Seriously

At the end of a long day yesterday, while I was running an errand, the emissions light came on in my dashboard (the bright red light on the left in the photo). The owner's manual handily pointed out that I should "take the car to be serviced as soon as possible."

Okay, hi. Let's review. I've spent the previous 24 hours draining water from my basement and figuring out what to do with the increasingly funky smell that basement bilge leaves behind. And now I've got car trouble.

I arrange for a friend to pick me up and we drop my car off at the Saturn dealer last night. That same friend kindly brings J.T. and I to school this morning. Once there, I call to confirm that Saturn has received my car and will check things out. "Yup," they say, "we'll be in touch."

At noon, and not a little anxious, I called Saturn. "We'll check out your car soon," they report.

At 3:30, now increasingly frantic that I will be without my trusty steed for the rest of the day, I call again. "The mechanic is looking at it now," they inform me.

I arrange for another friend to bring me and the sassafras boy home from school. And then I find a third friend to bring us back to school tomorrow. Missions accomplished, I wait for the nice people at Saturn to call me.

At 5:30, my phone rings. It's Anthony from Saturn. "We still can't tell what the problem is", he says, "we'll need to keep the car until tomorrow."

And what choice do I have? I'm home and there is homework to be supervised, a workout to schedule, and supper to be made. And then there's the pesky matter of 40 gallons of water needing to be sucked out of the basement (but hey, the fill-rate is sharply dropping). So I tell Anthony at Saturn that I've got nothing but time.

And I settle in to wait, with great hope that the week can only get better, and with even greater gratitude to the kind friends who graciously helped me out. Again.

Get Well Soon, H'dingers!

I started this post yesterday afternoon to wish my nephew Spencer a happy recovery from having his tonsils and adenoids removed. Spence, who is turning 7 in the next few weeks, gets to spend his spring break eating a lot of popsicles and talking his mother out of a little more root beer than usual. As his mother, my sister KO, would surely say, it's a below average way to spend your spring break.

I called my sister yesterday afternoon to see how Spence was doing. "Fine," she reported, "but I'm going to the hospital. I think that I have appendicitis." Apparently, she'd been feeling poorly and when she and M got Spence home from the hospital she continued to feel worse. So while Marty went out to get the tonsillectomy party supplies, KO decided that she'd better go to the hospital. The Sassafras Parents were summoned to help get things coordinated.

Shortly after that, the hospital decided that KO's appendix had to go. That night. So, in less than 24 hours, two of the four H'dingers had surgery yesterday afternoon. I'm hoping for the sake of a good story that the same insurance claim processor sees both claims. And I'd certainly suggest that the two other H'dingers in Clovis lie low, you know what I mean?

Get well soon, KO and Spence!

PS: The photo is KO and Spence at Disneyland, having a better time than they did yesterday!

February 17

JT was born at 12:29 am on February 17, 2000. He was 7 pounds, 9 ounces and 20 and a 1/2 inches long. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He was amazing. He still is.

In the end, I had to have help bringing him into the world. My midwife was joined by an OB/GYN who used something called a vacuum extractor --- it sounds worse than it was. Basically, it pulled while I pushed. Things were exciting at the end, with everybody urging me on. At the time, I just thought births were always like this; I learned later that I was very close to a C-section. But I did it and he was born.

In keeping with the spirit of the enterprise, his first few moments were tense. His first APGAR score was low but soon we heard him cry out and the smiling pediatrician came around to say, "He has 5 and 5 and 5 and 5 and 1 and 2." I laughed. And then I got to hold him for the first time. I cried of course. I had wanted this baby for so long and now he was here. He had enormous dark eyes, my sweet boy, and he was very alert in the middle of the night.

My next goal was to walk back to my room. I had been chained to a bed for nearly 3 days and I wanted to walk. The nurses were hesitant but my midwife knew about my willpower. And so at 2:30 in the morning I walked back to my room. While the baby got the once-over in the nursery, I got a little bit of sleep that night ------- it was so nice to be able to sleep on my belly again.

And as the sun rose, the nurse brought me my son. He and I had matching wristbands to go with our matching dark eyes and the dark hair on our heads. We were a team that morning and we are still a team. We spent the day together, rocking and learning about one another. I talked to him about his world ------- his two mommies, his loyal dog, his home, the many people who loved him already, and the life that we would build for him. I wanted to promise him that he would never ever be sad, but I knew that I couldn't do that. Life does sometimes hurt. But I promised that I would always love him; that I would always be on his side. I looked into his dark shiny eyes and I knew that everything had changed.

And here we are seven years later. My baby is a boy now. Every day he makes me laugh and smile. He has a big heart and a kind smile. His dark eyes still shine like they did on that first day 7 years ago. He's funny and forgiving. When he awakened this morning I could hear him singing, "It's my birthday; it's my birthday." And then he shot downstairs, wearing his pajamas and his birthday crown. He opened his presents ----- and read his cards out loud! ----- and his joy is evident. And 7 years later we are still a brown-eyed team.

