100 posts a blur

i always tell myself that this year, the holidays will be different. no frantic antics. no losing control or even a hint of my precious sanity. that i will float gracefully with ease into the sunset of christmas eve.

snort.

here i sit. my house is chaos. there are so many things to do and not nearly the time, the energy, the oomph. things to plan! things to do! things to be finished! my devotions have fallen by the way-side. i can't keep up with blogs or emails. photos need to be developed; christmas cards sent. i have a stack of snowmen waiting to be stuffed. laundry is threatening to overflow into the kitchen. i have yet to hem my jeans and i haven't practiced bella's lines for the christmas play with her nearly enough. cans for the food-drive need to go to the library. a toy to the church for the giving depot. jasons' car is in the shop with a yet-to-be-decided price tag on repairs, and he'd borrowed his dads truck for the time-being, which is now in the shop itself, after a lovely law-abiding citizen decided to throw a cinder block thru the window to steal some tools.

and still, there is that pregnant pause, waiting for just that right moment to pee on the stick.

with each passing day, i do this mental checklist and i find that i am far from basking in the peace and joy of the season.

reminding myself to breathe is helpful. as is remembering to take a moment to be still. and be thankful for Gods blessings in all of this. if i've not got back to you or i'm a little quiet these days, i'm sorry. but i still love you all. and i hope you're remembering to snatch those quiet moments when you can.

in the interim, here's the funny

lovely baby bumps

my sister told me the other day that she marks my progress by my lack of posting, and i had to admit that tho i hadn't really looked at it that way, it was true. often, when i find my mind busy and my heart hopeful, my computer time goes by the way-side.

the marked difference nowadays, is that when i come to a place of feeling somewhat guilty at not writing, i put myself in check and question my status: am i really ok? or am i avoiding? not long ago, i began embarking upon the story of my very personal struggle on a private journal, only to abruptly come to a stand-still. but i'm choosing to let that guilt go. i came to a really painful dip in the valley, so to speak, and i don't think there's harm in a time-out, from time to time. it will be there waiting for me, when the time comes.

i'm happy to say that right now, my absence has nothing to do with avoidance and everything to do with a busy holiday season in full swing. i may not post as much, but i promise i'm not layed up under the covers with the curtains drawn. i'm busy with work and shopping and preparing and practicing lines and running to rehearsals and doing crafty-type things, my sewing machine humming away or fingers calloused from stuffing.

last year at this time, i was in a painfully different place. so this? feels good.

i spent this morning in the hospital with flow. a routine test in her life is an all-out event. sensory reaction goes into overdrive. she is scared and away from her comfort zone, add to that the many medical professionals that walk in unprepared to deal with someone like her and it makes for quite the ordeal. and tho i've for the most part been removed from her day-to-day schedule, i wasn't surprised when i got the phone-call asking if i could be there with her today.

jason was irritated that i'd even consider it, after the way my position has been handled. and i could see where he was coming from. i see their request for what it is. to take something/someone, off their hands. its what they always do, when under the crunch. and i must be on speed-dial. but then i think of flow ~ scared and alone ~ and that's all it takes for me to say yes. i may not be much at times, but for some unknown reason, i am a comfort in her life. and i'm happy to be so.

the last few nights have been strange. tuesday, especially. i didn't sleep well. i kept waking up, having to pee. and then i woke up at like 2 in the morning and was convinced if i didn't eat saltine crackers i would most certainly vomit or die. i wasn't exactly sure if it was the breakfast for supper thing that my husband lovingly prepared since i was all depressed about my failed photo shoot and sucky mom skills. you know... too much sausage before bedtime.... or if it was that i chose to uncharacteristically take my vitamins before hitting the hay.

i have this weird relationship with things containing the connotation; yea the insinuation of the word *healthy* in my life. vitamins being one of them. after years of being nonchalant (read: ignorant) about my health and the lack thereof, tho with good reason, considering my childhood illnesses, and the then onslaught of every upper respiratory infection this side of the equator, combined with my dad eventually suggesting this immune supplement/power vitamin combo, that for me, was like discovering the holy grail, i find that i now break into a cold sweat and panic if my daily regimine is interrupted.

which, as it would happen, tends to happen often, in my world. i have the best ideas. seriously. talk to my parents about the plastic squeeze bottle phenomenon. oh, they're feeling it now. it all could've been ours....this squeeze bottle empire. but no.

anyway. so the ideas are grand. sadly, i fail in the execution. i'm a procrastinator. also, i lack basic skills. such as, i dunno, how to actually do something. i'm as loony as a bat and forgetful to boot. i like to think that tapeworm i swallowed to eat my food for me and make me a skinny minnie, took a detour up to my brain, where slowly, he sucks the ooze out of what was once, i'm sure, unparalleled intelligence and excellence.


