Moving Forward?

I think (THINK! Have no confirmation on this whatsoever) that my brother-in-law went on a date Sunday night.

I won’t lie.  When I first heard, I felt like I was going to vomit.  It hit me really hard.  Once I got past that, I felt ok with it.  Then I felt really sad, for him.  Sad that he has to be doing this (if he even is–or does in the future).  I just picture him in my mind–getting dressed, perhaps mentally wondering if he looks ok– chatting with a lady, doing all those “date” things.  I personally have not been on a date–a real first date–in about 11 years, so I can only imagine how nervewracking it must be for someone who has lost his wife and is raising their daughter alone.  Those mental images bring tears to my eyes.

Like I said, I don’t know if it was a date or not.  I do know that he had dinner with a lady and my niece and that he brought the lady flowers.  I’m basically jumping to my own conclusions here.  I know he won’t tell me and I would never ask.  The longer that Jen is gone, the more alienated from him I feel.  I wonder if it’s hard for him simply because I’m her sister?  Or maybe because we resemble each other or our voices sound so similar?  Or maybe he never liked me and just tolerated me because he loved her so much.  Who knows.

There’s no conclusion to this at all.  I just needed to get it off my chest.

Friday Night

Sitting in my recliner, fighting to stay awake.  I have been getting up before 5 AM for about 2 weeks now.  Today, though, my husband took Sunshine out and did errands for an hour so I could take a nap.  It was glorious.

But then he went out of town for 5 days and left me all alone with the baby and the dogs.  It’s nothing I can’t handle, but the house is so much quieter with the knowledge that I’ll be taking the dogs out before bed and sleeping with them as the warm bodies in the bed.  I’m thinking about making cookies.  We’ll see how that pans out.  I really want to eat warm chocolate chip cookies but I don’t feel like  making them from scratch.

Over on the ZRecommends website (which is, in their own words, “a product review, consumer research, and parenting blog”–and it is a great resource) I saw a link to this extremely powerful article written by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.  It is an extremely sad and painful article to read, as it covers the subject of parents who accidentally leave their children in their car seats in the car.  I have been hesitant to post a link to it here, but I really think that it is a subject that deserves attention.  Prevention through education.

Warning: very, very sad.  Could bring tears.  Not that I say that from experience or anything. (Full disclosure: I cried my eyes out reading it and my husband thinks I am crazy for reading stuff like that but I just think it needs to be done.)

Time Suck

I signed up for Twitter so I could follow Drew.  And now I’m hooked.  As if I needed something else to magically make my time disappear.  The good thing is I can’t figure out how to acitvate my phone and I’m not even going to try to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

Life with baby is good.  She is all over the place, crawling and throwing her little body every which way.  At betime we lay on my bed and I play the first BabySigningTime DVD while she rolls around and screeches.  She is a loud baby and I love to hear her voice.  She makes the funniest faces when she screams at the top of her lungs.

She goes down easy and sleeps soundly through the night.  For some unknown reason, though, she has been waking up between 4-430AM for the past 5 days and she is AWAKE.  The first two days she woke up sobbing, screaming in her crib.  Now she just sits up and coos, then yells, until she sees my face.  I stumble into the nursery half asleep while the dogs make themselves comfortable in the hallway and the cat scratches at the office door.

It’s not unusual for me to see the sunrise.  I’m used to it.  But my coffee consumption has skyrocketed with these 4AM wake-ups.  By the end of the day I am a walking zombie.  But I wouldn’t change it, not a thing.  I am glad the days are getting longer now so that after I put her down for the night, there is still some daylight left for me to play with the dogs in the yard.  It is something that I have truly missed.  They are such good dogs, so patient with me and the baby.  I know it is inevitable that I am unable to devote as much attention to them as I did in the past; I hope they understand.

Today is 7 years that my husband and I have been together.  I refer to this day as our “unofficial anniversary”, now that we celebrate our wedding day (which is coming up in about two weeks and will be 4 years).  So tonight I am making an effort to stay up just a bit later and not fall asleep on the couch.  It’s the little things.

Announcing…

My friends Drew and Margie have their new website up.  Follow them from French Polynesia to New Zealand and beyond!  Feel free to pass it on…the more the merrier.

Drew has been working hard on the site design but he’s also got a TON of stuff to do before he leaves on Wednesday so parts of the site are still in raw form.  Margie is staying in the States for another few weeks to tie up some loose ends and they will reunite on the other side of the world.  Nice.

Am I gushing too much?  I’m just so proud and happy for them.

Get Lost On Purpose

Update

Thanks for all the well wishes about my dad.  Much appreciated.

He’s home from the hospital and doing ok.  Still hasn’t passed the stones so there’s pain associated with that and he’s also extremely tired.  But he’s alive and able to take fluids so it’s a start.

Other than that, not much else going on.  Pretty basic here in Sucktown.

Dad

My dad has had this kidney stone for the last week.  He seems prone to them and this one in particular is giving him a lot of trouble.  Twice in the last week he has gone to the ER because the pain has been too much to bear.

Last night we were watching Pineapple Express (which is so funny, I haven’t laughed that hard watching a movie since Stepbrothers) and my mom called from the hospital where they had been all day.  The pain had just gotten out of hand.  Today he’s having a stint (or stent?  I’ve seen it spelled both ways) put in to help the kidney stone pass.

Is this serious?  I don’t really know.  I’m under the impression that it is surgery–real surgery.  And my dad is not young although he seems to be in decent health.  He’s at the hospital where Jen died and that makes me sick–that I have to go back in there and that he’s going to have a medical procedure done there.  And maybe it’s fine.  It’s  a different doctor and different circumstances but I just can’t help feeling ill about everything.

Jen probably (maybe?) would have died regardless of what hospital she had gone to that day.  I just get so angry when I picture the asshole doctor laughing it up at the nurses station mere feet from her bedroom door.  I will never know if someone could have done a better job and saved her; there’s no way to go back and redo it.  And the thought of my dad having to be a patient there weighs on my heavy heart.

Not to mention that I also have a slight cold and my mom–who is insanely difficult to reason with–has emphatically insisted that I NOT wait at the hospital with her because hospitals are dirty and germy and she doesn’t want my Sunshine there.  So now my mom will be all alone.  I know that thoughts of my sister and my uncle who died in August are swirling through her mind.

Ugh.  I need help.

Thoughts

Dear People Who Have Different Opinions/Positions/Thoughts Than I Do,

STOP JUDGING.  I’m not asking for your opinion, just the information.

Love, me.

Sunday

Cuteness for the day: my niece calling avocado “colorado.”  Ha ha, the lols.

As chapters close and people are now finally able to really move on, I have been thinking about how much I have–my wonderful husband, my daughter, our dogs.  The life we are building seemed a far away vision years ago, back when it was conceived as sparks between two people on opposite sides of a restaurant line.  When everything exploded and the shit hit the fan, very few people stuck with me…and only one of them is with me now.  All the others have faded away, friendships ended over anger or hurt feelings or simply grown apart.  But that one…a dear friend he is.  An amazing person, a solid individual who has a new chance, someone who deserves all the treasures life has to offer.

My friendships are few but the ones I have I hold onto with a firm hand.  And this is one I will never let go.