Happy Birthday sweet boy. Your mama loves you.

February 14

JT's 7th birthday is later this week and in previous years, Lisa and I have shared the story of his birth with him. And because we shared the experience of those sometimes harrowing days, we'd share it with one another as well. We're no longer sharing anything anymore, and so it seemed like a good time to write these stories down to share them with JT now and in the future. So in the next few days, I'm going to write about the birth of my sweet baby boy.

Seven years ago on this day, I headed to a hospital 35 miles from my house to see if I could get my baby to vacate the premises. Due to pregnancy-induced hypertension, I'd been on bed rest for the three weeks prior. But my midwife had decided that it was time and with my original due date still 9 days away, I headed to the hospital to induce labor.

I got to the maternity ward late that afternoon, having stopped at the bookstore to get a few books to read during delivery. This was perhaps a first sign that I had no idea what was coming. The midwife was amused. By 5 pm the pitocin was dripping and I was waiting for my baby boy to arrive. By 9 pm, my blood pressure had shot even further through the roof. The nurses kept asking if I had a headache or felt disoriented. But I felt fine and I was reading my book; wanting to be left alone. However, if full-scale labor ensued with my blood pressure at 220/160, bad things could happen. So they started some more medicine to lower my blood pressure. It was magnesium sulfate and it had two immediate effects: I felt like I'd just drank a 6-pack of beer (and I had the mouth to prove it) and other risk of the medicine (respiratory depression, which is as bad as it sounds) demanded that my blood be drawn every 6 hours, to check that all was well. My veins are not easy to find, one of many reasons I did not choose a life as an IV drug user, so the blood test requirement was not a happy thing.

So what had started as a pretty good day had gone rather rapidly downhill. I could no longer get out of bed (because with blood pressure that high, any exertion is not cool), I had IVs running all over, and my unrestrained mouth meant that everyone had to hear how cranky I was with this arrangement. After the 3 am blood draw went badly and I burst a vein (surprisingly messy and rather painful), the nurse urged me to have a shot of morphine to put me to sleep (perhaps to preserve her own sanity?). By morning, she said, I'd be having contractions and I'd want to be well-rested to deliver my baby the next day.

Just 3 weeks prior to this, my midwife and I had worked out a birth plan for natural labor. I'd envisioned walking through the halls as the contractions increased in intensity, listening to music, maybe standing in a hot shower. Now I wasn't going anywhere. And, as it turns out, neither was the babine.

Tomorrow: Did you know that pitocin sometimes doesn't work? Neither did I.

Kittens from Hell

As a result of an incomplete home improvement project, there is a small hole in the corner of my bedroom where the air conditioner cold air return duct is located. I need to have a box built around it, but honestly it just hasn't been a priority what with the zillion other things on my to-do list that seem more pressing.

And then I got some kittens. Within hours of moving into Sassafras House, Lucy went right down that hole and ran around the subfloor in my bedroom, meowing and generally sounding unhappy. It was a tense half hour and JT was hyperventilating with panic, but Lucy eventually came out of the floor and JT calmed down. I covered the hole with all manner of duct tape and cardboard. That was in October.

Last night I was exhausted and I crawled into bed at 10:30 pm. Two hours later I awakened to a scratching noise. I turned on the light just in time to see Lucy fling aside the cardboard covering the hole and then I watched her disappear right down the hole, complete with a sassy fling of her tail as I saw the last of her. Before I could get out of bed (to do what, I have no idea) Tiger followed. Now they were both in the subfloor, running about and meowing.

It was freakin' midnight, I was tired, and now I had two kittens in the subfloor of my bedroom. I'll not lie: my first thought was "if you're that stupid, then you get what you deserve." I figured they could stay down there until they were hungry enough to come out. Then I thought about how I would explain this to JT, not to mention the nice people at the Humane Society. For the next hour, I waited patiently by the hole in the floor so that I could rescue each kitten from the perils to which they had introduced themselves.

Then I shut my bedroom door for the night and tried to get some sleep. This morning, between starting a load of laundry and packing the lunchboxes, I patched up the hole with enough cardboard and duct tape to secure the international space station. For extra protection, I left my bedroom door shut.

Today I will make some calls to get the duct work permanently contained. And in the light of day all I can say is that it's a damned good thing those kittens are cute.

Friday morning update: Despite the fact that I had created a veritable Berlin Wall around the hole in the floor, Tiger and Lucy tried again last night at midnight. What's the deal with the midnight attack? I kicked them out of my room, only to have them meow pathetically outside my door, desperate for my company. It might be a long weekend.