Confessions of a Closet Hoarder

Serves me right.

2012-02-17T20:32:00.000-07:00

I was on the receiving end of some poetic justice tonight, and I deserved it.

The girls have always liked to be scared or startled. Just a little jumping out from behind a door now and then. It's not something that happens often, but they enjoy it and find it especially hilarious, if they sneak up on me and scare me. We always laugh about it, and it's been one of the fun things we've done since they're little.

The girls usually startle me by sneaking up on me, and I turn around and there they are. Scooter usually gets to giggling til she can't catch her breath, and she thrives on it. I think she feels really special that she can scare me in spite of not being able to talk. And when Hopper happens to make me jump, she throws her head back, slaps her knee, and laughs loud enough the neighbors can hear her through closed windows and doors. She does the same when she gets got.

Because Scooter is non-verbal and doesn't move as fast, it's really hard for her to get over on Hopper. So tonight, I helped her. We hid behind her bedroom door and left the door open, because we knew Hopper would be coming down the hall to say goodnight in a minute. As we were waiting in the dark for Hopper to come in, Scooter was quivering with excitement. We heard Hopper coming down the hallway, and I whispered to Scooter that we needed to jump out and say, "Boo!" I could tell she was giggling. She was having so much fun!

Coming down the hall, Hopper knew something was up. She kept saying, "G'nite!" She was waiting to hear me say it back, so she would know where I was based on the sound of my voice. I didn't say a word. I could feel Scooter's shoulders jumping, while she was laughing, and I couldn't wipe the grin off my face.

As Hopper came into the room, she said, "Boo!" So Scooter and I jumped out, and I yelled, "Boo!" right back at Hopper. Everyone was laughing, and we were having a lot of fun. So I decided to keep it going after I had tucked Scooter into bed.

I decided to hide in Hopper's room with the lights off and jump out to scare her.

The joke was on me.

I'd totally forgotten about a bedside table we got for her bedroom a couple weeks ago being in there. I'm going to be painting it, but it will be by her bed for her to use in the interim. We just haven't put it in place, because we need to fix a portion of her bed. She broke off part of one of the legs earlier in the week, so she's sleeping on the trundle bed until we get the leg put back together tomorrow.

As I snuck into her bedroom in the dark, in bare feet, I jammed my foot into the leg of the bedside table. Funny thing is that Hopper didn't even know I had gone in there. It took her another couple minutes before she came into the room. By then, I was doing my best to keep from putting my weight on my foot and was laughing at myself while cussing a bit under my breath. I told her what happened, and we both laughed.

It serves me right. We had a lot of fun, but I'm sure Hopper felt I deserved it for trying to scare her.

I can't say that I or my tender toes blame her.

Ribbit.

2012-02-16T23:36:00.006-07:00

The last few days, my asthma has seemed to be getting worse. You know. The wheezing-heard-round-the-room-kind-of-asthma. I've felt pretty worthless, but I've still managed to get some laundry, paperwork, and sorting done.

After working for several hours on paperwork and sorting today, I sat down to take a bit of a break tonight. I swallowed wrong and ended up in a coughing fit that had my chest muscles feeling the sting of lactic acid comparable to that of a marathon. Forty-five minutes later, the coughing was finally under control.

I'm no longer wheezing, but it's obvious I've got bronchitis. I strained my voice enough from coughing that I sound like I swallowed a herd of frogs.

I just wish it didn't feel like they'd taken a dump in my throat.

What to do? What to do?

2012-02-15T23:23:00.001-07:00

I'm in a bit of a quandary.

My back has been spasming more often as of late, and I'm thinking I may need another series of epidural cortisone injections to get the pain under better control. I haven't had any for a few years, because they seem to lower my immunity, and I can't seem to fight off anything that comes my way once I've had them.

I've already been struggling the last few months with my health. I get every cold that makes its entrance, and I've just felt drained. I don't know that I want to add to that. But I am so incredibly frustrated at how my back pain limits my progress around the house. It's really hard to concentrate on what needs done, if I take something stronger than ibuprofen for the pain. The ibuprofen doesn't really do much, yet I can't stay awake, if I take anything stronger.

I am trying to weigh the pros and cons of getting injections again.

I'm desperate to get some significant dehoarding done.

Hopper had a bit of a rough day. Even though she thoroughly enjoyed 'work', she started sobbing when she got home. It's really sinking in that she can only go to work one day a week, and it makes her so sad. Our hearts are breaking for her. It's times like this we'd love to be independently wealthy, so we could afford to send her to her day program 5 days a week, but we can't even come close to affording the $1500 to $1700 a month.

Hopefully, she'll get used to only going once a week, and then she'll just be happy and pleasantly surprised when funding comes through, or some generous benefactor shows up, and she can go more often.

And hopefully, I'll be able to figure something out to make my back stop spasming, my health to improve, and to help Hopper be happy with going to work only one day a week.

Roses are red. Violets are blue. Candy is sweet. And so are you.

2012-02-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

I worked hard today, and yet I have nothing to show for it. At least nothing anyone can see.

I spent the day working on paperwork that needs done for Scooter's hospitalization back in September. I spent the better part of 9 hours on the phone trying to get things straightened out. By the end of the day, I still wasn't done, but I at least know what I've got to do tomorrow. It's been nightmarish.

And all because of a (insert cuss word of your choice here) contaminated blood culture.

I still have hours of work to go tomorrow. I was going to work more on it all tonight, but I decided 9 hours is enough for one day. Besides that, I can't seem to get warm. I've been freezing all day long, and it's the warmest it's been in a week. My body is definitely trying to fight something.

Have I mentioned recently that I'm ready for Spring to get here? Take my word for it, if I haven't mentioned it.

I'm ready.

On a good note, Hopper is dealing with being home while Scooter is at school better than we'd anticipated. She was started on anxiety meds awhile back. It's the first medicine we've tried that has actually helped her with her anxiety without causing even more issues. We're very hopeful they'll help her through this difficult transition. More than anything, we're thrilled we finally found something that works for her.

She's so cute. She was so excited tonight that she gets to go to 'work' tomorrow that she tried going to bed at 2:00 this afternoon. I held her off a few hours, but she's beside herself with excitement. Without any prompting from me, she even got all her clothes laid out and ready for tomorrow before she crawled into bed.

I think I need to take her cue and go to bed early...

Hope you and all your sweethearts had a good Valentine's Day!

Travel plans.

2012-02-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

Things went well for Scooter with her first day back to school in several weeks. She fell asleep on the couch shortly after she ate, and she didn't give a second thought to going to bed - just got in her jammies and snuggled into her flannel sheets.

I didn't handle the early wake up time nearly as well. I overdid things in the workout room a bit when we were sorting boxes of books yesterday. It kept me from being as productive as I'd have liked to have been, but I was able to get 4 loads of laundry done and some of the bedding changed. It's better than nothing, but I'm hoping to get a bit more done tomorrow.

It's going to take awhile to get back on a schedule of zero dark thirty wake up calls. I think it's going to take me crawling into bed in the next 15 minutes and snuggling up under the blankets.

I think Scooter had the right idea...

I'm off to LaLa Land.

what's cooler than a full bookshelf?...(title by hubster)

2012-02-12T23:26:00.000-07:00

Two full bookshelves, of course!

I felt quite a bit better when I woke up this morning, but I'm surprised I was able to function. I ended up getting 4.5 hours of sleep, which is decidedly less than the 8 hours I need. Hopefully, I'll be able to catch up on it this week.

