Collective Mood

I started doing Eucharistic Ministry -- bringing communion to patients at UCSF Hospital -- about 9 years ago. Something I noticed early on is that there tends to be a collective mood amongst the patients most days. Maybe they are cranky or asleep or gracious, but there tends to be a unifying mood. Today the patients were just lovely --kind and acknowledging. It gave me such a boost to be there.

One of the cancer patients was accompanied by her husband who was sleeping on a cot next to her. As this patient and I prayed together I thought about the time I was in the hospital with my husband sleeping beside me. But that was while awaiting the birth of our daughter. The contrast in circumstance nearly made me cry. I am so grateful that my family and I are healthy. And yeah, I don't have health insurance but right now, thankfully, I don't need it.

Yesterday Olivia and I went to a friend's house who was having a few folks over for a late lunch. The other women were a few years older, unmarried, no children. I didn't have a whole lot too talk about. Generally I don't notice those sorts of markers, but I felt like the odd woman out which was weird.

A few months ago I noticed that I don't make eye contact, I rarely finish my sentences and I slouch. I've no idea how long these behaviors have been going on, but I know they weren't always part of my repertoire. The party yesterday made me wonder if the reason I have almost no friends any longer is because I am communicating "look elsewhere". Ditto my job search. Something for me to noodle on.

Sleep or Get Stuff Done?

A choice that has driven almost all decisions lately. I hate to be a broken record, but we are still dealing with fragmented sleep here and one's thinking gets cloudy after weeks of it.

One of the side effects of Aaron being home for 3 weeks between jobs was that I had use of the car. Really helpful for running errands, especially food shopping. What I didn't consider was how much Olivia and I enjoy biking places. Yesterday was Aaron's first day at the new job and it was bucketing rain, so Olivia and I did not bike to play group.

After a day of being cooped up indoors I decided that today we would go to a tumbling class to make up for it. I hustled Ols into her clothes this morning and biked downtown to get there by 9:30 to discover -- the class has been canceled. No matter, it's a beautiful sunny day so we came home and opened up the patio door and all the windows.

Now she is napping and I have an opportunity to get some work done on this tiny consulting project but my head is so fuzzy I am not sure I can have much problem-solving ability.

For instance I only just realized yesterday that when Olivia requests a bottle, as she does several times a day, she just wants something to drink. I was taking her literally and we were getting into a struggle over weaning her off a bottle. Finally I came to understand I could put water in a cup with a straw (somehow sippy cups became non grata. She won't drink out of them at all.) and she was good to go. Oy.

I am yawning, but I just heard Olivia wake up from her too-brief nap.

Plus Ça Même Chose

Whoever first said "the more things change, the more they stay the same" was evidently reading our mail. After a nice respite, a few days of R&R out of town, we felt as though our ship might come in before the dock rotted. We'd been needing a change of scenery and energy: going to the Monterrey aquarium helped us regain some perspective and humor.

For a NY minute.

We'd already been unsure how to bridge the gap between Aaron's jobs. At first it looked like a few days that would be unpaid. Then it was a week and a half. Now his start date has been pushed back again and it spells disaster. In addition, Aaron's former employer decided arbitrarily that he just wouldn't pay Aaron what he was owed.

Besides the financial strain, it gets harder and harder for us to be our best selves with each other. I have no excuse for it. I recognize it is wrong. It is for the family unit that we should absolutely be our best selves, and yet we get snappish and short with each other, our daughter, our dog.

Aaron told me about his revised start date when I got back from the grocery this evening. In that interval Olivia had drawn with crayon on the coffee table, the sliding glass doors and the couch. There were Cheerios stuffed between the cushions and scraps of lettuce on the carpet. Sadie hadn't been fed or walked. Olivia had dunked the new books I'd bought her into a bucket of water and left them tossed on the patio. I hadn't been fed. I'd spent the day doing laundry, attempting to get some workshop coordinating done, running Olivia to play group.

So I stood there holding a carton of diapers and bags of groceries, kid whining at my feet, and felt the overwhelming urge to turn around and keep walking. I was too tired to cry. Just pitch my cellphone and walk into the sea.

"The worst is not, so long as we can say 'this is the worst.'"

Olivia is waking up a few times a night so we are already running on fumes. Twice last night she got up from her bed and sleepwalked into the living room to curl up on her tummy on the couch where it's warmer. I never know which room Aaron or I will wake up in either. We start off in our room but during the night one of us will go into Olivia's room to get her back down and just stay there.

To top it off, my friend Jon called this evening from LA to "coordinate this weekend." Huh? Evidently a bunch of the Pterodactyls are getting together for a birthday celebration. This was the first we'd heard of it -- as we hadn't been invited. He was abashed that he'd inadvertently let the cat out of the bag, but the way this week has teed up, whatever.

