A Flying Mouse Saved My Day

You know those stories you hear about mothers lifting cars off their children during accidents?

Or how when you hear someone talk about an accident and how no one can really be sure how they'll react during an emergency until they're in one?

Well, enough emergencies and crises have happened in my lifetime that I know exactly how I'll react during one.

If it involves my children's blood, I'm gonna vomit, then yell then vomit some more.

If it involves anyone else's blood, I'm gonna get all, 'let's sew this muthatrucker up using dental floss and my nose ring. Pass me a tampon to soak up some blood.'

If it involves lifting a car off of anyone, I'm gonna hold my lower back and call a tow truck while whispering apologies to the crushed.

If it involves someone or some dog I love dying unexpectedly, I'm going to shut down, go numb, impersonate a robot, wait a few weeks to cry a whole lot, get incredibly ill and buy a bunch of stuff off the internets in the meantime.

As my husband likes to say, I am a creature of habit and I like to stay true to form.

The upside is, you always know what kind of crazy you are going to get with me. Makes living in this looney bin a little easier.

For almost three weeks now, I've been fighting off a zombie virus, and I'll be honest, I'm not much better than I was when I first contracted this plague. The difference between now and three weeks ago though is my husband is entirely sick of my whining and he's leaving to go back to work tomorrow.

I'm trying not to pout too much about him leaving me to die alone and miserable with only his children to witness my decline since you know, he's been off work for over a month now and we've got bills to pay, mouths to feed, internet shopping sprees to account for. And really, if I have to hear the soft clomping of his crutches across our floor for even one more day I may lose my mind and beat him to death with them.

The zombie virus has a charming side affect of making me more irritable than usual. It should also be noted my husband is a damn saint.

Because I've been too ill to eat my feelings, I've channeled all my sorrow and dog loneliness into finding awesomeness on the internet.

Translated: Every time I miss my dog I buy something I don't need on the internet. That plan worked out really well until my husband started noticing the high number of parcels he had to pick up from the post office.

He didn't mind the cute winter boots I bought, or the presents I bought for all the grandparents online. He didn't even mind the pink flannel sheets with cartoon dogs I bought for our bed.

No. He drew the line at having to go pick up a dead mouse at the post office.

In my defense, it was a really epic dead mouse.

Super Mouse

Nixon would have approved.

Big thanks to Heather from Mortuary Report who is not only responsible for Super Mouse's awesomeness but for also making me smile with her general awesomeness.

Boo has threatened to confiscated my credit card and made me swear, upon penalty of divorce, that I will only use it for emergencies.

Apparently taxidermied awesomeness does not constitute an emergency either. He was very sure to clarify.

Drat.

I totally had my eye on Jackalope.

Anyways, thanks to everyone who emailed, messaged, texted and called to make sure I hadn't expired offline. Your concern means a lot, and I'm not just saying that because of my zombie induced delirium.

I'm back. I may be slightly contagious and talking to a dead stuffed mouse, but I'm totally back.

I should be good as long as there are no cars that need to be lifted off anyone anytime soon.

My Life Is a Country Music Song

You've probably noticed I haven't had much to say in the last few weeks. It's not for lack of blog fodder. Rather it's more about trying to duct tape the pieces of my exploded head back together.

But hey. THREE ENTIRE DAYS have passed without anything randomly shattering, breaking, getting decapitated, celebrating a birthday on a horrible no good very bad day, having an operation or getting maimed at school.

I think the worst may be over. I've passed through the eye of the storm and I'm sweeping up the debris now. (Sorry. All the hurricane talk has seeped in. Thoughts and prayers to everyone affected by that wicked witch we're calling Sandy.)

In the span of nine freaking days my dog died on my son's birthday, my other son celebrated his birthday on the day another of my son's died, my rear windshield spontaneously combusted, my husband is bedridden and my daughter is broken.

It's like I pissed all the Gods off and they've decided to turn my life into some poorly written country music song. Too bad I don't own a guitar and I shaved most of my hair off. I could have been the next Patsy Cline.

It was a bad couple of days.

Boo was scheduled to have some minor surgery last Wednesday and like the naive dumb fools we are, we walked into that hospital thinking life had crapped on us enough already, there was no way anything else could go wrong. After all, this was just going to be a minor orthotic procedure.

You know what happens when your husband breaks his ankle months and months and months ago and mostly refused to wear his soft cast and then puts off having his ankle surgically repaired so he can build the behemoth we lovingly refer to as the Zeppelin hangar?

Nothing good, I assure you.

So my husband's simple day surgery didn't go as planned. Oh sure, he flirted with all the nurses while his hospital gown kept showing off our family's jewels and we were sent on our merry way fast enough, but that quick recovery after a minor surgery he was supposed to have? Foiled by what turned out to be major reconstruction work.

Suddenly my husband is taking up all the space on my overstuffed and ugly leather sofa, he's hogging the television remote, he's watching SOAP OPERAS and I'm starting to worry he's never ever going to return to work. In fact I believe he's plotting on driving me insane in the mean time.

Too late Boo. I'm already crazy. It's part of my charm.

The stress of the past week and then my husband's surgery knocked whatever wind I had left in me right out. I fell face first into my pillow that night and didn't wake up until the phone started ringing the next morning at about 10:30 am.

Realizing my husband wasn't about to hop up and answer the phone, I looked at the clock, cursed and then ran to catch the call before it went to voice mail.

Panting, I answered that phone in a voice that clearly advertised the fact I had just woken up, and listened to the school secretary inform me my daughter had been in an accident and would I like to take her to the hospital or should I just meet her there?