Scooter is doing well enough she'll be going back to school in the morning for the first time in weeks. I'm not looking forward to the 5:45 alarm going off in the morning. Why does school have to start so darned early, anyway?

Hubster and I worked on unpacking and sorting books in the workout room today. We unpacked and sorted 12 boxes of books. We have right at 2 boxes filled to donate, and the ones he's keeping are on the shelves, as we speak. We have 14 boxes left to sort through before we'll be finished.

Hubster is thrilled, and I am, too. It's good to see him happy and excited about his books. Hopefully, we'll get them finished this week, if not by next weekend.

I'm going to go drag my sorry butt to bed. I can't stay awake.

There's always tomorrow...

2012-02-11T23:53:00.002-07:00

Haven't gotten anything done today. Woke up feeling off and couldn't get warm. When my body did finally heat up it over heated, and then I was feeling the effects of a stomach bug.

Thankfully, Hubster doesn't work weekends, so I laid down and took a nap for a couple hours. When I woke up, my stomach felt much better, but I feel like I'm coming down with bronchitis. Thus, I got nothing done today.

I'll be doing what I can to get something done tomorrow. I really want to get some unpacking done on the books, so we can get to the workout equipment.

Here's to hoping things go better tomorrow...

#)(@%#)(%Q#^%

2012-02-10T23:22:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, I called the attorney's office to see, if we had a court date yet for the guardianship thing.

Around 6 tonight, the phone rang. It was him.

"I know you called a couple of days ago." (Um. No. It was a WEEK ago!) "Sorry I'm just getting back with you."

"I've got a note here saying that the court visitor sent her reports for both of the girls, but I can't find them anywhere. I tried calling her twice. The one time, it said that her phone number had been disconnected. The second time, I got a recording saying that the phone number was no longer in service."

"Did you get copies of the reports?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, I don't know, if she didn't actually send the reports, (Um. Yes! She DID! I could tell just by the way she handled the situation with the girls! She knew how important this was to us, and she purposely got her report filed well before the deadline, so we could be done with all of it as quickly as possible!), or if I just misplaced them. I'm moving my office at the end of the month, so things are sort of crazy on my desk."

"Can you get me copies of your reports for each of the girls? You can fax them, email them, or drop them off at the office."

"You won't get to them until Monday, anyway, right?"

"Right."

"Ok. We'll get them to you."

I was SO mad when I hung up the phone!! He has likely had the reports since we've had our copies. We've had our copies for right at 4 weeks! And he is just NOW trying to rectify the situation? He's just NOW noticing that we are his clients? At this rate, I highly doubt we'll get our court date until April or May, since he's screwed around and wasted our time for a full month.

It wouldn't be so bad, but when he let us know who the court reporter was, he said we needed to make sure we got copies of all the information that we'd brought in for him to the court visitor. When she got here, I apologized for not having it ready. She seemed taken aback. She said that our attorney should have already gotten that information to the court, and that she should be able to access it there.

So we're paying him, and he's having us do the work we're paying him to do!!

I'm sure that he's doing this, because we have legal insurance through Hubster's work, and the insurance company is paying him. I don't know, if he doesn't think it's enough money, or what his problem is.

We can't leave him and go to another attorney at this point, because we've already signed a contract with him. I'm sure that he would try to collect a $2000 retainer plus $250 an hour for the work he's done, and I wouldn't doubt that he'd lie about the hours he's put into the case.

!@#$%^&*(*&^%$#

As soon as the court case is finished, and we have the paperwork in hand showing that we have legal guardianship of the girls, we will be reporting him to the insurance company, and we will not be recommending him to anyone for anything.

Stupid !@#$%^!!!

Steamrolled.

2012-02-09T23:50:00.000-07:00

Scooter was a trooper when she had her blood drawn today. She glared a bit, because she wasn't happy to be there, but as soon as she was done, she was happy as could be. All was forgiven, and she was nothing but smiles.

She makes me happy. :)

When we got home, and I kicked my shoes off, I could hardly walk. My feet were so incredibly sore. I don't know, if it's the shoes I was wearing, or if it's still the IKEA shopping from a couple weeks ago that had my feet feeling bruised. I took the gel insoles out of my tennies and stuck them in my slippers. It helped. I'll take to wearing the slippers with the insoles for a few days until my new shoes get here.

I decided to take my sore feet to the carpeted workout room and rest them up a bit. It's amazing how much carpet can soothe the tired soles compared to hardwood floors. I decided to kick off my slippers and let the carpet work its magic.

In December of 2010, we cleared out the storage pod on the driveway and took several boxes of books to the workout room. Even though it's been over a year since we emptied out the pod, we haven't unpacked any of the books. As a result, the only workout equipment we've had access to is the treadmill, and its accessibility has been sporadic at best.

I really need to get some use out of the equipment that can help me with my back, and I can't use it when there are boxes piled all around. So I worked on getting some of the shelves on the simple case we made to hold some of the hundreds of Hubster's books. I was able to unload a couple boxes, but I realized I had no idea how Hubster wants them arranged, so I called it quits. It was time to stop. I'd completely soaked my t-shirt as my fever broke, and I knew it wouldn't be long before I got the chills again.

Hubster and I will be doing what we can to get the boxes unloaded and the contents put away this weekend. At the very least, we'll get enough emptied that we can actually workout on some of the equipment.

I'm motivated to get some dehoarding done. It's been entirely too long.

Now, if my body will only cooperate and kick this fever...

One of those days.

2012-02-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

Talked to the pediatrician today. She wants Scooter to go in for blood work. She wants to rule out mono. We'll also be able to tell from the blood work, whether it's a viral or bacterial infection that's causing the fever. We're relieved that she's going to look into things further.

Mono would make sense on a lot of fronts.

I guess we'll see.

Nothing else to report. I'm just trying to keep posting daily, so I don't fall away from my blog as much as I did last year. It helps so much to blog about what's going on, even when I can't seem to get my stuff together and get much else done. Like now. So I don't want to skip blogging, even when I don't have anything to say. Like now.

So it's off to bed for me. Hopefully, I'll have something more than, "I got a bit of laundry done today" to report tomorrow.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

2012-02-07T23:29:00.001-07:00

It's been another one of those days around here.

Scooter is still feverish and sleeping more than normal. I don't think the antibiotics she's on are working like they should. I will probably put a call in to her doctor tomorrow, so we can come up with a game plan.

My back has been in a continual spasm fora few days now. I think I'm going to have to take a muscle relaxant for it to stop. I can't seem to think straight from it. It's so annoying.

I did my best to get some laundry done today. I was marginally successful. Worked on sorting some paperwork with limited success. I have a feeling that even when I am actually able to fall asleep that I'm not resting like I should, since I've fallen asleep every time I've sat down today.

Maybe I'll be a bit more productive tomorrow.

Defrosting.

2012-02-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

The guy came out and fixed the furnace this morning. It was just in time... It's supposed to be even colder tonight than it has been the last couple nights. It's good to know the space heaters aren't going to be getting a heavy workout tonight. Every year we hear of house fires caused by space heaters, and every time we use them, I can't sleep for worrying about them getting too warm and causing a fire. It just always sets my nerves on edge.

And even though those trusty space heaters got a workout, they had a rough time keeping up. It never got past 66° in the house and got as low as 62°. And while that might seem like a balmy Spring day coming out of the cold of Winter, it's too cold in the house. Not only does the cold affect my fibro and cause it to flare a little, it always sets off my asthma, as well. And of course it happens just when I was getting my breathing back under control.

