Last weekend I wrote about not wanting to go to church. Well, I did anyway, because it's not about me... I'm a mom with kids who need it and love it... so I have to hitch up my big-girl-panties and deal.
Church services at the New Place are actually a respite. I don't feel pressured or "on display" or even obligated. I didn't lead worship. Didn't want to. I just enjoyed it quietly.
After we wrapped it all up, I was gathering up the Offspring when a kind-faced lady sidled up to me and handed me something. "This is a Wal-Mart gift card. There's $150 on it, for you to go get your kids' school supplies."
I wanted to melt into a puddle of butter.
God is so good. And He doesn't seem to mind when I'm tired and cranky; He keeps loving on me through it.
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Rick brought home some seedless green grapes from the grocery store yesterday. I hadn't really even taken them out of the sack; we'd just stuck them into the fridge as soon as he got home with them. I pulled them out tonight for a snack and HO. LY. COW. these grapes are the giant economy sized softball grapes... more like grapeFRUIT in size, maybe. Okay, I'm exaggerating. But they ARE enormous.
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Pop came home from the hospital tonight. A few days ago, I hadn't been entirely certain that he would. I really want him to get better; it seems brutally unfair that he's worked so hard all his life, that he's so young, and that he doesn't even get to enjoy it. I know, I know... lots of people don't get to have even the enjoyment that he's had... but I can be petulant from time to time, no? I want him to feel really good again. Mom got her second chance seven years ago. I'm hoping Pop gets his now.
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Tomorrow is Saturday. I am tentatively planning to do something unusual... I'm going to go to a Saturday vigil at the St. Maximus the Confessor Orthodox Church. Not because I particularly want to become a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, per se. No, it's just because I want to connect with God in a different way. It was suggested to me by a longtime friend, and I think it's a good idea. Or it could be just awful; I may accidentally desecrate something and get struck by lightning. Either way, it will be a change of pace.
Yesterday was spent on Interstate 35 traveling down to the San Marcos Treatment Center, where Martha is an inmate. We have to have weekly family therapy sessions, but since we obviously will be unable to travel the zillion miles down to SMTC once a week, we will be able to meet via teleconference.
I was discouraged pretty hard after yesterday's meeting with the therapist. He told us that it was unlikely she would remain there more than about thirty days.
THIRTY DAYS.
After attempting to compose myself, I (as calmly as I could) explained to him that if they send her home, they will be splitting up our family. Neither Rick nor I are prepared to EVER bring her home to live with us again. This is not because we hate Martha, because we do not. We do, however, love our other two children just as much and believe that their safety is paramount. As long as Martha lives in our home with them, they are not safe. This is not a situation we will allow. We will separate and I will live in my car or in a tent at the lake with her if necessary, but we won't bring her home EVER AGAIN.
Nor will I take the other two and leave. This is THEIR HOME and THEIR FAMILY. I refuse to punish them by taking them out of their own home and disrupting their lives.
Write that down in your session notes, Mister Therapist. Anyone with Child Protective Services who comes across this blog post -- write it down. I mean it. I have never and will never perpetrate abuse on Martha, but I WILL NOT BRING HER BACK INTO THIS HOUSE.
The therapist hemmed and hawed about it, mentioning programs here and programs there, but nothing definitive. Which is why we have never had any idea what to do, for years and years. It took a CPS investigator to tell me what to do (take Martha to UBH in Denton immediately) the night we finally took her in. We are a family who has absolutely no idea what to do about situations like this... we've handled everything ourselves... we take no money from the government EVER... to our near financial ruin, I'll be honest... but vague references to this program or that facility? That got me NOWHERE the night I tried to take her to a homeless shelter. Every bleeping vague reference I was given? Just another runaround. We have been responsible citizens, paid our taxes, mowed our yard, voted, and taken care of our own problems without defaulting or falling back on public assistance of any kind. If you look at our pay stubs, we don't qualify for anything because we make too much money. But if you then were to look at our out-go, you will see that because we foot all our own bills, we are very nearly bankrupt.
I am convinced that our daughter is an Axis II patient (in the DSM-IV lingo). According to Wikipedia, here are some of the disorders classified as Axis II: paranoid personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder; and intellectual disabilities.
