2014: Mono, Minnesota, Ali

2014, In Review!

What did you do in 2014 that you'd never done before?
- Got mono, at the age of 33, which is unheard of. 
- Wrangled four kids at once, on the reg.
- Read books on a kindle, on the reg.
- Drove across the country for three days with my best friend, which is a thing I will recommend anyone do. 
- Abandoned the car in the snow and walked with three kids to safety, which is a thing I do not recommend. 

Did you keep last year's resolutions, and will you make more for this year?
     I am fairly certain I never made them last year. This year, I would like to get a real job again, I think.

How did you spend New Year's Eve? 
     I juuuust blogged about NYE so I am changing the question. I just asked Anneliese what she would ask someone about their year and she said What's your favorite thing you ate? 
     (She would like you to know hers was "that spaghetti Daddy makes for me, and also when I had that piece of gum that one time.") I... don't know what mine is. I did have some amaaaahzing, like, close-your-eyes-and-moan-good roasted brussels sprouts with chestnuts and pork belly and apples and a mustard vinaigrette on New Year's Eve, so maybe that? (And, we're back to NYE after all. So.) 

What did you get really really excited about? 
     Our cruise! After a horrible mono-sick spring, and job stresses, and a million details nailed down for childcare and such, we got a grownups-only trip to the Bahamas. Cruises are easy and cheesy and delightful, for real.

What do you wish you'd done more of in 2014? 
     Sleeping. I remain a terrible sleeper. A sleep failure. Full stop.

What do you wish you'd done less of? 
     Losing my glasses. It made me cry more times per week than I should admit. Eeeiiii.

What would you like to have in 2015 that you lacked in 2014? 
     A sun lamp for my desk. Also, more time to sit at my desk. And blog, and read blogs, and send emails, and have general me time. It's everyone's dream right? 

What was great this year when you weren't expecting it? 
     Our Great American BFF Road Trip, to move Nathan to Minnesota and say good-bye. It could have been stressy and bickery and exhausting; on some level I was ready for it to be that, yet glad to go and help anyway. But instead it was wonderful and delightful and fun and bonding. Like one of the best things we have ever done, not just this year but ever.

Who is the best new person you met? 
     Ali! Sweet baby Ali! Of course!

What song will always remind you of 2014? 
     Shake it Off and also Let it Go. Also, Anneliese's horribly (delightfully) misinterpreted lyrics to both of those. (Prayers gonna pray y'all.)

Where did most of your money go? 
     Like always - mortgage, taxes, school tuition, and this year more travel than in recent years.

What was the best thing you bought? 
     A new wedding ring. Slash engagement ring. Slash anniversary band. I left mine on our cruise ship and after a small fortune in ship-to-shore calls, and a police report, a report with the cruise line, phone calls to pawn shops in Port Canaveral and Nassau, and six months of crying, it never turned up. I felt (feel) awful even thinking about it. I know it's just a Thing but it's a special thing, from a hugely special moment in my life, and no other thing will ever be that ring, that re-set stone that was my great grandmother's, bonded to that band that Mark put on my hand on our wedding day. But. I sadly took the insurance money, and Mark and I found one that he loved and I loved. It feels a bit like a solitaire and a bit like an anniversary band and it's set in rose gold, and... I do love it. After months with no ring, I am glad to have this one. Especially with the kind words and wonderful promises from Mark that came attached to it, even now, eleven years after our wedding. It is special too. 

Whose behavior merited celebration? 
     My dad, who retired from teaching this year. He has worked in the corporate world, and the military, and has been an entrepreneur with his own small business, but I think of his many careers, teaching is what he loved best. His students loved him, and he was damn good at it. We are proud of him. And! He remains a stand-up Grandpa. 

     (Also, Anneliese deserves celebrating. She was my answer last year too, but she is just really in a delightful stage. Five forever!) (Ages three and seven are getting the side-eye from me today.)

Whose behavior appalled you? 
     Baby Ali on dairy. My word, child. So much screaming. (Ali without dairy = best niece evaaaar. But on dairy? Appalling. I can say that now because it's over, but. Yeah. Picture my wide eyes.)
     Also, people who use leaf blowers, for any reason, ever. Just no.