I'm really looking forward to warmer weather. I don't mind the snow. I enjoy it, even.

But my body craves warmer days.

Soon, Judy. Soon...

Where do I start to dehoard? Pt 4 - Too many categories.

2012-02-05T23:59:00.005-07:00

When I first started blogging, I tried listing everything I'd gotten rid of in the side bars. I realized I was getting totally overwhelmed, and something needed to change. I had such a problem categorizing that I couldn't seem to sort things into only large categories like 'donations' or 'trash'. I would spend several minutes trying to figure out which category an action or item fit best, and before I knew it 45 minutes had gone by, and I still wasn't done recording my discards.

I would list the categories that I'd dealt with during that particular day. If I donated things, I listed them according to what the items were: toys, (subcategories being educational, just plain play toys, sentimental, or vintage toys), clothes, (with subcategories of children's, women's, men's or baby clothes), and then I even sorted the trash in my sidebars into several categories. And if I got busy and forgot a day? Yeah. That wasn't acceptable. I would sit and wrack my brain for 20 minutes trying to remember everything that I'd accomplished for the day I'd forgotten to list in the first place.

It was completely stressing me out, so I removed the lists and decided I'd try to list what I'd gotten done every day instead. But I soon found that I was mentally trying to sort the things I'd finished each day, so I could list them in a certain order on the sidebars. It was never enough to just say I'd accomplished a lot and leave it at that. It was was stressful and so time consuming that I realized I had to stop. The sorting was getting the best of me once again, and I knew I had to delete it all.

I find that I slip into the pattern of sorting things into too many categories quite often. It makes things incredibly difficult at times, but I've been working on changing things.

The most important thing is for me to be aware of what is happening at the time. The moment that I notice that I'm falling into the same pattern of behavior that led me down that destructive road I travel so frequently, I put on the brakes. I stop myself the moment I notice what I'm doing.

I ask myself what I can do to categorize things into fewer groups. Which categories can I eliminate altogether? What do the smaller categories have in common with one another? Which similarities overlap? Do they overlap enough to combine them into one category and sort them that way, instead of making things harder for myself?

When I can, I eliminate the categories completely, like I did on the sidebar with the lists of my daily accomplishments. Or like I did so long ago when I got rid of all the different colors and styles and decided to keep only the white shirt hangers and black pants hangers, so I didn't go through the tiring ritual of sorting them each time I walked by.

Being mindful of what I'm doing is definitely the most important thing I can do when I find myself struggling with a glitch in my thinking. It takes practice to recognize when I'm in that continual loop of thought that gets me nowhere, but it's worth the work I'm putting into it.

It's getting me closer to living the life I imagined for myself.

Brrr My nose hairs are frozen together.

2012-02-04T23:12:00.000-07:00

So. The furnace went out tonight.

Thankfully, it's only going to be in the single digits tonight, instead of below zero, but it's still going to be cold.

Got the radiator-style space heaters set up throughout the house. Hoping they're enough until we can get someone out here to look at the furnace. Hoping they don't ask an arm and a leg for after hours fees for someone to take a look at it tomorrow.

And we're really hoping the electricity stays on all night tonight.

IKEA is bad for my health.

2012-02-03T23:41:00.000-07:00

I think shopping last weekend was a bit much for me. I think it's the cause of the most significant fibromyalgia flare I've had in a few years. My feet and legs in particular have taken a beating. I'm hoping that soaking them in Epsom Salts tomorrow will help.

I feel like all I've been able to do this week is say, "I'm tired... I hurt... I don't feel well... I need sleep." I can't seem to concentrate on writing, and I've got so much I want to say.

It's just sort of stuck up there between the ears.

Maybe the Epsom Salts will dislodge some coherent thought, and I'll be able to get a post or two up this weekend, instead of more whiny drivel.

Question about Google Friend Connect

2012-02-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

So, I've heard we'll be losing Google Friend Connect. I know that it's the way I prefer to follow blogs. I'm not sure why I prefer seeing new posts on my dashboard rather than in my Reader, but I do. But I am not sure I exactly understand what it means...

Does it mean that we won't be able to follow blogs this way, that we will lose our followers, or a combination of the two?

Anybody know?

Halo Moon

2012-02-01T23:02:00.000-07:00

Bugster stopped by earlier, and when she got ready to leave, she had me come outside to look at the moon. It was the coolest thing ever. The moon had a huge halo around it. It was definitely worth seeing, but the smoke from the neighboring fireplaces flared the asthma even more. I started writing a post tonight, but I can't think clearly enough to finish the post I started earlier. I'm wheezy again, tired, and going to go to bed in a few.

I did take Scooter into the pediatrician today, since she's had a problem with a low grade fever for the last couple of months. She doesn't show huge symptoms of being sick except that she's requiring more sleep than normal. It's not unusual for her to get 9 to 12 hours of sleep. She's always done that. But lately, (in the last week or 2), she's been needing 12 to 15 hours.

Sure enough. She has a sinus infection. The doctor figures the antibiotics she had for a sinus infection back in December just didn't take care of it completely, and it's been festering in there. We're hoping this course of antibiotics kicks knocks it down quickly. Poor kid. She's always struggled with sinus and ear infections. It has to do with the bone structure in her head. Things don't drain properly as a result, so we'll go through this from time to time.

I'm just hoping she's back to her Scooterific self again soon!

Goodnight, Sweetheart. Well, it's time to go....

2012-01-31T20:58:00.000-07:00

Stopped over at Bugster & Bubster's last night for 10 to 15 minutes. It was too much. I'm wheezing like crazy today from being around their dogs. I miss being able to be around them without wheezing loud enough you can hear me in the next county, but it is what it is.

I hate to leave you, but I really must say...

I haven't been sleeping like I should, so I'm going to go crawl into bed now and hope I've got some energy tomorrow.

.... Goodnight, Sweetheart. Goodnight.

Where do I start to dehoard? pt 3 Perfectionism

2012-01-30T23:59:00.020-07:00

Back in January of 2010, when I saw that first episode of Hoarders, I was scared to death. I knew things were going to have to change, and that I needed to accept responsibility for my part in the mess getting to this level. It wasn't easy. I was embarrassed. Humiliated. Discouraged.

But I was also hopeful, because I knew that I'd made that first gargantuan step. I recognized that I had a problem. I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me, but I also knew that I could do it.

I realized that I'd hidden for years behind excuses. Some excuses were legitimate, (the girls demanded much more of my time and attention and energy than a typical child ever would, and it was bound to affect my life), but some of the excuses were just that. Excuses.

I don't think I actually set out to make it impossible for Hubster or Bugster to meet my expectations in order to blame them for the mess, but blame them I did. Yet my perfectionism played such a major role in the whole thing. I made it nearly impossible for their efforts to be good enough.

I wanted them to do things like I would do them, if I had the time to keep up with things myself. The towels need to be folded lengthwise in thirds and then in fourths, because it made it easier to just get just one when we grabbed one out of the linen closet. Laundry needed to be 'fluffed and hung' just so, so it could hang dry without wrinkles, shrinkage or fading. Dishes need to be loaded perfectly within the confines of the dishwasher but only after they'd basically been washed free of everything before loading them.

On more than one occasion, Hubster said he felt like he had to walk on eggshells around me, because I seemed more concerned about either he or Bugster getting things done right, rather than being happy with the fact that they were trying to help. Eventually, he and Bugster just stopped helping. Why even bother when all I could see was that they hadn't done something up to my standards?

