Ok, i thought i was "over" the Mother's day angst, but i was wrong.
The blogging world has opened new vistas to me: new friends to make, new ideas to contemplate, new insights to life & God, new mamas, new wanna be mamas, new pain. So, it has its good & its bad. Right now it seems to be full of tributes to wonderful mamas.
I wrote a post on my mother a few days ago. I don't know if it made her sound demented, or just me. It felt weird writing it, tho i have done so before (in private journals).
My mother had a very sad childhood. She was seventh of eleven children & she never felt loved or wanted. Everything she ever had or wanted was taken or broken by a sibling. Her parents did not know how to create a family that worked together, they were all rivals.
At age 13 my mother was raped by a brother in law. She kept that a secret until she married my dad, & for many years he was the only one who knew. She said that had she told her dad he would have killed the BIL; her sister would have been a widow with three small children; grandpa would have gone to jail & her family would be fatherless. She kept silent. Until, about 10 years later the BIL did the same to one of her younger sisters. THEN it came out, although it is my understanding that the family may have doubted younger sis. So my mother told her story then to support younger sis.
My parents deliberately planned their family. There are 3-1/2 years between myself & Sis #2, 5 years between Sis #2 & Sis #3. Mother said that she wanted time with each child so that they would feel loved. But that turned into time with each child for abuse that no one else could report. And each of us became rivals, feeling that the other was more esteemed than herself.
What happened?
I don't know. Except somehow my mother didn't have or avail the resources to make pattern changes. She told me many years later that she "read all the psychology books" & that they "were lies & didn't help me." One of the things she completely overlooked is that psychology well done is about healing relationships. Seeing a therapist is about learning how to have a healthy relationship & then go out & recreate that. It is much like religion vs God. Religion or simply reading the Bible is head knowledge or actions to "look good." Knowing God is having a relationship.
In retrospect, i believe my mother went thru severe postpartum depression after Sis #2 was born. She did some really strange things in that time. And, about the time she started coming out of it Sis #2 was walking, talking, needing her attention, & she was showing her developing personality. Sis #2 is very much like mother in personality, & i think mother hated that. I think she tried very hard to either ignore Sis #2 or beat it out of her. Sis #2 endured far more abuse than Sis #3 or myself.
By the age of 3 or so i no longer wanted my mother, no longer wanted to have much to do with her. I developed independently of her tho i managed to do things that would please her enough to make her let me alone. Sis #2 somehow couldn't do that detachment. She was needy of mother's love & demanding. So she kept going back again & again for the abuse.
I know there are children in the world who were more severely abused & had it worse. I know it was not as bad as it could have been. I know that my mother tried the best she thought she could do, & she believed she loved her daughters.
I'm just remembering the sad little girl in the church pew years ago who had to listen to a pastor tell her that parents are a gift from God & God chose those parents specifically for me. I'm remembering the girl who came down the stairs one school morning. Her mother closed the Bible & stopped praying when the girl said, "Good morning Mama."
The mother stood up & screamed "Don't you EVER call me that! EVER!" (It is typical Southern to call a mother "mama." I always had. I suppose that morning she was remembering her own mama in a hateful way . . . but i always felt i lost any mother i ever had at that point.)
It did occur to me earlier today that maybe God doesn't give us children so that i don't repeat the pattern.
Someone earlier left me a very sweet, encouraging post. She also mentioned forgiveness setting me free . . . or words to that effect. I appreciate the comment & the thought, but i have to honestly say i believe forgiveness has occurred. I'm still shaped by these things & they still hurt. But i too feel sorry for my mother. I feel she missed so much. There are so many things, beautiful things we could have shared & she missed them, every one. I still am sad & mourn what could have been, what should have been & was lost. I don't believe (tho i could be fooling myself) that i say these things with an unforgiving heart. I say them with a sad heart.
And God promises to wipe our tears away.
And i'm so very imperfect.
I think this year, this Mother's day, has hit me hard because we are going to see my parents & other family in a few weeks. Forgiven or not, visits are still hard for me. And i think this year is hard as well because i'm coming to terms - or trying to come to terms - with the fact that we won't be parents & this year is what will be for our future.
But the day wasn't all bad, even if i've spent much of it in tears. Check out my next post for the rest of the story!
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The squaw bread came out ok. Not quite what i wanted, but edible at least. I'll post the recipe(s) i used & how i made it later.
It is a gorgeous day again. The sky is unbelievably blue. It is 74F with 11% humidity. I hear it is hot & sticky down the hill. But not here at near 7,000 Ft! This is considered "unseasonably warm."
My house is a mess. The "I hope no one stops by unexpectedly" type mess. Not all of it. I worked on our bedroom last weekend & it is 90% ok. But the living room & the dining table (which is in the living room, we don't have a dining room) are a mess. The kitchen is better than it was. Part of the problem in there is i have a total of about 5 ft of counter space broken by the sink & the stove. It almost always looks cluttered, even when clean. If i have any dishes waiting to be done it looks a disaster.
BTW, i have come to love the dishwasher! Does that sound strange? I'd not had a dishwasher since the first year i was in college. So i'm totally unused to using it. And, i have to admit, i didn't see much point in it . . . the only dishwasher i've used recently is my MIL's. She washes every dish before putting it in, so again, what is the point? She even has a very fancy, very expensive, very quiet one, but she still washes the dishes. (And if i wash & dry a dish or glass by hand & put it in the drainer, she puts it in the dishwasher.)
Duane & i did an experiment a couple of weeks ago. We put in the dishes just as they are, including a really dirty glass pan. Didn't rinse them. Several had dried on stuff. I ran it on "heavy wash" but no extra heat, no extra rinse, & no heat dry. (It is so very dry here that they are dry within a few minutes of me opening the door to let them air dry.) They came out perfectly clean! In my month of doing this, i've only had one dish not get clean. Hooray! Now Duane will "do" dishes because he will put them in the dishwasher.
