quest for a faerie child

trust me on this...

Would you like to know what creeps me out just a tad?  Lately I have been noticing everytime I mention the name of a major healthcare organization related to Max's care, whether it be pharmaceutically-based, home healthcare-based or even the name of a hospital, within a day I get at least one hit from that company's domain.  This gives me such a '1984' feeling and I must admit, I do not like it.

At.All.

It happened with Baxter within the last week.  It happened with Apria within the last two weeks, with biogen-idec today and with OHSU today AND last week.  Of course, now that I have mentioned their names, once again, I expect to get hits from them again, which irritates me and the viscious cycle will continue.

Today, I took the boys out on a marathon trip again.  We had a most lovely time.  The best part was playing at Piccolo park with both of them.  We slid on the slide more times than I can count.  We swang in the baby swings.  We played with oodles of bubbles.  We ran around and around and around.

The second best part was walking up the hill from Ladd's Addition.  There are loads of cherry trees on the way up and the blossoms are beginning to fall.  So, as I was pushing them up the hill, cherry blossoms were falling, swirling around us like beautiful pink snow ala that most loveliest of scenes in Pleasantville, when color begins to seep into the world and Toby Maguire is driving through the same type of scene.  I keep forgetting to bring my camera, which irritates the crap out of me because it is just BEGGING to be photographed.

Perhaps I will remember tomorrow....   I must remember to remember tomorrow.

After what seems like forever and a day of working with Rowan on baby sign language and "more", I believe he finally began signing it on our way home this afternoon.  Max is signing all over the place, except that he refuses to use the signs functionally.  He knows the sign for water.  He knows the sign for more, but he steadfastly refuses to put them together and tell me he wants more water.  Instead, he holds out the bottle and freaks out on me.  He knows the sign for sleep, but won't tell me he wants to sleep.  Instead he just whines and whines and throws a fit until I take him to get ready for bed.

Today we had his Early Intervention appointment at the house and she and I worked him hard.  We worked on "more", "my turn", "I want", and "your turn".  By the end he was actually pretty frustrated and we decided to try a different angle.  Instead of trying to get him to say it or sign it all the time, I am going to continue to just sign every time and then every once in awhile I will hold back and ask him to sign what he wants.  We'll see how it goes this week.

He is, without a doubt, the most stubborn individual I have ever come across.  He is second only to his Daddy.  I suppose this is good, in a way.  It indicates a sense of strength that is actually good to see in a child with as many obstacles as he has.  I won't say it is easy.  But, he is definitely not a weakling and he definitely knows what he wants and DOESN'T want.  He needs to be strong.  His life requires him to be strong and so I understand him.  I understand where he is coming from.  I just need to figure out how to motivate him to do what I want.

Our speech pathologist recommended a truly lovely set of DVD's for signing.  I purchased four of them on Amazon.  They came on Tuesday and already, Max loves them and the signing world is opening up in so many ways.  If you are interested in trying sign language with your infants/toddlers, I would highly recommend them.  The series is called "Signing Times".  I think there are something like thirteen volumes.  I bought the first four and I love them.  LOVE THEM.  I can't say enough about them.

I must admit that part of me really loves learning ASL.  I speak German fluently, used to speak Spanish functionally and adore learning languages.  It is a skill at which I have always been highly proficient.  I have always attributed my innate understanding of computers, as well as my piano playing to my language skills.  So, learning sign language satisfies both my love of learning languages and teaching my children to communicate more effectively.  I am immersing myself in it and today I found myself attempting to sign with Moose, who gave me an odd look, before I realized what I was doing.

Someday we would really love to have one more child and when we do, I am going to start signing to her (I say 'her' because I am thinking positively that I will, indeed, have a girl) from the beginning.  It is truly an invaluable skill with babies. 

Trust me on this...

my last gift was a bag o' chocolate...

I just had a near-death experience with a yahoo in a monstrously large white truck.  Any time you come in contact with anyone in a white vehicle of any type larger than, say a sedan, you are pretty much guaranteed that trouble is just around the bend.

"White van, up to no good!"  Anyone... ?  Anyone... ? 

Please tell me you had that saying about those huge, white cargo vans with no windows in the back when you were young.  You did?  Cool.  Then you know to what I am referring.

Because you had that saying, you know that those are always the serial killer/serial rapist/rage-o-holic assholes that inhabit your nightmares.  Right?

Right.

