Walking Backwards

The albatross of a sports car Joe bought needs new tires. Yes, already. The good news is that I got a kind of job that will cover that expense. I'm note taking for the office of student special services for my physical geology class. It's something I have to do anyway, so yay for getting paid for it. I'll have to recopy my notes in-between classes, but I should be doing that since I usually can't decipher them by exam time. It's not much, not even enough to cover my community college tuition, but I really have been missing my paychecks since I've become an essentially stay-at-home parent. The income was basically superfluous, we were able to pay all of our bills without it (hence my decision to stay home), but I got to buy books and see movies and drink fancy coffee. It was nice and having to worry about credit card balances and hospital bills isn't. This income that is coming in is going to cover one unexpected expense; the tires. However, I think that I'll squeeze one fancy cup of coffee out of it. Yay for (almost) free money!

Today's parent-teacher conference ran exactly as expected. The only difference being that Joe was there and raised his own questions, which we're about the same as the questions I raised when I spoke to Nico's teacher. Same script that ran on Friday ran today; Nicholas isn't adjusting, Nicholas is emotionally disconnected from his fellow classmates, Nicholas needs to be assessed. His teacher told us that both she and the school will offer us all of the assistance that we need and will support whatever decision we make regarding his treatment and further schooling. We have a little bit of time to decide on that. We also have an appointment with the pediatrician to start the ball rolling with the assessment. I also got some recommendations for child therapists from friends who have been there/here. We seem to be in store for a busy few weeks. Right now I'm having a hard time corresponding the bleak picture of behavior they are presenting with the child I eat breakfast with and read stories to in bed. I know there are problems, but I suppose that I never knew how much they were effecting him. I'm hoping for the best.

The past few days have gone by in a bit of a blur. I haven't read a page in my book, I don't remember exactly when I showered (I know it was sometime in there), and I haven't returned a single phone call I've gotten. I seem to be a little overwhelmed. My life always seems to come in waves like this; either I'm running the marathon or I'm sitting on the bench drinking Gatorade with my feet up. There seems to be even more of the marathon lately, though.

Right now I can't remember what happened before Friday. Friday was one of those days that just burns the rest of the week and all of existence out of your mind. Friday I got my first traffic ticket ever. I was pulled over right after dropping Nicholas off at school. I got my first traffic ticket ever for an expired registration sticker. It wasn't even for anything cool.

When I picked up Nicholas, his teacher held me up for a talk. We're having a conference with her and the director of the school on Monday, but I think she wanted to give me a little preview so that I wouldn't go into shock or cry during our meeting. The last time Joe and I met with her, back in December, she told us that Nicholas was having some unusual problems adjusting to school. She told me that she has had the director come in and observe him and has really been working on his behavior problems. She thinks it's best to have him stay back a year in school. She also wants to have him evaluated by a therapist. I'm upset, but I really just want Nicholas to be happy and comfortable and I think that doing these things will help. We are going to discuss all of this and our options tomorrow. I'm upset. No one with children ever wants them to have a difficult time of things. Every difficulty that they have, you feel it as if it's your own. I took Nicholas to the zoo afterward just to watch him to see what was so wrong with my little boy. To me he's perfect.

Saturday was long, too. I drove around the daughter of my mother's friend because she is new in town and is having a hard time adjusting to her new life. It wasn't terrible, but I had just wanted to lay in bed all day reading and sleeping (it was my day off). Instead we painted ceramics and had Japanese food. In the evening we had dinner with friends and Nicholas and their son had some problems getting along which is opposite their usual kinship, so we left early figuring the boys were tired. Nicholas bounced off the walls until we got home, but feel asleep while Joe read him his book.

Then today we spent running errands. I'm tired and so is Joe. We keep annoying each other. He wants to talk and I want to write. I want stillness and he wants to get things done. Maybe we should both concede what we really want. To go to sleep.

By some cruel twist of fate, Nicholas' favorite movie right now is Bambi. Rip my heart out with a rusty spoon would ya?! Every five minutes the ominous music starts up and something horrible happens. I can't even walk out in my own living room any more. If you haven't seen this movie, let me just say that everything freaking dies or starves or is burned down. Nice for a kid's flick. Gah, can we go back to something slightly less bleak, please?

