protecting our kids

i'm reading a book called "Protecting the Gift" by gavin debecker. i saw it recommended on some parenting page and thought i'd check it out. the main subject is how we, as parents, can keep our kids safe and teach them to keep themselves safe as they get older. i've read various versions of these sorts of books in the past, but this one was a different flavor. it was very practical and i appreciated that.

one of the big things it teaches is how to keep kids safe from sexual predators. that's a subject that makes most of us uncomfortable and some of us queasy. we don't like to think about it very much because there's so much shame and secrecy surrounding it. we think that it can't happen to our kids because we love them so much and we do everything we can to keep them safe. we are good parents, so everything should turn out fine.

i remember hearing as a young teenager that 1 in 4 girls would be molested before she reached the age of 18. i was horrified and would look around at my friends and wonder which ones it would be.

at the time i first heard that statistic, i didn't realize that it was me. even stranger, in hindsight, is that it had already happened, but i had suppressed it and wouldn't even remember for a few more years.

my family was great. my parents were protective and careful about where and how we spent our time. they were careful about who we could be around without close adult supervision. they did everything they could think of correctly.

unfortunately, what happened was something they never would have thought of.

the summer that i turned 5, my mom was babysitting for another girl who was about 10. we were often left to play by ourselves or with siblings or other neighbor kids without a whole lot of supervision. shortly after she started coming over, that girl made me perform sexual acts with the other kids. she would tell us that we were married, even going so far as to perform a "marriage ceremony" to legitimize the whole thing. then she'd give step by step instructions on what we needed to do to each other. we didn't like it, but she was way bigger than the rest of us and when we complained, she threatened to tell our parents what we were doing to each other and we knew we'd get in trouble for that.

thankfully, she didn't need my mom to watch her for very long and soon she was out of my life. looking back, i wonder what must have happened to her to cause her to be acting out in that way. she was clearly a very troubled little girl.

when i was about 12 years old, i got touched inappropriately by my orthodontist. it happened a few different times while my mom was sitting in the waiting room and the doctor was leaned over my chair, pretending to adjust my paper drool bib. or if he couldn't get enough privacy in the exam room, he'd find a reason why i needed more x-rays and he'd back me into a corner in that tiny room and grope me where no one could see. he never said a word to me that wasn't about teeth or my retainer. he just silently found opportunities to touch me when no one was looking.

i don't know why i didn't tell my mom about the orthodontist. i felt all skeavy and disgusting each time i went. maybe i just wanted to pretend it didn't happen because addressing it would have made me look directly at it and deal with it when i really just wanted to forget it ever happened.

when i was 18 and got to college, i got really sick with a nasty sinus infection that just wouldn't go away. i had to go to a clinic a few miles away from the school several times before i finally kicked it. the worst part of being sick was that each time i went to the clinic, i saw the same, yucky old doctor. even though i only had a sinus infection, he always directed me to strip completely and then put on a paper gown that opened in the front. i didn't realize how strange that was at the time and i was so sick that i hardly had the strength to care, let alone question a medical professional. when he came back into the room for the exam, he always opened the gown fully and took my pulse in my groin. he also handled my breasts to supposedly hear my heartbeat properly.

again, i didn't tell anyone other than some friends. none of us knew what to do about it. we turned it into a joke and made up an obnoxious nickname for him and tried really hard not to get sick enough to need to see a doctor.

my whole point in airing out my skeletons like this is to say that we need to protect our kids. we need to teach them to value themselves and what is right. we need to listen to any little warning bells in our heads, even if they don't make sense on paper. we need to teach our kids not to just obey anyone in an authority position. we need to foster a sense of self worth in them so that they won't be prey to the dirty old men, adults who take advantage of their positions of trust, or even other children. we need to enforce an open door policy, literally and figuratively with our kids. that way, we'll be checking on them often and supervising anyone who's with them. if something does happen, they'll know they can tell us. and if, by any terrible chance something out of line does happen to our kids and they tell us, we need to report it. not just try to stay away from that person, but get them prosecuted. the statistics show that anyone who does such a thing to one kid is likely doing it to lots of kids. it can go on for years and years and wound so many innocents who are too afraid to talk about it. too many of those kids will go on to hurt others in the future.

let's protect the gift of intuition and innocence by giving too much information rather than not enough. kids who are likely to be targeted aren't too young to be told about such things, even if their parents feel uncomfortable talking about it. you aren't protecting them by keeping specific info away from your kids, but you might very well be protecting them by sharing what seems to maybe be too much.

belly baby

this post is not going to be entertaining and you will not leave here laughing your abs off. if you're not in the mood for some raw & honest emotions, feel free to click away, baby, click away.

when we had been married for a couple years, i decided that i needed to have a baby. i told that story over here, so if you're interested you can check it out. it took a couple years and a some fertility testing and treatments (including a sperm donation from my husband) before we eventually got pregnant with brooke.

we decided that if we were going to have the one, we would like her to have a sibling so she wouldn't be a bored, selfish only child, and we wanted that second child to be close to brooke's age, so our goal was to have the kids 2 years or less apart. almost as soon as brooke was born, we were ready to try again for baby number 2, but once again, we had no success at getting pregnant.

