is anyone still there?

oh...I miss updating the blog.

but man, I am having a very hard time finding time for it.

Life is ...well, you know how life is.

Here's my facebook profile, if you care to find me there.  I update something short and sweet every day or two usually.

www.facebook.com/J9Evans

if you send me a friend request with a message, I'll almost assuredly add you!


Too much to try to catch up on now.  Lilah turned 3 in April and Sadie just turned 6 last week.  I am practically drooling over my pregnant friends - especially the ones pregnant with #3.

...

thanks for reading.

J9

Christmas/New Year's recap

to balance out yesterday's downer post, here are some photos from our trip to Massachusetts for the holidays:

 Good morning, Merrimac!  Happy to be in Nana and Papa's kitchen

The stockings were hung on the staircase with care

 White Christmas!

 meeting Lil' Hickory, the winter lamb at Tamarack Farm

 Happy New Year! 

 Hello 2013 at Cleaveland Farm

First CA Evans Family Photo of 2013

I wish I had some answers

Our more-rare-than-usual-these-days Sunday Night Family Dinner last night was pretty great.  We were only missing Joanne, who lives in San Diego.  It was a birthday edition, celebrating Jill's thirty-somethingth (a week late because she was in Hawai'i with her friend Martha for her actual birthday, poor thing!)

The adults nibbled lobster cakes (honestly my mother can make anything) and toasted with a gifted bottle of sparkling wine.  The men were happy because the Sharks were on (and won!)  The little cousins ran around eating chips and playing hide-and-seek, with grins as wide as their faces just to be with each other.   Dinner was roasted cauliflower, grilled steaks and caesar salad.  Mmmmmmmm.

And then.

Somehow (can never remember how exactly it happens when it does) the conversation dipped into to the much avoided land of politics.  Now, in the microcosm of our family, we have:
a former teacher now working as a reading specialist in the public school system,
a small business owner & VP,
a speech therapist at a county hospital,
a retired RN,
a software engineer
and me - the stay-at-home-mom.

So, I guess I am the token bleeding heart liberal in the group - but I really don't like to argue and I really really don't like being written off as clueless.  So I listened & asked questions.  It has taken me a while, but I have found that it's way better than trying to explain or defend my thoughts on pretty much anything political.   I am happy to report that it stayed civil last night.  That might be a first; not that I'm eager to do it again any time soon!

The conversation ran the gamut last night.  Vaccines, unemployment laws, taxes, government spending, healthcare, drug addiction, homelessness, even a momentary blip about abortion!  Yeeeeeee-ikes.  I used to simply bristle and shake my head at some of the seemingly overly harsh and callous comments I would hear, but now I've become a bit obsessed with trying to understand where they are coming from and why.  What I'm finding is like everyone, their views come from what they see.  And what they see are the sad, corrupt and hopeless cases on a frequent basis.

wasteful spending:
-insanely expensive medical equipment that grows dust in the hospital basement because there is literally only one person trained to use it
-a predictable annual rush of Parks Departments to purchase expensive materials with government funds because if they don't, they lose it and won't be able to apply for more next year

unemployment conundrum:
- the man who says he can't/won't start a job until after he gets his next government check even though he'd make triple that if he accepted and started right away
-the job applicant covered in tattoos - including teardrops around the eyes

the ramifications of drugs:
 - the little boy who can't sit still or focus because he was born addicted to meth and has never been able to assimilate to the structure of school
- the man racking up more than $10K daily for months on end in the burn unit after setting himself on fire while high on meth

And on and on it goes...My head spins.

Why do government funds have to be spent in their entirety?  Why can't any leftover money just be banked?
How can unemployment laws be cleaned up so that people are motivated to get back into the workforce instead of relying on government checks?
How can we break the cycle of poverty (drug addiction, homelessness, unintended pregnancies, welfare dependency, etc.)
How can we fix our education system?

What I kept coming back to last night was "so, what are the answers?"
 Actually, not just "what  are the answers?"  but  "who is supposed to be figuring them out?"

The government?  Clearly that's not working.  And what does that even mean?  WE ARE the government.

I think it means that we must pick our pet projects and get our hands dirty.  Really dirty.  

I know I'm not the only one asking these questions.  I know there are really good people out there working very hard in a very broken system to try to make a difference.  I think I need to be one of them.

I don't know where to start.

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?

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.

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.  

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.