Do I know which one of these fits her? No. I'm not trained to diagnose these things. I am, however, a professional educator and a parent who has DONE HER HOMEWORK with regard to her children and their needs, and I promise you -- if there had been a pill or a coping mechanism that would have solved Martha's problems, I would have found it.
But regardless of Martha and her particular issues, this has now become a safety issue. And if we can't get help from the people who are supposed to be able to help us, we will protect all three of our children in the next best way we can find to do so.
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I spent most of the day working in my classroom. All the computers had been removed and then returned, supposedly refitted with updated software... I have no idea yet whether that actually happened, as I was quite busy trying to put everything back where it's supposed to be. We do have an IT guy, but he's not known for completing things in a timely manner OR putting things back the way he found them. Thankfully I am fairly competent in the way of hooking things back up to the network. I got most of it done today, but I needed two 15ft cat5 cables, so I sent the spouse to pick some up for me. (If I asked the IT guy for them, it might take until Christmas to receive them... much simpler just to go get them myself) Tomorrow morning I will fire up the old 'puters and see if they come alive.
The security blocks on the school's network render it virtually useless. I would venture to guess that upwards of ninety percent of the students and faculty have smart phones which operate on 3G and 4G networks by which they access the internet for things they really need to look up, and the remaining few of us who limp along with little brickphones (me included) have to rely on proxies and other less-than-kosher means of access. I mean, honestly... we're not spending our class periods doing internet gaming or social networking or Youtubing. But I would like to be able to show the occasional Youtube viddy that illustrated a concept I was trying to teach. AND I would like to be able to use features like GoogleDocs and online blogs in ways that I was trained to do at the workshop at the Smithsonian.
But we live in the Dark Ages here in Ballyhoo. We can't spend money on textbooks and materials, but we also can't let you look up stuff on your own. WTF is that?
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And yet, this is a very good place to be, despite its drawbacks.
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Piano students have begun signing up! I am excited about the prospects of helping raise up a new generation of musicians to take my place when I'm old and decrepit. I'm pretty close to that right now, so they'd better darn well hurry it up.
It's been about three years since I've had a professional manicure, but last week I had some time to kill while I was in Fort Worth for an education workshop, and my fingernails were actually sorta grown-out and healthy, and I'm in-between piano gigs, so what the heck... I had heard that the new manicure rage is "shellac", and that it's super-durable, so I thought I'd try it.
I don't want long, fake fingernails, not now and not ever. It's just not ME. And they get in my way; everything I do that I'm good at, I do with my fingers and hands, so I have to be able to use them. Anyway, it's been a few days, and I have to say -- this stuff is AMAZING. Not a chip, not a scratch... they look exactly the same today that they did when the tech finished with them.
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I've been driving back and forth to downtown Dallas every day now for about four days in a row to check on my Pop. Mom's with him down at Baylor, of course, but things are pretty delicate right now with his health. His cancer is in remission, but the ensuing graft-vs-host issues and childhood infections like chickenpox all over again have just taken a very heavy toll on him.
It's not about me, obviously, but this is MY blog, so yes, this WILL be about me. I have to have somewhere to decompress.
Martha has been calling me every day from the treatment center with a list of things she wants and of things she wants me to do for her. I have stopped answering the phone when it says "UNKNOWN" because I am just tired of having my chain yanked around by a mentally-ill hormonal teenage girl. If it's one of the nurses or therapists down there, they can leave me a message and I'll get back to them. If it's her, she can go to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire (in the immortal words of Eliza Doolittle).
I am busy. And tired. I'm not sleeping well anyway, because I'm worried about my dad.
The Lord worked it out so that I didn't have to deal with her here at home, and I am grateful. And I am not going to let her run my life from down there, either.
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In times of family stress, the cracks tend to show more readily. Old wounds, imagined slights writ large, visit us like nighttime hallucinations, and no-one can make us believe they aren't real. If only there were a way I could gently wipe the filmy residue away from the hearts of the ones I love most, so they could leave behind the fear and isolation that is SO. UNNECESSARY.
But I can't change any of it. I just have to navigate it. And try not to let any of it stick to me.
