Saturday, December 15, 2012

I can't even...


When our clock radio went off this morning I heard President Obama's speech from yesterday being replayed.  "...beautiful little children...  they had their entire lives ahead of them...Our hearts are broken."

So it wasn't an nightmare after all.  At least not literally, but a nightmare still.

I have no idea what time I fell asleep last night.  I laid there for what seemed like hours, alternating between trying to meditate and send my healing spirit of love to the shattered souls in Connecticut and trailing into dark, frightening thoughts and images of how this nightmare played out for those terrified little ones and their teachers, principal and school psychologist.  

I know the internet is lighting up with people raging on about gun rights, gun laws and gun violence but it all seems hollow and worthless to me.  There are numbers and statistics being bandied about as proof or explanations for why limiting access to firearms will or won't make a difference as far as preventing these types of horrific events.

I don't want to hear the rhetoric.  I simply don't want to hear it.

I have opinions about it, sure.  But all I want is for this to have not happened.  I want those children not to have seen and heard what they did.  I want the parents to have their babies back in their arms.  I want those teachers at home with their loved ones, enjoying the start of their hard earned holiday break. 

I am completely heartsick and I just can't begin to process this.  I keep shaking my head and choking back my tears.

Why?

Why, why, why?

Hallelujah.



We have got to own up to the reality that our society is severely wounded, if not already broken.  We have got to figure out how to love and care for one another - one and all.

If 20 beautiful, innocent little children being gunned down in their classrooms isn't going to serve as our wake up call, what ever will?

What ever will?




Tuesday, November 20, 2012

My family got hit with a violent stomach bug and I'm feeling...grateful?

Oy vey.
It has been a tough 48 hours.

When I turned my phone back on after my show on Saturday night, I was dismayed to see a message from Andrew that Lilah had gotten sick.  It was her first experience with vomiting and she did not handle it well.  I slept with her and held her over a dozen times throughout the night as she heaved, choked, screamed, writhed and then passed back out until the next round.  She has bounced back relatively well and we are focusing on rehydration and getting her guts back to normal.  (this has been a new parenting milestone for us too...yuck.)

We thought we were "out of the woods" yesterday.  Well, other than me feeling guilty for probably having accidentally food-poisoned us.

And then it hit Sadie.  And it hit her hard.  Last night was a long one.  She was sick for almost 8 full hours.  At midnight when all of our efforts to stop the vomiting were failing, we called the advice nurse and after 20 minutes of answering questions and only minimal manipulation on my part, he prescribed an anti-nausea medication for her.  As I pulled out of the driveway at 1:00 AM, I was pretty sure that it was probably going to be too late to do any good, but as my friend who recommended it said, "if it cuts her misery for even an hour, it is more than worth it."  Sure enough, she had just gotten sick again as I walked in the door with it, so we gave it to her straight away.  When she vomited again 25 minutes later, I felt truly desperate.  How was she not keeping down a Rx strength medication that is used for cancer patients suffering the nauseating effects of chemo?!?!

I may live to regret it, but I basically gave updates on my Facebook page of what was happening - mostly for moral support.  At 2 AM I lamented publicly:

okay she just threw up 25 minutes after taking a dissolve tablet of prescribed anti nausea medication! I am OVER this. we are at 8 hours of vomiting. I'm sleeping on the floor by her bed. God, Goddesses, Universe, guardian angels, Saints: MAKE IT STOP. SHE IS DESTROYED.

A tad dramatic, but I give myself a pass, considering the circumstances.  Of course that brought a whole slew of "take her to the ER for IV hydration!" suggestions from concerned family and friends.

I was glad to be able to report within just a few more hours that she had turned the corner and is slowly but surely on the mend.  She, Andrew and Lilah have all had long naps today.