2 years went by with no luck, so we decided that as long as the kids could be 3 years or less apart, it would be fine. at least then brooke wouldn't be an only child. shortly after brooke's second birthday, i got pregnant. i was still doing the whole temperature charting, ovulation predicting thing, so i knew i was pregnant within just a few days of it happening.

i was looking forward to the time when i was far enough along to take a pregnancy test and see the positive results. i waited a few weeks because i was busy and i already knew in my mind that the results were positive, so there wasn't a big rush. then one day i started bleeding and cramping and i rushed to the store for a test. the result was a very weak positive, but it told me my baby was really there. unfortunately the bleeding continued and i resigned myself to the fact that was having a miscarriage.

i tried to block out the emotional distress. i went on about my life as if nothing was happening and i didn't talk about it very much. i took care of brooke every day, but i couldn't focus on anything except my lost baby.

three months later, i was pregnant again. it was 3 years to the day of when i'd gotten a positive result on a pregnancy test with brooke & that felt to me like a good sign. i was going to have 2 kids 3 years apart and one of my best friends had just found out she was pregnant a week earlier, so there was the extra excitement of sharing my pregnancy with her. i felt confident that this one was going to work. i didn't let myself dwell on the miscarriage, i just prayed and trusted that this was the who was going to complete our little family.

 a few weeks later, the bleeding started again. and it was painful. i went to a doctor who told me that yes i was pregnant, but that the baby had died before the heartbeat could be detected. i probably wouldn't need a d&c, i just needed to wait for it to pass.

this time, i was eaten up with the grief. i was devastated and felt like i'd been destroyed. i could hardly get out of bed. my child was left to fend for herself during many of the hours when chris went to work. she would sometimes hug me and kiss my stomach and say she was kissing my belly baby. she brought me her toys and snacks to try to cheer me up, but all i could do was cry and tell her that the belly baby was in heaven now.


i dreaded going to the bathroom because i knew that i would have to see the mess that was flowing out of my body. i didn't want to let it go. it was coming out of me in clots, so every time i changed a pad, i felt like i was throwing pieces of my baby in the trash. one night i sat on the toilet and held a used pad wrapped up in a wad in my arms and hugged it and bawled because it was the only chance i'd ever have to hold and hug my baby. i knew it was gross, but i just couldn't let go. just because it was small didn't mean it deserved to go into the garbage with old hair and q-tips. it took me a long time to leave it behind.

i ran a bath that night & filled the tub with a massive quantity of bubbles, then turned off the lights and climbed in. i dunked myself so far down into the tub that only my nose and mouth were out and i closed my eyes and thought about how i would never get to spend any time with my second or third babies. i'd never get to know them or see them or hug them. i thought about how maybe if i just ended my own life in the bathtub, i could go be with them and stop feeling like i was breaking all into little pieces.

knowing that brooke would be left without a mommy if i went through with that terrible idea was enough to keep my nose out of the water. barely. so instead i took that time in the bath, in the dark, and i cried out all my pain. i buried my head in a mountain of bubbles and imagined that my two tiny babies were in there with me and that they knew how much i loved them. i thought about an email i'd gotten from a friend's mom telling me that she'd had a miscarriage too and that she was consoled at the idea that her baby was being cared for and loved by Jesus in heaven. and what better babysitter than the king of the universe.

eventually the physical pain subsided, but the emotional pain lasted a lot longer. so many people said things to me that they meant to be kind, but were hurtful instead. they told me i'd have more children eventually. they told me it was God's will that the babies weren't born. they told me that most likely they didn't make it because they were physically defective and therefore, better off not ever being born.

i wanted to scream at all of them. i wanted to tell them that their child was dead and then pat their shoulder and with a trite little smile say that it was God's will. i wanted to tell them that they were defective and better off dead. i wanted them all to shut up. they had nothing practical to offer me and their words were brutal. i wanted them to stop asking if they could help and instead, come over and take care of brooke for me. i wanted someone to bring dinner to my house so that at least there would be something to eat for the family members who could still swallow food. i wanted someone to do the piles of laundry that were piling up that i didn't have the energy to wash.

but i didn't ask for help. i didn't ask for anything. i just slowly started picking up the pieces of myself and trying to put me back together again.

after that, i decided that i had enough children. one was going to be my perfect number. i was going to do everything i could to prevent brooke from becoming a spoiled, self-centered only child, but i was going to pour myself into her every single day and be thankful for her.

and i was never again going to offer stupid condolences that had no action behind them. i was going to send cards to anyone i knew who had a miscarriage, just like i would if their breathing child died. i was going to use my own awful experience to become a more sensitive person. and i was going to hug brooke. a lot.

gerbils and helium

when i was a junior in high school, my whole family (consisting of 2 parents, 2 teenagers and 2 toddlers) took a month long drive from our house in ny, all the way out to california, down the coast, back across the country and up the east coast. we stayed in a different motel 6 almost every night and spent most of our daylight hours on the road. it was a wonderful trip and we got a chance to learn a lot about our great big country while traveling fairly cheap.

while we were gone, our pets were left with various friends around town, but when we returned, we discovered that one of our gerbils hadn't made it. our friend didn't want to tell us about it while we were still on the road for fear that we'd feel sad and it would dampen our trip, so she put the gerbil into a butter tub and stuck it in her freezer.