I had to run to the store.  On my way out, I asked Moose if he needed anything, to which he responded, "I need chocolate.  And lots of it.   I want those big, mondo, candybars."

On my way out the door, I turned around and said, "You mean reese's peanut butter cups or like that?"

He nodded, "Yeah.. or like 3 musketeers or something.  BIG ones.  BIG ONES.  There is NO chocolate in the house."

I gave him a knowing look and ran out the door.  No chocolate in the house is equal to a major catastrophe in the world of Moose.  No chocolate in the house is equal to perfection in my world.  But, I digress.

As I pulled away from the house and turned onto Division with NPR on the radio, I had two thoughts.  The first was, "This sounds like This American Life.  But it can't be... can it?"

The second was, "Oh fuck me....!" as I was almost hit by a car barrelling around the curve in the opposite direction.  The experience unnerved me enough to slow down my own speed as I drove around the same corner and continued on towards the intersection of 39th and Division. 

All of a sudden, about a block from the stoplight, I noticed a big, and I mean BIG, white truck speeding up behind me to the point where I couldn't even see his headlights.  I uttered another string of expletives, but kept my speed slow and steady and right at the speed limit.

What I wanted to do was stomp on my breaks and tell him to "FUCK OFF THE TAILGATING."

But, I didn't because I am not really a road rage kind of person.  It just tends to irritate me when people get right up on my ass when I am actually going the speed limit and when a stoplight is a block away and the light has already started to change.

He began honking at me, flashing his brights and I am thinking, "Come on.....!  What in the fuck??  Do you think I am going to floor it to 60, just to get through this light...??"

I continued on and stepped on the break.  Ok, I'll admit I probably was a bit overzealous with the break, but I was starting to get really pissed.  The truck swerved and fell back.  This is probably because he was so close there were probably a mere couple of inches between the back of my landcruiser and the bumper of his yahoo-not-even-close-to-being-cool-in-any-way-shape-or-form truck.

The light was red by now.  I reached over and locked the doors, just as I noticed the yahoo backing up and then pulling forward in what looked like an attempt to go around me.  If you know this intersection, you know there is no way to pull around someone and turn right onto 39th.  The street is narrow and you just have to wait your turn.

But not Mr. Big White Truck.  No, he actually pulled up on the sidewalk to my right and stopped, even with my window.

In my mind, I had the following thoughts, "Don't look over there.  If you do, you are going to say something you'll regret."  AND "Oh jesus, what if he is a road-rage freak and is about to shoot me?"

I kept my gaze averted but caught him doing something out of the corner of my eye, before he peeled away, almost hitting someone in oncoming traffic.  My heart was racing, but I just continued driving for two more blocks and parked outside the mini-mart.

As I was about to get out of the car, I glanced to the right and noticed the yahoo had dumped his milkshake down the front of our cruiser and left his dirty, fucking cup as a calling card on our partially extended antenna.  I got out and thought, "If this were a horror movie, that big, white truck would be waiting out here when I return."

I didn't really like that line of thinking and put it out of my head, as I attempted to find chocolate for the Moose.  The concept of chocolate is generally lost on me and so I can't explain how agonizing it is for me to sit in front of a row of candybars and attempt to choose what I think someone will want, when I don't really care for them myself.

After several minutes of considering, I just started picking up candybar after candybar.  In my head I thought to myself, "Well... if Mr. Monster Truck IS out there, this might be my last opportunity to show Moose how much I love him."

I could see the scene playing out in my head, "We found her with a paperbag full of reese's peanut buttercups, snickers, milky ways and fastbreaks.  Do you have any idea why she would have sooo much chocolate??"

And Moose would know....

He would know it was because I adore him.  My last gift to him was a big bag o' chocolate.

Oh... and it was This American Life on the radio, at 8pm on a Wednesday.  What in the hell?

what is life without a little fear...?

I've had a busy couple days, if you couldn't tell.  What with work and...well....work, I haven't really been in the mood to spend more time on the computer, even for something so beloved to me as writing.  There's also the fact that I just haven't felt all-too-inspired, of late. 

This afternoon I took the boys on an approximation of Sunday's walk and did it in about 2.5 hours.  Though, I did stop off at the park for a bit and I stopped in to New Season's, where I purchased far too much and ended up loading up our already-full-and-heavy-stroller with an extra 15lbs or so of groceries.  Let me tell you, I regretted that decision somewhat as I was traipsing back up the ridiculous hill from Ladd's addition to somewhere between 27th and 30th.  I had big-red, the monstrously heavy and difficult to manuever stroller, as well.