Meanwhile, I got some much needed quiet time to clean up, finish the laundry and think about what we just went through as a family.  You always hear about the whole "staying up all night with a sick child" thing, but this was really our first time.  Well, except for Sadie's ER visit almost 3 years ago, which was almost certainly food poisoning from a diner, but somehow the doctors thought it was much more serious.  (thankfully it wasn't)

Anyway, in the spirit of "mind over matter" and "onward and upward" and "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", it didn't take me long to come up with many reasons to be grateful despite thiese dreadful couple of nights.

We were all together.  I have a supportive, amazing husband who literally got puked on while I was off at a performance, doing what I love.  I have strong, brave, (usually) healthy children who can understand what is going on and trust us to take care of them during such a scary, miserable situation.  I had family and friends near and far who were ready and willing to help in any way they could.  And as cliche as it may sound, Andrew reminded me that it could have been so much worse.

So true. 

A quick inventory of what some friends that I know are going through right now yielded a sobering list of things that I am grateful that we aren't currently dealing with.  For example,

I am not facing a first holiday season after losing my young, vibrant sister to brain cancer or my beloved father to a heart attack.
I am not about to pass the anniversary of a family member's tragic death due to complications of alcohol addiction.
I am not navigating custody battles over who-gets-the-kids-for-which-holiday.
I am not scheduling ovary removal surgery and a mentally gearing up for a clinical drug trial for Stage IV breast cancer.

Then there's the global perspective:

I am not in a refugee camp in civil war torn Syria.
I am not fleeing bombings in Palestine or Israel.
I am not reeling from my home being demolished by hurricane Sandy a few weeks ago.
(tip of the iceberg here, but I am sure you get the point.)

Anyway, as we slowly get back to feeling normal, am going to keep focusing on feeling grateful.

It is Thanksgiving in two days, after all.

To your health.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

reNEWed!

New theatrical headshot:


 New fairy doll:

 

New loss:

New favorite photo of Andrew and Lilah:



New friends:



 

New memories:







 Capitola Beach 11/6/12

New sister sweetness:

New hope in our progress as a nation:
 
 
New term.  



Thursday, October 25, 2012

What she said. SERIOUSLY.

I've started a few blog posts in recent weeks that basically amount to rants about what I'm seeing and reading with regard to "women's issues" during this obnoxious (and not to mention obscenely fiscally irresponsible) presidential election.  The whole thing just makes me cringe, but one of the things I'm especially tuned into is anything regarding reproductive rights.

For starters, I bristle at the term "women's issues".  President Obama said it correctly:  "Women's issues are not just women's issues.  They are family issues.  They are economic issues."  Conservatives like to cite those statements as pandering to women voters, but that is BS.  Barack Obama was raised by a single mother.  He married a strong, smart, compassionate, hard working woman.  And he is raising two beautiful daughters.  I believe without a shadow of a doubt that he will continue to champion feminism.  And I am proudly determined to support those efforts.

There is so much to be said here that I am already struggling to focus and attempt to stay on topic.  What actually got me to the keyboard this morning was one specific aspect of the reproductive rights conundrum: rape. The idea that rape should be defined differently in order to mandate (eliminate) the victims' rights after their nightmare is beyond ludicrous to me.  It makes me twitch with frustration and scrambles my brain.  I don't want to believe it.  I want it to be some sort of sick joke.  But it's really, really not. 

A friend of a friend (thank you, Facebook) wrote this and I am sharing it with her permission.  Thank you, Jennifer Defilippo.  I pulled out 4 paragraphs for my blog, but the other 5 are just as good.  I hope you will take five minutes to read it.   

An open letter to old white men like Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin.

by Jennifer Defilippo

I should be used to hearing old white men making grossly inappropriate comments about rape and women’s reproductive rights by now, but I’m not. I can’t help but feel my blood catch fire when I read about “men” like Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin sharing their wildly outlandish viewpoints. And, yes, they’re viewpoints, and we all have a right to share them. We’re Americans after all. That’s one of the beauties of being an American.