In spite of the fact that I hated the perfectionism trait I carried around with me everywhere I went, it didn't just go away on it's own. In fact, I can't seem to shake it no matter how hard I try. It's here to stay, but I've worked really hard at minimizing it as much as possible.

I've tried to consciously be aware of when my perfectionistic tendencies take over and instead allow for things not to be perfect. If Hopper folds towels for me and puts them away, I don't refold them. I leave them in the linen closet in the same condition they were in when she put them with the other towels. There are times it's a real struggle, and I feel like I'm in a physical fight with myself to leave things alone. Occasionally, I do have to rearrange the kitchen towels, so they'll fit in the drawer, but I do try to just leave them, if I can.

If Hubster happens to do a load of clothes and doesn't get the wrinkles out of the clothes before they're hung to dry, I do my best to wear the clothes wrinkled. It's obviously a lot easier to do this, if they're clothes I usually just wear around the house, but even that can be hard at times. If a load of clothes I don't normally dry in the dryer go through the cycle, I try to shrug it off. It isn't necessary to do everything right all the time.

And when I'm writing a post for my blog, I sometimes don't proofread and correct the mistakes that are bound to be there. Sometimes, I go back and fix mistakes I see at a later date, and other times, I try to leave the mistake there for a few days, so I expose myself to the imperfection.

There are times that each of these seemingly simple things are monumentally difficult for me.

But I've found that nothing bad happens, if the towels aren't folded just so. The world doesn't come to an end, if I don't fix a mistake on the blog. And shockingly, I don't explode, if I wear a wrinkled t-shirt.

Life. goes. on.

I struggle with perfectionism on a daily basis, and I will likely grapple with it for the rest of my life.

But I am determined not to let it rule me.

I want to live.

Tiptoe Through The Tulips?

2012-01-29T23:29:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning, I felt like I could hardly move. Walking on concrete for as long as I did yesterday makes me ache from head to toe. I'm just thankful it's not always as bad as it was today. I'm sure I'll feel much better tomorrow.

Spent part of the morning in the laundry room getting the laundry sorted and the floor swept. Moved the freezer, so I could vacuum the dust underneath. I found a colony of dust bunnies but was able to thwart their attempt at a takeover of the laundry room. For now. I'll have to wipe the herds out a little more often to keep them under control.

Hubster and I got the cubbie units put together and set up in the girls' rooms. They look great, and the girls are thrilled with them. They're excited about what I'm going to be doing with the baskets we got to use in them, as well.

The baskets we picked out are fabric lined cardboard, but the cardboard seems pretty sturdy. I think they'll hold up fairly well, but thankfully, they're only $5 each, if we need to replace one from time to time. But they're just white and... well... plain. But I have ideas floating around in my head, and I'm going to have some fun with them.

The fabric is just a thin cotton, so I'll have to apply gesso to it first to get it ready to paint. I'll be painting different flowers on Hopper's baskets, because she has flowers in her room that resemble the type I've doodled since I was a kid. I'm not sure how many of them I'll be painting, but I'll have some fun with it. If she gets tired of the look of the flowers, I can paint the opposite ends of the baskets in a different design, and she can mix things up a bit.

Scooter adores butterflies, so it's a given that I'll be painting butterflies on some of her baskets. But I thought of another idea I may go with for the other side. I may either paint on giant butterfly using all the baskets, so it would look almost like a set of puzzle blocks when the baskets are put back in the cubbies, or I may paint some sort of a garden scene. I figure it would be a fun way for her to get used to where things go, and if she takes more than one basket out at a time, she'd be able to see where they go by putting the puzzle back together. I'll sketch a few designs out on paper and ask her what she wants me to do.

I'll likely sketch something for Hopper, too.

She's probably going to want a big picture on one side of her baskets once she sees Scooter's. :)

IKEA had me blushing.

2012-01-28T23:30:00.003-07:00

So tired tonight. And sore.

Ventured to IKEA today. We'd never been there before. It was fun but exhausting. I've never seen a shopping cart where each wheel could turn independently. It was nearly impossible trying to keep the cart going in a straight path while Scooter was helping me steer. It was an adventure, to be sure.

I looked quite the sight, too. Hot flashes and rosacea combined make for a really interesting look. The flushing was going all the way down my neck, even. Ahh. The wonders of growing old.

The girls don't have dressers in their rooms for a few reasons. First, they tend to forget where things are, if they're in drawers. Second, they have a heck of a time being able to get things in and out of them and still be able to get the drawers closed. And third, they have a hard time closing the drawers without breaking them. We've had to reattach the fronts of the drawers of baker's rack in the kitchen several times over the years, because Hopper closes the drawers with such force that they come apart. Even after we've glued them.

Plus the girls have used some sort of cubbies in school for the last how many years, so they're used to the system. They know how it works. We just think it will be a good investment for them, so they'll be able to keep their rooms clean and will be able to find what they're looking for, since there will be a place for them to put their things. We're hoping to get them put together tomorrow, since we won't be doing anything with them tonight.

Before we left for IKEA, we got the Christmas tree down and the decorations put away. We've been wanting to get them put away for a couple weeks now, but everyone's been a bit under the weather, and we just didn't get around to it. It's really nice to have it all put away, so we don't have to dread getting it done, and at least we didn't keep it up for over a year like we have in the past. I can't express how really glad I am that it's done. I'm so tired tonight I can't imagine having to put it away tomorrow.

Speaking of tired...

G'nite y'all!

Where do I start to dehoard? pt 2 - Feeling responsible for everything.

2012-01-27T23:55:00.000-07:00

The other day, when I wrote about feeling responsible for stuff, and how I felt mentally paralyzed by the decisions I had to make for items, Penny left the following comment:

"I completely identify with feeling responsible for stuff. I have a physical reaction when I recyclable is trashed. I can give away anything but I have huge problems throwing anything away.

How did you manage to get your head in a place where this responsibility wasn't in control?"

I am still not at a place where the responsibility isn't in control sometimes. On things that have been particularly hard for me, like recycling newspapers and soda cans or not wasting the ketchup packets, I've worked really hard to desensitize myself to those particular objects. After I sorted out the condiment packets and sent the ones we wouldn't use to work with Hubster for their breakroom, new ones would occasionally make their way into the house.

While I saved the kinds we would use, I would purposely throw the ones we wouldn't in the trash. I considered holding onto them until we had enough for Hubster to take to work, but I realized I needed the practice of throwing them away. To start, I was anxious about tossing them out, but I sensed I needed to process the uncomfortable emotions I was feeling rather than pushing them aside like I had for so much of my life.

The first time I tried it, I struggled with actually getting the packets into the trash and put them in the refrigerator instead. But I knew I needed to do this, so I walked away for an hour or so. When I came back in, I fought through the feelings and threw the packets in the trash. Once they were in the can, it was easier for me to leave them there.

A month or two later, I took things to the next level and threw a ketchup packet away, even though there was nothing wrong with it and was something we'd have eventually used. I knew I needed to know for sure that I was capable of letting them go. I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't as hard as throwing out the soy sauce that first day. Now I intentionally throw sauce packets away, including occasionally getting rid of those we would actually use, so I don't get back into the habit of hoarding them. But I really try not to bring them into the house in the first place.

Newspapers and other recyclables were easy enough to deal with, because the recycling center is over 20 miles away, and I can't justify spending $8 in gas to take them up there. So the newspapers go in the trash when we're done reading them, and the plastic milk jugs or glass spaghetti sauce jars do, too. I still struggled with feeling guilty about it, but because I had a legitimate reason not to save them, it was easier for me to handle.