There are still some things i don't put in the dishwasher. Big pots, & plastics. I haven't many plastics, i got rid of most of them 2 or 3 years ago. But i do have a couple of plastic scrapers & a few other odds & ends. I wash my knives by hand. Still, it has cut my work a lot & i sure appreciate it.
I'm not being too hard on myself about the housework. The chronic fatigue has been very bad the past couple of months, & Duane does not help beyond putting an occasional dish in the dishwasher, & carrying out the trash. Oh, he does do basic vacuuming & i so appreciate that. He will water our trees if i ask. It just means that i get things done very slowly. Maybe later today i can focus more on the living room.
Part of the problem is that he & i are so alike. That is really good for most things. Minimal conflict in the house. But we tend to get "hung up" on the same issues. We are both very challenged with paper. Eighty percent of my home is very organized, but i have the 20% hang ups, & paper is a big part of that.
On the other hand, i just came from the neighbor's this AM. She has at least twice the counter space i have, maybe more. I can see that having more counter space can result in twice as much area TO clutter!
Our apple tree is now blooming & looks simply amazing. I was pleased last year (tho we got no apples due to a late freeze) but i see now that it was effected by lack of water the year before. It is just loaded with blooms this year. We still are trying not to get our hopes up because we could get a freeze even into June, but it is possible we'll get a good crop of apples this year.
We live in a resort town. People pay a lot of money to come & stay here, sometimes in little houses or cabins. We have been trying to find someone to stay here while we are gone in June. And play with the cats. And water the plants & trees. They won't even have to feed the cats or scoop poop because all that is automatic. And we can't find anyone to come. They don't even have to stay the whole time. If we could just find different ones to come each of the two weekends we are gone. No soap, so far. Probably going to end up having to pay some young teen girls (sisters) from our church who live walking distance from us to come play with the cats & water plants & trees. How screwed up is that?
Two years ago the company Duane works for wasn't doing so well. Long, long story, but the result was Duane had hours cut, lots of people were laid off, & Duane became the sole computer guy. (Yes, we bought our house in the middle of that, what were we thinking? But it has worked out ok.) Duane's company is doing much better now, & he has gotten the back pay that the company didn't have for him before. In the meantime, he took on some consulting jobs & did other work for people privately. He is still working with a company in FL. That company has grown a lot, & they now have several computer guys working for them. Duane is kind of the "head guy."
A couple of days ago he re-wrote some script one of the other programmers had put on the site (they wanted a logo in a different position or something). It was a very minor change. And the entire site went down! This programmer had written in a "bomb" so to speak. If ANYTHING was changed after he had written his program, it destroyed the site. They lost everything.
Fortunately this is the test site for another product, or something, & not up & running yet. But Duane was blown away by it. He said he could understand that if the guy had written program that he considered unique & "proprietary" that they guy shut down all the items that were his own. But this guy took a page that Duane had written, made a couple of minor changes, & added this bomb (basically claiming it "his" design). When Duane took the same page he himself had created & tried to make a couple of more design changes, the whole site self destructed. Duane was flabbergasted. But he is glad it happened now, so that he can go in & check all the code that this guy has worked on. It is basically the same as having a hacker inside the company. We have been walking around, shaking our heads for the past couple of days. Some people do things that are just inexplicable.
This guy said that it was in his contract that people can't change the things he has worked on. He said he has dozens of other clients & no one has ever complained before. Makes me wonder how many websites there are out there just waiting to explode. If something happened to this guy, & his clients hired another programmer to replace them, their entire site will disappear & all the data will be lost. I wonder if they understood the meaning of this clause in their contracts.
Two loads of laundry down. I've about six more to go. Should have worked on it before, but i was focused on other things.
Hope you're having a good weekend wherever you are. :)
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Having a slow day here.
Head over to Finding yourself despite yourself. Erin has chickens her neighbors hate. I thought her farewell to her rooster just too funny for words. You really have to check it out.
She's gluten-free also.
Going to give a plug for a couple of others. Jessie @ Blog Schmog. She writes about her life, but also a lot of info on gluten free/celiac.
Alison at Wholesome Goodness also writes about healthy eating & most of her recipes are gluten free. I haven't tried it yet, but her most recent post was on a Decadent GF Chocolate Layer Cake.
Annemarie at Cheeseslave writes about healthy eating. I don't remember if she does gluten free, but she has good advice on eating healthy. She has a give away currently.
Thru Cheeseslave i found this wonderful site called Gluten Free Easily. Her current post is one of the best i've read on healthy eating & "affording" to eat gluten free. In brief: give up the processed "food" whether gluten free or standard.
And as always, Linda at the Gluten-Free Homemaker has a ton of recipes & good info.
Ok, i'm off to try & tackle my messy kitchen & play with an attempt at a gluten free squaw bread. If it turns out well i'll post the recipe. If not, i'll moan about it! :)
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This is Duane & me with my grandmother, taken at her house Dec 2005.
My parents are from a huge families. Daddy is 3rd of 8 children & mother is 7th of 11. So i have many first cousins, & many, many first cousins once removed, second cousins, etc., etc.
Mother grew up in Livingston, TN, which is roughly an hour & 45 minutes from Nashville (east).Daddy's family moved around a lot when he was a child, but his family eventually moved close to his grandparents & bought land outside Glasgow, KY, which is about an hour & a half north of Nashville. So we have family spread all thru that area & beyond. Sarah, i don't have family in Crossville, but i do have family in Cookville, which isn't far. We might be long lost 3rd cousins, or something!
