My latest dream...

I want to be a part of creating a community garden...I'm reading more about them here, and starting small with garden clubs at both E's school (starts Thursday!) and K's school (plans in the works).  Who knows what I can grow these projects into? :)

It has become apparent that I am not always the parent in this relationship...

Me, yesterday in the yard, muttering and complaining: "I am so sick of having dogs!  They bark all the time, they poop all the time....Do you hear me, you stupid dog?  I am sick of you!  Stop barking!  I don't know why I ever got these dogs in the first place.  I should get rid of them.  These dogs are such a PAIN IN MY REAR!!!!!!

Nathan, my old-soul-5-year old, sighs and says in a kind, patient, and soothing voice, like he's the parent and I am the whining child: "I know...."

The joys and pains of social networking

I have REALLY REALLY enjoyed facebook.  It couldn't have come into my life at a better time.  It was 2008 - cancer year - and what a great way to spend some nauseous moments!  Cozied up in bed in my quiet room, I passed at least a few really yucky Saturdays reading about old friends and learning more about new friends - a pleasant pastime in rather unpleasant circumstances.  I have loved connecting and reconnecting with people on facebook, loved sharing moments back and forth.

Beyond socially networking on facebook, I have also loved the games!  I'm embarrassed to think of the hours of free time I have logged playing these mindless games...but honestly, I needed them.  For A LOT of the past 3 years, I've needed to turn off my mind - to not think of my own cancer returning, to not think about the major catastrophic losses that were about to happen to me, or that now have happened to me.  Never underestimate the power of these games in grief recovery! I can log on, play some games, turn my mind off...and when I return to my thoughts (months later!), they aren't nearly as painful as they once were.  Oh the power of time.

However, time has another power - the power of slipping away!  I think I'm starting to be able to use my time constructively again - I'm fitting in exercise, I'm fitting in all of these crazy home renovation projects, I'm able to plan for the future and ENGAGE more in my own life - but now I'm starting to need that time back that I spend on fb!  I kind of miss watching movies and reading books...and blessedly, I (mostly) feel like a normal person again (what a blessing) and thus, watching movies or reading books doesn't just make me feel like an outcast more.  (It was not easy for me to watch the beautiful people or to read about exciting things when I was young, bald, deformed, and staring into the face of my BRCA status, and the fact that both of my parents were either dead or going to be dead before they reached significant old age.)

So I'm coming to a breakup I fear is not going to be easy for me...I'm going to have to significantly curtail my facebook usage, and soon.  No mom of 3 active children, who wants to be seriously involved in their lives, who also has 5 chickens and 5 other pets to care for, and a house to finish remodeling, and a career to consider beginning, who has an active passion for lots and lots of lots of gardening, who is also trying to get back into shape, and who also wants to follow a few other hobbies HAS ANY TIME TO BE FRITTERING AWAY ON FACEBOOK!

So, thank you, silly little social networking site, for being such a great "time suck" when I really really needed it, and when other "time sucks" were too painful for me.  I think it is time to start living my life a little more (and possibly, reading about other people's lives a little bit less...and sadly, playing games a little less, too!)

And she failed again!

1. Didn't exercise during my free time yesterday!  I took care of my chickens, and just as I was about to hop on the treadmill Grandpa Bill came over.  WELL...although I have been known to hide when people come to the door at bad times (!!!!!!!!!!!!), I don't hide from Grandpa Bill (he's really Bill's dad, but it feels weird to call him Bill, or Dad, and luckily I have 3 reasons why I can call him Grandpa Bill so that has solved my problem.).  He's always thought my kids were amazing-smart-wonderful-beyond-all-belief, so it makes it very easy to love him!  I'm not good at stopping to visit or doing much with him except being as thoughful as I can possibly be when he stops over, so alas...no exercise.
2. Lost Rosie after all.  I have been spending all this time watching over the chickens because I was sure she was the next to go...and I was right.  I think I could be the worst excuse for a chicken hobbyist ever...who loses 3 out of 8 birds?