Aluminum cans are a different story, though.

We have 4, almost 5, contractor trash bags full of flattened aluminum cans. I've haven't taken them in to the recycling center for several years, because it's way across town, and I just haven't gotten around to taking them up there. But I don't want to throw them away, because at this point, there's enough of them that they'll give us a little extra money to buy something for the house once it's cleared.

In my head, the cans are a different category than the regular recyclables, because they're actually worth money. They have an actual value. And while a can here or there isn't worth much, adding them all up makes a difference, so I really struggle when I see them in the trash. In the past, if someone has thrown them away at home, I've dug them out, flattened them, and put them with the rest of the cans to be recycled. I've even been known to bring them home from vacation, if we've gotten a can of soda on the road, instead of throwing them away when we get gas.

However, in the last couple of years, I've worked on letting go of my control over the cans. If there's in the top of the trash can, I'll go ahead and take it out and put it with the others, but if it's covered in garbage, I don't. My heart still skips a beat when I let one go, but I know I need to do it, if I'm going to beat this thing.

I know one of the reasons I struggle so much with cans is that we recycled cans when I was little. We'd pick up trash on different trails when we'd go for a walk as a family, and we'd save the cans we found to recycle. We'd use the money from the cans to save up for a family treat of some sort. Sometimes, we'd use the money to go to the fair. Other times we used it for picnic lunches at the park. I've always associated them with family and fun.

There are other things that I've worked on using this same method over the last couple of years, and I'm sure there will be other things I will work on with it in the future. I just know that it is getting so much easier to take my life back by doing it, and it's worth every sweaty palm and every skipped heartbeat. It's as much, if not more, about processing the emotions I'm feeling at the time, as it is about throwing the stuff away.

To be honest, I have to say that that the feeling of responsibility for finding stuff the best home possible still creeps into the driver's seat from time to time, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to. I'm realizing that in order to be in control of my future, I have to take the reigns.

Giddyup!

Where do I start to dehoard? pt 1 - Acquiring

2012-01-26T18:28:00.001-07:00

I have a feeling that when most people think of dehoarding, they think of removing clutter from a space. It's so much more than that. If a person has a hoarding problem, just removing the stuff isn't going to help them at all. It may help temporarily, but it won't result in long-term change. I think I knew this instinctively when I started this journey 2 years ago and got so frustrated and overwhelmed by people telling me how to do it. It's why the people showcased on the hoarding programs are rarely successful.

As a result, the next several posts are not going to be about how to clear out possessions or how to clean out a hoard. I don't feel I'm an expert on what to do first or how to do each bit of organizing. I only know the change has to come from within, if I am to succeed. As a result, the following posts will be about different things I have worked on to change my way of thinking. The more my attitude about things changes, the more successful I will be, and I have no doubt I'll eventually get to the bottom of the hoard and reclaim our home for us.

I also knew that in order to be successful, I was going to have to put in the work. I was doing to have to do things that made me uncomfortable, and when I thought I couldn't handle anymore, I would have to increase my discomfort. It was going to take time. It may take years, even. So I refused to put a time limit on myself. As long as I was making forward progress, I wasn't going to really worry about how long it took. It was more important for the changes to be permanent than to get the stuff out of here in a hurry. I was not going to add the stress of a deadline to my already stressful endeavor.

When I mentioned the other day that I had a problem with acquiring things, I only mentioned shopping. But I also had problems getting free things from some of the free groups online, and I knew I needed to stop. At one point I was an owner/moderator of both a free group and a buy/sell group, and I found I was obtaining way too many items. I'm impulsive by nature, and I realized the groups were only nurturing that impulsivity. I needed to put an end to it.

So as hard as it was, I stepped away from the groups. I'd thought about leaving for a few years, but I'd put so much into them that it took awhile to convince myself it was a good idea. I know part of it was that I felt a responsibility for the groups. Would someone else run the group like I did? Would they put the love into it that I did? But a big part of it was also that I didn't want to miss out on a great item being given away.

It was hard giving up the groups. For a few days, anyway. After a week or so, I felt such a huge relief having let go of the burden to be responsible for everyone else's actions and only be responsible for my own. It wasn't my job. I realized that, if someone decided they were going to throw something out with the trash, it was not a requirement for me to save it from disposal.

I felt...unburdened.

Recognizing that I was not obligated to rescue other people's discards helped me tremendously. I was changing my way of thinking, and I was loving how free I felt. As a result, I started working on other things.

I started by staying home. If I wasn't in the stores, I wasn't buying anything. I stayed off the websites that I shopped from time to time, as well as all the free groups I frequented in the past. There's a lot to be said about the old saying, "Out of sight. Out of mind." I was able to keep from bringing things home that we just didn't need.

When I did actually have to go to the store, I still shopped the clearance endcaps, but I realized I found things less and less appealing. If I did find something I felt I could truly use and wouldn't be wasted, I would only buy 1 instead of the 4 that were sitting on the shelf. Occasionally, I would put all 4 in my cart and think about them while I continued shopping. More often than not, I realized I'd lost all interest in them by the time I got up to the cash register and was able to resist the purchase.

I got to the point I could withstand the urge to buy things fairly easily, but I felt like I still needed practice saying, 'no'. I started putting things in my cart that I absolutely loved. As I would walk around the store, I would try to find at least 5 reasons I didn't need it, and then I would repeat those reasons in my head while I was walking around. If I still wanted the item when I was done shopping, I would purposely put it back on the shelf with the thought that, if it was still there when I came back to the store later, I could buy it.

Sometimes, it was downright torturous, but I can't tell you how often I totally forgot about the object of my desire when I got home. I'd get busy with life, and I would never think of it again or when I thought of it again a week later I was relieved I hadn't succumbed to an impulse purchase. I found I rarely went back to the store to buy whatever it was, and it was even more unusual for me to actually feel bad about not getting to the store in time to buy it before the item was gone.

It just wasn't worth paying the price of bringing it home.

This will be a lifelong struggle for me, but it gets easier the more I practice. I figure that by the time I'm ready to leave this world, I'll have practiced enough I might have it down. I'm definitely up to giving it a go.

How do I know, if I'm a hoarder? Pt 6 - What do you think?

2012-01-25T23:57:00.003-07:00

So far, I've covered several things that I have in common with those with hoarding issues. The last two things that come to mind are obsessive negative thoughts and trouble communicating.

I don't ever remember a time in my life that I haven't struggled with negativity. It often consumes my thoughts for days at a time. I can just be minding my own business and boom! Something creeps in and takes my thoughts captive.

I never know when it will strike, what will set it off, how long it will last, or what the topic will be. I just know it's incredibly discouraging. Most often, the thoughts I can't get out of my mind have to do with someone hurting someone I love. Like when I was preoccupied for several days with the way my in-laws had treated our family.

It's absolutely exhausting to relive the hurt over and over again. I'd rather just forget it, put it in the past, and leave it there never to be thought of again. But the thoughts aren't always about someone hurting me or my family. Sometimes, it's worry about things that I have done wrong. And believe me. I've got plenty of fodder for the thoughts that dance in my head.

When I was very young, (maybe 8?), I remember hearing someone in church saying that humans are in a constant state of sin. I took it very literally, and I couldn't sleep, eat or breathe for days after I heard that. I thought it meant that every single breath I took, every bite of food I ate, every thought I had, everything I did was a sin. I specifically remember breathing in and thinking, "Oh my goodness! I just sinned!" Breathing out and thinking, "Oh no! I did it again!" And I remember feeling very, very guilty.