This is the pic of my grandmother's house. It was built a few years after i was born, so my dad never lived here. It has been expanded. Where the first window on the right is used to be a carport when i was a child.My own family moved a lot when i was a child. In fact, i attended a different school building every year until i was in 8th grade, & most of those jumps were because we moved a lot. From Knoxville my family moved to Bozeman,
Montana. I spent the rest of my growing up years there. After i married & moved to California my parents & sisters moved to Auburn, Alabama. When my dad retired a few years ago he bought his parents' property. Grandma was still living in her own home then. They built a huge house (5,000+ sq. ft.) about 1/4 mile from her house. (2,200 sq. ft. is a basement that can be closed off, but it is also set up to be a separate apartment - with its 
own garage - for company, & they thought they might eventually need someone to live in. The house is built on a hill, so that basement has big windows of its own.)These two are pics of the house my parents built. I don't think this shows how very big it is. It is well made. It has high ceilings. It is formal. My mother is very proud of it. It is cold.
Duane's aunt & uncle in Wisconsin built a house very similar in plan. It is on a hill with a basement. It is very big. But that house is warm & inviting & full of cozy corners & places that it feels comfortable to be. I've only been to my parents' house once, but it was formal & cold to me. Maybe this summer i will find i was wrong, but i felt it lacked the cozy feel of the one Duane's family had built.
This is roughly the schedule for our trip there:
Thursday - 4 June we fly out of John Wayne in OC & into Nashville. We will rent a car & drive to Glasgow that night.
Friday - we girls, mother & my auntie will be doing whatever we are doing to prepare for the party. Sis #2 wants to make cupcakes, we'll have things to buy, etc., etc. It is my intent, also, for Duane to take which ever nieces & nephews who want to go to Mammoth Cave which is about 45 minutes from where my parents live. Duane loved spelunking as a kid & i think he'd really enjoy it. I don't know that he'd have a chance elsewhere this trip.
Saturday we will be up bright & early to be at their church to set up & decorate for the party. Guests are invited to arrive starting at 11 AM & we will have a buffet lunch. Etc., etc.
Sunday it is mother's wish that we attend their church together as a family. I'm not terribly comfortable with this, but again, will try to honor her. I'm not sure about the rest of that day. Daddy has booked rooms in Cumberland Falls (East KY) for the family for that night, Monday night, Tuesday night.
But once we head east Duane & i don't intend to return, & this may mean that we don't visit Livingston. And i really do want to go there. It may be that one of my favorite aunties won't be able to come to the party. And, even tho my grandparent's place is no longer standing, i have such fond memories of that area i really wanted to get some summer pics. So we may head to Livingston soon after church & spend an afternoon there before going to Cumberland Falls. It will mean a lot of driving, but i'd like to do it.
I've no idea what we are going to do in Cumberland Falls for three days. Mother, sisters & i might scrapbook some pics from the party. (Digital cameras these days! Quick pics.) I've no idea what Daddy has in mind. I don't think they know how limited i am physically, so i hope they aren't planning a lot of hikes.
Wednesday sometime, we might head to West Virginia to visit with some friends. This is not for sure. Neither are in very good health, & may not feel up to company. But if they are we would visit with them for a few hours. The plan from there is to go south & see some of the Appalachian Mountains. That is a part of the country Duane has never seen. I spent most of my first eight years near Knoxville, & i remember it as being very beautiful. I don't really have definitive plans for a couple of days there. Travel thru the Smokies, headed south.
We might venture east toward the coast as well. I've another friend not far from Charleston. Many years ago i spent two days in Charleston & Savannah. Both are very beautiful. Of course, the amount of time we have to spend in all these places doesn't even scratch the surface of all there is to see. And we are talking about a lot of driving.
Sometime by the AM of 13 June which is a Saturday, we have to end up in (or near?) Columbus, GA. This is on the west side of Georgia, southwest of Atlanta. My oldest niece is getting married there early afternoon. We will attend the wedding & part of the reception. Then we will drive a few hours north, find a place to stay for the night. Then be up early the next morning to complete the drive back to Nashville. Our plane back to OC leaves mid-day Sunday.
So we are talking about a long, circuitous drive thru much of the South. One of the benefits of this plan is that we are minimizing contact with family. There is so much to see there & so much we will be missing. But life has limits.
The rented car is not necessary just because of the amount of driving we are doing. My family cannot be on time for anything. I've lots of stories about that when i was a kid. It wouldn't be unusual for us to be half hour late to a 45 minute or hour Sunday School class. But i guess each time i've been around them, somehow i think it will be different. (Insanity? Expecting a different outcome?)
We were last there for 5 days just after Christmas 2005. Since it was such a short trip it didn't seem worth it to rent a car. Big mistake. Duane wanted to go to town one day for a specific item. Sis #2 was going to town, she said, with some of her kids. So i told him, have fun, & walked down to see Grandma. I was gone over 2 hours. When i got back Duane was sitting in the same spot where i left him.
"You're back already?" i asked.
"We never went," he replied. He was pleasant in tone, but i knew he was grumpy.
We eventually made it into town, about 4 hours later.
Then, the day we were to fly home i wanted to leave about 2 hours early so that we would have time to stop on the way & see some different things. We flew in & out of Louisville that trip.
Well, no, we didn't leave 2 hours early. We left half an hour later than would have given us time for the plane. There was no reason. Things just didn't get done. Folks sat & talked. It was a lot of "piddling around" - a term of my mother's that i've always hated, but it was accurate. And i was really angry. Then, they took a quick stop at a Crackerbarrel.
I'd never seen one, but at that point i did not want to get out of the car. But my parents insisted i had to see it. So we went in, & yes it is fantastic. And again, i was really angry. I could have spent the entire 2 hours looking at the lovely things in that store & restaurant. Instead, we had 5 minutes.
We did make the plane. It was about 4 hours delayed, so we had plenty of time, but didn't know that until we arrived. But we decided then that thereafter we would never visit with my family without transport. There is no point in putting yourself at the mercy of folks who cannot be on time.
My sisters are just the same. If Sis #3 tells me she'll be at my house at 12 noon, i know not to expect her until 2 or 2.30. She does make it on time to work. And sometimes she's really made an effort in other situations, especially as she knows it bothers me so much.