The joy I felt at knowing I got to rush back to yet another hospital was overwhelming. It almost as fun as the moment when my heart stopped dead upon hearing, "It appears she was hit in the face by a puck. It's hard to tell. There's a lot of blood." And then, as an after thought, "But she totally took it like a champ! No tears at all."

Aw, that's my kid. You can beat her up but you can't make her cry. I'll totally bask with pride over this irrelevant and unimportant fact. Don't judge me.

As it turned out, Fric wasn't hit in the face by a hockey puck. Thank God. No, it was only her face meeting the business end of a hockey stick. Whoops.

Yesterday's nose. We're down to one black eye now! Progress. I'm still calling her Bruiser though.

After her x-rays clearly showed what her flattened nose already reflected, we sat inside the doctor's office and the doctor noticed one of us was crying and it wasn't the kid with the broken face.

I may have been having a hard time coping with stress at the moment. I'm not Superwoman (or Fric) after all. Everything finally caught up to me. My dead dog. My dead kid. Every bad thing that happened finally just got the better of me in that moment. And to be honest, my kid's lack of a nose bridge was really freaking me out.

But all of this was last week and it's been three whole tragedy and accident free days since. Plus my kid's nose has sort of popped back up. Perspective has suddenly flooded back.

Both my husband and my kid are healing. One more gracefully than the other, *cough*Fric*cough*. My windshield was replaced, my flowers fertilized. It could be worse.

That's what I told my daughter this morning as I drove her to school.

"It could have been worse. You could have lost an eye. Or your teeth! Or both! You could have been the one eyed toothless girl wandering your school halls. Noses will heal!" Look at me! The picture of grace and optimism!

My daughter just gave me a look.

"Don't look at me like that. Life is good! One day soon your nose won't be on the wrong side of your face anymore!"

Life. It's all about keeping perspective. And learning how to avoid errant hockey sticks to the nose.

 

*I love you Fric. You're beautiful no matter what colour or size your nose is.*

Moving Mountains By Sitting

I love my son. All of my sons. And my daughter too, since we're on the topic. But there are some days I look at Jumby and I wonder "Holy hell, what am I doing?"

Don't get me wrong, I know what I'm doing. Except for those times I don't. Which are often. But I feel that way every day raising my teenagers. Human beings befuddle me regardless of their age, their health and their sex. This should be no surprise to anyone. My parents never let me out of the basement to play with others. I'm socially stunted.

I'm totally kidding. Well, about the basement part anyways. The only thing my parents kept in the basement was my brother. And bunnies. True fact. But they let my brother out. They even fed him occasionally. The bunnies they pretty much ignored, seeing as how they were my responsibility. As a parent to teens now, there would be no way I'd have a cage filled with bunnies in my basement. Bunnies are evil. Don't buy into their hype.

I didn't sleep much last night? Can you tell? Chalk it up to a dog that spent the entire night barking at the bunnies outside (further proof that bunnies are Satan's pets) and a teen boy who decided to empty an entire box of mothballs right underneath my bedroom window next to my bed. Not only does my room still reek of fetid skunk from last week but now it also smells like an arthritic geriatric person is rotting underneath my bed.

The smell is enough to drive to criminal cranky town. Just look for me. I'm there. Hurling tomatoes at the happy people.

Where was I?

Oh right. I woke up this morning feeling old and crabby and when my calendar app chimed a reminder that my youngest son had yet another medical appointment this afternoon, I was suddenly overwhelmed too.

There are days when raising a deaf, blind, quadriplegic, developmentally delayed, diapered and tube-fed child feels a bit like being steamrollered.

Today was shaping up to feel like one of those days.

Picture Sisyphus and a giant boulder. That's often how it feels raising special needs kids. And even the sanest most loving parent sometimes feels a bit flattened by the process.

And yet, like every other parent in the world, I carry on. I drove Fric to her volleyball practice, reminded Frac to shower and wrestled Jumby into his hearing aides and splints.

I parented and yawned and cursed mothballs and bunnies and yippy dogs as I went.

And then the house was empty and so I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at my computer.

And that's when I noticed Jumbster's iPad had synched with my computer via iCloud.

New pictures of the Jumbster, just waiting to be sorted and viewed.

And there it was.

A picture of my quadriplegic son, sitting, unassisted by himself, like any other boy in the world.



Just sitting. Not squatting on his legs for balance, not leaning, just simply sitting.

Years worth of love and hard work and therapy finally paying off. One teeny tiny goal realized.

He still can't sit independently. Not for more than a minute. But it's a full minute more than we've ever had before. And maybe it will mean that one day he can sit in a normal chair, outside of his wheelchair.



Sitting, unassisted in furniture would open up the world to him. To me. To our family.

It's not much and yet it's such a huge accomplishment. Jumby won't get the big milestones of drivers licences and first dates. He will likely never get a first step all by himself. But he gets this. A celebration of everything he has overcome and everything he has mastered. Even something simple as sitting for sixty seconds.

All those tiny little baby steps he's taken, all the set backs and the weight of hope we carry in our souls for him and there it was. Proof of progress made and of mountains climbed.

Photographic evidence of hope realized.

With one little picture, he reminds us that he never gives up. And neither should I.

Jumby gets hope. And then he gives it out to everyone he comes into contact with.

Even grumpy mothers who overdosed on inhaling mothballs.

 The day just suddenly got a little bit better. Bunnies be damned.

What's this about bunnies?