The thoughts eventually stopped, but I'm not sure exactly how it happened. I don't know, if I asked Mom, if I was understanding it correctly, or if I mentioned it to one of my older brothers and sisters, and they explained it to me or what. I do remember feeling relieved when I was no longer struggling with the negative thoughts. They would, however, still come rushing back when I would get in trouble for doing something naughty.

And just to be perfectly clear, my parents had nothing to do with the negative self talk. I firmly believe it's something I was born with. Something in my personality. I don't blame anyone for it. Not even myself. At least I don't blame myself when I'm actually thinking clearly. I still fall victim to my pointing fingers when I'm in the middle of a mind assault, but I believe it is how my brain is wired. It just is who I am, and I need to learn to deal with it, so it's not a debilitating thing.

I've also struggled my entire life with communicating my thoughts. I've written before about how I've struggled with talking too much. I've been told more often than I can count to 'get to the point' or to hurry up and say what I had to say. I always feel so belittled when it happens, but I can't find the words at the moment to say, "That hurts my feelings, and I feel belittled. Please let me finish my thought."

And there are certain topics that get me riled to the point I feel like I can't put two words together and make any sense. I have definite thoughts or feelings about the subject, but it's like they get stuck in my head and can't make their way out of my mouth . If I go ahead and try to address the issue right then and there, I come across as being in attack mode, because I can't get the right words out. My frustration level increases, my voice raises, and I go right into a fight or flight response. I am rendered completely ineffective to defend my thoughts, and my anxiety level increases dramatically.

It's maddening.

I've come to the conclusion that these will be lifelong struggles for me, but I also am hopeful that I will learn strategies for circumventing both situations before they get out of control.

I am more than my struggles.

How do I know, if I'm a hoarder? Pt 5 - It's about time.

2012-01-24T23:40:00.001-07:00

For as long as I can remember, I've struggled with time getting away from me. It extends into so many facets of my life, and it can be so incredibly frustrating.

Its taken years to realize that I need at least 2 to 2.5 hours to get all 3 of us girls showered and ready to go anywhere. It takes time. Lots of it. If we don't have any plans, and we're just hanging out at the house, it still takes about an hour and a half. If we don't start getting ready soon enough, I end up scrambling to get out the door on time and rushing to wherever we're headed.

That's about the only thing I have a clear idea of how long it should take. I'm not sure, if it's because my mind wanders, and I think of everything else that needs done when I'm working on a project, or if I get too distracted with other things that I end up doing, and it just takes longer or what. I just know that, if I think it should take me 15 minutes to do the dishes, and I allow for 30 minutes just to be safe, I'm still usually not done in an hour.

It's maddening. It's like I have no concept of time.

Any painting job I've started in the house, whether painting a room or painting furniture has taken at least twice and sometimes three times what I thought it was going to take. I sort of understand that, because I tend to be a bit anal retentive when it comes to painting. Once I'm done with the main part of the painting, I end up going back with a little tiny paint brush to fix my mistakes. I'm always satisfied in the end except for the length of time the project has taken.

And the dehoarding has taken so much longer than I expected it to. I was hoping I'd be done by this past Christmas, but realistically I now think it will take at least another full year. Maybe two. And once I'm done with the whole house, it will be a constant battle to make sure I keep it under control.

Besides struggling with time management, I also find that I'm constantly planning. It's like my mind won't shut off. I'm always rearranging furniture, hanging pictures, painting, sewing, dehoarding, or designing something in my head. In some ways it's great, because I always have an idea of how I want a room to look or what I want to dehoard well before I start working on it. I can see it in my mind's eye, and that can be a really good thing.

But it also has its pitfalls. I often find I'm lost in my head living in the future or even spending so much time in the past, relishing moments that have long gone, that I am not here in the moment like I should be. Don't get me wrong. Memories are a good thing, and we should all be able to enjoy them, and planning is essential. But it's not good thing, if it keeps you from living in the present.

You know why it's called the Present, don't you?

Because it's a gift.

I've been working on living in the present more often. I do something Hubster taught me years ago...

We were on a date for our anniversary when he suddenly went very quiet and started looking around. I thought maybe something was wrong, so I asked him what he was doing. He said he was taking a mental picture of how he was feeling, what he was smelling, what he was seeing, and what he was doing, so he could remember the moment.

I was bowled over. It was one of the most romantic things I'd ever heard.

It also reminded me how to live in the now, so I have wonderful memories of it later.

How do I know, if I'm a hoarder? Pt 4 - Too many categories.

2012-01-23T22:05:00.002-07:00

I've always struggled with sorting things. It's not that I can't sort. I can. But something I have in common with other hoarders is sorting things into too many categories.

For example, in the past, instead of just being able to close the box of crayons and put them away, I would have to sort them into like colors. It wasn't good enough to sort all the shades of red together. I'd have to sort them into shades of red starting with the pink on one side and ending in purple on the other. And it's something I did every time I'd put the crayons or markers away.

And laundry?

Towels are sorted into:

*Kitchen
*Darks
*Whites/lights
*Bathroom
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Reds

Clothes are sorted like this:

*Sweats
*Reds/Pinks/Purples
*Oranges
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Pants
*Black/BlueJeans
*Khakis
*Dress clothes
*Light Weight Clothing
     *Reds/Pinks/Purples
*Oranges
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Whites with any sort of non-white trim
*Medium Weight Clothing
     *Reds/Pinks/Purples
*Oranges
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Whites with any sort of non-white trim
*Heavy Weight Clothing
     *Reds/Pinks/Purples
*Oranges
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Whites with any sort of non-white trim
*Sweaters
*Light Weight Sweaters
     *Reds/Pinks/Purples
*Oranges
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Whites with any sort of non-white trim
*Medium Weight Sweaters
     *Reds/Pinks/Purples
*Oranges
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Whites with any sort of non-white trim
*Heavy Weight Sweaters
     *Reds/Pinks/Purples
*Oranges
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Whites with any sort of non-white trim
*All other shirts
*Reds/Pinks/Purples
*Oranges
*Darks
*Colors
*Whites
*Sheets
*Darks
*Lights
*Underwear

Thankfully, the kids are grown now, and I don't have to do all the sorting I did for their clothes when they were little anymore. I generally washed them separately from the rest, because their skin was much more sensitive. So add all the categories above to baby clothes, and you can understand why I've struggled with laundry over the years.

And when I clipped coupons? Yeah. I pretty much micromanaged my coupons. I stopped using them, because it was so time consuming. And toys? Oh my goodness. I'm not even going to go there. And this doesn't even scratch the surface of all the things that I need to sort in a day.

Needless to say, it's exhausting.

I've been able to curb the sorting of crayons and markers. And the toys the girls with are not the type that need sorting as much now. I still have a lot of their old toys, but they'll be sorted into 3 main areas when I get to them. Keep, donate & trash. And I will be getting rid of most of them.

But I don't know that I'll ever be able to sort the laundry any differently than I do now. For whatever reason, I can't seem to put the categories into bigger groups. I can handle crayons just being crayons.

But I can't handle laundry just being laundry.

How do I know, if I'm a hoarder? Pt 3 - Perfectionism

2012-01-22T18:08:00.004-07:00

I'm a perfectionist. You may not know it by looking at my home, but I am. In fact, I've been working on this post for 4 days now trying to get my thoughts into words. Trying to make it perfect.

Once again, I think I'm trying too hard.