I am late to some things. If it is a family event (Duane's family) that i know will last all day - pool parties & things - then i don't stress about arriving right at the time they give. But i hate being late for church. If i'm not 15 minutes to half an hour early for work then i'm "late." I try not to keep other people waiting.
This pic is a Walmart parking lot in Glasgow. I had not realized that there is a large section of Amish in the area, or that they like shopping at Walmart. Walmart provides hitching posts & water for the horses.
I asked permission to take this pic. The man didn't reply, but went to the back side of the buggy. If you click on this & look at it, you can see a child in the buggy.
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One hundred posts in under 4 months. I knew i would be verbose, talkative, stuffy, trite, tiresome. I was called "Chatty Cathy" as a young child & hated it.
We were notified yesterday that a woman in our church, Karen, died very unexpectedly. I thought the message was a mistake for Karen has been taking care of her mother who is dying. But it was the daughter caring for the mother who died. I'm not sure, i think Karen is - was - in her late 50s. Her kids are grown & in their late 20s or older. If you think of it today, please pray for Karen's family as this must be such a shock to them.
Some folks in our church heard that i like irises. I guess they have a lot. So they brought me a whole bag of iris bulbs & instructions on how to plant them. Whooo-hooo! Next year i'll have irises to join my tulips & trillium! :)
I had three people this week ask me if i've lost weight. Nice thought. But the scale stays stubbornly at the same place (+/- 2 pounds).
Duane put up shelves for me on Sunday afternoon. So i've moved all my books, set up a cozy corner for me to read or use my laptop. Maybe i'll post pics of it later today.
Our weather has been unusually warm, in the 70s during the day, & lows in the 40s, which is highly unusual. We shouldn't have such warm weather for another 6 weeks or so. But i think it has been warmer all over. OC is having summertime weather already.
My bad not to give credit to the pics i used in the last post. Those were all taken by Sis #3. Two years ago August was my grandmother's 90th birthday. Sis went & took many pics she shared with me. Most were of family. Didn't she do a great job with a point & shoot camera?
We chose not to go for that birthday, tho it was a little hard for me. It seemed like i should be there to honor my grandmother. But we had been there only a year & a half before, & i knew i would have to be going for this wedding anniversary. (I would feel compelled by conscience to be there.) And i have no intention of making a habit or establishing a pattern of being there every 2 years, so we didn't go to the birthday.
I have a ton of laundry to do in the next couple of days. And a messy kitchen to clean. And 82 invitations to a Wedding Anniversary to send out. I need to get busy.
Thank y'all for the comments on my last post. I seriously debated putting that "in print" so to speak. It is so very bizarre, & i have had people in my past not believe me, which makes it even that much harder.
If it sounds like i've not healed yet it isn't so. Those memories had not occurred to me for a long time. Somehow this week's Mother's day & the coming visit dredged them up. But God has healed me. He has even, somewhat, healed my relationship with my mother. Sometimes i think it could be healed further if i were willing, but the fact is i don't want to be close to her. I still find that idea scary. However, from the experiences of my sisters, i don't think it is possible to be close to her in a healthy way.
There are things that are painful yet & will always be painful, but they did not destroy me & they no longer dictate my life. I am, however shaped by them. That's not a bad thing.
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I mean that literally!
When we first began attending our church, i told the pastor that i've had issues with Mother's Day for many years & had stopped attending church that day. He told me (two years ago) he wouldn't be giving a homily on Mother's Day, the subject would be something else. And that they gave all women coming to church that day a flower regardless of their "mother" status.
Well, yes, that was true two years ago, but it was not true last year. And Father's Day disturbed Duane as well. So we have decided to forgo church on those days. Sunday we are planning to make a picnic lunch (no point it trying to eat out that day) & take it on a trip over the mountains. I don't know if we'll go toward Glass Canyon or Holcomb Valley, but we plan to have fun.
As i have said before, i've wanted to be a mama for a long, long time. I was fantasizing about it before i was physically able to have a child. So, already by my late teens Mother's Day was hard for me as i so wanted to be a mama.But also has been hard for me because i have a hard time honoring my own mother. Mother's Day could take a special meaning for me if i could think warm & fuzzy thoughts about the woman who brought me into the world. However . . .This is going to be kind of ugly.I'm not going to touch on my childhood. I'm going to talk of things that happened when i was an adult. I graduated HS on my 18th birthday, & was gone 2 weeks later. Except for the very occasional over night stay (one Christmas Eve) or the 3 weeks my parents went to Europe & i stayed with my sisters while they were gone, i didn't stay/visit at their home for many years.
My mother was very controlling without good boundaries when i was a child. She really struggled with the letting go when i moved away. I was told some years later, not at the time, that she would call my work (i was a nanny) in the evening & ask where i was. "She's not answering her phone at home. Where has she gone? Who is she with?"
My mother would drop by the house where i was a day time nanny. One day she came to the door. She had her hands behind her back & a funny smile i'd come to know & distrust on her face."You'll never guess what i found at the house today," she told me. I was backing up quickly by this point. She followed me into the house. "THIS is what i found." She swiftly brought out a jar with a black widow spider contained & stuck it about 2 inches from my nose.
I backed up quickly & she followed me, putting it in my face again. "Aren't they interesting?" I backed up again quickly, & she followed. "Do you see the red fiddle on her abdomen?"
At this point in time, i kind of "blacked out" my memory, which happened often those days. But there was a witness to this. The mama of "my" baby for whom i was nanny happened to be home for lunch. She has told me it was the funniest thing she had ever seen. Both funny in laugh meter & funny as bizarre. My mother chased me around that living room with the spider for about 5 minutes.I don't remember if i had a spider phobia before that - i probably did - but it was severe after that time. I'm over it now, but whoa!When my parents planned a trip to Europe, my mother told me she "couldn't go" if i would not comply with her wishes to meet with a pastor.