I got me some exercise and then some.

On the Maximus front, I was contacted yesterday by the growth hormone pharmaceutical company that Moose swears has a name right out of a sci-fi movie.  I would agree, though I think it sounds more like Gattaca and he thinks is is out of Blade Runner.  I can already tell this is likely to be one majorly expensive endeavor, much like my MS medication.  Which incidentally, comes from a company with an equally sci-fi name - biogen idec.

Anytime you are contacted by a support service funded by the pharmacuetical company themselves to 'help' you navigate the insurance approval process, you know you are in for a doozy.  And I am not kidding here.  If you have ever experienced it, then you know what I mean.  If you haven't, then you need to just take my word for it.

On the transplant front, our initial donors are preceding with what they were requested to do, though I still have no idea how that will pan out.  Our second donor has hit a possible snag, once again, and I don't know that it is going to go any further.  They have done the health history, provided the data regarding the blood pressure, which was all good, but the original issue may still snag them up.  We shall see.

As a family, we are all going away from Sunday through Tuesday to celebrate our anniversary.  We are going to Silver Falls State Park, where we have rented a cabin for us and also a cabin for Sarah and her boyfriend.  She is going to help us take care of the kids so we can have some time for ourselves in exchange for us paying for the cabin.

So, the faerie household plus all of Max's dialysis supplies will be heading out Sunday morning and will return Tuesday afternoon.  It is a short trip, but we have never done this with Rowan and Max and we obviously have never done it since dialysis began.  This is our 'trial run' so-to-speak.  We'd been putting off any trips, thinking transplant was imminent.  However, since all of that fell through, we decided we needed to stop putting off life for a procedure that seems forever elusive and just fucking do it.

If this goes well, we'll consider doing real camping over the summer.  Max will need to be temped off the list because we will be out of cell phone range while we are in there.  But removing him for three days seems a small price to pay for our sanity and well-being. I am not thinking about the fact that a kidney could come in while we are gone.

Let's just not even go there.  Ok?

Our anniversary is Friday, May Day and it has been exactly two years since the last trip we took, which was also to Silver Falls, with little baby Maximus.  I am very excited and if I am honest with  myself, also a little bit apprenhensive. 

But what is life without a little fear?

disheartening

I am feeling overwhelmed, of late, with the monumental task of helping my children to develop.  Up until we had the evaluation of Max's speech and development, I was feeling as if we were at least managing things.  Now I am realizing that Max's healthcare overshadows everything to the exclusion of being able to spend adequate amounts of time with both of my kids, teaching them what they need to know.

I feel as if my entire day is simply spent in moving from one task to another as it relates to the general maintenance of Max and Rowan, i.e. baths, feeding, changing diapers, Max's dialysis prep, Max's meds, Max, Max, Max.

Rowan is developing good motor coordination, but I feel as if his communication is also somewhat behind and I fear that is because Max is behind, as well.  He imitates his big brother and when his brother isn't really speaking and is instead, babbling all the time... well, that's what Rowan does, too.

This feeling leaves me with a general sense of unease, a feeling that Max's health is already superseding Rowan and I promised myself when I was pregnant with Ro that I wouldn't let that happen.  I wouldn't be one of those mothers that neglects one of her children because the other one is sick.

And yet... here it is... happening and I feel powerless to take control of the situation.  I am wondering if the key to this might be trying to pick one thing each week that I am going to work on with them, individually.  I think I need to have a plan.

A plan for each day.  A plan for each week. 

The thought, alone, exhausts me and this is ridiculous, as well as disheartening.

ambitious little sundays

Today was a lovely little day in which we left the house on foot with boys2 packed into big red, the stroller beast, at 930am and didn't get home until 4pm.  I estimate we walked about 80 blocks, perhaps a little bit more.  It's hard to say because we were winding through Ladd's Addition at some point and god help me, I am lost almost from the moment I enter that crazy neighborhood filled with rose gardens and houses you'd need a winning lottery ticket to purchase.

Inner SE Pdx was our stomping ground from Clinton to just past Hawthorne and 43rd to 16th.  We purchased coffee at K&F, tried to stop by the Temple but noone was home, let the boys run crazily around the park at Abernathy School and visited with friends, got espresso shots at Palio in Ladd's, ate lunch outside at Rovente Pizza, purchased laundry baskets at the Dollar Scholar, bought a hippy shirt for Moose at a shop on Hawthorne, purchased wine at Freddy's, deposited some checks at Wells Fargo and traipsed back home.

