time

It has been such a long couple of weeks. My great-grandmother suffered a stroke on Thursday and passed away on Friday. She was 98, but in good health, so it wasn't really an expected death. I had been meaning to get down to see her for weeks, but...it never seemed to happen.

Then after we decided that I needed to dramatically scale back at work, we got slammed again--nobody is working overtime anymore, so that's around eight grand we're losing, plus we got notified that there aren't going to be hours at our per diem job where Rob has been working at least a 24 hour shift for over a year. This is a drastic pay cut for us, and I can't quite figure out what we're going to do. I won't put on here what we were making together with the overtime and per diem job, but we were quite comfortable. So now I'm struggling, trying to figure out what to do.

And then.

Driving home today with Josh in the backseat, just a few miles back into my county, a vehicle in front of me hit a little four-year-old boy.

What am I to do? I'm a paramedic. I pulled over.

But I had nothing with me, not even a pair of gloves.

I asked a friendly looking bystander to please go check on my son, sleeping in his car seat in the back of the car. I attempted what stabilization I could, and prayed that the ambulance would get there soon. I borrowed a firefighter's radio and tried to contact my crew coming in what we had and how bad it was. I tried to keep my voice from shaking on the radio, tried to keep the thought that could be my son out of my head.
And when the helicopter lifted off, after I did everything I could do, and so did the firefighters and the ambulance crew and the helicopter nurse and paramedic, I pulled my son out of his car seat and held him close. The wind from the helicopter blew his hair, and he smiled his big gummy smile, and kissed me on the cheek.

Mommy, he said in his four-month-old talking way, I know that you are my mommy, and I love you.

And I kissed my beautiful little boy back, and looked over at the other mother standing there, watching her little boy, now very badly injured, lift off into the sky to get to a hospital where they could help him.

Oh, my precious little boy. Everythign else faded away in that moment--worrying about the money and the hours and the time and all of that. I get to wake up tomorrow morning to a happy, beautiful, whole baby son crawling onto my chest and kissing me till I wake up and smile at him.

There is nothing in the world that is worth giving that up for.

Tired

Another one of those days.
I was sick, Rob was at working overnight, so of course Josh chose now to lurch into a growth spurt and need to start night feedings again, after three and a half months of not needing them. Between coughing and generally icky all night, and being alone, and taking care of Josh, I got about three hours of sleep.

And then I let Josh sleep in the bed because then he would actually sleep, and I was so exhausted I fell asleep in the living room in the recliner, and got woken up by a loud thud and Josh screaming. Yep, he'd fallen out of bed. So I scooped up Josh, did the full paramedic-head-to-toe thing, decided he was okay, and then snuggled him until he put his thumb in his mouth and fell back asleep. By then I was wide awake and never did get back to nap today.

So I filled the day doing mundane things, like laundry and vacuuming and dishes, and lots and lots of playing with Josh, who had no interest in naps today. And then Rob came home, and my sister(lifemoresimply.blogspot.com) and her two kids came over, and we had to get all three kids washed and dressed and ourselves re-dressed and run out to a Very Important Chamber of Commerce meet and greet at work, since my mom was unexpectedly out of town and we had no babysitters, so we took the kids to this very adult event.
Yes, that was fun. Fortunately we have adorable and well behaved children, so it was okay. We kept feeding the two-year-old fruit and crackers, and the babies kept everyone enertained with smiles and giggles, and they were probably the highlight of the event.

And then we came home and I looked up tables for FLN's Christmas dinner concert and found two still available, so if you want to come sit with us, buy yourselves tickets for table 1 and 2, and I don't have to eat with strangers.

So this is my life. I never claimed it was exciting, but, somehow, it is definately exhausting.

Hoping

I'm having one of those weeks.

One of those weeks where I check my college's alumni boards to see what the people I graduated with are doing with their lives, six years out of college. This never fails to depress me, because the college I went to is an academically rigorous, pre-graduate/professional school prep college. Thus the fact that over 70% of their alumni go on to earn advanced graduate degrees, write books, become attorneys and doctors and professors and engineers, and other such impressive feats, should be no surprise.

Note: I have not done any of this. I started, but did not finish, an M.Ed. I may finish in the next year, I may not, I don't know.

Or maybe it isn't reading my peers' impressive accomplishments. I know I've come down with pneumonia, but have been trying to put off going to the doctor because antibiotics really screw with my blood sugar, and I walk around a hypoglycemic zombie. But nothing else I've done is working, and Rob told me that I need to go tomorrow.