It feels strange even to write that now, for the two things are not even related. If she said something like that to me a few years later i would have learned to say, "Gee, i'm really sad that you would choose not to take a trip to Europe when you have the chance. That's too bad. But it is your choice."
I complied with her wishes & saw this pastor. He told me i was demon possessed & needed to obey my parents. I needed to see him weekly for counseling & exorcism. I declined to continue that relationship.The Christian Women's Club i was a part of had a mother/daughter banquet that year. I invited my mother. But i was also there with someone who was my mother's mentor, & her daughter-in-law, Betty, who is the woman who is my mentor/spiritual mama. I love her dearly, but my mother does not. I had made a very pretty dress for that banquet. It was strapless, but modest. Again, my memory is mostly blacked out, but "my
mama" tells me that mother belittled me throughout the entire meal & program. Largely because of the dress.
I do remember the end of the program. The speaker had been talking about how we are often like our own mothers. We got up to leave & my mother said, "I surely hope i am not like my mother. There would be nothing worse. That really scares me." I didn't know how to respond to that statement. Thinking about the whole evening & how i had been treated what could i say to that? Didn't feel like i could say, "Damn mother, it scares me too!" But that is what i was thinking.
My mother also took "my mama" Betty to lunch once & told her why her influence on me was so bad & that she should no longer have anything to do with me. I was not told of that conversation then. When Betty told me of it a few years later she said, "I had always assumed you had had a typical unhappy childhood & felt misunderstood. You had never said much about your childhood & when you did i assumed you were exaggerating somewhat. I changed my mind that day. If she could try to be that manipulative with me,
i can't imagine what she was like to you as a child."
I moved away. Met the guy who became my first husband. When i called my mother to tell her i wanted a June wedding, her response was, "We'll be out of town then."
We moved to CA & were married justice of the peace style.
I had a couple of old dolls i'd inherited. They were from between 1895 & 1910, bisque head dolls with paper mache bodies. True antiques. Mother told me there were some dolls my aunts didn't want, would i like them? She did tell me they were not in good condition.
"Sure" i said, "send them along."
Opening that box was like opening something from a horror show. The dolls were rubber or plastic that had split, cracked, & fallen apart. The stuffing from part of them was leaking out, & the dolls were sticky like honey had been poured over them. I've never seen something as disgusting & disturbing in my life.
Another time she sent me a "care package." She'd poured a bag of jelly beans into a jar & it was half full. She wrapped up everything very carefully. But on top of everything she put a very delicate, fragile decorative glass cup. She did not wrap or protect that in any way so that when the box arrived sharp thin splinters of glass were blanketed over the top of the wrapped items & the shards had settled into every nook & cranny.
The last issue that comes to mind is something i'm not sure of. When i graduated from college i did everything short of being rude to my parents by telling them blankly that i did not want them to come. I tried over & over to let them know that i would not welcome their attendance. They didn't listen. So they came. I don't remember that week very clearly, either. I "shut down" in order to survive.My mother brought a package for me, but again she had that odd smile that i don't trust. She had brought me a magnolia blossom (here in So. Cal we had them blooming everywhere). She had wrapped it in damp paper towels, & had it in a weird vegetable box.
By that time i was being very cautious about her gifts. I put it in the car & later tossed it in the garbage. The next day i had a huge red spot like a bug or spider bite on my knee cap. It looked so bizarre that i took a pen & traced the edges. The first day it was about 2 inches in diameter. The day after that it had grown to about 4 inches, but it didn't grow more than that. I believe it was because the point of origin was over the bone of my knee cap & not over muscle & other fiber. If it had been i think it would have been very serious indeed. And when she saw it, my mother made a really big deal about it.
As i said, there is nothing conclusive about this. In fact, any of these incidents taken alone is not much. But it is a pattern that continued for a long time. And, it was a pattern that grew out of the strange things that happened when i was a child. And in most of these adult incidents i had witnesses. The friend i showed that box of dolls was more horrified than i.
Things are not so bad now. My mother has mellowed. She could have made my wedding day to the most wonderful Mr. Duane a living nightmare, but she did not. She tries to be supportive & normal. I try to honor her as best i can.
We are a month out, now, from when we will be visiting them. Already i'm beginning to be anxious. I usually can do well, but if i have too long a phone conversation with her i find myself hyperventilating or wanting to bang my head against a wall.
I can't do anything about it. We are going. Getting anxious in advance doesn't help. I try not to think about it too much.
And, in her defence, my mother had a pretty miserable childhood herself.
This is really long. I've been writing long posts. Guess i've a lot swimming around my head. Thanks for listening!
The pics are from a summer green Kentucky, where we will be headed soon. I do have pleasant memories of spending summers playing with my cousins both in KY & TN. (Get my long lost Southern accent polished!)
The beautiful pics are of KY, my sis took them in Aug 2007. Thank you Sis #3!
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Subtitle: Most of the pieces are swept up.
On Friday i posted a long tale of some of my medical issues, specifically gluten-free/celiac issues. One of the responses to that was about Kaylee. (I want to state here i know the comment was not intended to be cruel or cause me pain. I believe it was made with the kindest of intent.) I lost Kaylee at 10+ weeks & have mentioned her fairly frequently in this blog. She's even more on my mind than ever as Mother's Day is this coming Sunday, & the 26th is the 3rd anniversary of her due date. She is also mentioned here because these are things i can't say to the general public. People don't understand & don't know how to respond. So i've learned to keep my mouth shut, but it is posted here.
I didn't really understand the comment which was that i'm being hard on myself over Kaylee. ??? I was writing on celiac vs. gluten-intolerance. Kaylee was mentioned only in passing (i thought) because i started on the gluten-free track in order to be healthy enough to get pregnant. But i understood enough to be shattered, broken, & cry uncontrollably. That continued on & off for the next 18 hours or so. Now, i've written this before, but i reiterate: i HATE crying. At least, i hate when i cry.
