Christmas Week 2013

(All pictures in this post are from LAST Christmas)

 

In case you were wondering at my quiet, I would remind you of something I said a couple of years ago, "I blog on the upswing."  If you are new to the blog, this drop in visual productivity, it has happened a lot over the years...I feel the downward pull of emotion or circumstance and I can't.find.words.




A girl and her "Grinch Punch" and her living back stop

Those closest to me will recognize it in my arguing style...I lose nouns and descriptors and start calling everything "crap" and "thingie" and "stuff" and find that, while I may have a valid argument in my head there is no way that it will be passing my lips anytime soon. So, I go quiet and stay that way until I find I have control of my faculties again.  It's just how I process.





The girls and Uncle K putting up the lights that I STILL have up on my back fence.

But, today, dear reader, I found my upswing.




Uncle BakerMan chattin them up

This has been a hard week for me, well...honestly...a hard month.  It's Christmas for crying out loud.  Usually I'm one of those OBNOXIOUS "Let's sing Christmas carols on Halloween" people.  I usually start in about September sizing up my kid's friends to see which would be caroling fodder and try and teach them new songs they might not know so that when Christmas comes around I can drag them around the neighborhood.  BUT...not this year.




Those are his ACTUAL horns...been there all his life...only
became so prominent as he lost his hair.  Just ask Uncle J...he'll tell ya.

It's odd how a fact that underlies your life affects you.  I've know since the divorce last year that my-ex and I would be trading off holidays...he was nice enough to give me the first Christmas, and I've KNOWN that meant that I wouldn't have my kids this Christmas.  KNEW it.  Prepared my head for it or so I thought.

There is a whole series of these
I'm saving them for her wedding video.

See, I've been "crankier" than normal since putting my feet back in my house after my Florida trip.  It started out as just little things...running out of coconut milk and butter.  Other people have other staples that they never run out of...in my house it's coconut milk (for curry) and butter (for life)...I am NEVER out.  Over time it progressed to either me being too weepy or too silent with everybody. 





Hilarity all around.

When last week started, I could feel the completely counter-productive desire to tell the kids to just "GO ALREADY!"  It's been a surprising emotion for me, "get out of here, it hurts me to know you'll be gone, so just GO."  I've felt that way a lot in the last year.  Thankfully, by the time Mom GOT married, I think I was better at recognizing it for grief and NOT saying stupid things that I didn't mean...I think. 

Anyway, when it hit this week, I definitely recognized it...I lowered my goals for the week...I pulled my kids close and actually WENT caroling on a whim with zero preparation (which was great by the way) and finished up school and tore apart caches of clothing that needed to be torn apart and went to a movie and did everything I could to ENJOY my last week with my girls for the year.





I was SO sick in this picture...but it's become on of my favorites
Go figure.

And then they left.

Singing with my family around is not something to miss...

And then I sat on the floor in the middle of the mess and cried...for awhile.  And then I reached out to people in one post...spent awhile chatting, texting, and talking...to say that my phone 'LIT UP' would not be an exaggeration.  And then I realized that this was something I was going to have to walk through ... So I did what any self-respecting total geek would do...I set up my laptop in my bathroom,  watched a couple of episodes of "Farscape" from my tub and decided that sleeping was a pretty good option, all things considered.  I find Science Fiction soothing...it is part of my charm.




Ah wrapping...a skill I hope their daddy realizes HE needs to teach them.

I wish I could say that my "funk" was over at that point.  I'm not sure it's over now.  But over the last couple of days of quiet within my own house, I realized something pretty great... I realized that I walked through another valley and made it...again.

Nine of us last year.  So much fun.

In "The Screwtape Letters", chapter 8, C.S. Lewis talks about the "Law of Undulation".  If you've not heard of this book, in a nutshell, it is letters from an elderly "Uncle" demon (Screwtape) to his younger nephew detailing ways to bring people AWAY from God.  It's a very interesting juxtaposition in Christian writing, taking it from the devil's point of view, everything that seems like a triumph is actually a defeat for Christ.  In the quote below, the "patient" is this nephew's charge.  The nephew has noticed that the patient is downhearted and supposes it is his success that has make him so.  Dear old Uncle Screwtape offers insight into our lives in his answer.

If you had watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life - his interest in his work., his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down.  As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty.  The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make a good use of it. 

Let's just say there is a LOT of estrogen in my house, and leave it at that...

I made it through another undulation...another turn of the wheel.  YAY ME! Every one of these "undulations" has taken me farther into comfortable-in-my-own-skin and given me proof that I'm capable.  It's hard to admit, but without these dips I wouldn't have made the progress that I've made.  When things coast along, I get proud...supercilious (one of Bean's words this month ...  go on, go look it up...I'll wait. ;) ).  I guess I need that humility of despair now and then, maybe we all do.