I seriously forgot that when you allow Ladd's to dump you out on Hawthorne the way back up towards home is an unbelievably steep climb.  I even wound us back into the neighborhoods, trying to get past the hump, but we were unbelievably pleased to see the back of Safeway.... the pinnacle of the climb.  It's all downhill from there.

At about 10 blocks from home, I said, "Wow... that was an ambitious expedition."

Moose:  It was really ambitious for daddy.

Me:  Yeah well... that's what I mean.  It was ambitious, even for me.  If I thought it was, then I know you did.  Of course, I think I am going to do that route with the boys more often.  That was some serious exercise.

Moose:  You go for it.

Hee!  It was all my idea and I was honestly greatly suprised when Moose readily agreed to my plan.  Generally it is me who is begging him to go for a long walk with us, and usually we have to come to a compromise on how far we are going to go.  I was estatic that he agreed to the monstrous trip, but now I think it will be quite some time before he will let my ambition run rampantly all over his Sunday.

The only problem now is that I am actually unbelievably pooped.  And my plans to clean up some more around the house have been dashed.  All I want to do is sit down and read, read, read....

I'm still devouring books faster than a kid in a book reading contest.  I really need to start the book club I've been wanting....

I need a book club, like now.

the new pariahs

Moose and I found out this week that there is no way his small consulting firm is going to be able to provide health insurance for us.  We had been promised the insurance would be in place last fall, then by the 1st quarter of this year.  Now, it is not going to happen.

The reasons are understandable.  There are too many of us who would need to be on the plan with significant health issues to make it affordable.  It's not just Max and I.  There are people who are cancer survivors, as well.

In this day and age, those of us with serious disease are the new pariahs. The health insurance companies make it impossible for us to obtain coverage from them without being a part of a huge employer-based network.   You know... to balance out the risk, so to speak. 

I think they are are a symptom of the very worst in capitalism:  You are sick or your family member is sick. Instead of ensuring that you have the time, the ability to care for them or yourself, we are going to chain you to corporate america, in a job producing revenue for the Man, regardless of whether or not your working would place a greater strain on the situation, just so that you can get the almighty insurance.  As a result, financial ruin is, perhaps, years down the road, instead of in the next month, but you live your life on a hampster wheel of unyielding worry and you have absolutely no time in your life to actually live in a manner conducive to healing.

In the words of Moose:  "It is absolutely ridiculous that I should have to consider the idea of moving to canada, just so that my wife and my son are not chained to a corporate job for the rest of their lives.  I mean, I can work from anywhere."

Amen.

But what this ultimately means is that our plans of having me possibly stop working once Moose's insurance was in place, are completely scrapped.  I am being forced to continue to work for OHSU for the forseeable future.

Yes, I have a good job.  Yes, I work mostly from home.  Yes, I am in a really good position for someone with a terribly sick child.  But, I live in fear it will change and it is possible.  The reorganization is coming.  I just have to trust and hope that I will not be forced into a full-time, from the office position. 

And that's where the worry comes from:  the worry of losing your job, the worry of losing the situation you are currently in.  In this economy, everyone worries about their job, but those of us who are beholden to corporate america for our health insurance due to devastating health conditions....

Well... we are the ultimate casualty in this.

on nights like this...

In the last 24 hours I have made a huge batch of polenta, Ro's super spinach fritatta, a double batch of Ro's ultimate bean cakes and a sauce of sundried tomato chicken sausage with wild mushrooms for the polenta.  Now, if only Rowan would go to sleep, I could saute slices of polenta and reheat the sauce, throw a salad together and eat some fricking dinner.

If you couldn't guess, I am starving right about now.  It was probably a bad idea to elaborate on all I have cooked while my youngest shows no signs of sleeping and my stomach is growling so loudly it is competing with the live music coming from the punk-rock house one door down and across Division.

On nights like this, I am glad we decided not to look at the house directly across the street from them.  It's not that I don't enjoy live music.  But, I want it to be what I would like to listen to.  Additionally, as I sit out here on the front porch, it is as if I am at a concert and I have a building blocking a great deal of the sound.  If we were directly across the street, I fear what that would be like.....

my weaker moments...

This afternoon, I was sitting out on the back deck with my husband.  We were eating lunch and I was working on updating Max's website with his status of late.  In order to do so, I was reading through the report we received from the Early Intervention Program's assessment.  It came in the mail this week and while I had glanced through it briefly a couple days ago, I hadn't really sat down to read it.

