All our love

It is with incredible sadness that I say goodbye to Laura and Justin's tadpole.

Thank you for sharing your spirit with them for a time.

I don't know why you came and went so fast, but I hope, wherever you are, that you're holding your big brother's hand and watching over your parents.

Home improvement strikes again

I have blogged many times about the joys and nightmares of home improvement projects. There was the flooring that I never did post a picture of...I will have to rectify that some day. There were the windows. There was the painting and the trim in "Alex's room." (I now say "Alex's room" in quotes because it obviously isn't Alex's room. Alex has a nice comfy suite somewhere in the afterlife, so we're going to use this room for some other purpose. We're not sure yet whether it will be a guest room or actually get used for a baby some day, so I just call it "Alex's room.") Anyway...I digress...

These home improvement projects aren't giving me grey hair. They're giving me weird ailments. This time...sore thumbs. Yep. Red, swollen, painfully tender thumbs. I cringe everytime I hit the space bar because it hurts. So what joyful project brought about the lightbulb thumbs? Why, installing a fence in our backyard of course.

I got the idea from Vixanne when she was having all that trouble with her homeowners association over her fence for her little doggy. Heck, if she can expend the money and effort for one little doggy, I should get off my fat ass and get to work to make a doggy playground for my FIVE (and multiple fosters).

Off we went with our sights set on something cheap and easy to install. NO SUCH THING! So we got what we thought was the least expensive and most efficient. It's wire, with vinyl coating to prevent rusting. Sounds good.

The posts, however, are a creation of some evil force that wants to torture me. No amount of twisting and turning or pulling and pushing is going to make this fence work with those posts. And believe me, we tried. I've got the swollen thumbs to prove it.

I have learned a few things over the past four months or so. The main thing is that I know when I've been beat. So tonight the posts are going back to Lowe's and I'm taking the credit card and buying wooden posts and fence nails. It's something I'm familiar with and I know I can operate. And I'm right handed, so I can be assured that, at most, only ONE thumb will be swollen and painful when I wake up the next morning.

Tell me it will be great once we get it done. Tell me I'll feel a sense of accomplishment when I see my furkids running around having a good time. Because right now, I'm this close to giving up. (When I say "this," imagine me holding my two swollen thumbs up about a quarter inch apart from one another.)

I hate tags

Lorem tagged me.

I hate tags for precisely this reason...

23rd post...fifth line...

Then it hit me...there's going to be four of us!

Crap.

I'm not going to tag anyone else...I'm not in the mood for this anymore.

Let me clarify

After reading comments from a previous post, I feel the need to clarify. There isn't an outward "yuck" that I'm worried about. It's that underlying discomfort everyone has with seeing pictures of a dead person (baby or otherwise). I know people want to be supportive, but let's be honest with each other...even MY first thought was, "Oh...dead baby." It wasn't until time had passed that I was able to see MY baby. And I know if I felt it as Alex's mother, then others most certainly feel it.

Let's face it, you don't want to sit and gaze at dead baby polaroids in quite the same way you want to gaze at nursery pics of a beautiful, perfect, pink, healthy, LIVING baby. I know I don't. I know I'm saddened by the harsh reality in those pictures...it doesn't give me a warm fuzzy cuddly feeling. Now I know people will be supportive and kind, but it's NOT the same as a living baby. It's not that I am ashamed of the photos...it's that it's not the same. It's that nobody will oooh and aaah and tell me how perfect he is...how beautiful. It's precisely that difference that makes me sad when I hear of new babies being born. I don't judge people for having their reactions...I totally understand them. I just feel sad that Alex doesn't get the good stuff.

How stupid is that? I think I've mixed up the issue again...

I feel sad that Alex didn't get to live...forget the pictures. THAT'S what I'm really sad about.

Balancing act

There's an old saying about angels dancing on the head of a pin. I wonder just how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I wonder this mainly because it seems to illustrate the precarious balance of life.

Today was a particularly hectic Wednesday. Certainly not as hard as Wednesdays used to be, but hectic nonetheless. It was a "normal" hectic...with me trying to get things accomplished while my three-year-old managed a running commentary and endless stream of "why?" questions. As he was napping in the car on a long drive home this afternoon, I got to thinking about how much I can really handle. I began to think about the head of that pin...and how much room is really there for balancing stuff.