i'm kidding. i'm kidding.


there was never any real evidence of intelligence...

so vitamins! all that said, i hate vitamins. i cannot smell them or i will gag. also, i cannot simply take them with water. so i take them in really cold milk. or yogurt. which is an acquired taste all in and of itself, my friends.


i hate taking them, worse. so i experiment with different times. i dunno. it never really works. but it keeps me occupied.


so i took them before bed and we were laying there with the dvr on pause because i totally interrupted "dirty jobs" to tell jason about this cute husband meme i'd seen on one of my favorite blogs and then, as i do, managed to beat the subject to death. but it was fun for awhile. jason actually appears to know far more about me than i about him. at any rate, we finally got bored and ran out of off-beat, random questions to ask eachother and went to sleep.


so by the 3rd time i got up to pee, i was all, this is just a bummer. i found myself snacking on saltines, which i hate and had only brought into my house in the first place, under the thinly veiled premise/intention of making cracker candy for christmas.


but then it hit me. i was all, dare i hope? could it be? nooooooo. i mentally calculated things in my head. i had that month long period in august, and then.....

it was all too surreal, because for the past couple months, jason has been talking alot about babies. as in, we should have another one. to which my reply is, bring it. the odds are against us for a myriad of reasons but we've not been doing anything in the lines of prevention for years now. i've always kind of just figured if it was meant to be, God would see to it.


in times past, i'd get all excited and then totally depressed when it turned out not to be. and losing 2 babies was so hard. so i've tried to just let it go.


we'd been talking about what we wanted for christmas and in all honesty, we could think of nothing. which was awesome. and very freeing. the thought that all that glitters is not gold.
i'd like to help out people less fortunate. and sure, we'd love a wii. and then there are the logical, needed things we put on the back burner. like a transmission for my neon. or jason getting a partial for his upper plate. money and life and things are far from perfection. the economy sucks right now. jobs are possibly on the line.


but it felt really good to say that we're happy. and content. that we're beyond grateful for all the incredible, awesome, mind-blowing blessings that have just literally been poured out on us this year. and that, after all that, anything else, really just pales in comparison. when i think of where i myself was, a year ago, i'm just beyond words.


today, right now, we have our jobs. we have a roof over our heads. we have cars that get us where we're going. due to an ungodly 9 hour layover at chicago's airport last february, we have free tickets to go back to NE for the holidays. to see my family. to wrestle and snuggle little nephews. to shop and cook with my sister and mom. to follow in the traditions of my own childhood christmases in years past. with 2 exceptions that are definately credited yet slightly tainted in my memory, due to a massive heart attack and then a massive family argument, respectively, i've not made it back for an actual holiday with all of my family since leaving home. and without divulging my age, thats been a long time, my friends. saying i'm excited is the understatement of the year.


my mom sent some unexpected christmas money early. bella and i got new winter coats. i got my hair done. bella got a pretty christmas dress. jason got new work-boots and thermals.


we don't need anything else.


so we kind of came to the conclusion that a baby (for jason) or a new watch (for me) would be pretty sweet.


so as i crawled back into bed for the 4th time last night, i sleepily patted my tummy and asked God that if i'm really pregnant, our baby will be just right. and then i asked if he could send me a sign. like a *for real* sign. one that i couldn't miss.


kat you're pregnant.


um. yah. yeeeeaaaaaah, that would be cool, something like that...


ok. you are.


i sat bolt up in bed and began an exasperating argument in my head. don't you hate when you can't decipher that still small voice and your own inner dialogue? oh you don't have that problem. well fine then.


all of a sudden, i'm wondering if all the peeing i've been doing is for a reason other than a bladder on crack. usually i'm the one with the industrial strength bladder that can go for hours without a stop. and the dream i had the other night? the one where jason took a 2nd wife because of my inadequacies and i woke up mad as a hornet? ahhh yes. i remember those dreams when i was pregnant with bella. my sisters' call the other day, talking about her friends' daughter whose name is, coincidentally, my all time 2nd favorite name for a girl. and i log onto dooce this morning for the first time in a month, only to discover she is pregnant. i've been sick at my stomach periodically for the past couple of weeks, actually.....


so.


i bought a test.

here goes nothin.

if you only knew....

the blood, sweat and tears it took to get that christmas shot down below.

oi, the agony.

i admit i'm a tad prejudiced. i tend to side with sophie. think my kid is pretty durned cute. and i like to take pictures to prove my point.

