I am fine now. TMI area below.

Meanwhile, Carla’s sick with the flu. Boy did I feel dumb when her doctor casually asked if we’d gotten “flu protection this year.” Uh, no. Not that it’s automatically recommended or required for a seven year old, but I am kind of kicking myself (it’s a hobby of mine!) She has already been through the worst of it, though.
I even don’t call the doctor quickly when my kids are sick. I follow pretty strict criteria; their illness has to reach certain levels of either high temperature or one which lasts, or the illness itself has to last a certain length of time and not respond to the first treatments that I offer. It’s not that I’m indifferent, it’s just that I don’t like to drag a sick kid out to the doctor when I think that bedrest, fluids and tylenol will likely do the trick.

I decided last night, however, that three days of fever were plenty and I wanted to specifically rule out strep throat and ear infections and so, off we went today. If there was a way I could be trained to examine ears, and a home strep culture, I would probably be able to decrease our pediatrician visits dramatically.

Now… as for about ME and my LITTLE PROBLEM, I will let you be the decider about whether you want to…

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Weird… Herein lies one of those Too Much Information kind of posts, so I’ll leave it to your discretion as to whether you want to read more……….
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I have been thinking a lot about my brother and about my sister.

Those who’ve been following my story know that I have an uneasy relationship with my brother, whom I grew up with, and a brand-new unknown relationship with my half sister, whom I have never met.

Prior to talking with my sister on the phone, and exchanging some email and photos, I never really realized how sad it is that my brother and I are not close. One visitor to my blog pointed out that I should consider my relationship with my sister in light of my relationship with my brother (or something like that.) This made my whole perspective shift dramatically: I had not thought to consider the two of them as “my siblings” before. In other words, I had drawn truly no connections there.

Starting to mull things over, I find it really disconcerting to think of how much I’ve lost since childhood. My half sister is someone I simply never had access to; a strange decision born of the times in which she lived as a young child. Those were the days when “doing what’s best” meant avoid complex family configurations like bio dads and step families. So I don’t count her as a loss, so much as an opportunity for connection that was denied.

But to really consider what I’ve lost since childhood, I could make you a sad long list. My brother and I were very close at the time he left for college.  His issues with depression came to light as a teenager, and continue to this day. As his younger sister, a full five years behind him, I was not in any reasonable position to help him, but I knew that he needed help. I thought (as twelve year olds, and other people, tend to do) that by loving my brother as much as I did, that I could heal him of whatever sadness or anger he was feeling.  My clueless parents, at a loss as to how to help him either, thought that sending his little sister in to “talk with him” when he was feeling suicidal was a good way to help him feel better, since he wouldn’t talk to them at all.

In spite of his emotional troubles, he was able to use his smarts to finish high school, and get into college.  Off he went, and leaving me behind of course, and soon little sister was easily replaced by college pals, girlfriends, marijuana and jazz. We lost touch, and I supposed he no longer needed a little sister to love him, or bake him apple pies when he came home to visit, or to follow him around and bother him when he was showing his visiting college girlfriends around the town.

I was also quite busy by then, learning how to be a holy terror teenager myself, as my parents picked that time to decide to split up in the most agonizing ways they could think of, with my dad slinking off to sleep somewhere other than my parents’ room. First, he colonized my brother’s empty bedroom, then trudged downstairs to the basement guest room. Finally, as my grandparents died, he crossed the street to live in their house “in order to fix it up and clean it out.”

And so it was that within the course of a few years, I lost my brother (to college – 1985), my parents (to their self-absorbed separation / divorce – begun in 1986 and finalized in 1992), and my grandparents (died in 1988, and 1989).  Plus, my best friend’s family moved to Germany (1987). I really cried when she told me they were moving away, it seemed so unfair.

Fast forward to now. My dad’s health is less than stellar. My mom drives me insane. I speak to my brother about twice a year. And I want to connect with my half sister — Why?

I don’t really know what I expected to gain from this. Did I track her down for my father’s benefit, or mine? If I want so much to connect with family, why am I also so estranged from the ones that I actually know?

I spoke to my brother for the first time this year on Easter. His wife is apparently recovering from major surgery,  and their family is doing their best to adjust to life in which the mom of the house is significantly disabled (temporarily – it is hoped she’ll be able to recover fully within 6 months or so). I feel very sad for my nieces and nephew, and for my brother, that life is so difficult for them right now.

I find myself thinking, “What can I do? What should I do? How can I help my brother?” It’s a familiar and painful feeling. I think I’ll send them a care package, at least. In the long run, I can’t help him, really — his life is what it is. He and I are very different and his choices have molded him so extremely.  We grew up together, but then, apart.

Did you ever see the Muppet movie in which Gonzo is contacted by his alien relatives and he finds out that he’s not really alone like he thought he was? I think my hopes concerning my sister were something like that. That I would find this long lost sister and learn that there’s a reasonable, creative, kind and interesting person in my family who is something like me.

Is that so much to ask?