Amazingly, two of my friends have discovered they are pregnant this week. One had been trying for about a year and just as she gave up, she got pregnant. Yay for her! The other, however, has her husband's vasectomy scheduled for the middle of next month. I don't even know if her husband has been notified of the situation yet. I really feel for her, but I know it will all work out in the end. To be honest, I don't think she was sold on not having any more kids anyway. It just makes me realize that no matter how hard we plan, mother nature will have things her way in the end. Very few of my friends have had children or conceived children or raised children in exact concordance with their wishes. I just don't think it's possible. I think it is the way the world has of telling you that these little beings have minds of their own.

I'm still sick, but I no longer think it is just allergies. Most allergies are not accompanied by gastro-intestinal problems. I think I might have gotten sick from some of the kids at Nicholas' school. They all came down with some stomach flu about a week ago. Nicholas is, of course, not sick, because he doesn't associate with the kids in his class. He leaves that to me. Darn insidious toddler germs. I just hope I don't get baby H sick when he is here today, because that is just no fun. Sick children are more difficult to deal with than being sick yourself.

For those who don't know, I have horrible, debilitating asthma. I've had it since I was born and have come to accept it and deal with it in my own way. There are times, though, that make it harder to deal with than normal. Cedar season is one of those times. If you don't live in central Texas you may not know what I am referring to when I say 'cedar fever' (and you should consider yourselves lucky), but right now all of Austin is in the throes of it. The cedar pollen now covers the trees and is so thick it changes their coloring. You wake up in the morning and it has coated your car in a thin yellow dusting. You can see it in the air at dusk. Really, it's unbelievable. Allergies to cedar usually result in the condition of 'cedar fever' which doesn't feel like an allergic reaction at all. As the name implies, it is often accompanied by fever (mine has gone up to 102 degrees at times), but you also get body aches, racking coughs, and all of the other joys that accompany typical hayfever. You can imagine how this is making my asthma. I now take shots of Robitussin every four hours just to breathe. My breathing treatments are so frequent that I have stopped unplugging and putting away my nebulizer. I feel like an old emphysema patient. I really don't like going outside and it is getting hard to chase after my super active three year-old. Man it sucks. I often have to ask why people live here when the environment in Austin does this to people. Really, what the hell? What did I do to piss it off so much?

In other news, we had a really busy day today doing nothing. Joe, Nico, and I headed down to the farmers market this morning to buy goodies like field greens, nine grain bread, and fresh eggs. One of Joe's co-workers was there selling eggs and lamb and we were much surprised to discover that he runs a hundred acre farm in addition to the desk job he has at my husband's office. I always knew I should be asking Joe to do more around here. Also, my dad visited and brought me a Meyer lemon for the backyard. We were also supposed to go get an oak tree for the backyard, but the nurseries are still a little sparse for the winter season, so no luck finding one. It was a good day. Not too exciting, but who needs excitement when you can rant about the allergies from hell ;)?

I had a lovely surprise this week; my best friend, Deta, came down to Austin for a short holiday. She came over yesterday and stayed for almost five hours. We got to talk and gossip and kvetch. It was so wonderful getting to see her and it reminded me of how much I love having her around and how much I miss her. Being a stay-at-home parent really can test your friendships. It is difficult to imagine the degree of isolation you feel, not only from the people around you, but from your friends who aren't at the same point in their lives. Having Deta here for a little while made me forget that our lives had so far taken us in totally different directions. We are friends because we appreciate who the other person is and we respect each other for our values and beliefs and candor. I love Deta and will miss her when she's gone, but I know we'll always be close.

Tonight, I am going out on my own. I can't decide the best course of action for this stolen evening of independence. Should I go to the walk-in art studio and get my craft on? Should I go see one of the five movies out in theatres now that I really want to see? Should I sit at the local coffee shop with one of my books and read in the relative peace and quiet? The couple of nights a month I get to go out and pretend I don't have anything to do are always so much fun. It is just so hard to decide the right way to waste my time. Now that school is in session, these nights are soon going to be consumed with studying plate tectonics and mineral composition, but for now I'm going to try to get away with doing what I enjoy - the completely inane.

