I'm Being Myself

I've already conducted a webinar on puberty and adolescence in children with seizure disorders, made phone calls for my other job supporting advocacy efforts for kids in foster care, spoken to my sister about supporting Oliver with mindfulness meditation, gotten Sophie ready for an 11:00 orthotics fitting appointment that The Husband is thankfully taking her to, prepared for my afternoon meeting with the social worker from Medi-Cal and IHSS who will be appearing between noon and 2:30, hopefully closer to noon because I need to pick my boys up from school early because it's Tuesday, but not too close to noon because Sophie won't be back from her orthotic fitting, and she needs to be at the meeting so the social worker can ascertain whether she still needs benefits and am thinking ahead to this afternoon's semi-annual meeting with The Neurologist in Pasadena, hoping that she'll be in a better position to help ME get Sophie's medication added to Anthem's formulary so that I won't have to go to Vancouver, even though a trip away by myself in Vancouver is alluring.

There's a Mother-Son dance tonight, the culmination of Cotillion, and I'm kind of, sort of, hoping that Oliver will decide that he doesn't want to go. Because it's all too much. Then again, racing back from The Neurologist in Pasadena just in time to change my clothes to be squired around by my handsome youngest son is probably the brightest spot in an otherwise cockamamie schedule.

What are you up to, today?

How We Do It: Part VIII in a series

I was in my room, working on the computer and simultaneously talking to Oliver, who had just gotten out of the shower and was begging me to look up the video of the song Cherokee Nation. He had been singing the song incessantly since he'd gotten home from school, and while it made me laugh -- do you remember that song? -- it was also becoming tiresome.Cher - o - kee Nation! Cher-o - kee Pride! he shouted and then we laughed together at Paul Revere and the Raiders, their mustaches and long hair, what Oliver called hippies and in the olden days, so when he paused in the shouting of the song, we heard a steady banging coming from Sophie's room. I jumped up from my desk and Oliver froze as I ran out of the room. Sophie had fallen and was having a seizure, her head banging on the door over and over. Oliver and I realized this simultaneously, and as I tried to open the door, he yelled for Henry, who came running down the hall and as I moved out of the way, he placed his hands on the top of the door (cut-off halfway so that we can see Sophie in her room but not completely shut her out) and leaped over the door and over Sophie who lay on the floor, bent and seizing, her head banging on the door. He knelt down and drew her into his lap and held her there until the jerking stopped and he could drag her away from the door and we could open it and go inside. When I picked her up (thank you strong back) and put her on her bed, both boys left the room, and I sat there on the bed thinking of knights in shining armor and warrior Indians, the olden days.

I'm not sure how to get anything done around here

when there are episodes to watch of Breaking Bad 

and

phrases like this to read via The Dishwasher's Tears:

"But life, man, it fucking asserts itself."

I can assert that baking cupcakes, re-learning the table of elements with your fifth grader, dropping off your teenager at a ballpark, not able to watch him play the game, making sure your dog is getting his bloody poop medicine and peeling your sixteen year old off the floor after a seizure is life asserting itself and quite possibly getting the upper hand.

If I told you/UPDATE - please see asterisk

If I told you that I woke up yesterday and baked off croissants for my children's breakfast and then sent the boys off to school and belatedly fed Sophie who had a huge seizure while eating and I had to hold her in a weird horizontal position, my legs dangling, painfully from the stool, shielding my face from her flailing arms and arched back and the drool dripped down my arm and I shouted STOP but it didn't stop at least not for a couple of minutes and I cried a little, like I always do, alone and said the usual god have mercy christ have mercy lord have mercy but no mercy comes and I took her to school anyway and dropped her off with the Angel Renita, and drove back home to finish the strawberry shortcake and the two dozen mini-muffins picked up at noon, and then fed lunch to Moye, my dear friend, Moye, the only bit of peace for the day, her dark eyes warm and so civilized, the comfort of a shared childhood, a bit of personal history, the thirty five years we've known one another, the salad from our garden with bread and tomatoes that summered up the June gloom --

If I told you that I opened my door next to a financial advisor debt counseling retirement planning education planning who suggested that I perhaps go into training to do such advising myself and I contemplated it for the next six hours while I baked four more dozen cupcakes, each one a different flavor with a different frosting, picked up the boys from school and the carpool boy and drove them home to catch Sophie's bus and shuffled her right into my car with Oliver and took him to a tennis lesson for one hour and walked Sophie round and round the park and then back in the car and over to Verizon where I picked up the Blackberry phone that I left there yesterday when I got my new phone and marveled, again, like yesterday at the astounding obtuseness of the service "workers" there who drew cartoons, bad ones, while they talked to me and debated the merits of Fruity Pebbles versus Cocoa Pebbles, really were these servants of the free market any better than those much-aligned government workers (my point, and I digress, being that all this bashing of the government employee is just so much politics) and then back in the car where Oliver waited with Sophie not so patiently to pick up Henry hanging out at a friend's house and it was all on the way, all so organized but dinner was not --

If I told you that I drove through the drive-in of Burger King much to the surprise of my sons, Oliver who said I haven't been here in a year, Mom, can I have a soda and a double cheeseburger and fries? And I said Yes and I picked up the food and drove around the corner and back into the parking lot and changed places with Oliver who found this as exciting as the meal so that I could sit in the back seat and feed Sophie her disgusting cheeseburger and if I told you that I always, always feel guilty when I feed my children, especially Sophie, fast food, even though I know in the scheme of things it's no big deal --

If I told you I then headed home and brought Sophie inside while the boys cleaned out the car I don't want to see a speck of garbage in there from this meal, I told them and they did it, happily stuffed with the crap and then running inside an early dark from the June gloom while I busied myself baking four more dozen cupcakes each one a different flavor with a different frosting but I'm not complaining not at all because I can do this, I can make money doing this and it's relaxing in its way but difficult so difficult especially when I'm called on by the middle school principal and I have to figure out a way to help with the arranging of the end of school community gathering in a park? in the school? at all? --

If I told you that The Husband came home from The Mistress** for a few minutes to hear Oliver's presentation on Lance, the cyclist, presented in a silly voice that drove me nutty enough to say I'm not going to sit in here and listen to this unless you do it seriously, like you'd do it in school and it didn't happen so I stormed out of the room and back into the kitchen to make another batch of cupcakes saying from gritted teeth that you're wasting my time and I just can't do it and then felt bad when Oliver went to bed so knelt by his bedside and told him how much I loved him and that tempers were short because school needed to be over and we were all getting on each other's nerves and he said you mean I don't have to go to school tomorrow? And I said yes you have to go to school tomorrow but soon it'll be done and we'll all relax and I went back to the kitchen and pulled another batch of cupcakes out of the oven --

If I told you that Sophie didn't go to sleep, her brain a scrambled mess bumbling through her room in the dark, knocking her head on the wall and standing, staring, until I put her back in the bed, over and over --

If I told you that when I pulled out the last tray of cupcakes from the oven after 11:00 pm and placed them on the rack and looked, again, at the peonies sitting on my dining room table and felt pleasure, a surge of wonder --

would you believe me?

**The Mistress is my husband's job, his business and not a real woman. I love, though, that some of you thought I was tolerant of that along with the all the other shit I put up with!