Or maybe because I've been sick, we've been eating so bad, and that always depresses me too, when I'm stuck relying on take out, canned soup and boxed macaroni and cheese. What we put it our bodies affects so much more than just weight(oh, there's another depressing topic, but, hey, I had a baby four and a half months ago)---and the overload of salt, sugar, and other preservatives never fails to mess with me.

But Rob is done at work up at SSA tomorrow afternoon for the week, and I will go to primary care and get the Z-pack and hope it's not bad enough that I wind up admitted, and next week is another week. So tonight I'm going to bed and hopefully sleeping well for the first time in days, and then tomorrow just take it easy and hang out with Josh.
Hopefully.

Wounded

It's been a hard week.

I've been hurt.

Deeply. And felt trampled on. Someone who I thought was a close friend has turned out not to be. Someone who I thought had my back turned out to be trashing me, up and down, behind my back.

And it hurts.

I don't have a lot of friends. I work in a male-dominated profession, and we're still trying to find a church we're comfortable with, and even though my husband keeps telling me to go do activities, I can't explain to him that I can't find anything profitable. I've found that moms groups and things of that nature seem to be turn into nothing more than husband bashing sessions. I adore my husband, and I don't have much to criticize him for. And, honestly, I have too much respect for Rob to sit around and publicly talk about the ways he fails(and he respects me enough to not air all the ways I fail, either). I don't like them.

But it leaves me with no one to really talk to about this. To say that I'm hurt and wounded. To try to sort out what I did wrong(and, honestly, it was probably nothing; this person thinks that by trashing me it makes him look good, and it isn't only me he's suddenly turned against). Sometimes we all just need a shoulder to cry on, but right now, I wish so much that I had a really good friend to just go out to lunch with, and play with the baby, or sit on my futon and watch a movie and have a cup of hot chocolate.

But it will be okay. I suspect I'm no different than most young moms who struggle with changing roles and ideas and opinions. And I have a beautiful, beautiful baby boy, and a husband who adores me and wants nothing but the best for me. There is so much love in my home, and I am so glad that I have this to come back to when the rest of the world seemes against me.

Missing

It was one of those calls that sends chills down a mother's spine.

Little girl, lost in forest, going on 6 hours now. Two counties are there, the police and fire departments and command trailer and now they are calling in a dive team to search the pond in the forest and now they are calling in an ambulance--my ambulance--to stand by for whatever they find.

I find a babysitter, go downtown. We've sent a crew, I'm covering the county.
I miss my son.

The parents are on scene, no, now they've gone to get their dog in case he can help trace her scent. It was a school trip, playing some sort of hide and seek game in the forest with middle schoolers(which just makes it reason #3,219 why I'm homeschooling). It's getting dark. It's getting cold. She's 11, and not dressed for the weather. Cut off shorts and a t-shirt, and the sun has set and the October night air has rolled in. It's cold even for the rescuers.

We're busy downtown; high fevers, cuts, drunks, the usual. We're thinking about the crews up at the search scene, preparing for all night. I call my mom and tell her she may have the baby all night, because if the search continues through I will be sent up there, and my husband won't be home from work until 3 am. It's getting darker, and colder. I think about the parents, about my son, about how I would be. I would be needed sedation, to be honest. I think about looking at a member of the dive team, knowing he was going down in the pond, looking for my child's body.
This makes me sick, and I can't think about it anymore.

My pager vibrates while we're on the way back. They're calling for mutual aid from my fire department, requesting 4 personnel and our 6x6. They request that they all wear yellow or orange coats or vests to stay reflective. I think of my golden retriever at home, and remember that we need to train him to search for my son by scent. It's on our to do list, but my four month old isn't particularly mobile yet, so I don't think about it too often.

And then everyone is turned back. She's been found, 7 hours missing, in some of the heaviest brush in the forest. She walked for hours once she realized she was lost, hours and hours, kept walking in circles. Finally she sat down and waited, curled up into a ball to stay warm. I remember that I should teach Josh what to do in case he is lost(stay where you are. Sit down, and wait. Yell so we can hear you. If you get cold, here is how to create a shelter. Mommy and Daddy will find you, just stay where you are. Don't be afraid if someone comes that you don't know, this time you can go with them. They will tell you that they've been looking for you, and what fire department they are with. Mommy will be waiting for you back at the command trailer, because they will probably not let Mommy search for you. And if you are hurt, Mommy will be in the back of the ambulance with you, and will probably tell the paramedic what to do).