this gerbil was not an especially treasured pet. we always had lots of pets and my brother went through a phase of rodent collecting, so it was just one of several. we didn't know if this one was male or female, so it was named Herm. in other words, we didn't know if it was a her or a him. hence, her/m. never mind, the joke goes flat when you have to explain it.

it was october when we got home and by the time we had the little buttery body back in our possession, the ground in our part of the country was already getting too hard for digging holes. we didn't want to flush herm down the toilet, partly because, well, yuck, and partly because it was questionable if it was too large to make it through the pipes. so we opted to leave the critter cadaver on ice through the winter.

the next spring we remembered that it was still there and we had a long distance move in our near future, so we needed to go ahead and get herm into a final resting place. my brother was often colorful in his sense of humor and liked to do things a little differently, so he came up with an unusual plan for disposing of his little dead pet.

it was his senior year at the time and we planned a big graduation party for all of our friends. we rented a helium tank, but no balloons so that guests could just fill up their lungs with it and we'd have a big, noisy munchkin festival. we converted a small shoe box into a lovely, satin lined coffin for herm and we even attached little poles to each corner so that it could be carried like a proper coffin to the burial place.

we drafted 4 strong male friends to be pall bearers and carry the corpse through the yard on their shoulders to the garden. we had friends who participated in being loud and raucous mourners as the somber procession moved through the yard. we had a "pastor" on hand who said a few kind words and a prayer at the grave sight. a couple people stood by the hole and recounted their memories of herm while wiping tears from their eyes.

slowly, herm's casket was lowered to the ground and placed gently into the hole we'd prepared. all our party guests took turns throwing handfuls of dirt into the grave until the hole was filled. a stone was placed at the head of the hole with "HERM" engraved on it.

we fake cried a little bit more and then commenced with the revelry and helium huffing. and a good time was had by all.

he knows me, he really knows me

my husband & i are only about 2 weeks from our 13th anniversary and i was thinking i'd save this post til then, but we're moving next week & my brain is all befuddled, so there's no telling when i'll have time or inspiration again.


last weekend while we were out of town in the mountains for a few days, we had a really great, relaxing time. that first night, arriving in that little town & sitting down on the couch beside my honey after brooke was tucked into bed in our cabin, i felt my soul take a deep, cleansing breath such as it hadn't taken in a very long time. it was just the thing we needed, even in spite of all the things that needed to be done at home.

i took tons of pictures as we wandered through the woods, meandered through the strip of tourist crap and wound our way through a nice zoo.

it was our last night, just a few more hours and we'd be headed back into reality. we had eaten in a nice restaurant & were driving through the back of a parking lot when something caught my eye. i was craning my neck to figure out what it was. "there's a dead duck lying on that curb over there!" i said. he looks at me, looks at the duck & says, "want me to drive closer so you can take a picture of it?"

i blinked a couple times before i burst out laughing, because of COURSE i wanted to take a picture of it! and even though i know that's kind of dark & creepy and not particularly lady-like, i totally wanted to get all up close to that dead thing so i could check it out & take a picture of it. but i wouldn't have asked because i didn't want to gross out my love. there have been so many dead creatures that we've seen & generally i don't have my camera handy when i stumble across their permanently ended paths, but here i was, camera in reach & there was a duck carcass just begging for its photo to be taken.

so chris drove up all close & positioned me just right for a good look at that dead duck. and i got my one shot of it that of course i now need to share with you guys. because who doesn't want to look at a duck dangling over the edge of a curb? who knows, it may be the only picture ever taken of him and now he will be remembered forever as the last picture i took on vacation & a sign of how well my honey knows me.

belle and rosie

this day has been a long time coming and while i'm relieved that it's over, my heart feels so sad that it's here.

today my parents 2 old, adorable golden retrievers, belle and rosie, were put to sleep. they were 12 years old, litter mates, and they've both been getting pretty broken down in the hips & tumor department for the past couple years. they live in a house of stairs and they were having a hard time managing because clearly it hurt them, just getting where they needed to go. the decision was made that their quality of life had decreased too much and it wasn't reasonable to keep them going with expensive meds. they've had long, wonderful lives together with my family and it seemed that it would be too sad for either of them to live without the other, so they were both put to sleep today, in their own yard, laying snuggled up against each other.



they usually said goodbye under the piano.

 i've known this was coming for quite a while. i've been preparing brooke for it for years because every time we went to visit the grandparents, it might be the last time she saw them and we wanted her to always feel like she said a thorough and loving goodbye to them at the end of each trip.




brooke said they were sleeping 'in a pile' like they did on "where the wild things are."

  belle has always felt like she was our dog. we lived with my parents briefly when i was pregnant with brooke & we were moving from one state to another and belle adopted us then. from that point on, she always seemed like our fur girl. when brooke was 1, belle lived with us for nearly a year, but i couldn't keep up with the extra work required to own a big dog, along with the other stuff that was going on in my life, so she went back to my parents' house. every time we went to visit the grandparents, 6 hrs away, brooke's favorite part was spending time with the dogs. she loves the people, don't get me wrong, but the dogs were the best. they played in the yard with her. they chased things she threw. they sat beside her and watched her play with her toys. they stole her stuffed animals and slobbered all over them. they let her walk them around the yard on leashes, even though they were in a fenced yard and outweighed her by 40 pounds. they caught the ice and food bits she threw to them. they obeyed when she bossed them around and they always showered her with affectionate grins, licks and tail thumps when she looked their way. they were never too busy or preoccupied.