Annie called me this morning and informed me that baby H was skipping out on me and I wouldn't see him until Thursday. I got a stolen day off. More good news came in the mail as our health care reimbursement checks appeared and several of our tax forms made it in there, too. Then, I got some recommendations for a urologist for Joe's cut-and-tie job and the name that came up the most with the most positive feedback was, get this, Dr. Richard Chopp. Yes, I've been laughing about that one all day. It was even better when I told Joe that his doctor was going to be Dr. Dick Chopp, he thought I was either joking or insane.

Today hasn't been all fun by a long shot, but I'm feeling a little better. My first day of class was uneventful and, while I don't think it is going to be easy, I'm fairly sure I can handle it. I'm feeling a little more prepared for the shift in our lives. I think having today off really illustrated to me the fact that I am a little more ready for it all than I thought I was.

Joe bought a used sports car today so I'm making him an appointment for a vasectomy consultation.

Our server crashed some time yesterday so I don't have access to my normal e-mail and all of my photos are inaccessable. If for some reason you need to get ahold of me, I'll be checking my *gmail* account - jamie.royer at gmail dot com. Right now, I hope my professor reads my blog.

I'm really not having a good day today. It would be just an average, eh, not so spectacular day, but this morning I got my Depo-Provera injection which makes me a bitchy, discontented harpy of a woman for a couple of days. Think PMS, consolidated. I'm also sore from helping out at Nicholas' school where they are completely re-doing the back play area. Blargh. All of this is making it hard to handle the little things today. Like Nicholas putting an entire roll of toilet paper in the toilet and flushing it. Like finding a load of towels in the washer from three days ago. Like my husband calling to tell me he wants to spend half of our savings on a sports car. . .

Baby H is back tomorrow as school is starting. That also means that my school is starting, too. I'm nervous about both. I wish there was a way to push the pause button and take another week off. I'm not ready. I don't even know what ready would be. Nicholas and I went to the grocery store and the Mediterranean market to stock up on food. I dusted off my backpack and loaded it with books and paper. I started the laundry again. I'm just scared, I guess. When school is in session, I have no moment of relief or respite. I feel like I'm missing out on all of the little things. I just enjoy my free time with Nico and the cat and the husband a little bit too much it seems.

This last little stint of posting voids was, in fact, not writer's block, but a last minute side trip to San Antonio to watch my friend Maria's daughter because Maria was in the hospital having her twins! I am now utterly exhausted because watching two toddlers, one of whom refused to sleep in foreign locales, is a lot more tiring than I expected. Now I'm home and can sleep, but not really because SCHOOL STARTS NEXT WEEK. I got half of my books in the mail this afternoon and they are big and imposing; scary really. Can't a woman get a break around here? I guess not . . . Nicholas just woke up.

I seem to have a case of writer's block. It really isn't that I don't have anything to write about, really I do, I just don't feel like putting a lot of it down right now. I guess that is what happens when you force yourself to write something every day for a month.

School starts next week also, so there is something else I am feeling a little unmotivated for. This is the first semester since starting school again that I haven't felt eager to be let back in the doors. Hopefully, that will wear off soon because that feeling is what gets all my work done the first few weeks. I'm taking historical geology this semester and am having a very "could care less" feeling. Fortunately, something in my brain is aware of the looming deadline of school starting, and I've been getting a lot done around the house. Today, I built a cabinet in Nicholas' playroom and made and hung curtains for his bedroom. The house is free of all Christmas decorations and I bought a whole slew of new containers for them so I can avoid using the beat up cardboard boxes. This week I'm planning on getting several extra meals cooked and in the freezer for when I start running into exam and homework problems, and I'm setting up everything for the return of baby H. I'm sure there are other things that need to be done, but I have a to-do list and I'm fairly confident that it won't all get done, but most of it will be cleared away. I just wish I could get to the point of looking forward to it all.