Who did you miss? 
     Another Nathan, so freaking much. Especially Tuesday nights.

What was your favorite show? 
     I finally got on board and watched both seasons of Orange is the New Black this year. Also, Mark and I loved Parenthood and watched it religiously until the end (*moment of silence for perfect Braverman series finale*). But besides that and The Mindy Project, I... don't watch very much tv anymore? I still love tv, in theory, I just, I think I like the quiet more. (Mark watches all kinds of things, increasingly with headphones plugged into the roku remote, because see again: quiet.) 

What was your favorite book? 
     I apparently only gave 5-star ratings to six books last year. Of those, I think my favorites were The One & Only Ivan (read that one with your kids! it's a good first chapter book!) and The Fault in Our Stars, because I am very mainstream and predictable, and also it was really dang good. 

What was your favorite new movie? 
     Frozen. (It wasn't new in 2014 but we didn't see it til the new year so it was new to us. And yes I unabashedly love it.)

How old were you on your birthday, and what did you do? 
     I was (am) 34, I went for a really fun and delicious Asian seafood dinner with Mark in Chapel Hill, and we shopped for that new wedding band. It was a lovely wonderful night after a hard season of heavy feelings, and I felt really special and close to him. It was a good birthday.

What was your biggest achievement in 2014? 
     Being the best moving boss ever? (WHAT. I WAS.) Also successfully turning Anneliese into Rainbow Brite, twenty years late. 

Your biggest failure? 
     I majorly let down the kids last summer, and myself, and our dreams for the school break. I just had no bandwidth for the fun bucket list items we had planned. I was sad as it happened, sad when it was over, and still sad now. This year will be better. Anneliese is starting kindergarten and I will start back to work at some point, and this summer is a summer for us. I feel fired-up protective of having some family fun.
     Also, that snow adventure thing. We should probably put that in the Fail for The Ages column too.

What countries/states did you visit? 
     The Bahamas, on our cruise. (Also Georgia and Florida, driving to the port.) Also we went to Virginia/Maryland/DC with the kids in October, and I hit several new-to-me states on our great American road trip: Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota (and West Virginia, Ohio and Illinois which were not new).

How would you describe your personal fashion concept this year? Have you showered today? Good for you! 
     Yes! And learned how to make my hair wavy! (It was apparently already wavy, I just didn't know.) Does that count as a fashion concept? If so, I could undo that strikethrough. 

What dates from 2013 will remain etched in your memory? 
- February 12, the snow adventure.
- March 7, when Mark accepted his new job.
- March 13, when Ali was born. 
- April 6, when we sang a beautiful Bach cantata that we worked super hard on, and then Charlotte fell down the stairs and I had to take her to get her face stitched up (when I was horribly fever sick with mono, and Mark was on the last shift of his old job, and Another Nathan was at an interview for a new job himself, and whoa that evening was a perfect storm, a microcosm of all of the angst of that season, April 6 you can GDIAF, except for the Bach thing). 
- April 28, when our cruise departed. 
- July 27, Another Nathan's last Sunday at our church. 
- August 4, the date of my one-way plane ticket back to Raleigh after a horribly sad goodbye.

What kept you sane? 
     Hmmm... iMessage? I don't know. Am I sane? I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer this question.

What valuable lesson did you learn this year? 
     And I am definitely not qualified to answer this one. I don't think I have have any good takeaways. Last year was mostly (not all! but a fair amount) sucky for me. Spring and summer were a haze of sickness and angst and newborn crying and a long goodbye. Fall was colored by a rough marriage season, and struggling to communicate with Charlotte and her sudden stuttering. There were so many hard things, and so many of them were things that I couldn't heal or fix, exactly, besides just riding them out. 
     Maybe if I learned a lesson, it's that *feeling better isn't linear, and sometimes you just have to let hard things be hard, until they pass. Which they usually do. And then it can be okay again.

Anyway. Onward and upward! Etc etc.

*Thanks Sarah. #kissyface

Eleven Questions

Okay apparently we are being meme-y on the internet this week and I am not complaining because these things are fun to read, fun to write, and easy on mah brain. Elizabeth tagged me. So. Here goes.