i told brooke a few days ago that friday was the day for the dogs to go to heaven. she understands the reason and she's been preparing herself for a long time and since i was crying when i told her, she just patted my arm and walked away. i didn't know if what i'd told her really sunk in, but last night when we were praying before bed, she broke down and started crying and said that she didn't think her life or her heart would ever feel the same again. like things in the world would never look the same again knowing that belle and rose were gone. she said that next time we're in charlotte, she's going to go out back and sleep on their graves.

it seemed to brooke that since we always have funerals for the people we love, then of course we must have a funeral for our beloved dogs. it seemed insulting and wrong to even consider going on with life before a funeral was held, so chris and decided we needed to do something today to recognize and love the 2 furry girls and how much they've meant to our lives. we didn't want to put up a marker of any kind in our house or yard because brooke would likely fixate on it and let her hurt hang onto her. instead, i took brooke out to a party store today and let her pick out 2 helium balloons, one red, for rosie, to match her collar, and one blue, for belle to match her collar. she picked heart balloons and we brought them home and wrote and drew all over them. we told the dogs how much we loved them and would miss them.

then we all went outside with our red and blue balloons, brooke hugged and kissed both of them goodbye and told them that Jesus would read the notes to them when they got to heaven. we let them go and watched until they were out of sight.

our hearts are hurting, but we're glad to have known these wonderful, goofy, sweet, golden girls. we love
you, belle and rosie.

why am i telling this story?

this is going to be a dark one with maybe a few funnies tucked in around the edges. abandon ship if you're not up for it.

when chris & i were first married, we got a cat. she got kitty aids & died really soon after we got her. it was awful, foaming from all facial orifices. (you were warned!)

shortly after she went to kitty heaven, we got another cat, named onyx & she was my furbaby. she was the one who i snuggled with & adored while i was going through infertility crap for a couple years. she was gentle & friendly and she liked to be nurtured by a needy, wanna-be-mom, or so i told myself.

one night, chris & i were hanging out, taking turns playing on the computer & playing with our little onyx before retiring for the evening. we were in a really good mood, lots of laughing & a general sense of wholeness and contentment. we had just crawled into bed & were still giggling when we heard a noise from the other room. i thought it was probably the kitty knocking something off the dresser. it wasn't a big noise, more of a little thump. but chris, being manly, stood up, thumped himself on the chest & declared, caveman style, "i am MAN! i investigate noises in the night! OOG!" i clapped appreciatively and bounced around a bit because that's what cavewomen are supposed to do when their man saves them from scary noises.

he was only gone for a few seconds before he yelled, "oh no! come here, quick!" all fun and games vanished in those five little words. i dove out of bed & into the guest room where he was crouching down. he was leaning over the cat, who was lying on the floor, motionless. the noise we'd heard was onyx falling off the window sill. she was dead. with no warning, she went from frisking about the house with us one minute to dead on the floor the next.

we were beside ourselves trying to figure out what we should do. we'd never had a pet die in our house before and neither one of us really wanted to touch her. we held a mirror up to her nose to check for breath. we called 911 to see if they'd direct us to a number for an all night animal hospital (they did. don't mock me. it felt like an emergency to me.) because we were too spastic to find it in a phone book. we debated giving her mouth to mouth, but by then, it had been at least 10-15 min & surely it was too late, plus, ew. frenching our dead pet somehow seemed like too much even to us at that point.

we finally decided that our poor kitty baby was really gone and we needed to figure out the next step. um... i couldn't bear the thought of her being in the house all night. i knew i wouldn't be able to sleep knowing there was a dead family member in the laundry room who might possibly have gone grossly stiff & have her legs straight up in the air when i awoke the next morning. she needed to go away. immediately.

but it was 2am. and it was raining. and it was cold outside. but she needed to be out of our house. i knew that sometimes coyotes ran through our neighborhood at night because i could hear them howling on occassion, so we couldn't just put her outside. the thought of waking up to find bits & pieces of her carcass spread around the yard complete with teeth marks and blood spatters was too much for us, so we decided that we'd bury her. but again, it was the middle of a dark, cold, rainy night.

we bundled ourselves up in dark clothes. we put our kitty baby into her favorite bed & then double bagged her into garbage sacks in hopes that the critters wouldn't smell her & dig her back up. we went out to a big empty field that was behind our house & through some brambles and brush. it was one of those fields that was used for growing hay, so we knew she wouldn't get dug up by a farmer plowing his field in the spring.

it was kind of horrible with some hilarity thrown in at the same time. we took turns digging in the hard ground until we felt that we'd made a hole big enough and deep enough to fit the cat & her bedding comfortably. we felt like some kind of treacherous body hiders as if we were committing a crime, because who else would be out at 2am burying a body? a car drove by at one point & slowed down a bit, so we hit the dirt & lay still until they passed because we didn't want someone calling the police to report suspicious individuals digging in a field in the rain. we didn't want to have to dig her back up later to prove that we really were just burying a cat & not a trash bag filled with human remains. or pirate booty.