I'm fighting off an upper-respiratory infection and haven't been really exciting lately. I've also dropped the ball a little on this holidalies thing. I hope that they can forgive me, but I think I am only going to have 25 postings for a month (not too shabby for me). I just feel like crap and Ny*Quil is making me feel even more like crap, because I'm still exhausted even after the cough suppressant part of it wears off. We have a party tonight and are leaving tomorrow for Houston, so I hope I can either get better or hold it together enough to make it through. I don't think I would be so badly off if I didn't have this burden of asthma to bring me down and make any illness I contract about thirty times worse (damn steroids lowering my immune system).

Being sick has also highlighted how messy my house gets in a single day. My hesitant gait throughout the day let Nicholas get a little too far ahead of me and the place is trashed. First, he decided it was time for inventory of the playroom and emptied all of the shelves and the drawers and turned out all the puzzles just to make sure there was nothing hiding with their boxes or in the wooden frames. He apparently decided that this task was too time consuming and left his pile of possessions in the middle of the floor. Second, he found the superball we had hidden (for obvious reasons) and started to bounce it around the house knocking over picture frames and really pissing off the cat. Then, to try to distract my whirling dervish, I set up one of his Christmas gifts: a lab to make your own candy. I know, it sounds stupid when I sit and think about it. There was gummy candy mix everywhere, including in my hair. That was a bad idea. I still haven't cleaned up from yesterday and now I have today to contend with. I normally don't have a hard time keeping the little guy in check, but give us any contingencies. . .

For New Year's eve, we took a trip to San Antonio to celebrate with our friends Mark, Maria, and Fiona. We were all sick and feeling lazy, but it was quite a bit of fun to get to hang out. The kid's played and ran around together and eventually fell asleep in Fiona's room. After getting home yesterday, we asked Nicholas if he had fun this weekend. His reply, "Yes, I got to sleep with Fiona!".

The year in review. It's always nice to look back over what you've accomplished. Maybe not so nice to look over what you wish you could forget.

January:
Returned to school after a hiatus resulting from the birth of his supreme highness. Called poison control for the first time when my son ingested a tube of fluoride treatment gel.

February:
Went to see Cirque du Soleil. Nicholas had the flu for two weeks and woke-up coughing up blood. Working hard in school, but sporting perfect grades. Tax-refund arrives and is gone as quickly.

March:
Got a haircut for the first time in over a year (haven't had one since). Travis rear-ends a school bus. Nicholas masters the art of the carpool and attends many playdates. I question enrolling in school again because it's a hard balance.

April:
I try and quit caffeine and last less than ten days. I START my day of the dead quilt. Summer school is signed-up for for me and Little Gym is cancelled for the small one. We take bluebonnet photos, attend a birthday party, and walk our asses off for charity. School starts getting to me.

May:
Finals. Nicholas' first year of preschool ends and we all celebrate his third birthday. Travis and I go to see Marriage of Figaro. We go on our first ever family trip to the beach. Later, I shake my booty, get a migraine, and go see Sin City (not in the same day, but close).

June:
Summer starts and Annie starts watching Nicholas twice a week. Nicholas wants to trade mommies. Nicholas and I get painful sinus/ear infections from spending so much time in the pool. Joe's family decides we should all get together at Schlitterbahn. Ram is shot and killed and San Antonio loses an institution.

July:
I paint Nicholas' room during the long, Independence day weekend. Nicholas discovers a deep love for chocolate. I meet the parents for the upcoming preschool class and realize that the new ones are a little bitchy. My car dies and no one knows why.

August:
We go to Louisiana to visit with family for some reason I'm not clear on. I start making soap and Joe keeps calling our soap-making meetings 'Fight Club'. Travis returns from Germany to make me extremely jealous and I start watching baby H.

September:
Nicholas starts preschool again and meetings and orientations follow this beginning. Hurricanes disrupt our extended family, this disruption spills over into our home. I cannot find a simple black dress. I rather enjoy going out.

October:
Italy.

November:
Travis moves out. I have a hard time adjusting to life outside of vacation. Maria and I see Depeche Mode and transform into groupies. I go to a scrapbooking sales party and feel dirty.

December:
Holidalies increases my verbosity. Holiday celebration horrors begin. We have a horrible parent-teacher conference. New Year's resolutions are formed, Nicholas becomes a trust-fund baby, and I look like Judy Garland.