once a year, about this time ok, lets face it, usually 3-5 days before christmas, i pick up bella from school and we spend an afternoon primping and curling and generally girly-ing up for the all important Perfect Christmas Shot that will inevitably be talked about for generations and that all the grandparents and aunts and great-aunts and friends and friends of friends are waiting, with baited breath, in tingling anticipation, to receive.

or at least i tell myself this. don't rain on my parade. better yet ~ don't melt my snowman.

in the early years, when my child was golden and naturally photogenic and i thought i had money to roll up and smoke, i'd take her to olan mills. they chopped off an extremity each time for the bill, but boy-howdy was my kid cute. ringlets and halos, my friends. ringlets and halos. as early as 6 months, my little red-headed, blue eyed bundle of energy was perfection for the photographers. sitting so still. holding a pose. smiling so beautiful.

and then, the teen years set in. 'round about kindergarten.

all of a sudden, my perfect little poser would rather eat spinach wrapped liverwurst rolls dipped in rancid goat-cheese, than to sit still and take a picture. i have more photographic evidence of blurs and bottoms than actual face-shots.

my little calvin down there at the bottom of the page making all his little faces? he is my little friend. why? because he reminds me to laugh. because he is my child, personified.

now. usually, i reserve this daunting nightmare task for the privacy of our own home. that way i can muffle the screams. as it turns out, i am evidently a dissatisfied photo-hungry ogre. my daughter, the diva.

and for some unforseen reason, last year, due to a lapse of good sense and mostly to the fact that we didn't actually get a tree til the week before christmas, i got the idea in my brave head, that it would be fun to take pictures at nana & papaws.

due mostly to the fact that they actually had a tree.

which went over like hitler performing a circumcision.

the whole thing ended in frustration and tears. and then there was bella. later, my m-i-l would take it upon herself to inform me that i was a loser (tho she was slightly more delicate) and that i "expected entirely too much out of my child. that rolling around underneath the tree with her rump in the air was perfectly natural, not to mention beautiful. that i should have got the shot. "

this from the woman that took my child in leotards, a santa hat and a *lets get physical* belly-tee to sit on santas lap at the mall.

and no. i will never show you that picture.

as it happens, i'm saving it for my tell-all autobiography when my daughter hits hollywood.

so yeah. i suppose we'll chalk up yesterday to a combination of being high on sinus medication, a mocha moo-latte and/or nothing better to do with my time. i had torture on the brain, my friends.

we'll go with that.

at any rate, i picked bella up from school and convinced her it would be the best, most funnest thing in the whole wide universe, to dress up in her pretty dress and curl her hair and use all manner of ribbons and nail-polish and such, and take: drum roll please, christmas pictures! at nana and papaws!

woohoooooo!!

now. i should tell you that the process leading up to the apocalypse is flawless. absolutely brilliant, for those of our british friends, amongst us. yes, my daughter will be selling mary-kay by 10.

:sob:

she doesn't get it from me. i can barely match my bra to my underwear. my idea of makeup is lipgloss and mascara. i may remember to actually curl my lashes, first. if i'm getting really fancy, i will dig my hot rollers out, circa 1992.

but bella loves the girly stuff. the accessories! the makeup! so she is a dream. right up until the "ready for my closeup". and then we skid 90 miles an hour into a screeching halt, implanting ourselves in the brick wall that is the camera lens.

all i ask is one stinkin' shot, dude. one. stinkin'. shot. i just want to capture one tiny moment of the year older, angelic, adorable child i helped birth.

instead, i spent 30 minutes last night, simultaneously with satans spawn and the devils advocate.

in one brief road-weary, tear-infested, wrinkle-induced, manic- giggling moment last night, loading the 63 shots i took, only 5 of which were acceptable and only 2 of which i'd actually consider, i briefly tossed around the idea of loading them all for you. a slideshow of horrors, if you will. including, yes, yet again, a shot of a bum under the tree, as she broke my perfect pose and dove underneath to grab the kitten.

le sigh.

in my defense, i was being perfectly reasonable. i was determined to make this fun and pressure free. i was not overbearing. i was not expecting too much. i bit my tongue when mid-shoot, nana plopped down a bowl of potato soup, because she "knew all this was making her grandaughter hungry." i gritted my teeth as nana butted in 3 seperate times with her own camera and my daughter gave her the miss america shot then picked her nose for me. i swallowed my lips whole, as nana made little comments about how "all this really wasn't necessary, considering we weren't even going to be here for christmas. "

sensing my frustration kicking into over-drive, she then announced "well. i think i'm done for now." then promptly sat down, lit a cigarette and told bella, "oh honey, just think. someday you'll have a baby of your own and then your mama will finally leave you alone. "

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

you know. its true what they say. about your kids picking your nursing home, i mean.....

making lists and checking them twice