it took much longer than we would have liked & we were soaked by the time we stumbled back home. we showered til the hot water ran out to wash away the dirt & cold & sadness that we seemed to be covered in. we sobbed in each others arms because we'd just lost our second beloved baby. the whole thing was too overwhelming. i think i wept for the human babies i couldn't conceive as much as the furry babies i couldn't seem to keep alive. it was a night that will forever stand out in my mind as one of my biggest losses emotionally and one of those growing up moments that we never like, but we all go through sooner or later.

goodbye, onyx. we still love you.

when it stops being fun

a bloggy friend of mine posted the other day asking, "how long will you blog?" i'd never before thought of putting a time limit on it or planning an ending date. it's not a means to an end to me, but rather an outlet & a way to have some fun. i don't often have the chance to just indulge in foolishness & talk funny with my friends, so this has been a fun way for me to kind of do that.

however, in the past few days, i've gotten a little bit stomped on by a stranger on here. she felt the need to make a snarky comment on a post suggesting that a family can't be both honest (whatever crass places that may take us) and also be bible readers. like you can't love God & still make boob jokes. um... God made the boobs & all our other kibbles & bits & if we find humor in them, where's the harm? there was a second comment today, this time done anonymously, where i was told that i was sick & basically saying that i'm attracting the pervs by writing the trash that i write here. (don't bother looking for it, i deleted that one already & changed my comment settings to not allow anonymous writers anymore. sorry if you're one of the nice anonymous visitors.)

ever since i started reading the blogs of others about a year ago, i've stumbled across posts much like the one i'm writing now where the blogger is troubled by some snotty comment made by a stranger or someone they know who's too scared to use their own name. i never figured i'd attract enough attention from the world at large to get the kinds of comments i've read in the comment sections of others. but here we are & i don't especially like it.

i thank the friends of mine who jumped to my defense. i love you guys. i don't want to start any mud slinging. i just do this for fun. when it stops being fun, i guess that's the answer to the question of "how long will you keep blogging?"

art therapy 2

today was one of "those" days. you know the kind - where you wake up & there are grumpy vibes coming from everywhere. the first thing i heard was the cats hissing & snarling at each other. i should rephrase that; the big one was hissing and snarling because the little one was bugging the crap out of her & needed her butt to be properly kicked. my kid was whining, my husband was huffing. i wanted to go back to sleep & try the other side of bed a bit later, but i was going to be responsible & productive & peel myself out from between my fabulous sheets, regardless of the day's beginning.

i tried to play peacemaker to all parties involved; i really gave it the old college try when i was out on the back deck putting out bird seed to feed our abundant wildlife. chris made a silly face through the window, so i dropped my pants & mooned him. nothing brings a spurt of shock & bewildered amusement to a group of people like a totally unexpected, pasty white butt flash.

it seemed as though we'd pulled our emotions up by the bootstraps, but after a few hours of school work, brooke & i were both over it. she'd been put onto yellow on her chart (green means good, yellow is not so good & red is bad. i know, so original) and still had to finish her book report. when it was done, she buried her face in my boobs & started shaking & saying that she just wanted to scream really loud for a long time. so i sent her up to take a shower & told her to scream it all out in there. our duplex neighbor wasn't home, thankfully, so it was the place in the house where it was least likely to annoy the snot out of me or result in cops showing up at our door.

when she came down later, she was wearing a red shirt & had made a little paper sign that she stuck to her stomach. i threw it away eventually, but then took a picture of it in the trash because it's kind of funny.

then she made a bigger sign to hang from herself to make sure it was loud & clear that she was feeling red. she frequently shows & expresses her feelings in colors rather than words & red or burgundy seem to be about the worst. well, black's pretty bad too, but that's a whole different place for her.

i told her it was time for another round of art therapy. time to go get her marker box & draw on the floor. when she's extra frustrated, there's nothing like coloring big, huge things to really purge out the crap that's on the inside so that she can go on with her day. there was some stomping, banging & snarking, but she soon got down to business. here comes the predictable giant head of anger. the angry eyebrows & the huge, toothy frown. she didn't have enough juice in her red markers (another source of pissiness) to fill the whole thing & she riduculed me for my suggestions of red polka dots because, duh, mom, polka dots are for cheerful times! she settled for drawing hearts & then scribbling them out to show her sadness & broken heart. she wrote, "I AM SO SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and then she counted how many exclamation points there were so she could point out to me that there were 19 exclamations points worth of sadness displayed on the floor.

i told her that when i was a kid, i used to write all the bad words i knew on paper or in my diary and it kind of made me feel better. i encouraged her to try it because, 1, i thought it might help her. 2, it would be interesting to see what bad words she knows. and 3, it seemed to me that i might just have some bad words of my own that i'd like to write down after having such a draining day.

she resisted my peer pressure to write down bad stuff. she said it would make her feel too bad, so i got out a marker & started my own list.

it wasn't long before she joined in on the fun & was writing away. i told her that spelling didn't count when you're writing your mad words, so she could spell them any old way she wanted. you can clearly see that she did just that.