Additionally, I had taken Max this morning for a bone-age in order to get the process going for growth hormones.  The results were back in less than an hour, something truly astounding in my estimation.  I wasn't expecting to hear until Monday.  Max's chronological age is 27 months.  Apparently, his bone age is showing as 18 months. 

While this truly should not shock me, the truth is that it did.  I mean, I see what other toddlers his age look like.  I see what they can do.  I notice the fact that he still appears like a baby, whereas children younger than him seem as if they are at least a year older and seem quite adult in comparison.  But to get the numbers, in black and white so-to-speak, and to know he is 9 months behind in growth, it shocked me to the core.  I guess I didn't fully realize how much it shocked me this morning when I got that piece of information.

However, as I was copying portions of the assessment into his blog, as I was reading (again in black and white) how he is significantly delayed in every single area except for social skills, I was shocked once more.  Again, it is not as if I did not know he was behind.  I've been posting on it for some time.  I've been worrying about it for some time.  But to see it written out by a professional....

Well... it affected me.

Almost immediately after I finished the post, I began to feel nauseated and not just mildly so.  I felt like I was going to vomit.  I thought it was my lunch at first.  Sarah was here and so I decided to lie down for just a little bit.  When I did, I realized my heart was racing and I felt an overwhelming amount of fear, fear I could not really name.

It was at that point, that I realized I was on the verge of a panic attack.  I started trying to breathe deeply and evenly, to calm my mind, to quiet the fear and eventually I fell into a deep sleep. 

When I awakened an hour later, disoriented, out of sorts, I lay in my bed and knew what had happened was a direct result of Max.  I was horrified by things I had heard, by the things I had read today, but I buried them for a time.  I buried them and probably would have continued to do so if I hadn't felt compelled to update his site.

Faced with the reality right there before me, I couldn't ignore what was happening to him.  As I lay in bed, I felt grief all over again for my little boy who's life is so drastically, so dramatically affected by this awful, awful disease. 

I went to a place I rarely go to, a place where no mother should go.  But when I am faced with the true reality of what Max's life is like, what Max's life could be like, I agonize over whether or not there will be some point in his life where he will be upset with me that I allowed his life to be like this.  And what I mean by that is, by having him, I condemned him to this life, this difficult, painful, sometimes horrible life.  We knew the possibilities.  We knew what could happen.  We knew what we might find when he was born and yet we had him anyway.

We couldn't fathom the idea of not having him and I would not change that, even knowing what I know now, even knowing what our life is like, even knowing what his life is like.  But, what absolutely kills me is if he will ever wonder why we did this.  If he will ever see us as selfish.

I know that is a really negative place to go to.  I know it is horrible.  And sometimes I wonder why I torture myself in that way.  Moose would find it typical for me, typical for the dark, german girl who sees the blackness everywhere and he's probably right.  His response would be to wrinkle up his face, to frown and to say, "Oh god... why would you ever think about that...?"

And yet, I can't help myself in my weaker moments.  In my weaker moments, I wallow in a pit of darkness and despair.  I berate myself.  I beat myself up.  I kill myself a thousand times over. When I was younger, I would get swallowed up.  I would have difficulty clawing myself back up to the light.  I would stay there for ungodly lengths of time, until something would miraculously snap me out of it.  It could be days later, it could be months later.  Eventually, I would come back out and life would resume once more.

But now, thanks to years of therapy, years of addressing my past and my issues head on, I snap back out in a period of hours.  I recognize what I am doing and turn my back on it.

And thank god I do.  Because my weakest moments back then absolutely pale in comparison to my weakest moments now.  They were a mere shadow compared to what we could and sometimes do face now.

I would not change my life for a second and thankfully I have the tools to keep it all in perspective, to appreciate the wondrous joy of my firstborn, of both my children and my husband....

But all I can say is.... thank god.

Prince Rowan's ultimate bean cakes

You know you are tired when you fall asleep while attempting to write about how exhausted you are.  This happened to me last night.  Perhaps it was because Moose built a fire last night for the first time in over a week and fire + me = highly addictive sedative.  When you combine the huge, soft lazy boy chair sitting beside the fireplace with the fire, you can basically guarantee I will be comatose inside of about 15 minutes.

However, this is more likely a combination of the above and my dramatically early mornings, of late.  I can continue to get up earlier and earlier, but apparently my body is just going to decide when I need to go to sleep in order to accomodate my assinine schedule, even if that is 7pm.