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I'm going to go over to my mom's to sleep tonight. She normally comes home from the hospital at night after Pop goes to sleep, but he had a really awful night last night, so she wants to stay with him this time. They have a little dog at home, though, so Alice and I are going to go take care of Coco.
Tomorrow, assuming all is well with Pop, I'm going to meet my best friend from college, Emily, at Grapevine Mills Mall for a couple of hours.
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I think that, sometimes, the gifts that God gives us are the actual struggles and hard things... because without having been through the struggles and hard things, how can I be of any help at all to others enduring the struggles and hard things?
Whenever someone asks, "When does school start?", I clap my hands to my ears immediately and begin chanting "LALALALALALALALA" to drown out the thought.
This is not to say that I do not enjoy my job. I do. I love it, in fact. But sudden jolt changes are hard, even when they're good. Slamming headlong into the inflexible routine of the public school year is inexorable, like the jab of the flu shot, and causes me similar anxiety.
I am also experiencing something that I don't think I ever have before... I don't want to go to church.
Huh?
Okay, so I am aware of all the externals, here. Lots and lots of people don't go to church. And probably don't feel weird and guilty about it.
But "church" has been as much a part of me as the egg in a cake. You don't get to take it back out. You can scrape the frosting off and even slice off a thin layer to remove it, but take the egg out? Nope. It's sort-of fundamental. And that's how church is, and has always been, for me.
Also, for a significant chunk of my life, I have either been personally employed by a church OR have been married to someone personally employed by a church. As churches are full of human beings with frailties and are subject to shifts in mood and philosophy, these jobs have come and gone, leaving learning and wisdom in their wake... and hurt, too, but less so as time has gone on. You begin to realize as you grow older that when you find yourself hurt by a church, you had your priorities and expectations placed in the wrong spot. Fix your priorities and expectations on God (Psalm 62:5, anyone?), and there won't be nearly the same kind of hurt... keep in mind that God puts up with spoiled, petulant Christians all the time and still loves them, and that God has a much bigger plan that mine, so getting my dander up about pitiful little stuff is a fruitless waste of emotion.
So for the past couple of years or so, I've been plugging away as the musical entertainment coordinator at a local establishment. My official title was... hmm, what was my official title?... worship leader? Music minister? Something like that. But if we're going to be honest in job description, we have to call it an entertainment coordinator.
And therein lies the problem... because I actually wanted to lead worship.
Since that didn't really match with their expectations, it didn't really work out that I should remain there. I actually have no hard feelings about them... lots of folks have been tiptoeing around me, asking if I'm "okay", etc... yes, I really am. I just wasn't a match, and that's okay.
But it also meant that our Sunday morning routine changed. We didn't miss a beat; the very next Sunday, we were worshiping at the church where Isaac's guitar teacher is the pastor. It's a small gathering, and very out-of-the-ordinary, which is refreshing. I have no complaints.
And yet... I don't want to go to church. Not this church, particularly. Just church.
Being a parent has kept me from veering into the Chaos Zone a number of times. Knowing that Isaac and Alice are depending on me... well, I won't lie, I probably would have gotten in the car and just kept driving and disappeared on a few occasions, if not for them. I owe those two babies a good, solid upbringing. Which means I suck it up and deal with my darkness instead of running away from it.
So I take them to church. They love the new church -- infinitely more than the one we recently left, in fact, and this one seems to have the potential to meet their spiritual needs much more effectively.
I have brought along my keyboard several times and it's been terrific. Those people SING, like no group of believers I have ever been with.
And yet... I don't want to go to church.
I'm still working through it. I don't think I need advice, per se... I listen to the spiritually wise people around me, and I listen to God's still, small voice in the air around me. I'm not angry with Him... not at all. If anything, I love Him more now than I ever have.
It's just one of those in-between times, like the week or two before school starts, when you just feel the need to BE STILL and quit scurrying around because you know there are Imminent Things ahead.
Yep, the first blood draw was compromised. The nurse called me back today to let me know that I did NOT have hyperkalemia, as they had first feared. AND... even better... my iron levels are normal. NORMAL! Woohoo!
So the weird light-headedness I've been feeling? In all likelihood it's a side effect of not using the hormone patches anymore.