i love how she spelled onion & stupid & meany. and she asked me to write plaque & then she drew icky teeth. i tried to draw a tooth of my own on the left, but it ended up looking more like long-crotch tights, so i added feet.

she wrote down "o my god" and "damit" but then asked me to erase them immediately because it made her really nervous to even see those written down. she's so much better than me. she wrote down a couple of the stupid songs that i sing to her to help certain words stick in her head because she hates them since they get lodged in her brain & she can't get them out. (mwahaha! all part of my evil parenting scheme!)

we added another level of fun to our therapy by trying to read all our words backwards as we washed them off the floor. this tickled her little self all the way down into her funny bone. she wanted me to read them out & then filmed me washing & shouting them because it was probably the best part of the day & she's all about documenting her life on video. it's a horrible little video, but you can see how the therapy worked for her through her giggling.

she thought it would be fun to color on her face & i decided to join in on that portion of the fun as well. we started out with war paint (we've been studying sioux indians lately) and then it deteriorated to something involving angry eyebrows & a soul patch. it was very funny, either way & thankfully all washed off before bed.

and so ended another day in the riley household in which art therapy came, saw & conquered our pain.

smokeless

sometimes, i really miss smoking. i smoked cigarettes on & off from the time i was 20 till i was 33. i quit lots of times, including when i was preg & nursing, of course, and i tried to never smoke around brooke because i didn't want her to remember me that way since i fully intended to quit while she was still little. it's been nearly 2 years now, but there are still some days when i'd like nothing better than to go sit on the front steps & light one up. i haven't yet found anything that can replace the feeling of being all stressed out & lighting one up & taking a big, long drag. somehow, bits & pieces started crumbling off around the edges of the stress brick that was sitting on me. by the time i'd spent 10 minutes outside with a smoke in hand, i'd feel lighter somehow & less tightly coiled. i know all the bad things about it & all the reasons why you shouldn't smoke. i agree with all of them, but i sure would like to find something that could do the job of that stress relieving cigarette. because i sure feel like i need it today.

shoveling road pizza

today brooke & i went out front to visit with our kitties & i noticed her looking out toward the road. she said, "mom, what cat is lying in the road?" a few yards past the end of our driveway i saw a furry shape lying there, not moving with its legs sticking up. oh crap. i got closer & realized that it wasn't the color of any of our 6 cats, so i breathed a huge sigh of relief. brooke of course wanted to go out & examine it, so we  walked out to look at it more closely & it was a little kitten, not much older than the 4 babies who live in our front yard. he was black & white w/ the prettiest pure white toe pads on the bottoms of those raised paws. it had clearly only been run over once because it was still in pretty good shape, if you can say that a dead thing is in good shape. i was concerned about us being in the middle of the road even though we live on a fairly quiet street; i would hate for a car to zip over the hill & leave one of us as roadkill, all because we were gawking at a carcass, so i decided we needed to go back to the house.

i realized that over the next few hours & days that kitten was going to get run over many more times & we would have to watch as it got flatter & ickier & brooke would want to go out & look at it numerous times as it decayed in the road. with the heat being so ridiculous, i was sure we'd also be smelling it for a while before some predator finally dragged it away to munch whatever bits were left at that point.

brooke ran around to the back of the house & came back dragging a very old, very dirty shovel so that i would collect the little squished road warrior. ew. i so did not want to have anything to do with that furry bug buffet, so i went into the house on some flimsy excuse, but really to just avoid the job at hand. i finally gulped down the mouth vomit, donned some rubber flip flops & marched out to my destiny. i made brooke stay on the side of the road ostensibly because it was unsafe, but also because i really didn't want her to have a front row seat if i started to scoop the thing & a bundle of intestines or a rat fell out. i was standing there in the road with a muddy, spider covered shovel & i realized that i'd never used a shovel to scoop dead stuff before. this wasn't quite as easy as i'd first thought and i couldn't manage to get it scooped. i didn't want to bend over & push the thing onto the shovel with my hand & i wasn't sure i could get a good angle to push it on w/ my foot (never mind that i didn't want death germs on my shoe) so i kind of push/dragged it with the shovel over to the side of the street. i was thankful that nothing disgusting fell out & most of the bugs dispersed when i started wrangling their lunch. it took a few tries, but i managed to get it mostly onto the shovel with only the little floppy head hanging off the end. and then i was faced with the problem of what to do with it.

there's a lot next door to us where a house used to stand, but it burned down a few years ago & now it's just a broken concrete slab with a driveway with a lot of weeds & trees surrounding it. so i decided that i would death march that thing down the hill & fling it into the woods back there to get it as far away from ourselves as we could. but brooke didn't want me to throw it and with my luck, i would have thrown it directly into the nearest tree where it would have splattered & splashed back at me, so i put it gently down into a patch of grass at the edge of the woods & then with a queasy stomach, headed back home.

i'm glad to know now that i'm tough enough to shovel up a dead cat if i need to without asking a man for help (chris was in the house & i didn't even tell him about it till afterwards) and also glad to know that if someone asked me to help them dispose of a human, i wouldn't be tough enough for that. so please, dispose of your own bodies.

does he really have my back?