1. What is your favorite type of cheese? I have no real feelings about cheese. Maybe... any cheese that is not smoked? And preferably melted. For to dip things like chips.

2. What are you excited about? Hmmm I... don't know, actually. Sad. I have spent the last few weeks so filled with nerves and dread and worry that I don't think I have been looking forward to anything. Let's remedy that now! *brisk clap* Okay, I think I am excited about summer, at least the kids being home from school part. (I miss them.) I am alllllmost excited about my new iPhone coming this week. (I have never owned an Apple product, and now I will. I don't even know who I am anymore.) And I might get to go on a road trip in August to the midwest which will be weird but also fun and I could totally get it up to feel excited about that. Oh! Oh! And we are taking a day trip to the beach on Monday! Okay I just hit legit excitement. Good talk.

3. How did you celebrate your last birthday? What awesome thing has your dad done this week? (I think I answered the birthday thing in the New Year survey, so I changed the question, don't mind if I do.) Y'all! My dad is retiring from teaching! Teaching, which was a late-ish-in-life career change for him (when I was a senior in high school), after many years (and several master's degrees) in corporate America, which was after several years in the military, and anyway it turns out he is pretty awesome teacher, and has been for almost twenty years now. And he is retiring and his kids and colleagues love and respect him, and we do too. We are super crazy proud of his work and (warning: cheesy ahead) the difference it makes. You should watch this sweet and funny video some of his students made for/about him. Love it.

4. What is on your bedside table? A lamp I used to love and now find incredibly ugly, an alarm clock blinking the wrong time, a booklight, a baby monitor whose mate was abandoned months ago in Charlotte's room, a bottle of gatorade, and all these books. (I am currently reading all of these, save one I haven't started yet. Yes really. I tend to read one novel at a time, and nonfiction type stuff a chapter at a time, rotating through each of them once a week or so. I don't know why. Now that I am trying to explain why I have all these books on my nightstand it doesn't seem like a very good system.)

I am also reading another but I took it off the nightstand before I took this pic because some shiz is private from Some People Reading) (not to you, you can ask and I will gladly tell you).

NOT on my nightstand: my glasses. Even though they should be. I can't find them, again, story of my life, whatever.

5. What do you order from the movie theater concession stand? Small popcorn and the largest size of diet coke (for to share!) because only the largest size gets refills, and I want the option for the refill, even though I never actually get it refilled.

6. Do you have a garden? What’s growing? I have some flowers in some boxes on the deck, planted by the previous owners. (They couldn't pay their mortgage and a third of the house was termite-destroyed, but sure! Keep the flowers alive!) Other than that, I do not garden. Although, Nathan wants to plant some dinosaur garden this summer, some something about prehistoric plants that would have grown when dinos roamed? I might humor him on that. He put it on the summer bucket list! It is now sacred!

7. Any summer plans? Well, the dinosaur garden, apparently. Especially now that I have told the internet about it, I have to. Also learning to get into a rhythm with Ali. Also sitting by my pool and reading, hopefully a lot. Also, a week at Montreat with Nathan again for youth conferences. Also, probably more crying than in some other summers. Just putting that out there.

8. Which TV couple(s) are you rooting for? Julia and Joel. (And, in case we never get to see them again, I will put my emotional cheering into Mindy and Danny instead.)

9. What’s the last thing you bought? I can't remember, so I will go out on a limb and say... something from Starbucks? (Oh wait! The new iPhones. I bought those today.) If I wait til tomorrow to post this, I can maybe say new jeans. I think I might need to make a jeans purchazzie tomorrow, because none of my pants fit, because mono. (Not that I recommend the mono diet. I stridently dis-recommend the mono diet.) Hmm I should take a picture like in a diet ad. Should I do it?

(I did it.)

10. What’s one thing you are passionate about? I feel like I always answer this type of question about apostrophe usage, but that is mostly a joke. (Not really. I am dead serious about it.) But also, I think: inclusive language. I am more and more bothered/ranty/willing to fight about how we talk about things, especially in terms of privilege, and propagating stigma. I know that all sounds like a bunch of nothing but I don't have it in me to be more articulate about it right now. Friday! Lazy! Language! Passion! Something!