It has been a LONG year...and it's only September. I remember the old days, when September meant the beginning of the school year...new school supplies...new school clothes...new class schedules...making new friends and seeing old friends again. But now September feels like the end of the year is approaching. There are no new beginnings involved here.

But I'm still here. I haven't died. I haven't had a mental breakdown...which I think I'm fully entitled to, by the way. And the normal things are starting to take up the space in my brain again.

We have no money. The dishes need done. The bathroom sink needs cleaned and I seem to be the only one who knows how to do it. The husband is irritating me with his lack of domestic skills. The son is making me crazy with the potty training setbacks. We have too many bills. We have too many animals.

It seems I can take a lot. I appears that I'm pretty tough stuff. I am woman...hear me roar.

But I still wonder if there will come a point where there will be too many angels dancing on the head of the pin. Will I have that breakdown? Will we have too many bills and not enough money? Will we catch bubonic plague from the crud in the bathroom sink?

And just what IS that goo I just scraped off the bottom of my mouse?

Just GREAT

And another thing...

What's new, right? I mean, it seems all I do is whine. Get used to it, cause I have a feeling it's going to go on for a while yet.

Another mommy from my June 2002 board had a baby girl yesterday. Her third. I know I shouldn't lurk because it's going to hurt...bad. But I'm happy for her so I just had to know.

So what's my latest problem? The well wishes. They just got to me this morning. "She's gorgeous," or "She's perfect," or "She's beautiful." Nobody but Steve and I will ever think that, let alone say it out loud, about our Alex. Instead of unfettered admiration at his beauty, there will always be that quiet little "yuck" underlying the conversation when we talk about him. Nobody will ever say he's perfect but us. There won't be any oohs and aahs over his head of hair (which was dark and thick, by the way). Nor will there be any giggles of delight at the recognition that he had his mama's curly toes. He deserved so much better.

Now I'm off to buy a baby gift.

A new day

There seems to be no shortage of things that remind me my baby died. Everywhere I look, in everything I see, hear, taste, feel...there is something. The list is infinite, it seems. Some moments I ache to repeat, and therefore look forward to the reminders. Other moments I ache to forget...so try to close my eyes or plug my ears in an effort to ignore them. I have very few "new" moments that I actually look forward to, like a normal person would.

Normal people get up in the morning and look forward to what new things they will think, accomplish or experience. I get up in the morning and wonder how this day will somehow relate back to that horrible day in May. I worry that I will break down somewhere inappropriate. I worry that I will say the wrong thing to someone and cause hurt feelings or anger. I worry that there will be no happiness in my day at all...or that there will be and that will somehow be unfaithful to my dead son. There is nothing that isn't related to grief or sadness.

I'm so tired of this...and I'm so tired of myself in the middle of this. I want to wake up in the morning feeling excited to face a new day. I want something that isn't tainted by this horror. I want some joy...some peace. The universe owes me...and I intend to collect. I just don't know how.

A day of rest?

I SAID I wanted to spend the day vegging at home, watching football, drinking beer, and playing Thomas trains with Sam. What actually occurred...Woke up and spent the morning underneath the lawn mower (up on ramps), picking clumps of grass out of the mower deck (that had previously caused smoke and a very nervous me refusing to ever get back on that thing ever again). That was fun.

THEN I got the bright idea to take Steve and Sam for a "quick trip to Lowe's." WHO AM I KIDDING?!?!? There is NO SUCH THING when talking about home improvement stores and boys (a lethal combo). And of course, the building materials we were looking for were out of stock at Lowe's. So off we trudged down the road to Home Depot. Home Depot...you can do it we can help. And help they did. We brought home all the materials necessary to fence in our backyard and make it a doggy friendly playground. It's going to be a thing of beauty. We considered starting the construction today, but the threat of thunderstorms caused serious second thoughts. Sam suggested he and Daddy could work while I held an umbrella. I asked if he remembered our tree and what happened to it...and that we didn't want to end up like that tree. He agreed.

I was testy and short tempered and nasty all day. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. But this evening I had an epiphany. It's just all too much. My brain is constantly playing a movie...and the added never-ending commentary of my three-year-old son...and the pressure of having my husband ask me a zillion and one questions about "what I want" out of this project or that project...along with the previous day's experience being social with my mother and multiple strangers...created a need in my soul to escape and find some quiet. Oh yeah...and I have PMS and a headache.

The best laid plans

You would think, after this year, that I would know better than to PLAN anything...or at least expect there's gonna be some pain when I do plan.

