1974 Family ala Olan Mills and more scanning projects

Woohoo! Look at those hair styles! Funny to see my dad sporting that comb-down like every Emo kid out there these days! And my mom~ yikes, just where does the top of her scalp lay under all of that Aqua Net? This picture is a perfect example of how I don't look like anyone in my immediate family. Everyone is brown-eyed, dark-haired, thin and wirey, and has these olive-skinned complexions. Me: pastey white, chubby blonde with blue eyes.
It's amazing to me that my own two children look so much like me. I must confess, I am somewhat secretly pleased after all these years of having no resemblance to my family.

The top photo is one of me and my brother. He must have been 5, I was 2. He looks like a little ape man, all tan and long limbs. Makes me laugh. He's still all long limbs!

I asked my mom to bring over all of her photos. Blech, they stink of musty mildew from being stored in a box in her basement for years and years. But it's so fun to go through them. I'm working on scanning loads of them and then making photo-story DVDs with music for each parent, and also ones for my siblings. And a special for my sister showcasing her 3 boys. We'll see if I get all of this done. The biggest job is surely digging them out and scanning them one by one. Putting the DVDs together are fun. I love that process of putting them in order, finding appropriate music, etc.

Enough scanning for tonight. I could stay up longer with my obsessive nature. But, I'm going to be good and go to bed.

feeling good

It's been a fairly low-key week. Greg, Eamon and Sarah have had horrible coughs for 5 weeks? Ugh. This Wednesday Sarah had a sore throat, "burning eyes", and generally felt icky. She stayed home from school. Then again Thursday and today. Poor kid. her cough is terrible and so whoopy, croupy. The way she always gets when sick. Like she's been smoking stout stoagies for 40 years. Eamon seems to be on the mend, Greg is feeling better but with the terrible cough.
I've been surprisingly fine through all of this. Yesterday and today I finally felt a little stuffy headed and achey, but I'm warding it off with Emergen'C, drinking lots of fluids and really trying to avoid sugar.
My NARM exam was postponed yet again due to no baby model. We've agreed to wait til my December client has her baby before we schedule again. We won't be using my client's baby. The evaluating midwife has offered to find both mom and baby models for me since she's 3.5 hours away.

We dyed Sarah's hair with pink stripes last Sunday. It looks super cute. She has this great head of thick hair that just lays so nicely. Don't know who she gets it from. She's like a Breck Girl from the 70s, shaking her mane lusciously.

I made an appointment to be seen by our new naturopathic MD that Greg's been seeing. Greg is the biggest cynic and unlike me, gives very few people the benefit of the doubt (which makes a good balance between the two of us on most days). At any rate, I tested this doctor out on Greg, and got the thumb's up that he's a cool guy.
I feel like my blood sugar is going crazy. I know I have a history of it crashing and getting light headed, blacking out, etc. but it's not happened in a really long time. Lately, even when eating well, I get a headache about an or two after eating. I see light around people's bodies when I look at them. I get super cranky if I haven't eaten in a while (and granted, I always leave it too long~ but there's a part of me that is so reluctant to be the type to carry baggies of nuts in my purse!). I get the shakes and generally feel like shit 2 hours after I've eaten anything. I feel like I could sleep after every meal. I feel like I'm much older than I am! Like 50 years older than what I am!
Speaking of, I'm really loving my senior clients. I'm appreciating life in general so much more. They are truly amazing. There are times when I can't help thinking terrible things like: Why are you saving all this crap? Why are you clipping all these useless articles and catalogueing them? Why are you putting off moving into assisted living for another 2 years when you are 86? Why NOT? I'm so inspired by my clients basic feistiness and desire to live every single day. They savor every minute it seems, and so they should. It is SO refreshing to witness and have as a reminder to slow down and enjoy my life.
This year has been a year of heavy processing, of coming down from the ceiling (like a cat with it claws stuck upside down) of pressure and anxiety that was my apprenticeship. And although I love and have a lot of respect for the women who trained me, no one could have prepared me for the sorry to say it, but, fucked up dynamic between preceptor and apprentice. It's somewhere between mother/teenage daughter and therapist/patient and other crazy roles to be sure. I've talked to other midwives, other apprentices and many admit their frustrations. It's so hard because the work we do is so intimate, yet there's this air of secrecy, of hardcore confidentiality that makes it hard to define the proper boundaries we should keep. And then the general business of our lives makes it terribly hard to process with each other. My apprenticeship was all full-steam-ahead, and I am so done with that model of living.
My kids and my husband suffered from it, while being graciously supportive. It is so nice to have time be my own, my clients be my own.
And I am so fortunate to have found this side job of senior companionship/errand woman. I'm working with great people who have done amazing things in their life and continue to do so at 80, 86 and so on.