11. What are you grateful for this week? My awesome Marky who lets me be as chatty or as quiet as I need to be, always. Another Nathan who makes time for me and our creature-of-habit habits, even when his own life gets crazy. My sister who is always in my phone and understands me. My minivan. My guest house fridge full of gatorade. And warm spring weather that is freaking gorgeous. Oh! And a pool to sit beside in said weather.

The rules say I must now tag eleven bloggers: Emily, whose answers to these things always crack me up. Arwen, who hasn't blogged in too long for my taste. Elsha, who (apparently) already knew I would tag her. And Emu, who can use this bloggity survey to kill time while she is in labor any day now.

I'm on a Boat! (Don't Call the Ship a Boat.)

Look! I am all bloggity caught up! And it is (yet another) emotional week here, so let's talk about our cruise! We went on a cruise!

The most important thing to know is that my spleen did not explode. (Someday I will stop talking about the frikking mono. Apparently that day isn't today.) The second most important thing to know is that this was a kid! free! cruise!

(Well, there were kids on the boat.* Just not my kids.) (*Apparently if you call it a boat, you get scolded. It is a ship. A boat is a thing you get on when the ship sinks. We have been on many cruises and had never heard it explained... quite like that.) (Somewhere, my maritime-oriented brother is reading this and hanging his head in shame. Don't call it a boat, Erin!)

So, pictures, for no other purpose than preserving my own memories and hoping that for once I don't have to be the one feeling jealous that someone else got to go somewhere tropical:

on the top decks of Enchantment

I love him. That is all.

Our ship, from Coco Cay

In light of Mark's promotion, Another Nathan made him take this pic
and I am *so glad* because nothing about it doesn't make me laugh.

Cruise ships are so tacky-fabulous they are hard to describe.
Just... whoa.

But some of the cheesiness is totally fun. I will never not love towel animals.

Make sure your travel group includes dapper friends in suits.
You will not hate it. #ProTip

We took a sunset sailing trip around Paradise Island (now home to Atlantis)

my bestest fraaand
(not even seasick this time)

Enchantment of the Seas, at twilight (docked in Nassau)

He's on a boat! (Actually a boat.)

Coco Cay with my very own Marky

On a cruise ship! With champagne!
(Even mono cannot get me down!)

We spent our days in the sun -- by the pool, and one day at the beach, and one day wandering through Nassau where it was hot as the blazes but we found respite at a random rum distillery. We shared bottles of wine every night at dinner and spent our evenings at cheesy shows and floating in the indoor pool and sitting in the breeze of the top deck in the dark. (And one night in a hot tub, drinking tropical bevvies and gawking at beautiful people dancing by the edge of the pool.) We went late to our muster drill (not late! everyone else was early!) and collected hate-stares from the hundreds of people we had to walk by on the way to our lifeboat. We had a sting-y encounter (minor, but still sting-y) with the remnants of a jellyfish. We bought Christmas ornaments shaped like the ship. We spent the second half of the week avoiding a super awkward family from our first night at dinner (we saw them everywhere). We got to snuggle late into the night and late into the morning and keep no kind of schedule at all. We played car games and we all read long books, and most of us got sunburned, but only in odd patches, because of course. We made the same dumb jokes all week, in terrible caribbean accents. It was everything I could have wanted in a week away from real life, is what I'm saying.

Silver Linings

Okay after a fair amount of complaining, I feel like I owe the universe (myself) the admission that there were lots of silver linings in the clouds and misery of April. Not the least of which was our beach trip and (kid! free!) cruise, but also many sweet and helpful friends who brought dinners and gave rides to my kids to/from school, and games and rehearsals and sweet Marky who not only started his new job but also did all the parenting (when he was home), along with most of the cleaning and grocery shopping too, and between all of those efforts, I really was able to cut waaaaay back on things, and rest. I got to the point where I canceled everything "extra" off my calendar, and got rides for the kids for as many things as I could, and tried to limit myself to a One Thing Per Day rule. Most of the time it was to pick up or drop someone off at school, but other days I got to sneak away to starbucks or go to choir or that kind of thing, and anyway it was all very helpful and I felt very loved.