But a number of things were happening as i was crying. First, i knew she was right. I have known for some time that i need to let it go.
When i first had the miscarriage i was sad, unhappy, disappointed, etc. etc. Duane & i both cried. But it didn't seem to effect me all that much. I'd heard stories of women who had miscarriages, even very early miscarriages, who were so decimated by the loss that they couldn't function for weeks or months. I remember thinking, "It didn't hit me that hard. It wasn't so bad." I wasn't being critical of the ones who had such a hard time afterward, just thinking that it didn't effect me that way.
However, as time has gone on i'm finding it harder & harder. I made the assumption that because we had conceived once we would conceive again. It just was a matter of time & waiting. But that has not happened. I am currently trying to accept that we may not ever have children.
And, as i was crying i found myself crying, "But she is all i have! She is all i'm ever going to have. I'm never going to be a mama. She is ALL i have." But i know, i know, i know i have to let go of it.
I don't know how.
I don't know how NOT to think, "Kaylee would be three now." "Logan is 2 months older than Kaylee would be." "Kaylee would be able to wear Hailey's hand me downs." I don't know how to stop my brain from that track.
Neither do i know how NOT to think, "Today is day 13 of my cycle." Or "In another week i would be 2 days late. Maybe i can test then." I don't know how to stop "trying." How do i stop being aware of what is happening naturally every month? I DO NOT know how to stop my brain from following these tracks. I would guess this is why i've read that women who have children after infertility still have "infertility mindset."
Also what what going thru my mind is how that i am accused - by myself - in this statement. I've been meaning to write before, but sometimes folks tend to take a "you" & "us" mentality. I've struggled with this some because i read blogs of loss, but the loss occurs when they have other children. So my thought tends to be, "But you HAVE children!" (I really don't like this about myself. I'm sharing my bad.) I KNOW that loss is loss & that losing a child is always heartbreaking. If you had 20 children, losing one is still painful. Losing a loved one is always heartbreaking. Shoot, losing a pet cuts deep. So the comment was an indictment of me in the way i think of others & the pain others experience it. It was pointing a finger at me for lack of compassion of the pain others go thru.
Where was my beloved husband in all of this? Well, he had gotten a new video game . . .
But i didn't want to tell him, especially when i was crying. He tends to be protective of me & i knew he would be critical of the person's comment, or of my blogging in general. (He is a guy after all, & he wants to "fix" it for me or make it go away, & sometimes that means the simplest - but not the best - way to make it stop.)
So on our way down the hill today i broached the issue. (We are so blessed to spend 4 hours a week together this way!) I told him i didn't know whether to talk about it or not. We haven't talked about the baby issue very much because, what is there to say? It is not happening. We saw a reproductive endocrinologist & decided that was not the path for us. So time has gone by.
So we talked about it today. Neither of us cried. But we are both heartbroken, in much the same way. It is hard for both of us to see little children, especially the cousins of any children we would have. Duane finds it difficult, too, that we lost our baby when her heart was still beating, for no good reason except she implanted in the wrong place.
I can't say much about that conversation because we didn't say much that is important, what was to say? But we shared. And we talked a lot about contentment & wanting "the next thing." As a whole, i'm pretty content. Love my husband, where we live, our house, our church, friends & family. I'm wondering if we did have a family what i would "want next."
And something Duane said sparked something in me. We don't pray together much. (Now i've just horrified the strong Christian Women who read this.) We always pray together before meals. (We didn't do this in the early days of our marriage. It has grown.) I suggested spending the next 31 days praying together, but the focus of our prayer to be on the things we are grateful for. Prayers of thankfulness. And the hope that doing this will either give us direction in where we are to go, or will help us come to terms with childlessness.
I'm still struggling to come to the point i can accept i am not a mama, & i'm not likely to be. I will probably still mention Kaylee when i feel the need. But the comment, even tho it crushed me, helped me to take a couple more steps toward acceptance. And for that i'm very grateful.
This is a quote from The Road Less Travelled, which is a quote from a book called "Trying Again." It rather sums up the feelings i've been having.
"My body betrayed me when it failed to sustain my baby. Now it's failing me again by not giving me another chance at pregnancy. I am very afraid that Katie was my one shot at motherhood and I blew it. What an awful feeling to be so close [emphasis mine here] to something you've wanted for so long, only to have it snatched away, with no reassurances that you'll ever have anything like it again. With every passing month, I feel my hope of having a baby slip further and further from my grasp."
I don't intend this blog to be primarily about infertility & loss, but that is bound to come up as that is some of what is happening in my life. So, i've swept up most of the pieces, but there may be a few shards left around i step on.
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Curly Muse has tagged me for a four. You go to your fourth album & choose your fourth pic to share. My albums are in chronological time. I'm going to whine a little as my 4/4 is very boring.
It was taken about a month after i met Duane. He was in Wisconsin with his family for a wedding. I was not there. I only know about half the folks in this pic. I don't remember all their names. This was taken in his Aunt Regina's kitchen.
So i'm going farther, & doing 3/3, 2/2, & 1/1. Not that they are all that interesting, either.
Three of three was taken at his sister's triathlon in San Clemente, in 2003. I had not met any of his family at this point, & knew i was 
going to meet his sis (step-sis, but they were very close), her husband, & his niece Kassidy. When we were headed to the starting point to watch them off & looking for BIL & Kass, some woman went by us & said something like: "They aren't here yet but soon will be." I assumed she was talking to someone else, but no. She was talking to us. It was Duane's mom. He didn't know she would be there. It was kind of a shock to my system (shy me) to meet his mom & step-dad when i didn't know it was coming. On the other hand, it saved me some worry in advance!
Two of two is a pic of the creek near my parents' & grandparents' homes.