i think it's great when churches can attract people of varying nationalities, wallet size & lifestyle. i think everyone should feel welcome at church, and yet... i've had some interesting experiences with those other people at church in the past year.

around christmas time brooke & i were getting onto the escalator & an odd woman jumped in between us. brooke squeezed past her on the single file ride to get in front of me rather behind the strange woman. after she did, the woman leaned against my back from the step directly behind me & started singing opera loudly into my ear. later in the service as the worship was winding down, the music went low & there was mostly just humming or quiet, that same woman started belting out the star spangled banner. she was allowed to go on for a minute before our pastor stepped over to her & next thing i knew, her solo ended. i wanted to know what he said to her because i have no idea how a situation like that should be handled.

there's a man who attends regularly who gives off an air of homelessness. he sits in the same section where we generally park ourselves & a few months ago i was pretty sure on one occassion that he was talking to himself, and not just talking, he was swearing to himself too. it was vaguely amusing to me in a twisted sort of way. i was glad there weren't kids sitting near him because it would be a shame for them to learn the bad words at church.

well, today we were sitting in the same row as that dude. as the music wound down, i heard him start mumbling. it was louder than a whisper, but quieter than talking & definitely in the growly sort of speech category. the first thing i clearly heard him say was "your f%cking mother's a bitch." he kept it up for a few minutes, dropping an arsenal of F bombs. there was something very disturbing about sitting next to him, albeit with seven empty seats between us (yes, i counted) and listening to him cussing up a storm right there in church. i'm pretty irreverent in a lot of ways because i don't think Jesus was the reverent type, but this was over the line, even for me. i was getting a distinct vibe of a spiritual nature, and not the kind you hope to encounter when you're sitting in church (or anywhere else for that matter). i've had some dealings with such things in my life & i felt that same feeling that i've felt in those situations before, which just made me all the more tense.

a couple who was sitting right in front of him got up & moved. i've never seen them before, but i hope they weren't scared off. people started glancing around & i hate to admit it, but i put my shoes back on & moved my purse close to my hand so that if i needed to leave quickly, i'd be ready. i couldn't concentrate on anything the pastor was saying, even though, based on the pictures, it seemed like it was probably a good one. chris got up and went to speak to someone in leadership about this guy & i felt my heart thumping when he got up because then i was alone w/ the disturbed man. he kept zipping & unzipping some little bag & repeatedly changing cd's in his player that i could distinctly hear coming through the headphones in his ears.

all through the service, i kept thinking & praying that God had something going on that would end well. i cautiously asked Him if there was anything i was supposed to be doing (i was kinda hoping He'd tell me to move, but i was willing to listen if He had another suggestion) but i got nothing. i couldn't even close my eyes to pray because i felt like i needed to keep them open & be ready for the slightest movement in my peripheral vision so i could snatch up my purse & haul ass if i needed to. i know that makes me a coward and probably an un-compassionate one at that, but that's how i felt.

i feel like i failed somehow. i'm not even sure what i failed at. maybe just by feeling fearful, as if God couldn't or wouldn't protect me if protection was needed. i was left wondering if i really believe that God's got my back.

sinking

there are days when being brooke's mom leaves me feeling like i'm drowning. or like i'm on another planet where the creatures around me act & speak in a way that makes no sense, but i know i'm supposed to do something, i just have no idea what. they desperately need my help, but i can't figure out what that help looks like or how to perform it.

i sometimes wonder what God was thinking when He gave her to me. i don't know what i'm doing. she sometimes seems so sad or frustrated or overwhelmed, but there's nothing that i can figure out that i can do to help her. when she's hurt, she runs away from me, not toward me. if i wrap my arms around her & attempt to comfort her, she often stiffens up or tries to get away & run & hide. her stuffed animals give her greater comfort than i do. the cat makes her happier than i do. i would give my life for brooke, but so often i'm useless to her. she'd rather hold some inanimate object & hide in a hole than be with me. i just don't understand.

i think maybe it's time for us to get some testing done. i need to find a dependable, knowledgable doctor or counselor who can help steer us in the right direction, if such a direction exists. it would be great if some questions could be answered and maybe we can take some actions that would feel productive for a change.

i'm sorry to whine on here tonight. it's hard to feel funny or entertaining when i feel like i'm sinking.

my guts hurt

sometimes my guts hurt from parenting brooke. she can be the most absurdly challenging human being i've ever met. school especially seems to exasperate her issues & cause us both unending quantities of misery. spelling seems to push her beyond her capabilities. just writing the words down on paper or spelling them out loud makes her cry. she's working on writing each word 5 times right now & so far we've spent at least half an hour & accomplished very little except for weeping & gnashing of teeth. i try to be understanding and patient & kind. i try to give her some room to make decisions about her school work in areas where flexibility is ok, but still the weeping continues. i've tried being strict & tough when she does this, but it seems to make it worse. like then she's trying to deal w/ the stress of a disappointed parent & frustration over discipline as well as trying to do something that's too hard.