And you may be wondering why in the world I would stop taking the hormone patches... and I will be perfectly honest with you and tell you that it's because my face was breaking out horribly in hormonal acne and I'm just too vain to put up with it. I'll suffer the hot flashes before I'll put up with the giant tennisball tumors on my face.
The things we suffer.
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Tomorrow, Martha gets shipped off to a residential treatment facility in San Marcos.
I am SO. TIRED.
I had a dermatologist appointment this morning, then on the way back home to pick up Isaac to take him to the orthodontist, I was trapped for an hour and a half on I-35N in Sanger when a semi overturned about ten cars in front of me. I was grateful I wasn't involved directly in the incident, but after an hour and a half of idling and running my A/C at full blast in 110 degree heat, I ten-point-turned my van around and drove down a steep embankment in an attempt to reach an access road where I might actually have a chance to get around the mess. Thankfully the other cars around me were polite enough to move as far as they could out of the way so I could even make the attempt.
And we weren't late to the orthodontist. But I felt like a wrung-out dishrag.
The rest of the evening, I went to Mom's to have a low-key celebration of my sister's 30th birthday. Pop is just so weak and frail and sick. It's so unfair. And the whole time I was at mom's, I was parked at the kitchen table sorting through the enormous pile of paperwork I had to go through in order to have Martha committed to the place in San Marcos.
While I was sitting at the table reading the interminable legalese and doing my best to recall every cut and scrape she ever suffered, Isaac came in the kitchen. "So when are we going to get my school supplies?" he asked.
I literally felt like coming unglued. But I didn't.
I am JUST. SO. TIRED. And today I just can't think.
"I can't really think about that just yet, buddy-boy," I said in the most light tone I could summon up.
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I have an educational workshop I must attend tomorrow in Fort Worth, on top of all the other fun and games that tomorrow brings. I am seriously praying I can just stay awake and appear to be interested. Meetings are excruciatingly difficult for me under the best of circumstances.
One bright spot? They require us to bring a laptop to the meeting.
Which means that I may at least be able to edit photos while listening to someone drone on. This might not be so bad after all...
A couple of hours ago, the hospital called and said that they are looking at putting Martha in residential treatment in a facility in San Marcos. The irony isn't lost on us... San Marcos is where her adoption was finalized seventeen years ago this November.
Martha is back in the lockup, after becoming physically aggressive toward Alice.
In our first family therapy meeting on Sunday afternoon, she was primarily angry because the session had been scheduled during a time when she had hoped to be able to go to the gymnasium.
After complaining bitterly about the whole arrangement being "fucked up," she decided that the clothing she had chosen to bring was not adequate to her liking and I should bring her more. I explained that the contents of her room were horrifyingly rancid and that I was disinclined to spend time washing and sorting any of it. "Then go buy me new stuff," she demanded.
This evening she used her one daily phone call to badger me about bringing her more clothes or buying her some. I told her I wasn't interested, and that she should make do with the ones she chose to bring. "OmiGOD," she spat. "Bring me some crayons and a coloring book."
"They'll give you paper," I said. "Draw your own pictures."
"That's gay. I hate my drawings. Then I get pissed off."
[silence]
"Anything else?" I asked, after a rather long stretch of nothingness.
"No. Bye." [click]
I didn't hear from the therapists or the release planners today, but I am hoping with all my heart that they are finally able to convince the insurance provider that she cannot come home and that long-term residential care is really the only option we have left. They closed the Nebraska loop-hole, or I'd already have packed her in the car and headed for Omaha to leave her at the hospital doorstep.
Maybe that makes me a bad mother.
But I think that allowing her to torment and physically abuse her siblings makes me a worse mother. So that option's out of the question. If we are forced to bring her home again, I will be packing up the other two and we will seek shelter elsewhere.
There. I said it. [/marklevinvoice]
Honeybadger JUST DON'T CARE. Honeybadger gets stung by bees. Honeybadger gets bit by a cobra. Honeybadger don't care.
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The 2011 school yearbooks are in and are sorted and ready for distribution. WOOT!
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I have been feeling rather light-headed for quite a while now, so last week I called my hematologist's office to schedule some blood-work. I've learned to pay attention to my body, and when I feel weird for more than a week or so, I figure it's time to run the numbers and see if my iron levels are where they should be.