Pic one of one is interesting, because it is the only pic i have of Katie. She was the daughter of Duane's step-brother & his wife. She died a few months before i met Duane. This is the pic that will pop up by default on my computer, because it is the first one so i've seen it alot. I'd never given it much thought, but last Thanksgiving the family came by to see Sugarbear (our house we'd bought the winter before). Duane was showing various different pics & this one popped up. His sister in law was so excited. She'd never seen this pic & said it is the best she has ever seen of herself & Katie. So Duane made copies for them.
Sorry, i can't do anything like anyone else.
Here are the four i'm tagging:
David @ Sugarloaf Mountain
Abigail @ Rear Window
Jingle @ Just Jingle
Jana @ I Can't Wanna
I'm off to let them know!
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Taking a station break while i sweep up the pieces.
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Subtitle: Celiac, Gluten intolerance, pain issues, chronic fatigue, trying to conceive, trying to conceive after 40
I also plan to try to stick to facts here, & not delve into emotion too much. Probably not much humor here either. I may throw in some pics to break it up!
Also Curly Muse from Discovering Mars asked why we are away from home two nights a week. So i added a link in the column over to the right linking to my first 2 posts. Number 2 explains why we're gone two nights a week.Jessie from Blog Smog (glutenfree4goofs!) wrote me recently. I really appreciate her blog on baking & cooking gluten free & also her commitment to her kids & raising them in a healthy environment. I'm going to answer her directly, but my answer might be too long, & involved. Also, for those interested it will be here as well. Her question was if i have celiac disease & that it could be related to fertility. My answer to that is quite long.
I came across this vid on infertility at another blog yesterday. I didn't feel i "learned something" so much as it seemed to beautifully illustrate the pain of living with this.
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Celiac disease - we will probably never know if i have celiac disease. (The link will give basic info on this.) In order to test for celiac disease the patient must have been eating products with gluten in them for 4 to 6 weeks before the tests are done. They run some blood work & if this is positive they do a biopsy of the small intestine to confirm the diagnosis. It is recommended that people not start a gluten-free diet until they have already had the testing to confirm.
I didn't start out to have a gluten-free diet, & i don't think i had ever heard of celiac disease when i began eating gluten-free.
Also, a MD would NEVER have looked at me & thought "celiac" at that time, probably not now, either. Celiac prevents your body from absorbing nutrients in the small intestine & so "traditionally" people with celiac are very thin & unhealthy & unable to gain weight. In the years since then some docs working with this find that celiac also can result in overweight issues as the body stores the stuff it doesn't know how to deal with, tho nutritional deficits are still in play. However, most MDs haven't kept up with this info & still are operating on what they were taught 15 or 20 years ago & so don't think of celiac in someone of normal or over weight.
I've been dealing with fatigue issues since i was 14 or 15. I started seeing docs looking for an answer when i was 16 (& that age because i had a job & could pay for it; my parents were unaware i saw these docs). I knew there was something physically wrong with me, but the docs told me "depression." So in my 20s i was looking into whatever i could think of or find as a possible explanation. Anemia, low blood sugar, i don't remember all the things i looked at. But when i would present them to a MD, & especially when all the tests returned "normal" they immediately said "depression." In time, yes i was depressed because i was so tired, & because of my family life/childhood i carried a lot of baggage, but i don't think i ever quite believed it as depression & only depression. Also none of the anti-depressants they gave me - & i think i tried them all plus some combinations - ever helped much, if at all.
Also, in my early 20s i began having severe - & i mean REALLY severe - pain issues related to my cycle. I've never heard of anyone else having anything remotely similar to what i had. I think i've already blogged about this, but let me say that NO pain med of any type was helpful. I tried them all, codeine-based, anti-inflammatory, everything they had to throw at me. Demerol did not help. I eventually learned that Diludid did work, but that is not something you can be on 10 days out of the month.
A couple of years after college (in the mid-90s) i came across the idea of candida overload causing issues like i was facing. Now, any conventional MD worth his salt would immediately refute this. I had one tell me that the only people who had candida issues were people with advanced, terminal AIDS. But by this time i had decided that MDs don't know nearly as much as they think they do & i needed to try something. So i began a "modified" candida diet - which is essentially gluten-free. The early stage of a candida diet is simply Meat, Eggs, (limited) Vegetables & Yogurt. This alone is not healthy, but the plan only has you stay at this phase for 4 weeks or so. And, within 4 to 6 weeks my pain level was down by 50%.
Now you would think that i'd be over the moon about this, & i was. But in time i began adding back in things i missed & before long i was back to where i was before. A couple of years later i tried the straight candida diet - not modified. They warn you not to do this without a doc's supervision, but i couldn't afford that. They also warn you that you WILL be sick if you have candida issues because the die-off of the yeast is toxic. And i was sick. And sick. And sick. I had expected 2-3 days of flu-like symptoms. I did not expect 7 days of the worst flu i'd ever had. In desperation i called a doc that handled candida issues on day 5. His office was rather rude to me & his initial fee was $300. I just ached all over. Instead of seeing him i went & had my first ever massage. (And the result of that was i became a massage therapist a couple of years later.)
I know now that had i continued the program even just a few more days i would have broken thru & started to get better. But i was so discouraged & depressed & just didn't care that i went back to my very unhealthy, processed-food, gluten & junk food heavy diet. My mental health went down hill, & only by the grace of God did i get thru that.
Eventually i did get healthier in my mind (tho how that happened on the "food" i was eating only God knows). About 18 months after i was pulling up out of that tail spin i met Duane (we are coming up on the 6 year anniversary of that). He knew of my pain issues early on, & that i might not be able to have children. In fact, i tried very hard to scare him away with stories of my history because i thought he was just really too nice a guy to be tied down with me.