Monkey Face dazzling her Grandma

I've gotten a couple of emails from the girls and it sounds like they are having a GREAT time.  I wouldn't take that away from them for the world.  The hardest part of this week is that guilty feeling that I have in the low moments where I would rather it be ME having fun with my girls.  How selfish is that?  And narcissistic? And entitled?  I pray THAT part goes away.  I think that it's probably a natural reaction...but so SO destructive.  Just keepin it real.

Monkey Face's mantra last year, "I'm going for the Yahtzee"...and she got about 8 of them. 
Amazing!

Today is Christmas Eve...by tonight, Nali and I will be tucked in among our dear friends, probably eating cookies and playing Rummi Cube.  Tonight, I will be surrounded with family I've adopted as my own and I will make memories and they will be beautiful, too. 

Scott and Stacey 2012
Love my big brother.

And next week, when my girls get back, for the first time in THEIR lives, we won't be starting school on the 2nd.  Nope, we're going to figure out some new fun New Year's traditions beyond taking down the tree, so the NEXT time I have my Christmas week to myself, I have something great ahead of me.

I have so many pictures of the sky changing colors over those roofs.
Just my favorite spot to watch the sky change.

Well, unless we get bored...then we'll just break out the microscope...

My loves, 2012

 

 

See ya around...

Less Than One hour...

We are out on another trip...on our way to California.  Things have been going wonderfully...dry roads...happy kids (by and large).  It almost feels like we're getting good at this sort of thing.

We were out on Highway 70 in Arizona and we were marveling at the clouds...they were gorgeous...


As we went on things began looking more and more ominous...





The direction we were headed took us right through Globe, AZ which is at 3,544 feet above sea level down the side of a mountain to Superior, AZ which is at 2,749 feet.  It makes this drop through a series sharp guard-railed turns and 6 and 7% grades.  Now, see, it's probably not that bad of a drive...when it's dry.

It should be said that there are two things that I am TRULY afraid of.  One is high places.  My legs go cold on good sized over passes.  The other is driving at freeway speeds, when I don't KNOW where I am, in heavy rain.

It started raining a few minutes before we hit Globe proper...we saw the sign at 4:07 pm.  By the time we hit Miami, AZ, 3,411 ft at 4:21 pm it was pouring...I mean waterfalls-coming-down-the-cuts-in-the-rock pouring...

By 4:24 we were PUSHING water.



There was a gray truck in front of me...he didn't have his lights on...and there was a point I couldn't see him at all...thankfully I could see the guard rail.

It was terrifying.  We were praying aloud...specifically for the Lord to close the skies.



I'm not sure how long we drove in it...but by the time we saw the sign to Pinal County at 4:37 pm it had completely stopped raining.  As in, He closed the skies.



We were in Superior, AZ by 4:49 pm...it hadn't been raining for awhile...


and by 4:54 pm we were all the way down... 

It's weird.  I'm not sure what to write.  I know that writing this can in no way touch the emotion of that timeframe.  I was still shaking an hour after we were down.  I'm not sure I want to get back in the car even now.

I also know that there are a bunch of people who simply aren't afraid of heights or rain and so it doesn't seem a big deal.

Still, it was a big deal to us.  And scary.  And faith building.

He shut the skies for me.

See ya around...

(Pictures supplied by Beanie and log of places, elevations and times supplied by Grandma)

In Which the Grandma Scares Stack...

This is a pure prayer request...

My mom has had REALLY high blood pressure this week. On Monday she went for a root canal and her BP measured 203/99…

It came down a bit over the next few days…but starting yesterday afternoon her left arm was feeling very uncomfortable…of course, she didn’t say much about it…

Today, when I called to tell her that I was on my way home, she told me that her left arm was really uncomfortable and sort of numb. I called my neighbor to take the girls and rushed her to urgent care where THEY rushed to get her BP (now 218/103) down and went about trying to find out what is going on.

Long story a little shorter…they still don’t know why her arm is so uncomfortable but it does seem that she is “okay” in that she has not had either a heart attack or a stroke. And they’ve given her some medication to bring her blood pressure down to a safer level.

Because she lives out of the state so much, she doesn’t have a doctor in the area…so I’m praying that we’ll be able to find a kind doctor who takes Medicare here in the area…

Because we are a pretty natural family, we don’t know even how to approach being on a medication that has severe side effects…and until we find this doctor we have to understand what we see and be ready to take her to the ER should any of the many possible side effects come about…some of which they told us WOULD happen anyway for the first few days…so I’m praying for understanding and clarity…

And because she’s my Mommy…I want to keep her. So I’m praying for healing…and peace…and to be able to keep our emotions in check so that we can keep a level head…I say “we” but probably mean “me” and “my”.

To be clear…she’s okay…and I’m praising the Lord for that!!

But…please pray.

See ya around...