Also, two days after the stitches/fever/ER fiasco with Charlotte, Anneliese totally found my lost glasses. (Anneliese! Who can never find anything!) She was right pleased with herself, and I was too. I might have picked her up and squealed gleefully and spun her in a circle. Maybe.

And before the whole stitches/fever/ER fiasco ever happened, we spent a long morning at church doing our Lenten cantata, which in hindsight totally pushed me longer than I should have been there (I sang two services and sat one out), but I don't regret for one second that I went and did it, even feeling super sick, because dang we worked hard on it this year, and I was not going to not be there.

We did a somewhat obscure Bach Cantata (39, the 1st movement, if you're curious about that kind of thing) and it was an ambitious undertaking for our choir but whoa dang we pulled it off! Another Nathan is a totally legit teacher and conductor and I felt super proud of him and really proud of us too. (He had some angsty weeks in there worrying that it might not happen well, but we burned CDs, and part-prominent midi files, and made a video of the sheet music against a good recording) (oh yes we did) (I am his I/T person haaaaa HAomg) (but really) and that Sunday was just beautiful.

hm I just realized this pic isn't from Lent, it is from December, but...
it looked about the same, minus the greenery, so just go with it :)
(PS that flute player in the front row is pretty cute, yes?)

So anyway I ended up being really glad I sat out one service (thanks, mono! #thumbsup) because being able to just listen to the whole thing was really lovely. I might have maybe tackle hugged Another Nathan in the hallway behind the sanctuary after he conducted the Bach. Maybe. (No spinning in circles with him like Anneliese though.)

At some point in the last month, Nathan announced that he was finally (!) learning to use the bow on his cello. (I guess they teach the fingering, music reading, etc, just by plucking, which makes sense. I know next to nothing about string instruments, actually.) He offered to give Mark and me a lesson on using the bow so we said yes, obviously. Hi there, silver lining! I can play cello at a not-quite-first-grade level now!

Also, I bought Nathan this shirt at the Carter's outlet (the outlet store was my One Thing that day), and he loved it, and when we put it on the next morning, he yelled down to me, "Mom! My sperm shirt is the perfect size!"

Sperm WHALE shirt, Nathan. Always say sperm WHALE.

Speaking of clothes and kids and awkwardness -- when left to her own devices, Anneliese will wear every. single. color. she owns, all in one outfit. I call this her "my mommy has mono and is too tired to talk about my clothes" look.

Hmm what else? Oh, here is a silver lining: we went to Dave & Buster's one night to play video games and drink drinks (Another Nathan's Christmas present to Mark), and while I later paid dearly for the drink-drinking part (I didn't know! I felt off but I didn't know yet it was mono!), before that it was quite fun, and also I think (now that I am looking at this picture) that I might have made peace with my haircut. Which means you may now see it:

And, here, enjoy a picture of Charlotte, because she is the very definition of a silver lining in any tough day/season/whatever.

If swaddling a pony (read: insisting Daddy help you swaddle a pony, repeat times infinity) and singing it a lullaby is wrong, she doesn't want to be right.

Spring Sucktastic (or, Effing Mono)

{Note 5/21: Still playing bloggity catch-up. In re-reading this, I am super glad most of this is over. And May has been... well, exhausting, but in a different way, and much MUCH better than this.}

So! Hi! Hello! It has been a crappy month.

There were some light and easy days (mostly: I got to go on a cruise! with! no! kids!) but basically this spring has exhausted me and kicked my ass and I am all out of feelings about it (that's not true, I am never out of feelings, and sometimes I hate that about myself because again: exhausted) but now that it is (mostly) over, it seems more bloggable, although it is all just going in this one post because although any one of these things would have been hard on its own and deserve its own ranty post, I am out of rants and words about my feelings, if not the feelings themselves (omg was that all one sentence? You know what, I don't even care).

***

Okay so I got mono. Can we just take a moment to note the fact that 33-year-olds do not get mono? That is some bullsh!t for teenagers, right there. Not exhausted moms of three kids.