i try to make testing either non-existent or so subtle that she hardly knows it's happening, because to me, the grade is inconsequential, it's the information sticking in her brain that matters. i have never punished her for spelling a word wrong or ridiculed or criticized her. i only make her practice them more so that they'll hopefully stick. and yet still we're sitting here with her hardly able to breathe while she writes this stuff. she's gotten up about 6 times for tissues because her snot is dripping onto her paper, her head is pounding from all the crying. how the hell am i supposed to accomplish anything? how can i get through her schooling with a smart, educated daughter at the end of it if so many days are filled with this crap? she's begging for medicine and a nap and a hug and punishment, but i think none of those things will make her better. they're just stall techniques from a kid who doesn't seem to be able to perform the most basic of tasks some days. how can one person be both so smart & capable & independent in some areas & so totally helpless & miserable in others? she can spout out science information like a scientist & work the technology in the house like she was born w/ a remote in her hand, but she can't spell bread without wanting to beat her own head in.

finally she finished & then i had her draw a picture of how she felt to hopefully get it out, move past it & allow us to get on with our day. i rocked her & squeezed her & let her blow snot bubbles onto my chest for a few minutes & now we'll go outside & try to find some dirt so we can plant some flowers in pots. maybe the dirt will soothe our souls.

this girl is a mystery to me. a completely exhausting, infuriating, wonderful mystery. i'm glad i only have one kid. God knew.

quirky dog-girl

today, as usual, brooke spent her day running around the house in a costume. she was a dog, which usually consists of some odd combination of her own clothes in "natural" dog colors w/ ears, snout & tail strapped on. now that she's 7, i rarely let her leave the house in a full-on costume like that because it's just starting to seem weird. people don't understand why there's a kid running around walmart on all fours barking & growling at them. but i will frequently allow her to wear a piece of the costume, such as ears or tail & i try to remind her to act like a human. i never dreamed i'd be having to tell my 7 yr old offspring that she's a human & to please act like it. she seriously believes that she has some animal DNA in her body. she told me today that it's one of her dreams that one day she'll be riding in the car, wearing her dog ears & snout & sticking her head out the window with her tongue hanging out & some news crew will see & film her & put her on the news as the amazing dog girl. when she's in costume, she really feels like she becomes one with it & it becomes a real part of her. it's like her grasp on reality shifts a bit & she no longer sees herself for who she is.

today at walmart she was scampering around the checkout area (wearing her dog ears, of course) while i was scanning & paying & i saw that she was over at the next register interacting with a lady & a couple other little kids. as usual they were looking at her oddly, as most people do when she's in costume, and then she ran back over to me & told me that she made them laugh. i asked her how she made them laugh & she said it was because she was sniffing them & they liked it. holy crap! who knew that i needed to tell my kid that she can't sniff strangers in public?! i mean, i wasn't watching as closely as i should have been, obviously, but i really hope she was doing a humanish form of sniffing rather than the real doggie deal of going straight for the butt/crotch area!

last weekend we were at the mall & ran across a group of people at a display who were selling sugar gliders which are tiny little marsupials. they like to hang out in your pockets or inside your clothes & will always come back to you if they fall on the ground. brooke, of course, fell truly, madly, deeply in love with these little critters & wanted desperately to take one home. it cost $600 & wasn't an option for us, regardless of how cute it was, but that didn't stop brooke's heart from breaking as i walked her, weeping, out to the car. we had taken a paper handout thing from the sales person & as soon as we got home, brooke cut out some pictures of the gliders & one in particular became her new pet. it was as if it became a real animal when she looked at it and petted it. she even wore a special shirt all the next day so that it would have a comfy pouch to sleep in while she romped about with it.

we went to a deli for lunch & had to stand in line for a while & there was a little girl in front of us. brooke kept holding the paper sugar glider out to the girl. i don't even think she said anything to the kid, just held that thing out with the sweetest, happiest & most expectant look on her face. and the girl just stared at her & the paper critter blankly. she asked someone else if they wanted to pet her glider.

i have a hard time watching those interactions in brooke's life which are entirely too common because it makes my heart ache for her. she sees the world through different eyes than the rest of us boring folks. her world is full of excitement & adventure & possibilities that only she can see. she wants so badly for someone else to be able to join her in her world, but the rest of us just stare blankly at the little paper thing or ears & snout & wonder what she's doing. wonder what she's talking about. wonder what's wrong with her & wish that she'd stop. i don't want to tell her to put the paper glider down because i don't want to be the one to make her sad. but i don't want her to be hurt by the world when some unkind person makes fun of her either. i don't know where the balance is between letting her be herself & be carefree & quirky and when i need to put my foot down & make her act "normal." i only care a little bit about how she's percieved by the world, but there is that piece of me that does care. i want people to like her & find her interesting as much as i do. i want her to act in a way that other kids can understand & relate to. but if i try to make her more like the rest of the world, then if people like her, they're not seeing the real brooke. they're seeing a mushed down version of her.

i wonder if this is something that i'll have to deal with through her whole childhood. or is there a time when she'll mellow out? will there come a time when i won't have to try to think of the different things i need to teach her that seem so obvious to the rest of us? like don't sniff strangers butts. but then again, her version of life is way more colorful & amazing & innocent. i wish i could find it within myself to join her in her adventures. if only i could cut loose & drop all my inhibitions & gallop around barking & growling with her, chasing my tail & howling in the wind. but if i did, we'd probably both end up on the news, only not for the fun reason she had dreamed.