I just want to return to work again. Not a few hours consulting, not a job that returns me to the workforce but doesn't justify daycare expenses, but a worthwhile job. As this crappy job market has dragged on my aspirations have gotten smaller and smaller and I have too.

Often at night I lie awake in bed and think of things I'd like to share in this blog, or with friends, with family. But it is all so depressing it seems wasteful and trite to let the newts and toads keep hopping out of my mouth. So it's days before I can work up the nerve to post, weeks before I return calls, months and years between visits with friends.

I have orange cupcake frosting to clean off of my blouse. And a happy vision to find that I can hold in my mind's eye so that I may sleep.

Sorry for all the toads.

There's A Million Ways To Go Part 2

Well, our health insurance payments got significantly cheaper now that I've been denied coverage. We were wondering whether we could afford it and it's much easier to do so if one family member is without. Turns out my back spasms are a pre-existing condition. Apparently being female disposes you to having children and picking them up.

Olivia had her first tumbling class on Saturday and was a natural. We went early to the center and observed a class of older kids. Ols watched very intently and sat quietly on her Dad's lap the whole time. Then when her class started she executed the various moves cleanly and quickly. The other parents were floored that it was her first class. We had trouble getting her off the rings, she was having such a good time on them. It's kind of wild watching your kid use a skill from seemingly nowhere. Watching her hang from the rings with no assistance Aaron and I were asking ourselves "where the hell did she learn that?"

Yesterday we went to a friend's wedding and I saw a bunch of people who I hadn't spoken with in years. They of course asked where we were living now and what were we up to? Again I struggled with encapsulating it into a sound bite. I think I came off as a bit unfriendly, which wasn't my intent, just my poor small talk skills on display.

I spoke often with my east coast family this weekend. I was awakened very early Saturday morning by a call from a cousin who was alerting me to the news that her mother had been admitted to the hospital, a victim of domestic violence. I made what calls I could to connect folks, but felt all the while that I was on the wrong coast.

It got really chilly over the weekend and I'd hoped to skip play group today because I didn't feel like biking in the cold weather. But about a half hour before play group started Olivia was walking around the house repeating "helmet" and I realized she seemed to know that today is a play group day. Foiled again! So off we went singing our ABCs and Cat Stevens, Olivia ringing the bike bell for emphasis.

Car is in the shop since we had really no brakes to speak of and, strapped or not, that's not the kind of maintenance you can defer -- unlike the crunched hood which will probably never get fixed. We are becoming more hillbilly by the day. We had hoped to take a brief trip somewhere this week that Aaron is off, maybe Vegas or LA. But, as usual, we either have money or time but not both. So we may do a day trip somewhere like Carmel. Just get out of town for a bit so it feels like a vacation; haven't had one since our honeymoon.Though only a few years ago, it truly feels like a lifetime ago.

Fall Cleaning

I believe I have adopted a box of apples. At $6 a pop they no longer qualify as a purchase; we may as well just go ahead and set up a college fund for these little guys. With autumn in full bore we were missing Connecticut apples -- California apples of all varieties are lackluster specimens of biomass -- so we had some McCouns shipped out. Apparently a bit of stress-induced folly. I mean, they are very good, don't get me wrong -- but $6 for an apple?! WTF?

Today Aaron had to interact with his devious former employer (Yay! Ding dong, the witch is dead!) to retrieve some personal items from the office. He was not looking forward to the trip and the apples arrived just as he was headed out. He was able to tuck one into his bag as he left the house, a talisman before the big battle. Aaron is still owed a bunch of money but his previous employer's ickiness will no longer permeate our home environment.

We can already feel the difference. Our humor has returned, most of the seriousness is cast off. Sadie is fully mended and back to her daffy disobedient self. In a similar vein, our Olliepop is acquiring so many new words and concepts and mannerisms that it is getting harder and harder to discipline her with a straight face. She often comes back with some zinger phrase or gesture that will just crack one of us up. The other then tries to keep some semblance of authority, but all is usually lost.

Parenting really brings you in touch with hypocrisy. For instance, we'll say to her "don't say 'No' to me little girl!" and she hears that word from us all the time. She is, of course, really tuned in to any discrepancies between word and action and exploits them to the hilt. We are rapidly seeing both the difficulty and the need to maintain our integrity while still maintaining her well-being. Lots of times we just pull rank, but I am guessing that is not going to work in a little while.

Saturday morning she will start a tumbling class. We are curious if it will harness some of that energy or just make her more robust. At this point all we can think of to give us an edge would be to stop feeding her, but she already appears to be a breatharian. There are some days I don't know what she is subsisting on. She's healthy as a horse but still, I had no idea how anxiety-producing it is when your kid eats a few mouthfuls for days on end.

Aaron's bike is all fixed up now, so this weekend we'll probably take the apples to the beach or something, maybe grab a movie.