommy's classroom, and two little girls asked me to make them the hat ~ the requests were for "all pink" and "black with pink trim".  So I went home and whipped them up!  These little guys were whipped together in about 40 minutes each.  I am particularly fond of the little cards I made for the hats.  I cut words and images from a children's fairy tale book that I had thrifted for 99 cents, and used a little star stamp I had found in a box of "teacher stuff" too.  The cards were very sweet!  Two boys also asked for hats ~ one wanted "pokemon masterballs all over" and one wanted "cell phones all over."  Um.   Not sure what to tell you, boys!

I made these for a teacher at work who is about to BURST with a baby!  The little felt booties were made from a free pattern I 
found at Heather Bailey.  The dress I crocheted from a pattern in the Candy Tots book.  I went to a very fancy-pants yarn store and spent over an hour browsing books.   I like to make clothes and blankets for kids, because of the smaller sizing.  It makes a project zoom by!  I started this dress on Friday at a "Crochitting" (pronounce crow-shitting) party at my friend's house.  Four of us crocheted or knitted presents for the mom-to-be that we all work with.  Anyway, it was so fun!  We had breakfast for dinner and I got to listen to their crazy sweet stories.  They are all old enough to be my mom, but I have a thing for the older ladies.  I'd make a great cougar hunter!  haha  I finished the dress by Sunday.  My camera isn't doing the yarn color any favors here, but I have to tell you, it's a very cute ensemble!  The dress was a bit of work, but the little booties worked up in under an hour.  But don't you know?  People go NUTS over those booties!  Crazy nuts.  Go figure.

I have always had a hard time with Tommy's eating.  I'm not kidding,  I can remember when he was like 6 months old and I couldn't get him to eat raisins or mashed potatoes, or well, anything except peanut butter crackers.  The kid is a nightmare when it comes to food.  So here are a few things that have actually been working lately.  

First, I made a menu of items.  He named the restaurant based on an idea (or was it a dream?)

 he shared with Erik one day about opening our own family restaurant.  Everything on the menu is stuff that he will eat and more importantly, that I make at home and usually have the

ingredients on hand.  For example, he can order cheese pizza, but I make the crust myself (there are  a million easy recipes for this, and he likes to put the cheese topping on himself.  Oh, or even better, Trader J0es has prepared whole wheat and regular pizza crust for a buck or two in their refrigerator!).  Or he can order the cheeseburger, but it's lean beef and it's not McDonald's, so with baked fries I'm calling that a "win".  There are  some things on there he didn't know he would eat ~ like ravioli, but come on, if you'll eat spaghetti and meatballs, you'll eat cheese ravioli!  And he did, and he loved it.  I also add pureed veggies (a la deceptively delicious cookbook) when it works.  You might be able to tell that he added a meal at the top ~ he quite enjoyed a toasted peanut butter sandwich Erik made for him one evening!

There are only two rules:  Once he's eaten the meal, he can't have it again the rest of the week.  That way, he's not eating cereal every night for dinner, even though it is an option.  Ahem.  I don't know where he gets it.  The second rule is he has to tell me in the morning what he wants for dinner, so I can defrost anything that needs defrosting or stop at the store if I need to pick up any ingredients.  

Another thing that has been great is he's totally responsible for setting the table every night.  This has actually turned out to be a very charming situation.  I put all the place mats and napkins in the bottom cupboard of a hutch that lives near the kitchen table.  He puts it all out, and completely on his own, decided to start using our wedding china (stored in the same cupboard) for nightly meals.  It's  pretty dang cute, if you ask me!  He also ~ hold onto your ass ~ lights the candles on the table.  I know.  It's not for 

the weak.  I taught him to use the flicker lighter thingy (I suppose you have a better name for it???) and we've had three or four safety talks and a four point training program.  He does a great job.  Then, when it's dinner time, he rings a cow bell I got for him at the saddlery shop.  