They drew blood this morning. It hurt like Hades, which is extremely unusual; I usually don't even feel it when they do their phlebotomy jiujitsu on me.
They called me this afternoon. Apparently my potassium levels are extraordinarily HIGH.
WTF?!? The only meds I take now are colestipol, which is a bile-acid sequestrant and which can cause one to be LOW in potassium... and omeprazole, which shouldn't have any effect on my potassium levels.
It is possible that I could've gotten a false hyperkalemia indication because of this:
Pseudohyperkalemia is a rise in the amount of potassium that occurs due to excessive leakage of potassium from cells, during or after blood is drawn. It is a laboratory artifact rather than a biological abnormality and can be misleading to caregivers. Pseudohyperkalemia is typically caused by hemolysis during venipuncture (by either excessive vacuum of the blood draw or by a collection needle that is of too fine a gauge); excessive tourniquet time or fist clenching during phlebotomy (which presumably leads to efflux of potassium from the muscle cells into the bloodstream); or by a delay in the processing of the blood specimen.
Since the blood draw WAS somewhat abnormal, they're going to re-draw blood tomorrow morning. In the meantime, though, they were extremely concerned and wanted me to head immediately to the E.R. if I got extremely dizzy or felt some kind of cardiac problems, since hyperkalemia can lead to cardiac arrest.
I swear, it's always something.
If they determine that I really do have hyperkalemia and it isn't due to a lab quirk, I may end up in the hospital tomorrow. But let's hope not, k? I just don't have the time or the inclination to be hospitalized.
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I am really worried about my Pop. He just isn't doing well. He's cancer-free, but the ensuing misery of re-establishing immunity has been nothing short of horrific. A couple of weeks ago he erupted in a virulent display of chickenpox, which has left him pocked from head to toe and disturbingly addlepated.
Cancer sucks. And life is just not fair.
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On the plus side, "serene" is precisely how I'd describe home and family life without her here. Even "Zen-like." And yet, as Rick and I discussed it, we're both gritting our teeth in anxiety over the uncertainty of what we'll have to endure. It's just too good to be true, this peacefulness.
The first time she was in the lockup, we felt almost celebratory. We took family walks. We went places. We all sat together and laughed about stuff and watched television and left bedroom doors open without fear of having our things ransacked. And then they dropped the bomb on us that even though they completely agreed that she needed more serious and long-term intervention, the insurance company would not cover the expense because of the lack of a history. The pall descended upon everyone in the house almost immediately.
This time around, the exuberance is muted. We don't trust it, because it will get yanked away from us again just like before.
We're like abuse victims who can't get away from their abuser. It's like living in a war zone... you become inured to the daily, hourly, minute-ly whistle of incoming sniper fire or bombs, and when everything goes silent, you still can't relax because your body (at an almost cellular level) just knows it won't last and you'll have to duck and cover again.
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People all the time ask me if I'm okay. I work really, really, really hard to be positive and funny and to NOT be a complete funsucker, which is why I just don't talk about this stuff much.
Yes, I'm okay. As okay as I can be, I think.
I am meaner than this crap. People all around me are suffering in private ways, and I've got no reason to expect different. My pain ain't special. And I'm not going to allow it to take center stage. You bet -- life does suck. But it doesn't mean I can't figure out ways to make it suck less.
Such as:
Crab Imperial
Sauvignon blanc
Show tunes
Afternoon naps
Funny Facebook status updates
A good cry
Puns
The color green
Sparkly things
New boots
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I glued some teeny Swarovski crystals to my big toenails so I could have sparkly things with me on a continual basis.
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I think that having a Facebook account has taken quite a bit of my blogging impetus away. But some things, like the stuff in this blog post, just don't lend themselves well to a Facebook status. They're too, well, serious. And because there are just so many people who read my FB status updates, I fear that writing about this on FB would appear to be a solicitation of pity. I'm not interested in people "feeling bad for me" ... but I do need this outlet to write it down from time to time. If anything, I'm grateful that so few people read my blog. It liberates me to be a little less concerned about how people will "take" it. Because this honeybadger JUST DON'T CARE.