I think my very nature is to glom onto GOGOGO! It's like an addiction of sorts and would have to be to be on-call, I think. Maybe not. I guess I'm just saying I'm happy to have some balance in my life after 5 years of pushing for things to GO!

It's a struggle for me to make myself drink my tea while it is hot. To watch a movie with the kids without folding two loads of laundry, making a phone call, and cleaning up the toys.
Talk about sitting on your hands!

Okay, enough reflection and so on: a vagina update.
The orange construction barrels are gone from my thighs (I felt like I was in this nothing-per-vagina state for 2 weeks). The post sex, post Halloween yeast issues have been resolved. I experienced my first post-IUD period. The cramping was so minor (but I usually have none anyway). The bleeding was heavy on days 3-4 and went away on day 6 or 7. Definitely more clotty, but didn't feel like I needed to do much different.
So I am happy to report that I feel really good about this IUD decision. The best part being that I can have unprotected sex when I'm ovulating and want to have sex, without worrying. That's the downside to working with your fertility signs and ovulation, right? When you most want to have sex, it's not a safe time to do so (if your plan is not to become pregnant, of course). Now, it's all systems go! And what a huge relief. It's amazing how feeling protected takes away so much strain and tension revolving around our sex life. And I didn't feel like there was any tension there in the first place. Now that it's gone, I think we're both way more relaxed.
Good stuff.

Okay, I should go. I realized that I somehow forgot to pay our car insurance, oh, NINE DAYS AGO. And here it is almost midnight on a Friday. Hopefully I can pay online or by phone, now.

Democrats, doves and senior hefting

WAAAHOOOOOO!
The Democrats are kicking ass all over this country! AND best of all, that freaky Amway conservative, Dick DeVos DID NOT WIN!! Yes! I'm all about Jennifer Granholm and Debbie Stabenow. Oh, I am so thankful Amway freak did not win.

And I'm pretty sure the doves are having loud, celebratory parties all over Michigan right now too. So they should. As I told my father, if you feel the need to shoot something so little.... I mean, really. What can possibly be left of a frickin' morning dove after you shoot it, right? A foot, a blackend beak?
Go to Ted Nugents backyard of yahoo delights, shoot some live creature, stroke your penis/ego, then go back to Krogers and buy your meat like you always do.
Ridiculous. And my dad isn't even a hunter. He just doesn't like birds because they "shit on his car". Grrrr.
(for those of you who don't know, that was one of the proposals here: whether the Bow Hunters for Bush {or whoever they are} could legally shoot doves.) I'm sorry, hunters in our oh-so-urban setting make me crazy.


Tonight I had a good night with my senior client. He finally got into his new HoverRound wheelchair thingie. His confidence soared! It was truly fun to see him get the hang of this machine (he tried a month ago and hated it). He was buzzing around for close to 2 hours. Even made me pull the car out of the garage so he could wheel around there. There was a problem though. Dismantling. He has one very weak leg and the other is prosthetic. He can stand shakily and momentarily. He was trying to get out of the fancy machine and into his wheelchair. He wisely had me settle him near the bed to attempt to stand, move over and sit again. He fell flat on his face on the bed. Could not get himself up. Laying atop of the arm that doesn't work. I braced myself and heaved. My back is so jacked up. Right in the middle. No stretching can fix it. I think he must weigh 220 or so. I picked him up to a fully sitting position. Bloody hell.
Sweet Kate my massage friend will be getting a pleading call from me in the morning.

Time for bed. I should read some midwifery and not Terry Pratchett. But the Pratchett is soo funny.
Tried reading Michel Houllebecq's new book: The Possibility of an Island. Ugh. Could not get into at all. And I'm an OCD, must-read-book-cover-to-cover type of girl. I had to put it down after 40 pages of shite. Blech. Greg trudged on, was surprisingly not-squeamish about how bad it was. VO, you read it?

Warning: extreme pissiness follows

Wow, it's Friday again. A crazy week. I've been studying a lot. My NARM skills exam was supposed to be Monday the 6th. I wasn't going to say anything to anyone (as best as my big mouth could), because I have insane test anxiety. Seriously voices in my head shouting: You are SO STUPID! You don't know this stuff! You're such a LOSER! Never, babe. Not YOU, ever...
grrr. It makes me so angry. I want to stuff a sock into whatever mouth thats coming from.