Growing up, we were taught to do the best we could at anything we attempted. To give it our all. If you do your best, you can take pride in your work. You can be proud knowing you gave it your all, and your effort will be rewarded.

You know the old adage... If you can't do something right, don't do it at all.

When I was a kid, I thought that meant I had to be perfect. And when I wasn't perfect, when I didn't get something right, it meant that I was wrong. And I equated 'wrong' with 'naughty'. With failure.

My parents wanted me to apply myself, and rightfully so. Kids should apply themselves. Thankfully, my parents were not stage parents who pushed and pushed wanting me to be perfect. I was the one who wanted to be perfect, and I made things so much harder on myself as a result.

Even though I got good grades in school, I would be so disappointed when the grade on my paper was less than an A-. When I would get a B+, I always chided myself for, if I had only applied myself a smidgen more, I could have gotten an A. Disappointment doesn't describe what I felt, if I got a C on a paper. I was traumatized. Report cards were even harder to handle, because I could never quite get straight A's. I'd get all A's and 1 B one quarter and the next I'd have brought the B up to an A while in a different class my grade slipped to a B. It was maddening and disheartening.

School wasn't the only area where I had perfectionism issues. I didn't like art, because I couldn't seem to draw or paint anything that resembled what it was supposed to. As much as I loved to sing, I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket with the lid duct taped on tight, if my life depended on it. So I didn't sing where anyone could hear me.

Shortly before Bugster was born, we bought my sewing machine. I loved it, but I was so afraid of making a mistake and having my project not look good that it took me months to sew the only baby outfit I ever made. I made plenty of baby blankets and curtains and the diaper bag and bumper pads, but they were fairly easy things to sew. They were straight lines for the most part. Plus they stayed in the nursery. If I messed up on a baby outfit, people would see it when she wore the clothes. People would be able to see my mistakes, so I just never made clothes.

The list goes on and on.

It carried over into my life as a mother. I needed to be a perfect mother. It felt so personal when one of the babies cried. I just knew that it was, because they didn't love me, because I wasn't a good mother. I would be so embarrassed, if one of them spit up on their new clothes. I mean, if I was a good mom, they wouldn't get their clothes dirty, because I would have kept them from getting sick.

By the time life became so overwhelming with hospitalizations and the different medical needs the girls had, I was exhausted. Not only couldn't I get ahead on the laundry and housekeeping, I couldn't keep up on the daily stuff. It didn't matter that what I was going through as a mom was not typical, and that the only way for anyone to really keep up with what I had going on was to have extra help. I felt very, very imperfect.

In the meantime, I still had to make sure the clothes were all folded and put away without wrinkles. (Wrinkled clothes have always made me feel like a failure). The towels and sheets had to be folded exactly the same way each and every time. The dishwasher needed to be loaded, but it didn't get the dishes clean, so I had to pre-wash all the dishes before they went in the machine.

When I started getting so overwhelmed I couldn't keep up I stopped trying. I started living the, 'If you can't do something right, don't do it at all' to the fullest, because I didn't know how to do it any other way. As a result, all sorts of stuff piled up. Papers didn't get filed. Clothes didn't get sorted out of the main laundry when the girls outgrew them. Forget about getting the clothes sorted. I couldn't even keep up with keeping them clean. Dishes didn't get done in a timely manner, if I didn't have time to wash them all before the dishwasher was run.

I couldn't do it. I was a bundle of nerves, and depressed enough that I struggled with daily life.

And once again, I was a failure.

Stop the ride. I want to get off.

2012-01-21T23:58:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get a post done for the last couple of days, but I'm struggling with my concentration. I just keep getting distracted. It's so frustrating. So instead of trying to force myself to think in a way that I can't right now, I thought I'd go in a different direction.

We got the reports from the court visitor in the mail yesterday. They are the ones she filed with the courts. She did a good job of representing the girls and made it very clear she felt like we should be awarded guardianship. It helped take the pressure off a bit. It feels like we can breathe a little better now.

We expect the attorney will be calling in the next week or two with a court date. We feel fairly ready. Hopper and Scooter did so well when the court visitor came out that we're hoping they'll do as well when we visit the judge.

In spite of feeling confident that everything is going to go smoothly for the guardianship, my stomach still flips when I think about it. Once again, I am very thankful for anxiety meds.

I just hope the anxiety takes a leave once all the legal stuff is finished.

My stomach is ready to get off the merry-go-round.

Nothing.

2012-01-20T23:50:00.000-07:00

My head is full tonight.

Mind won't turn off.

Can't concentrate to write a post at all.

Will be back tomorrow.

How do I know, if I'm a hoarder? Pt 2 - Feeling responsible for everything.

2012-01-19T23:26:00.003-07:00

While watching the hoarding shows, I recognized a familiar stress in the participants of the show when they were challenged to get rid of certain items. Sometimes, they were little things like empty cans or jars that could be recycled. Other times, it may have been something that belonged to a loved one who was no longer alive.

The person being asked to make a decision would often look like a deer caught in the headlights. You could see the fight or flight response kick into high gear. They were scared. There is no doubt that they wanted to just run and hide.

I get it. I've been there. I've felt that very thing when I've tried to make decisions about getting rid of stuff over the years. Instead of making a decision, I would just decide to make a decision later. It wasn't logical that I had such battles with myself to get rid of some of these things, but struggle I did.

For example, I really wrestled with getting rid of ketchup packets. I mean, really. Ketchup packets? It made no logical sense, but I was afraid of wasting them. I mean, it's not like the world would come to an end, if I threw them in the trash, but they were good food. Surely someone could use them, but I didn't know who, and I didn't want them taking up space in the refrigerator anymore, but I didn't know what to do with them. As silly as it sounds, I felt a responsibility to be a good steward of the condiments, and I was was terrified of making the wrong decision.

So I just didn't decide.

I didn't decide which of the girls' clothes to get rid of. I didn't decide which toys needed to go. I didn't decide which clothes I no longer needed. I didn't decide which mugs I loved and really wanted to keep.

I kept everything, so that I didn't make the wrong decision.

I remember feeling a panic in my gut when I would see someone throw a newspaper or pop can in the trash instead of putting them aside to be recycled. After all, it was irresponsible to just throw things away that had any use left in them. It was my job to save stuff like that from the landfills. I would get it to it's proper place. It was my responsibility.

Except that it wasn't.

I was miserable. I felt absolutely overwhelmed by stuff. I was carrying the weight of every single pair of pants, every shirt, every toy, every baby blanket, every newspaper, every pop can and every ketchup packet on my shoulders.

I felt mentally paralyzed.

How was I ever going to have the time to find the right home for each piece of clothing that the girls had outgrown? How would I ever find the mates to all of the socks? I couldn't just give a half a pair of socks away. They'd just be tossed in the trash. People need 2 socks. They have 2 feet. I needed to find all of them, so I could match them up and find them the proper homes.

What about the toys and puzzles? I knew that the pieces were all there for each one, but I also knew that some of the pieces were in the garage, some were in their bedroom, and some were downstairs. How was I ever going to reunite the pieces, so the toys would be complete? No child was going to want an incomplete toy, but we spent hard earned money on them, and it would be a total waste to just throw them in the trash. Right?

The more I fought to figure it all out, the more paralyzed I felt.

I knew others could see that same fear in my eyes that I saw in those who appeared on the shows.

How do I know, if I'm a hoarder? Pt 1 - Acquiring

2012-01-19T00:02:00.002-07:00

Over the last couple of years, I've noticed 2 recurring searches that bring people to my blog. The first is something along the line of, "How do I know, if I'm a hoarder?" The second is variations along the line of, "Where do I start/How do I start to dehoard?"