Sam hated Clifford and we left at intermission in order to avoid a major temper tantrum. He wanted a light spinner...I wasn't going to spend $20 on one when I know you can get them for $15/dozen. He wanted a pretzel, then popcorn, then a hot dog. OY! My head was pounding by the time we left.

Today, I spent at the craft fair. We sold a whole $62 worth of stuff. And I had to sit on this wooden chair that is, I truly believe, a Chinese prison torture device.

While mom was on a bathroom break, I happened to overhear a woman shopping at the personalized Christmas ornament table directly behind us. The ornaments are made of clay and they have "snowmen families." You can get them with 1-6 snowmen on it, and the lady would personalize each one with the names of your family members. This lady was commenting how she needed on with four snowmen on it because, "Four is the perfect number for [her] family." The man running the table said that's what his daughter thought too. She had had a boy and is pregnant with a girl, and that will be it. The woman agreed, "Me too...I got a boy and then I'll be having this girl, and that will be the perfect family." Thankfully, I did not have to witness her perfect pregnant belly that will bring her her perfect family, or I may have totally lost it.

The best laid plans hurt in more ways than one.

Tonight we are off to see Clifford the Big Red Dog at the Playhouse Square Center. Tomorrow I'm helping my mom sell her stained glass at the Geneva Grape Jamboree (which doesn't have a functional website, if you can believe that). Sunday I plan to catch up on all the housework I didn't get done Wednesday when the window guys were here. I'm not sure I can handle all the excitement. :o)

It was almost dry...


...and then...

While it may not normally happen on this grand of a scale, this sort of thing seems to happen all around us. People ALMOST have babies. People ALMOST have love. People ALMOST have financial security. You just never know when the next strong storm is going to blow through your life and wipe the slate clean, forcing you to start over, or at least retreat a bit and walk over some part of the path a second time. Where are we all headed? Two steps forward and one step back. Until we die. How ridiculously silly it all seems.

Vintage???

I am looking for a new lampshade. The one that got squished when we moved into our house four years ago has finally given up the fight and can no longer be reshaped back into place. When I left this morning, it was hanging woefully from the frame, like a basketball hoop that has been pulled down too far during a dunk shot.

So of course, I hit ebay to find something I like for a reasonable price. Apparently people think if you slap the label "vintage" on crap it will sell. I give you Exhibit A...Can you guess what this is supposed to be?

[ugly football lampshade picture no longer available]

A lampshade!

Second Child Syndrome x 10

I should have paid more attention. With my first baby I had journals and baby books to record everything...My favorite foods, my aches and pains, the things that would make the baby move. With Alex, I didn't do any of that.

I'm told it's quite common for the second child to have fewer momentos and fewer photos. I'm told it's normal. I'm told that women regret not having that stuff later on in life and they do their best to fill in the blanks in the baby book before their second child turns 30. But there is no baby book. There is no pregnancy journal. And it seems a waste to try to do it now, when it is all marred by the knowledge that there is no later-in-life opportunities to fill in the blanks...when some of the memories are already smoothed around the edges by the grief that chased them down and swallowed them up.

Why did I take it for granted? Why did I take Alex for granted? Because he was the second child, I thought all that stuff was less important than the time I spent with him "in the moment." I figured I would have time to play catch up later. Little did I know those oh-so-important moments would pass and I would be left with nothing but a fading memory.

Blinkie signs?

I visited the month board where all the June 2005 mommies migrated to after graduating from the Due in June board. They've made themselves a blinkie...with a blue dragonfly on it.

Equinox

Tomorrow is the autumnal equinox signifying the first day of autumn. I survived the summer I wasn't sure I would survive. I should be happy.

Maybe God read my blog

After all this time, it seems God, or luck, or fortune, or fate, has finally tuned into my various rants and raves. One day after my conversation with Ms. Clueless at the Vital Records office, Alex's Certificate of Stillbirth arrived in the mailbox. AND, we get one free, so the state will be refunding my $15.

I'm not happy...not sad...just numb...and angry.

I'm more than slightly pissed off that the powers-that-be didn't start reading my blog sooner. Why does the universe listen to me when I ask for something insignificant like a certificate? Why didn't the universe listen to me when I talked about how much I wanted my son? Is a $15 refund really supposed to make up for that little oversight?

Don't you think he deserves a good home? 

Isn't he a doll?