A while back, I blogged about how stopping the use of  pull-ups seemed to “cure” my daughter’s bed-wetting.  She was, indeed, dry at night for the rest of the summer. Then, at some point, I started to notice that her bedclothes were stinky: the wetting had started again, though she sure did not want to point it out.

I don’t know if it was the return to school, with second grade’s higher demands on her, or the cooler weather, or what, but through the fall and winter, we saw a return to wet pajamas and sheets.  She doesn’t even really wake up, but instead removes her wet pajamas and throws them down from her loft bed onto the floor, and just moves to a dry place on the bed.

I do not want to put her back in disposable pull ups (like I did when we visited my dad in January) because not only are they expensive and wasteful, but also, they are quite pricey and rather a big waste. Um. Right.

So, what I’ve been doing these past six months is trying to get her out of bed and to the toilet once during the night (when I am not sleeping myself) and otherwise just dealing with changing her sheets frequently.  Baking soda, applied to her vinyl protective sheet, seems to help with the odor as well.

Now that I’m past the denial that this is only going to be for a “few more weeks” until she’s dry again, I am starting to think  that it might be less of a laundry burden if I had some cloth pull-ups to dress her in at night.  She is wetting just about every night, though she didn’t at my mom’s (thank goodness!).

I’ve done some searching and have not found anything offered for large kids like mine.  I guess most people just use disposable pull-ups for big kids who wet the bed.  But if there’s anyone out there, who is really into cloth diapers, maybe you know something I don’t? Can you help me find cloth diapers absorbent underpants that would fit a kid who’s a size 7/8, weighing oh, about 50 pounds?

Much obliged!

This morning I got to be the victor in the Tiramisu competition: mine didn’t fall over (as much). Does anyone else feel funny about eating vast quantities of raw egg? If the stuff wasn’t so freaking delicious, I’d avoid it like the plague.

Some readers may not realize that my mom isn’t from the U.S.; she’s a citizen of the U.S.A. at this time, but was in fact born and raised in Italy. Two of her best friends (a pair of sisters) from Italy happen to live in New Jersey, and one of them is my godmother. Easter — every year– is held at my mom’s house. PERIOD. And Sonia and Milena (my godmother and her sister) come to share easter dinner with us. Every year.

It’s nice to have traditions. I’m sitting right now in the living room while the three of them yak in the kitchen. Their Italian is dotted with dialect; what I actually think of as lazy italian, though that may be unfair or inaccurate. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t know the language: but to me, hearing the dialect always sounds like chickens clucking.

Thus, they are in the kitchen clucking. I’m not really following the conversation, though I can understand italian quite well. When I tune into what they are saying, I realize that I am not listening because I am not interested.

Dinner was filled with a number of awkward moments; I’d crack some rather lame jokes and be met with quiet stares that seem to be trying to figure out what I’m saying. My godmother and her sister both speak english just as badly as any american; plus a heavier accent.

“Did they broke their egg?” asked one of them about the easter eggs.

I have to restrain myself from correcting the way I would if my kids (who don’t make such grammatical errors) had said the same.

My mom’s english is not flawed, however. She speaks perfectly, with just a hint of an accent. People have a hard time placing where she’s from when they hear her speak. For the longest time, I didn’t think she had an accent at all. I simply could not hear it.

Now I can hear it, though, and part of me wonders if her accent somehow got stronger since I was a kid. Like maybe she’s just not bothering to speak properly anymore. The word “the” is a good example. Now when she says it, it sounds more like “duh” which bugs me.

I guess a lot of things she does and says bug me. (Can you tell she doesn’t read this blog?!) Though I can’t fault the food: predictably exquisite.

This morning she decided I’d slept long enough. Get up, she told me, your kids are hungry. I’d not slept well; just felt really ill at ease, tired, and also a little worried that C would wet the bed. (7 year old Carla, that is, not Cammy!!!) So I waited til about 2 AM and took C to the bathroom and emptied her before I went to sleep myself. So you can imagine I was pretty sleepy when my mom decided at 8:30 that I was really sleeping way too late.

The girls had apparently been up for about an hour at that point: and they were hungry and yet my mom didn’t bother to offer them any food or drink. (NICE ! HOSPITALITY! SUCH ! A ! GREAT !!! GRANNY!)

“I’m going out for my walk,” she told me, adding: “There’s english muffins in the fridge, and a little coffee left over.” Bleary eyed, I dragged myself downstairs and fed my hungry kids.

When she got back, she made sure to tell me that I had to get dressed now, and make the antipasto, and cut up the bread, and do it in such and such an order and such and such a way. She is such a control freak: she didn’t want me, for some reason, to make the antipasto until I’d changed out of my nightshirt and into regular clothes.

This continual combination of criticizing me with telling me what to do is the sort of thing that makes my skin crawl and also makes me heave great sighs of relief as as soon as we leave my mom’s. It’ll be good to be back on the road. Soon!

Serenity! Soon!

My kids aren’t allowed to have bubblegum, because one of them has fillings and the dentist recommended avoiding gum. So, I just don’t allow either child to chew gum.