The last big change was an idea I got from Super Nanny.  Seriously.  It's a snacking solution.  Tommy would rather snack than sit down and eat a meal.  When asked his favorite meal, he actually replies, "junk food."  So, I took this empty oatmeal container (I thought we'd decorate it, you know, tart it up, but 

he was all, "nah, it's good" which is pretty funny now that I'm thinking about it.  Boys.)  and at night he gets to pick 4 snacks for the next day.  One for school snack, one for lunch snack (he always gets a pb&j, yogurt, and sliced apples in addition), one for after school, and one for after dinner.  The snacks he chooses from a basket in the pantry (in the picture at left), and they go directly into his container.  He can eat anything in his container, but nothing at all directly from the pantry.  The "snack basket" he chooses from is filled with chips, nilla wafers, cheese and crackers, etc.  I usually buy bulk and then use the small plastic snack bags to make single servings of each thing, and he shops from that.

Between these three things ~ dinner menu, full table setting duties, and snack box ~ our fights about food have been reduced by eleventy-billion percent.  

Couple of issues:  I have the hardest time being consistent with the snacks, because when we run out, I often don't replenish fast enough.  And, if I haven't bought groceries, it's easy to run out of lunch stuff, so he buys school lunch on those days.  He always buys school lunch on Tuesdays, actually, but in a perfect world he'd bring lunch most days.  I'm hit and miss these days, but it will get better. 

The system works, you just gotta work it!

After we last spoke (haha), a doctor told us that he had no idea what was wrong with my grams, and it would be malpractice for him to do anything exploratory to find out.

Oh.

He told us that she was generally living well, and that she's 87 years old, and if it's anything horrible we'll know soon enough, but why go poking it with a stick in the meantime?

Oh.

He said knowing would be no different than not knowing, because the treatment would be the same.  As in, nothing.

So I sat with that for a long time, and I thought about it a lot.  And while I was thinking about it, my dear friend called to tell me that, although she's just fine now, she did have a wee surgery a few days before the phone call, because she had to have her kidney removed.  Because there was an encapsulated, cancerous tumor residing in it.  And she's the same age as my mother (young, in my opinion, at 61 and newly retired) and it took her about an hour to tell me the story that began with a routine office visit and bloodwork in January.

She told not a soul during the entire ordeal.  I mean, her husband knew, but none of her family or friends did.   At first she just didn't want to worry people for nothing, then when it turned into something, she just wanted to get through it.  If she had told me this story even a month before, I would have been shocked, possibly hurt, that she didn't feel confiding in me would have made things easier, that somehow my friendship and support could have eased her burden.  I mean, maybe just a little, I would have felt like that.

But after what I've gone through with my grandma this last month, I have to say, I think she was on to something.  Oh, I get it.  Yes I do.

It sort of happened to me right here on my little journal, actually.  Because starting to talk about it didn't make me feel better, and it only added to my burden because I didn't feel like I could write about all the things that are happening in my life right now ~ good or bad ~ because doing that would mean I had to deal with this other thing, first.

So that's what I'm doing right now, I'm dealing with this, even though it lingers on.  Her other doctor, just two days after I spent a week turning this over in my mind and coming to grips with it emotionally, took one look at her chart and, essentially, called "bullshit" and scheduled some kind of scoping activity for the end of April because she doesn't think any of this adds up and thinks there just might ~ oh maybe! ~ be something worth dealing with in her tummy.

See what I mean?  I just can't stop everything so that I can stare at this problem.  It's too much.  It's like trying to hit a moving target, and, rather surreally, life goes on.  Now I'm going to go wash my face and start over tomorrow.

Thanks for sending Gram some good vibes!  I'm pretty sure it's working because last night, for the first time in a week, we got some "not horrible" news.  Which is a serious victory, for real.  Let's see, basically they gave her an MRI and found a mass on her pancreas, a spot on her ovary, and a spot on her pelvis.  We're not allowed to use "the C word" because her mom, husband, and oldest child all died of some from of cancer and so it's her number one biggest fear.  That she'll get it.  And we were trying to figure out what to do about it.  Because, you know, everyone was pretty much saying, cancer.

But last night, a different radiologist looked at her mri and said, you know, maybe not.  Maybe that's just a shadow, instead of a mass, and could be calcium on her ovary, and say, wait a minute, didn't you say she broke her hip a few years ago?  Well, there you go, maybe it's just scar tissue from that.  And it's just that he's the first person who's offered any kind of reasonable explanation for any of the stuff that's been coming up, besides a diagnosis of cancer, and so she's off to see an oncologist tomorrow, because it's better to be sure, but it's just that it's the first time we have hope.  