I didn't scare him off & 10 Sept 2004 we were married. On 1 Oct i began the "modified candida diet" to try to get the pain level down enough to go off birth control. (Being on the birth control pills & later the ring did lower my pain levels some. However low-dose estrogen birth control - which i was on during that tail spin - really messed with my head. A psychiatrist i saw later called that type of BCP "psychic poison.")
In Jan 2005 i went off birth control & another med i was on (topamax for migraine & depression but cannot be taken while pregnant) & did the full candida diet, warning Duane that i might become very ill. But that did not happen. I guess that the modified version had cleared me enough that i didn't have much left to do the die-off that had made me so very ill before. And my pain level was down very tolerable. When i was eating the unhealthy diet, my pain level was typically 9 sometimes even 10, so bad that i just didn't want to live. Fortunately for me it was intermittent. Had it been constant i probably would have killed myself long ago. After doing the candida cleanse the pain was down to 4 or 5, where i found it to be very livable.
In February i was baking some biscuits for Duane & i snagged one. Within half an hour i had a raging migraine. Oops, better not do that again. Then in March Duane & i shared a pizza. Again a raging migraine. And i was on my way to learning that while candida may have been an overt problem for me, gluten is an ongoing constant.
But gluten is such a part of our culture & food & the things that we like. I had a hard time being consistent. And my reaction to eating gluten was not consistent, either. Sometimes i'd have the headache. The smallest amount could raise the cycle-related pain to previous levels. But other times it didn't bother me. I discovered that it seemed to be hormone/progesterone related, & so early in the month i was "safe" later in the month was disastrous. So i stayed gluten free most of the time.
In June 2005 i went off Prozac, the last routine med i had been on. (I used to really, really believe in the medical system & "better living thru chemistry," & so i used to use a lot of Rx meds.) At that time they were saying that Prozac was safe in pregnancy, especially if the mother "needed" it. But i read an article saying that they had done testing on 4 & 5 year olds whose mothers had taken Prozac during pregnancy. They said there was a difference in the brains of these children compared to children whose mothers had not taken meds. The article said they didn't really know what the difference was, how it occurred, or even if it was important, but there was a significant difference. My decision was that it is not fair to a child to take any kind of chance, & i quit the Prozac. And i've never looked back. I have found i didn't need it, & that eating healthy did for me all the things that anti-depressants never did.
In August that year i began seeing an acupuncturist. I was pregnant within 3 weeks of that first appointment. Unfortunately, we lost that pregnancy at 10+ weeks, on 16 Oct. Her heart was still beating, but she implanted low & as i moved she tore away from the uterine wall & was pushing out my cervix. Duane swore it was a girl, & so we call her Kaylee. This has been my only confirmed pregnancy. I have had 2 others i believe, but they were early losses without + test.
The new few months following this loss i ate gluten-free most of the time. But in the spring of 2006 i had trouble staying motivated. Eventually i wanted to KNOW if i really had to eat gluten-free & started eating gluten again so that i could be tested. Also during that time a neurologist i saw for migraines documented the migraines as largely triggered by gluten so that i would have it in a medical record. The family doc i had then also documented "gluten intolerance." After 3 weeks of eating gluten regularly i was quite ill, & ran the blood tests. They came back negative. It may be that i just didn't wait long enough (it might have been 6 weeks before i had a + test) & even then i would have had to continue eating gluten for the biopsy. I decided that it was obvious i was gluten-intolerant & that it didn't matter that much whether i had celiac or not.
I still "cheat" on occasion with gluten. Because my reactions are not consistent, i don't seem to be as sensitive as some gluten-free people i know, i usually can get away with this without extreme consequences. However, as time has gone on i find that many of these things just don't taste all that good to me any more. These days "cheating" often consists of a thumb-nail sized piece of Duane's bread at a restaurant with some butter. I rarely want more. There are some things i'd like to learn to make - squaw bread is one i really miss, & focassia is another. But i have learned to make a number of things, brownies & poppy seed muffins & coffee cake & short bread are a few, that other people don't even realize are made with non-gluten flours. And i'm anxious to try more with the new Xanthan Gum i bought.
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I was going to write more on the things i've done to be healthier & try to have a family, meaning the changes we have made in our home. In brief they are changing over to organic foods, fewer processed foods, changing the things i use to clean & cook with, the soaps & products we use, oh a long list of things. I've done a lot of alternative therapies. Also i have learned that the issues i have are beyond gluten-intolerance. However, this post is extremely long & i think i've said enough.
But, please let me add this: I am not 100% anti-conventional medicine. I believe it has a place in our lives. But it think it has the wrong priority with most Americans these days. We want a pill or a quick fix. Even if a doc recommends a diet, it often is not a good one. There is too much of a "low fat" & "all fat is bad" attitude for us to be healthy. Processed foods that say "low fat" are not healthy. Sugar substitutes are chemical & not healthy. I could go on & on.
My experience - & this makes it anecdotal & an opinion only - is that most of the problems we experience with chronic illnesses could be addressed or managed with diet & healthy living. The depression the docs kept telling me i had was largely resolved by the many healthy changes i have made. Now i am not saying that this would cure 100% of folks diagnosed with depression, but i can't help but wonder if 50-80% would not be much improved if they changed their diets & other chemicals they are exposed to.
And, i've known couples in their 40s who had tried fertility Tx, IVF & all, & had it be unsuccessful. Then when they quit trying & began eating a healthy diet they got pregnant on their own.
Now, please don't misunderstand me. I am not denying that there are people who need the fertility treatment & who will not get pregnant without medical intervention. I am not dissing those who chose that path. But i can't help but wonder if many of those people would not need medical intervention if they made lifestyle changes that many would consider drastic. If nothing else, especially the younger ones, i would so much encourage them to spend a year really looking at what healthy living is & make those changes before turning their lives over to the medical professionals.
Ok, off my soap box. Sorry.
If you're read this far you are amazing!
This is myself with Logan, summer of 2007. Duane's cousin's child, who is 2 months older than Kaylee would be.
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