>>>>>>>>>>>>Rambling about Chickens>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

1. When Superman seemed ill - cold feet, seemed like she lost tons of weight in a weekend, was uninterested in things, listless - I spent hours looking on the internet, reading, trying things to help her (if she was eggbound, to warm her up, etc)...and then hours on the phone with the farm trying to figure out what might have happened.  Didn't help - could be genetics, could have been eggbound, who knows.  I felt guilty and wondered if I should have taken her to the farm sooner, given he, left her alone...
2. When PuffPuff was ill - diarrhea, seemed like she lost weight too, not laying, was out of it and miserable - I called the farm and took her right there, got her antibiotics, got her electrolytes, helped her drink it all, put her in the coop with her sisters (but separated because I didn't know if they would attack her because she was failing).  She died anyway.
3. Rosie has always looked little, skinny, and runt-like since the girls got their big girl feathers.  I've been worried about her from the start...but for the past couple of days she has looked unhappy and less interested in being a chicken (only stopped laying maybe 2 days before death though).   Yesterday she was cold and had a droopy sad look (no diarrhea though). I decided to try tactic number 3 - be nice but don't try anything extraneous.  So we had a good day (except that I didn't exercise and so was a maniac this morning) - I took her around with me as I did garden work, spent time petting her, talked to her (and she clucked gently back - so cute).  This morning - dead chicken #3.

I'm really starting to hate this...and not only because the ground is so horrible that it takes a thousand years to did a grave.  YES, I should be more resilient...but honestly, it is hard to lose something even as insignificant as a chicken you've only had for 6 months.  It's also a big giant pain to not be able to plan on something and have it all go as you have planned -but I'm just not capable of getting on the treadmill when a) I have a sad-looking bird in the yard or b) I have a dead rotting bird to bury.

Better luck next time?  Or should I just let all these birds die and then get out of the chicken business?  (It's still a better business to be in than the rabbit business, though. First, they obviously don't all live as long.  Second, they give us eggs.  Third, they are always so spunky and happy - until they are dying... wahhh)

My sordid relationship with exercise

I have such a dirty, sordid relationship with exercise.  I need it, I want it, I can't have it, it's keeping me from developing other relationships, I hate it, I'm afraid to come crawling back again.  It's such an old relationship, too - it remembers me from when I was first trying to become an exerciser long, long ago, to when I was actually pretty good at it, through all the ups and downs of pregnancies, childbirths, raising small children, developing and treating breast cancer, losing one parent, then the 2nd, and then the 3rd (m-i-l).  Admittedly, it's been mostly remembering me, and I've been remembering it, lately!

Well, finally, my last child has started school in the mornings on Monday-Friday.  Even if he misses for an occasional cold, I should be able to still be mostly on a schedule and stick to it.  I need to not sign up for anything except for exercise during that time period (M-F from 9:20am - 11:20am when I have to get in the shower to be clean for pick-up), and then I actually have to DO IT.  That's the trick - this week my boy went M-Th (cold he can't shake so kept him home yesterday) and I was only a successful exerciser on Monday.  I spent the other days cleaning up after chickens/pets/gardening, cleaning up from the renovation, blogging or doing email or organizing the schedule (and one awesome and really-worth-it day with a dear friend who gave me a million ideas and inspiration for the house and for life).  They were all great things to do - things that needed to be done - but the thing is, there is ALWAYS something that needs to be done.  If I want to turn my dirty sordid relationship with exercise into an actual relationship that is working for me, I need to make the time, and now I have the time to make, M-F.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>All of my whining to myself>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If I had any willpower or devotion to this dirty sordid relationship it would not have taken me 11 YEARS to give myself that 2 hours/day regularly!  I would have gotten up early without fail (instead of about 7 times in  11 years), I would have stayed up late regularly, I would have forced any one of my 3 children to go to the gym when they were having a fit about not going. I wouldn't have let myself fall off these schedules and plans so easily.  I do have an obvious guilt problem, though - and it's hard for me to not get stressed when something unusual comes up (all the time with kids, illnesses, deaths, moves, renovations, etc) and then I get worked up, and the depression comes in, and that whole cycle begins and I begin reacting instead of acting.
>>>>>>>>>>>>All of my niceness to myself>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I've done a pretty good job, considering all of these other things.  Yes, a better person could have done better...but I have three healthy children who are confident, and smart, and HAPPY, and doing very well despite all of our difficulties and more than any of that, DESPITE having a mom who suffers from depression.  That I have (mostly) spared them from my crazy is by far my biggest accomplishment! and if I had to get fat to do it, or be scatterbrained to do it, or be spontaneous in my cure-the-depression tricks to do it, it was all worth it when I get reports that my children are doing well, are coping well, are being good role models, are spreading their sunshine to others.