I know that people do very well and survive all kinds of cancer.  It's just that she's 87 years old, and she's kind of been leaning into "failing general health" the last few years, so what if it's cancer and all the treatments for cancer are just too brutal for her fragile little self?  It's not a good scene.  But we'll hear more soon. 

Hey, do you ever notice that your sense of urgency and a doctor's sense of urgency rarely collide?  Like, she went into the hospital last Friday, for unspecified "bleeding" and "severe abdominal pain".  And they x-rayed her and said, oh yeah, there's  something on your pancreas.  Let's have a look at that.  On Monday.  On Sunday we'll scope out the colon, how's that?"  And then, on Monday, they're all really slow to get back with the results of the mri, but when they do get around to it, they're like, "Could be worse than we thought!  How about we do an ultrasound...in two days?"  And now, now that we're really getting down to brass tacks, somebody's going to want to get a look see at this stuff, maybe even get a biopsy, and when they come back tomorrow and tell us, "Let's schedule something for next week", then I am going to a poke a pencil through his ear and tell him no, now would be good.  Thanks.

My spring break was uneventful, and I'm having a hard time lately.  My adored grandma is in the hospital.  It really doesn't look good.  At 87 years old, and with a "mass on the pancreas", she has been in the hospital awaiting some fancy new "cat scan"  (what is it?  ct scan?) that will supposedly tell us about the mass and whether it has friends setting up camp in her lymph nodes.  I have a heavy heart, though I'm trying to heed my dad's advice.  ("No use hauling out the hoses until you know where the fire is."   Which makes me laugh again typing it out, but I know he's worried too. )  Each new dispatch from my parentsmakes me feel even worse...the vomiting, the blood, the....forget it.  Because I can't.

I'm just keeping myself busy until I can get to her, which will probably happen tomorrow.  

I finished this blanket this week.  It's for charity.  I was originally going to make a blue one with white and blue/white stripes, edged in black.  But the pattern was making me apeshit.  So I made this one this week.  I LOVE it's cheerful cheekiness.  Scotty loves this blanket too.  As I pieced the stripes together, the blanket got longer and longer.  By the time it was three stripes long, he would cuddle under it and if I put it away and then brought it back out again he would jump for joy and point and squeal the names of the colors and basically turn himself inside out with excitement.  I guess I'll need to make a second one for this little fidget!  I wish I had thought to do this earlier, because if I had I would have given him this one and made a new one for the charity; I could have worked out some of the kinks I had in putting it together.  I hope nobody minds that it's not perfect.  

I'm going to have to go keep myself busy for awhile, and await word from the hospital.

No chickens.  Erik pretty sternly told me he wasn't kidding.  Now, I like a challenge, and normally the minute somebody tells me "no" my Oppositional Defiance Disorder kicks in.   But, despite what I may write occasionally in my blog, I really like that guy.  And if he's so seriously against having a chicken, well, so be it.   Maybe I'll take his advice and talk my mom into letting me have chickens at her house, and I could visit them.  

So, I actually have some health related news.  I've always had really bad leg cramps, and the whole Restless Leg Syndrome that I've written about, too.  The last time I mentioned it, somebody emailed me (Hi KW, if you're reading this!!) and told me about how RLS might be related to low iron.  So, you know, what does it hurt to take an iron supplement?  Of course she was sensible enough to recommend getting some tests, but good god, that sounded like work.  I have had bouts of anemia my whole life, particularly when pregnant, so it's not uncommon for me to take some iron.

Anyway, it was interesting advice, so I've been stocking up on iron-rich foods and taking a supplement (and ohmygoodness if there is a chance of od'ing on iron, I don't want to know, but I think I'm in reasonable amounts...)  and guess what?  

I'm pretty sure I'm cured!  Okay, well, I don't know, but seriously, I've had NO jimmy leg and I've been virtually cramp free.  I did get a wee cramp in the bottom of my foot last night (and by "wee" I mean "cursing and nearing crying", but at least it was short lived) but it only served to remind me how long it's been since I've had any leg issues at all.

Thank you, Miss K!