Category Archives: kids’ stress

kids' stress, lifeisnowhere, mom's wedding, MS cognitive function, piano, stress and MS, therapy

"Lifeisnowhere."

“Lifeisnowhere.”
What do you see when you read the title?  I have written this down on sheets of paper and asked people to read it.  It’s interesting because it’s a pretty evenly split response between
1. Life is nowhere.
And
2. Life is now here.
As I look at my family’s life this week, I think a convincing case can be made for either.  Therefore, I will start with evidence for the first option, the “nowhere” option.  My kids and wife are losing their best friends in 2 weeks as they move to Africa for two years.  At the same time, they are losing their home visiting therapists whom they have worked with for the past 2 years.  If that is not enough, they may also lose their other therapists as well as they are promoted/reassigned.  It all makes a tough way to start a new school year.  
I tried speaking with the director of the at home services about the timing of the change.  When told they had needed to change/end this service for months, all I could ask is why they waited until now to tell us?  Had we known, we would have ended the service at the beginning of the summer when they still had their friends for months.  As I said this, he told me we must teach our kids people will come in and out of their life.  Learning to deal with this is a skill they need.  
Do they need to learn everyone will leave them save J and me?  At the same moment?  This does not feel like a healthy concurrence of events for children who already have attachment issues.  That these issues are common for foster children in no way makes them less difficult with which to live.  I do not understand how a director of a project whose mission is to provide mental health services would so casually dismiss the strain the timing of their withdrawal is causing.  
As their bodies start showing some of the signs of strain of stress and lack of sleep, their behavior becomes fit to make a parents hair curl every afternoon.  At this point other parents avoid even customary greetings too my son after school because they know they could expect nothing more than sour grumbles in reply.   As my head hurts more and more often towards the end of my infusion cycle, I feel less able to string ideas together, which can make programing at work take longer.  I am having a harder time dealing with multiple situations at once, so with our kids at home I take longer and longer to get things done, whether it is getting them bathed or cleaning the dishes. Yes, times like this feel like life leads nowhere.
In times like these, I am thankful for Dire Strait Why Worry lyrics, “There should be laughter after pain.  These things have always been the same.  So why worry now?”
(For a more positive side, continue on to the next page)

2. Life is now here:

Both kids had double birthdays of fun celebrated first with Grandma and Grandpa and then with our friends down the street.   We have had lots of cake.  Grandma made some awesome cakes designed to invoke memories and smiles from some of their favorite moments of the last year that they both enjoyed last weekend.  Then during the week, we had a cookie cake (for A) followed a few days later with a tie-die colored cake covered with purple icing in honor of the Ravens (for O).  Sharing them with their friends made for a fun filled school night.
Then over the weekend, we all took part in my mom’s wedding.  While they did not sleep well the night before, they did have fun running the dog around the house until its tongue looked permanent hanging out the side of its mouth.  People commented on how calm Rodger (the dog) was, and we chuckled because even a young labradoodle is no match in energy to the waves of energy our kids brought to the game of chase.    In fairness, it was three on one.  K also had a great time picking up the beet played by the piano player and joining (uninvited at first).  It turns out she has a gift for music.  In our next house, we will have to make room for a piano.
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As for which reading is correct of the original “lifeisnowhere,” I think I will stick with my original reading.  When I first read it, I said, “Life is here now or life is nowhere.”  We have only now to pull what joy we may.  Sometimes, that means making the best of difficult times.   I think we continue to do so, making the best memories possible from stress-filled days.
This blog will soon be moving to thelifewelllived.net.

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Easter, hit by a truck, kids' stress, live today, timing, typhoid

From Typhoid Mary to Easter

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What do you mean these aren’t subjects linked in everyone’s mind?

As I talked about my kids trying to figure out all of the short cuts in life last week, I feel it served me right to spend the next week telling my kids reaction to being told why they can’t short cut washing their hands.  In our house where we’ve just gotten over a nasty stomach bug bad enough to send our youngest to the hospital, I’m still frequently surprised how hard it is to get our kids to wash their hands for more than 2 second splashes.  So this week, I remembered the end of March had some historical relevance to Typhoid Mary.  Don’t ask me why I remembered this random trivia, but I told my kids her story on Tuesday.  Wednesday, March 27th, is when Mary was returned to prison where she spent her last 23 years. 

I told them how there was a cook who was so good, clients kept  hiring even after previous clients died.  However, despite being such a good cook, almost 100 years later, she’s not known for her cooking.  She’s known for refusing to wash her hands, and she’s known for all the illness she spread by refusing to wash her hands.  Here was a disease known to strike people on ships, and I don’t mean the cruise liners of today. (OK not some cruise liners of today, but you get the idea)  This was a time when being a mariner was not a career for those expecting to live to be an old man.  The conditions were dirty, and people died of infections all the time. 

Then there were all these rich families getting sick with some dieing, and they were getting sick of an illness known primarily to strike poor sailors.  So investigators starting backtracking all the dead’s activities, and they all had Mary in common.  She was their cook, and when confronted, she refused to believe her sanitation was the cause of the deaths.  She was warned, detained, released, changed her name, was hired as a cook again,  killed again and was arrested.  She spent the last 23 years of her life in quarantine.  80 years later, it’s not her recipes’ tastes which are remembered.  In history, she’s known for not washing her hands and despite changing her name to Mary Brown, she is known these many years later as “Typhoid Mary.”

(More on next page)

“Do you want to be ‘Typhoid O’ or ‘Typhoid A?'”  At least for the moment the disease “typhoid” seems to have captured their imagination enough to prompt them to take washing more seriously.  They even teased when either of them failed to wash their hands asking if they want the typhoid nicknames.  I just wish it had lasted a bit longer as we’re back to reminding them to wash their hands.  Still, we seem to be past the 2 second splash zone.

On the crazy front, as if my teaching my 6 and 7 year old about typhoid is not crazy, we had a close family member hit by a truck this week.  Watching my kids’ concern manifest is heartbreaking and warming at the same time while it wears all of us so thoroughly.  Watching the misbehavior and not reacting to them as signaling anything other than uncertainty is tough especially when we all worry.  At least come Saturday night, nurse/mommy J was back after setting up the family to a point of at least temporary self sufficiency to make it through a night and day.  It’s a reminder this Easter to live and enjoy every day.  “Live every day because who knows, you might just get hit by a truck tomorrow?” is more than a cliché.  Our family is proof.  Still, our luck held another day, and it was a fabulous Easter Sunday.

Heck, with our family dinners’ conversations ranging from Typhoid to surgeries on any given day, of course our kids had fun pretending to wear neck braces.  It’s how they deal.  They were thrilled when J brought them each back one to wear.  So they joke, write cards and make dinner with/for me.  Then over the weekend we enjoy Easter Sunday, a fitting beginning.

Side note: I had to chuckle at myself trying to fill the little plastic eggs early in the morning before O and J woke (again).  I was trying to fill 33 eggs before the kids woke again, and I knew time was short as O had been up off and on since 2 AM waking A to come down and see if the Easter Bunny had come yet.  Seriously, I take so long buttoning my shirts for work that J buttons them for me to save time, and here I was trying to open, fill and close these silly little eggs quickly enough to hide them before the kids got up.  It turns out 68 min. was in time with 5 minutes to spare.  It’s a crazy crazy life we lead….

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