And now I have Monday - Friday, 9:20 - 11:20am, to get myself back on track with exercise and quiet time, to do some good things to actively treat the depression instead of reacting to it.  My dirty, sordid relationship will have a little regular time and attention and should be able to become a tool I can use to build a more complete (more neurologically-sound!) me.

Moving houses for the 6th time...

At the end of June, we hurriedly started a renovation of the whole first floor of our home.  My mother-in-law was the brains behind this operation, and when it became clear to me that 1) she really meant it, she really wanted to see this happen and 2) she didn't think she had much time left, I begged the contractor she found to come and start this crazy project early.   He is a most wonderful man, and so he did...but unfortunately, my dear mother-in-law passed away as the walls were being torn down and built up again in my house.  Our last picture of her shows her smiling as she watches Bill hang our kitchen's late 70's oak cabinets in our garage....but she never got to see any of the finished product (makes me miserable to think about).

So...we've had a summer of a mess.  New hardwood floors, new stairs and railings, new cabinets, appliances, etc.  Although we aren't blessed in all ways (who is), we have been blessed to have friends who have given us good advice, to have had my mother-in-law's guidance throughout the entire planning process, and to have found good, honest workers and so the disastrous remodeling process has not been magnificently easy but it's not been horribly hard, either.

Finally our appliances are in, our granite fiasco is cleared up, we have a sink in our kitchen, and I can move us back in.  It feels like I am moving into an entirely new house (though the footprint of the kitchen is the same, the cabinets are taller and there are fewer of them, the arrangement of the whole main level is different, etc.)...and I'm feeling the disadvantages of all the moves we've made in the 11 years of our marriage (5 houses, and now this is the 6th/sort of).  I'm going through piles from this move, but also piles from other renovations/moves, finally (because we are really moving in this time...this stuff is here for keeps)...and it's kind of sad to see all of the little items that got lost along the way popping back up.  The kids have grown up so much!  We've been so busy and it's all flying by...and from what I hear, it's going to get even faster.

It feels really really sad to be settling into this house, physically and emotionally, with all of the things we've picked out, etc. without my mother-in-law.  How many phone calls would I have made to her, how many impromptu visits would she have made (or photos would I have sent to her if she wasn't able to travel over) to see the improvements, would she be proud and happy and comfortable here?  But tonight, at the same time, when I pick through our misplaced piles of paper and find Emma's 1st grade dictionary and Katie's scrolling papers, and way back to before breast cancer, before we even had Nathan, and mostly, to way back when I felt my luck was going to change soon, before I had so much experience with the fragility of life and the pain of loss, I realize how fast it is all going.  It is really really time to settle in, to make this house cozy and organized and home-like, before my kids are all grown up and gone (even if I don't feel like it, even if it hurts to be doing it without the mastermind).

And just a note about my blog's picture

It is awesome.  I just love those chickens, all eager and bursting around the yard.

I wish I could tell who they are...I think it is Margaret to the left, but I'd expect her to be the bursting one to the right.  Leads me to believe that it is Annie Lennox to the right, who is spunky as well...though it could be Alan Trammell, who is dark in color (like this chicken) and also a bit determined.  I do think the chicken in the middle is our dear, departed Puff Puff (named by Katie), who I feel is looking into the camera knowingly..."my time to leave you is nearing, and thus I have this wise look in my eyes."