My mom knows this. And yet, every year the easter baskets (which the kids were given today, and trolled through for candy immediately) contained bubblegum balls. And every year, this year included, my mom acts surprised.

“Gum? That was gum? Oh I thought those were chocolates.”

* * *

Included with the easter baskets were piles of plastic “grass” — a decorative and utterly wasteful pile of frizzy plastic stuff whose only purpose is apparently to get spread all around the living room, making a huge mess when the neighbor’s boys came over to play. Mom sent them home as soon as she saw the mess.

PROBLEM! Those boys just made a mess! They have to clean up, THEN go home. But no, she asked them to go home and off they went. The girls and I cleaned up.

* * *

Also included in the easter baskets were two blank Thank You note cards and envelopes*.

Carla opened her card and peered at it. “Why does this say Thank You and have no writing in it?”

Mom: “Oh, I thought you might want to send a thank you note to… whoever you think of…”

****

TACKY, anyone??!!!???

*******

Deep breaths, deep breaths.

* EDITED …. when I got home and unpacked everything, I discovered there were actually FOUR blank thank you notes and envelopes. AND YET I haven’t sent her back one of them. It is hard to be enthusiastic about the weekend enough to send a thank you note.

We make tiramisu – an italian dessert (yummy, with raw eggs! google it!) and it’s perfectly fun.

She taunts me that *my* tower of cookies & fluffy creamy stuff is messy and not as pretty as *hers*.

As we’re finishing making the desserts, my cell phone rings. I go to get it, and sit down to talk to my husband a while. As I am still finishing my conversation,   she comes out of the kitchen to where I am.

Mom: “You left *all* the clean up to me. Thanks a lot.”

Me: “Oh, you could have waited, I’d have helped.”

Mom: “Yeah but it was messy. I’d have to look at it.”

OH, THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING.

Mom: “Oh my god… your hair… what have you done to it…”

Me: “Um, nothing.”

Mom: “It’s so… grey. Ugh, it’s almost completely grey. You are going to be completely grey soon if you don’t do something about this.”

Me: “Um. I like it this way. It’s kind of blonder this way.”

Mom: (shudder.)

I’m at my Mom’s house.

Something about stepping across the threshold of her sterile clean house is like finding myself back in time, a teenager again. The fact that I’m all grown up with kids of my own is meaningless, a strange anachronism here.

It’s Easter, and that’s my mom’s mean time of year. I don’t know why. She just gets real bitchy at this point in the year. I think she really, really resents that Easter is so many months far away from Christmas, and so our visit has been so long awaited. She’s thinking: and for what? We didn’t even bring her any presents.

What’s in it for her, huh?

This troop of mayhem and mess, cooking and egg dyeing mess, so many little bodies. Don’t break the glass knickknacks…

…TO BE CONTINUED….

I have not been writing very much lately. It’s not for lack of thinking about it, though. I have a lot of different things I’d like to write about, but my mind is feeling scrambled.

I did get back on my meds, which is of course a very good thing: but I think I am not quite myself yet. It’s funny how at one time I really felt opposed to taking any anti-depressants, for fear they would erase that part of me which is me. It could not have been farther from the truth: they actually just take away that part of me that is NOT me, the depression that I mistook for a part of myself.

Have you ever had to deal with someone who isn’t rational? (well, who hasn’t??) Being depressed (for me) is like dealing with an annoying irrational person all the time, one you can’t get away from, and it’s yourself. Yeah, annoying as hell. Plus, I get extremely irritable. I mean, really anything at all can make me feel annoyed (including myself).

Things that are usually cute or sweet: a hug from a child, a caress from D, a cute little trick that a child wants to do to show off. Instead of reacting in a pleased and friendly way, my internal irritation is extreme. Get off of me, I think. Go away. Stop it.

Because I know these reactions are NOT what’s expected of me, and I don’t even like myself for reacting that way, I try to cover them up, but really I doubt that I fool anyone.

I hate depression. It’s a lot better than say, cancer, or schizophrenia, of course. But it is its own kind of hell, and it feels like it will always be there, lurking.

Right now, though, I am not terribly depressed, but maybe a little under the weather. I want so much for it to be warm, sunny, and I want to be out in the garden, amending the soil, building some new plant beds, checking on my tulips and other bulb plants. Instead it’s raining, and I have been spending way too much time on the computer (and this blog post might just be one of the most productive moments of all the computer time I have spent.).

This wasn’t the blog post I thought would arise from my title “Spring Break Musings.” What I thought I’d write about would be the baby quilt I’d like to make, the plants I would plant if I’d gotten the new beds made, the program I want to create for the summer camp I’ll apparently be running. Instead, here I am nattering on and on about depression.

A nap might just be the ticket, but I have to go to my mother-in-law’s house and tinker around with her dead PC. Joy, rapture, bliss. Then again, maybe we can get dinner there, which would cheer me up, as well as getting out of the house.

Another good remedy: shower. Oh the brilliant ideas that arise when we blog!