BUT if these old white men spent just one day fearing rape, sexual assault, or sexual harassment like women do then they would shut their mouths forever on these matters. If they spent one day being catcalled, inappropriately grabbed while walking on the sidewalk on their way to get a cup of coffee, or aggressively approached by a group of men while walking to the supermarket - in broad daylight no less - then they would shut their mouths forever on these matters. If they spent one day even thinking about the act of rape, fearing not only a pregnancy that could result from ALL rape, but also the transmission of HIV and other irreversible STDs, then they would absolutely shut their mouths forever on these matters.

 And that’s what makes my hands shake and my forehead burn with fury when I wake up in the morning and read about an old white male who used his public platform to tell me and other women that if we’re raped and conceive a child, then it was God’s plan for us to have that child. That a woman wasn’t legitimately raped if she conceived that child in the first place, because a woman’s body has “the natural defenses to protect itself.” What’s my defense from these men’s beliefs when science and biology no longer apply? And what do I do if I don’t believe in God?

 I can only hope that with time, even though right now it seems like the fight over women’s rights is going backwards, that the personal decisions that I make with my body will not always be in jeopardy. Or at least won’t feel like they’re always going to be in jeopardy. That all the work of the women who came before me, who fought so hard to make my life easier, who wanted to protect me, wasn’t in vain. That all women who have suffered the horrors of rape or sexual assault, will not have to suffer yet again when it comes to making a difficult decision on what to do should they become pregnant.

Think about it.  Talk about it.  And pass it along.

Thanks.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

A Funny Thing Happened During Our First Family Movie Night

Well, I guess that may depend on what you consider "funny"...

I'll cut right to it:  Andrew knocked Sadie's 2 front teeth out!

Yup.  He had just gotten home to find his girls all jammied up and cozy on the couch watching Mulan.  He joined us there with a fresh bowl of popcorn and as he was handing it to Sadie, she leaned forward and *bam*!  The edge of the bowl cracked her square in the teeth.   They were already a little loose; one was probably due to come out in a week or so, but yikes.   I'm sure it hurt and it really didn't look good - they were knocked inward/sideways and were all bloody.
We hurried to get her cleaned up but I made a couple of big mistakes (I'm the first to admit that I'm not great in a crisis - I tend to panic and really don't keep my cool very well).  First, I let her look at herself in the mirror.  Note to self: minor trauma + a visual = major drama.   She kept wanting to look again but would dissolve into tears all over again each time.  Mistake # 2 was that I didn't plug the sink in time, so one of them dropped out and we lost it down the drain. Once we got the bleeding stopped, she was actually very brave and pulled the other one out herself.

I can't say that she was happy about it, though.  The bloody, gaping holes in her mouth was not a sight for which she was prepared.  I am That Mom, so I did take pictures for posterity.




 (Andrew felt terrible, of course)

Here's a scary close up with flash:


So, that's what's new in our world.  
This was my sweet girl's smile as we left for school on Thursday morning:


and here she is today:
 

I have to admit, her lisp is pretty cute, so I'll have to get her sthpeaking on video as well. 


Sunday, August 26, 2012

Where did Summer go? June recap.


 With Sadie's first week of Kindergarten under our belts (that post is coming), I really can't hide from the fact that summer has ended.  I did manage to post about our trip to Maine, but I skipped June entirely.

Here are some photos and a few words about what we did for those 30 days.

 


We went downtown to our favorite spots a lot:
The "fish store":


 the "Buddha store":

 the Frozen Yogurt Shop:

 
The library:


 and the train station:


We hung out at home quite a bit as well:




 We went to Pescadero one day when Daddy was working at a bike race:
Our friend Caitlin had her birthday party at the beach in Rio Del Mar:

 Our friend Anders had his at a park with a face painter:


Grandma and Grandpa's pool was the #1 destination, of course:



We went to the movies to see BRAVE with our cousins:

We had one last play date in Felton with our friends Sammie and Josie who moved away to Southern California:



We went to the Music in the Park in our cousins' town:





 
  June was pretty great, actually!