Why do I get up so early, you might ask?  Generally, I get up early to be able to clean up the kitchen from the night before, or because I am planning on cooking before everyone gets up and generally also because I need a little bit of time to center myself before all hell breaks loose.

Lately, I have been working on recipes that I am either developing myself or modifying to make them healthier for everyone.  I've already posted on my sneakiness and that's the reason why I need to get up early to do it.  Currently I am developing something I call a bean cake.  They are on the order of a risotto cake, except that they have no outside breading and the ingredients are a variety of different veggies mixed with beans and other items, food processed to a smooth texture and then baked like you would cookies. I am about to start working on my fifth incarnation of it. 

These were originally for Rowan, but I fam desperately trying to find a combination I think is worthy of getting my finicky husband to try.  The first batch was way too dry and really bland, but Ro loved them.  The second batch was still dry, but I added dill and parsley to the mix and that really started to kick them up.  On the third batch, I switched to canned black beans instead of dry white beans and I added red pepper and a bunch of dried and reconstituted sundried tomatoes and wild mushrooms.  I also switched to fresh oregano and parsley and added a combination of grated parmesan and gruyere, an egg and a quarter cup of bread crumbs.  These were lovely and smelled/tasted somewhat like pizza.

On the fourth batch, I tried to see if I could get rid of the egg and breadcrumbs and cut the cheese amount.  The result was a very moist cake, but it fell apart in the baking/flipping/flattening process that needs to happen halfway through the cook time.   So now, I think I am back to the egg and breadcrumbs. 

Though, I was also attempting to see if I could get a vegan cake because I have friends who are basically eating vegan due to a health condition and also cannot eat wheat.  I wanted to make this for them and bring it over if I could figure out how to get it the right consistency and flavor, sans the non-vegan items.  I'm considering grinding oats and using that in place of the breadcrumbs, but I am unsure about what to use as a binder in place of the egg.

The current list of ingredients include:  1/2 a zucchini, 1 cup baby carrots, 1/4 medium red onion, 1 garlic clove, 1 quart bag spinach/kale, 1/2 medium red bell pepper, 1 cup sundried tomatoes (reconstituted and drained), 1/2 cup dried wild mushrooms (reconstituted and drained), 2 cans of black beans (drained and rinsed), 1/4 cup gruyere, fresh oregano (a palmful of leaves), italian parsley (a handful wripped from the stems) , 2tsp flaxseed oil, 1 egg and 1/4 cup italian seasoned breadcrumbs, salt to taste.

You foodprocess all the veggies and herbs, add the beans and process, add the egg, cheese and breadcrumbs and process until blended.  Then use a 1 tbsp cookie scoop to drop the batter onto a non-stick cookie sheet with cooking spray.  Bake at 350 for 10 minutes, take out the tray and flip the little balls over (carefully - they will be soft) and then flatten with a spatula.  Bake for 10 more minutes.  Flip them over and then allow them to cool a bit on the cookie sheet before removing to a plate.

The above amount of ingredients makes about 3 cookie sheets of 28 cakes, each.  I think these will probably freeze really well, but I haven't gotten to that point yet, because Ro eats them like they are going out of style.

Now, if I could only get Moose to try them.... I would feel much better.

freakishness freaks even the freaks out

At some point, I think I will realize that the list of tasks I have set for myself is soo long no human could ever manage it.  Until then, I just continue to get up earlier and earlier and earlier in a vain and desperate attempt to complete the impossible. I am already at 4am on the non-office days and 325am on the single office day. 

Even admitting that disgusts me. 

I need help and I don't just mean in the practical sense.  I need someone to take away my hampster wheel.  Please.  For the love of god.

Tell me it's ok that my bathroom is a swamp, my kitchen is a disorganized mess, our laundry (multi-days worth) is piled on the conference table while my kids drawers remain empty.

Though, you could tell me all of that and it wouldn't make a bit of difference.  You'll need to change my genetic makeup for me to ever not feel guilty about the slow and steady decline of our house and all within its walls.  Until then, I'll just feel like a fuck-up whenever my gaze lands on anything housework related.

And then I will start to freak out.  And then I will freak out my husband (and my kids) with my absolute freakishness and everyone will find themselves hoping against hope that I'll take a chill pill sometime this century so that I can actually start breathing instead of freaking.

I freak out the freaks.  Seriously.