I think of all the things that I need to teach Josh, and I wonder how I will ever remember them all. And I think about that other mother, and, about midnight when the other paramedic comes back to cover the county, I slip out of work and head to my mom's. Usually I let Josh sleep there overnight when we both get out late, but tonight...tonight I need to hold my son in my arms. I need to feel his soft baby hair, and kiss his tiny baby lips.
I need my son with me this night. To memorize his little features, to kiss them all one by one, and to whisper I love you.

Mommy Blogs

What do paramedic supervisors do in the middle of an extremely slow 24 hour shift when they are tired of doing QA/QI?
Answer....they read Mommy blogs. At least I do.

Mommy blogs are a variety of their own. I tend to favor conservative/large family/Quiverfull/homeschool blogs, not because I agree with or identify with them, but because it interests me. What really interests me, to be honest, is how someone can have 12 kids, homeschool, can all their own food from the garden, sew Regency period costumes, and still have a lovely, daily updated blog complete with advertisers and hundreds of readers. Quite frankly, I suspect what their children are really doing is watching Sesame Street and flooding the toilets. I also will be brutally honest and tell you that in a few years, when Josh starts Special Josh School, and I have Nicholas, Zachary, Elisabeth and Matthew running around, I will probably not blog at all.

(Note: yes, I have named my future children, so hopefully I really do have four boys and one girl, and I really do tell Josh that he gets to go to Special Josh School when he's five instead of having to sit a desk in Regular Boring Everyone Else's School. Usually when I tell him this, he just gives me a toothless, slobbery kiss and I melt into a puddle of Mommy mush.)

And here, I'm not talking about the women I read who updated every few days, posting interesting articles on their family life and all that. I love those blogs, especially the ones from other wives of firefighters, because then I know I'm not alone when the baby is sick, the house is a mess, the dog has run off and gotten himself in puppy jail, and the freezer is melting, and there's no relief in site because my husband is off on a 24 hour overtime shift AGAIN. No, I'm talking about the blog writers who go on and on about how wonderful they are, how wonderful their homeschooling is, how clean and nicely decorated their house is, and in between all of this writing, they managed to put up 274 quarts of applesauce, handpicked from apple trees in their backyard that they fertilize with the special organic fertilizer they make in their kitchen. While their five year old is doing algebra at the dining room table and their fourteen year old daughter is busy sewing a complete fall wardrobe for the entire family. And how anyone who doesn't live up to that standard is, at best, a complete failure as a mother and probably is secretly a die-hard feminist careerist who didn't want kids in the first place.

That's a standard that (a) nobody can live up to and (b) why would you want to, anyway? Fifty years from now, is my son going to care that I had a beautiful blog attracting hundreds of readers and Special Homemade Applesauce, or is he going to care that I spent my time at home on the floor with him, rolling a ball back and forth? Is he going to remember the homemade decorations on the walls, or the afternoons we went to the park? Is my son going to feel horribly neglected and become a psychopath because Mommy chose to work one shift a week, or his he going to look back and remember his dad bringing him every week to see Mommy at work, and all the love and attention he gets from his firefighter/EMT "uncles." (Plus, it's pretty cool when you're four months and you get to sleep on the stretcher while Mommy does a rig check)

So I'm calling shenanigans on some of these Mommy blogs I read. Number one, I don't believe it. I don't believe that anyone can do everything this women are claiming they do, and do it all well. Something has to give, and I think in these cases, it's probably the kids. And number two, that isn't an ideal that I want for my life. I don't want to be so busy doing all these "good" things(blogging, sewing, cleaning, decorating, etc) that I forget WHY I'm doing them--my family. I don't want to get so wrapped up in what I think I SHOULD be doing, based on these Mommy blog claims, that I wake up and watch my son get in the car and leave for college, and wonder what happened to my little boy with the toothless, slobbery kisses.

Because at the end of the day, the only thing that matters are those kisses.

Babies don't keep

mother, oh mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth

hang out the washing, make up the bed,

sew on a button and butter the bread.

where is the mother who's house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue

Lullaby, rockabye, lullaby loo

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due,

Pat-a-cake darling, and peek, peekaboo.

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew

And out in the yard there's a hullabaloo

But I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo

Look! Aren't his eyes the most wonderful hue?
Lullabye, rockabye, lullaby loo

The cleaning and scrubbing can wait till tomorrow

But children grow up as I've learned to my sorrow

So quiet down cobwebs; Dust go to sleep!
I'm rocking my baby, and babies don't keep.