It's horrible. I've come to the conclusion that I just need to pray about this. Keep the doubt from my brain long enough for me to amble through birth scenarios. At any rate, the test has been postponed til the 13th because for the lack of an available baby model. You're supposed to have a baby there 6 weeks or younger. The midwife (3.5 hours from me) volunteered to have both mom and baby models. We received permission from NARM to make it the following week. Funny enough, the model baby is yet to be born! What a concept! The evaluator is waiting on 3 babies at this point! So the likelihood of her being at a birth that day is high too. Sheesh, asking midwives to plan something together is a monumental task. Either someone is at a birth, or is incredibly on call or is sleeping/recovering.

I am happy for the postponement not to put the test off (I'd just assume get through this step instead of anticipating another week of the "voices"!), but rather because I figured out a few days ago that my first period post-IUD insertion was due to hit on the 6th. From what I'm told, I'm to expect heavy, heavy bleeding and hardcore cramping for the first 3-4 months. Yeah, like I needed to add hemorrhaging, insane hormones and cramping to my already rattled self on a big NARM day. Blech. I just assume stay in bed all day. (HA!)

Oh, and in other IUD-related news: the new thrill of: "Sweetheart, you needn't pull out" has landed me with a lovely yeast infection. I forgot about this.Sperm is so alkaline and I teeter on the edge of yeast so easily that, wouldn't you know it, the day after Halloween(!) I woke to a yeast infection.
How unfair! How am I supposed to stay away from that orange plastic pumpkin full of chocolate? Plain organic yogurt and probiotics or a cup of hot coffee with a couple of miniature Reese's Peanutbutter Cups? I think the answer is clear (and it does not contain acidophilus).

I nearly ate my own head thanks to working with my senior guy last night. He had me programming his new DVD-VCR recorder/player for 4.5 hours! And he kept hitting buttons at random and locking the damn thing up and then yelling at me for unplugging the machine to restart the whole shebang. He made me call the CABLE COMPANY 3 frickin' times to ask them how to work his SONY player. I was so embarassed. Of course the cable company is like: Um, that's not our machine, mam. We couldn't tell you how it works. And then I'd say softly to them (because my client is very hard of hearing), Yeah, I know. I'm working for a senior client who insisted on my calling you. Thanks for your time.
At one point, while I was in the middle of another cable call where I was actually getting a useful code for this machine's installation, I yelled at my guy. I said (just as I would yell at my kids, I swear): Wait! Mr. X- DO NOT PRESS ANY MORE BUTTONS! DON'T TOUCH! I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF SET-UP AND I NEED TO SPEAK TO THIS WOMAN ON THE PHONE TO HELP ME.
He got sulky and pissy and wheeled himself to his table where he read a stack of Enquirers for the next 45 minutes, not talking to me.
Bloody hell. If its not my kids, it's my husband. If it's not my husband, it's these seniors.
Strange what roles life hands you.

By the time I left I was ready for a stiff drink and resuming smoking long enough to have one cigarette.

Add to this, stress about getting an O2 tank of my own in the next week or two(ahem $300).
Getting 2 payments from midwifery client next week that I really, really need.
I need to send lots of pics (finally ordered, printed and received) to all of Greg's family in England, complete with thank you cards for a year's worth of stuff they send our kids. (I'm so pathetic this way. A thank you card every fall and a Christmas card at winter. Oh well. I'm busy and postage is expensive. I'm doing my best, people.)

Off to hopefully do something relaxing yet productive. Have no idea what we're having for dinner and I could care less. But I know if I don't figure this out soon, we'll be buying take out food we cannot afford.

Halloweenies

Here's my little Vampira. The first time in FIVE years that this girl was not a princess, or a fairy, or a fairy princess, etc. AT age one she was a mummy. From then on it's been lots of pink and purple tulle and satin. This year I asked her to consider something new. (I am of the camp that thinks Halloween should be scary, but whatever.) She saw this long Morticia Addams-esque velvet dress at the Halloween shop (lame, stressed, out-of-time mother here could not fathom finding time to MAKE a costume). She loved the dress and thought it was very glamorous. She said she'd be a female vampire, only if we didn't put on scary makeup (although purple eye shadow was requested). The stand-up collar was neat, and it kept her warm from the wind as we trick-or-treated.

And here we have little Cat in the Hat. (Not scary, I know.) But very cute. :) The hat was very floppy, but it stayed on most of the night. Eamon walked straight into some woman's house when she opened the door to give them candy. He just said , Hi! and walked right to the couch and started petting her cat and watching her TV. What a nut! Had to explain that one to him. There were only a few more houses where he asked people if he could come in. His vocabulary seems to have exploded in the last couple of months and he is so funny!

I have a lot going on right now, but don't have time to post more than the Halloween stuff. I still need to pack Sarah's lunch and get my bones into bed. Wednesdays are my "early" night since I'm home from work by 7:30 and can go to bed with everyone else. It is not nice to stay up late when I don't have to.