The diagnosis came two days before Mark started his new job. Meaning he could not miss work. Meaning I had to manage life, and all the kids, and blah blah blah the logistics are boring, but suffice it to say "rest" was not really an option there for a while. And can I just say, my life is super hard with mono. I admit it.

*** 

In the throes of the mono, Charlotte fell down the stairs and sliced her forehead open. She was going up to bed by herself (guilt) for Nathan to tuck her in (guilt) because I was alternating between flat on the couch in fever misery, and crying on the bathroom floor in vommy misery. So she fell. And it was an injury-causing fall. She needed three stitches, she was in pain, I had to manage all three kids at the ER for many hours, by myself, after bedtime, with a mono fever. Also I could not find my glasses anywhere. Not being able to find things makes me crazy. Not wearing my glasses makes me feel super disoriented and out of it, obviously, and a fever makes it worse, obviously. (Nathan suggested I use my old ones. Besides being the six-year-old-hero who tucks his baby sister in bed because mommy is sick, he is apparently also the only voice of reason in my house when I am overwhelmed and throwing up and sick and my child is bleeding from the head OH MAH GAH THAT NIGHT SUCKED SO MUCH.)

A nearby church does a "blanket ministry" for kids whose parents rush
off to the hospital without lovies and such. To that church I say THANK YOU.

So anyway it is over now and the stitches are gone and she is left with a perfect little Frankenstein scar line of stitches and I secretly call her Frankenbooler in my head every time I see it.

***

Okay this is the one that I wasn't sure I would ever tell the internet about, but it turns out I want to: Charlotte let go of my hand and ran into a street in front of a car, and she is fine (fine!) but it was still every bit as traumatic as you would assume. I ran after her and grabbed her, and the person was driving really appropriately slow and was paying attention (insert here times infinity: THANK GOODNESS), and there were slamming breaks and squealing tires but she missed us both.

You always assume you would throw yourself in front of a moving vehicle for your child, but when the day comes that you actually do it, it turns out it is super traumatizing, and you spend many many hours afterwards in tears.

Also, and this seems laughably irrelevant juxtaposed against the bigger picture (she is fine!) but it adds to my horrible Feelings about the whole thing so I am saying it anyway: my pants are all too big (mumble mumble mono something) and they totally fell down to my knees when I ran and lunged into the street. So I was sobbing and scared for my baby girl's life, with my unders showing. It was emotional and embarrassing and yeah, THAT DAY SUCKED A LOT TOO.

I feel very sure this is an event that will haunt my dreams for years. Ooof, is that too heavy? Back to something else.

***

So as if all those (kinda big) things weren't enough, there was also:
- a long-awaited pair of rx sunglasses that the optic assistant broke and had to re-order before I ever got out of the office,
- a broken dryer,
- a g/i bug that hit everyone but Charlotte and me, who fled the scene in immuno-compromised mono panic,
- pool ladders with missing parts,
- a broken heater/ac in the guest house,
- a never-ending saga with diagnosing and fixing a weird smell in the car (we fixed one problem before we realized it was tires, which was a huge pain and involved several trips for purchase/alignment/messed up appointments/etc),
- an extra trip to the ER, right when I thought my mono was better (nope),
- in which the whole (!) hospital was full (FULL) and they treated people in the waiting room,
- a dormer window upstairs leaking rain into our foyer through a light fixture in the ceiling
- our (semi-celebrity) neighbor's kids drinking in our yard on weekends, loudly and while littering

WAIT WAIT I'M NOT DONE.

***

We went on our cruise which was just lovely, but when we got back, the parenting was super hard, like miserable hard, like existential crisis hard, for several weeks (*side eye Nathan*).

AND it turns out while we were on the ship, a cement truck doing work next door had their line explode, and cement blasted all over our car and house (and even one house past ours). And then in cleaning it up, they pressure washed off our house paint. Mark is still working on getting all of this fixed with the contractor.

And, finally and sadly, my engagement and wedding rings never made it off the cruise ship. I am super sad about this. I know it is "just" a Thing, and doesn't change my love or my marriage, but to me it is a Thing that matters. I guess it is also a Thing that you can only lose once and get lucky enough to find it again. *sob*

May will be better.