I will try over the next few days to answer these questions to the best of my ability.

In my opinion, if a person is searching about information on whether or not they are a hoarder, the chance is they have a problem. It's only a matter of degree.

I realized that I had a hoarding problem after watching Hoarders the very first time. I physically felt the anxiety the participants in the show felt when someone would try to help them discard things. Whether it was someone demanding that something be thrown, a family member chiding or ridiculing them for saving something, or touching their things, I felt their anxiety. I could feel my heart rate noticeably increase, my palms begin to get sweaty, and my stomach start to flip. It scared me, because I saw myself in the people on the screen.

I was taught to trust my gut, and I knew.

I. just. knew.

Several years prior, I recognized I had a major problem with acquiring. I loved shopping, and if I found something that I thought was good buy, I would buy every item like it on the shelf when 1 or 2 would have been enough.

I was obsessed with bargains.

If for some reason I didn't buy an item I'd thought about buying when I was out and about, I wouldn't be able to get it out of my mind. Seriously. The thought that I had to have it would wake me out of a dead sleep, and I would go on the hunt for it the following day. If I was too late and the thing was gone, I'd feel like I'd lost something. The feeling of loss was very unsettling.

If I was able to actually buy the item when I went back to the store, I would be elated. Giddy, even. But it didn't last long. I would often be disappointed within a day or two of bringing my purchases home. At times I would come to my senses and return my purchases, but more often than not something would prevent me from returning things to the store.

I didn't enjoy using those things that I knew I shouldn't have bought. If I bought 6 of the exact t-shirt in different colors for the girls I would feel guilty about it when I would get them dressed. Even if the clothes were as little as $1 each, I would feel guilty over having bought as many as I did, because I knew they could never wear them often enough to wear them out.

I hated myself for being so weak.

I noticed on the hoarding shows that most of the homes had bag up on bag upon bag of purchases that had been dropped when they were brought in the house and totally forgotten. I recognized that was part of the hoarding behavior, and I recognized that I had struggled with that very issue for years.

From time to time I find myself slipping into the same mindset I had when I was acquiring. When I notice that I'm debating buying more of something than I need or we can use, I purposely stop and ask myself, if I really want or need the things in my shopping basket. Thankfully, I don't find myself in the position often, and 99 times out of 100 I put the items back on the shelf.

Years ago when the acquiring was so out of control, I went shopping several times a week. Now it's rare, if I go shopping more often than once every 2 weeks. I have noticed that the longer the time between shopping trips the harder time I have saying no at the register. Being mindful of this, I often window shop online to exercise my 'no' muscle and keep it strong. I put things in my online shopping cart and then never go through the checkout process.

I don't want to go back to unhealthy habits again.

Ugh.

2012-01-17T20:31:00.001-07:00

Woke up with a horrendous sinus headache. It took the better part of the day to get rid of it. The girls are feverish again. We have been hit with yet another cold. Seems like we can't seem to shake the colds this year.

So I'm off to bed. Hoping I'm up to doing something tomorrow.

My pillow is whispering to me...I must heed its call.

Coming clean.

2012-01-16T23:29:00.001-07:00

Almost 2 years ago, I walked around the house in a bit of a panicked daze taking pictures of how things looked before we started the dehoarding process. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It brought me face to face with my hoarding problem, and it made me sick to my stomach.

But it also motivated me. As a result, the levels of hoarding throughout the house have decreased. In some rooms, the decrease has been substantial.

Our bedroom probably started at about a 3 on the Clutter Image Rating on the International OCD Foundation site I mentioned the other day. Today, our bedroom pretty much stays at a 1, although the night stands climb to a 2 from time to time. Both Hubster and I find that we can't seem to allow it to go over a 2 before we go nuts and clean things out again. It's been pretty nice knowing it's always our little refuge from life.

There has been a much more drastic change in the girls' rooms.

A year before we realized we had a hoarding problem, the basement flooded due to a burst pipe. A lot of stuff was ruined as a result of the flooding, and what survived was stuffed into storage pods on the driveway. Even though she'd only been staying in the room for about a year before the mess, Hopper's room had been freshly painted, and it was the only dehoarded room in the house. But it became a dumping area for everything that wouldn't fit in the storage pods on the driveway, and we had to start over from scratch in her room.

With all that had been stored in Hopper's room, it would have easily rated a 7 on the visual scale. Mom helped me get it done when she was down here last year. We worked really hard for several days, but it was so worth it. Hopper's room has been at a level 1 for the most part since we finished. From time to time, it gets to a 2, and I'm quite happy with that. The best part is that it will never get really bad again. Ever.

Scooter and Hopper shared what is now Scooter's room for many years. When the basement flooded, they had to share it again, and it was so incredibly frustrating. I would work for a week or more on the room and would never seem to be able to get it under a 3. Within a week of having it clean, the girls would undo everything I'd have gotten done, and it would be back up to a 5. The clutter would creep back up to a 6 or 7 within a couple of weeks. The girls still slept in their beds every night, but there would be piles of stuff that Hopper had stacked as high as 4.5 or 5 ft at the heads of their beds. I could never seem to get the room clean and keep it that way.

Because of the magnitude of the clutter in Scooter's room, I focused on it early on in my journey. Mom helped me get started on it when she came down for Bugster and Bubster's first wedding when they got married at the courthouse. I finished it after she went back home, but it wasn't easy. I know that I had to have gotten rid of enough toys in the bedroom to fill a 'grand' van from top to bottom, front to back, and side to side. That doesn't even count the amount of stuff that went to the trash and the clothes that found their way to the laundry room to be washed, sorted and donated.

Since I finished cleaning Scooter's room, it's stayed clean. It would get messy from time to time before we got Hopper into her own room, but overall it has stayed clean. For the most part, Scooter's room remains at a 1, occasionally climbing to 2, but it has only gotten to a 3 once in the almost 2 years since it's been clean, and that was with Hopper's 'help'.

The bedrooms are definitely the biggest success stories, but I think they should be. The rest of the house hasn't fared quite as well.

The laundry room, was probably a 7 or 8 on the visual scale at its peak. It was bad. Once we finished clearing out the laundry room, it stayed at a 1 or 2 for the longest time, but it's crept back up to a 3 with the hospitalizations this year and the stress from the guardianship. I'm working on getting it back together. Hopefully, I can get it down to a 1 and keep it there!

The living room and dining room/kitchen have never been too bad, so there hasn't been significant improvement like the other rooms. They've crept up to a 4 for short periods of time over the years, but they probably averaged a 3 before I started this dehoarding process. Since then they stay between a 2 and 3 on average. They get down to a 0 or a 1 from time to time, but they don't seem to want to stay there without help.

There's also a large baker's rack in the living room that is a 7 all by itself. I don't count it as part of the rest of the room, because it's so out of place. I filled it up with paperwork when I was sorting through boxes back in October. I'll get it done eventually, but it might be awhile.

The study is bad again. It's always been a catchall, but it has the remnants of the paperwork I didn't get all the way through when I was sorting boxes. It's on the list. Not sure when I'll get it crossed off. I'd say it's currently a 5. I want to get it back down to the 1 it was years ago. It'll happen.

The garage had been really bad, too. Hubster thinks it was a 9 at its worst, but I think it was closer to an 8. Not that there's a huge difference between the 2. It's probably at about a 4, maybe a 5, since we worked in it about 18 months ago. We have plans to knock it out this Spring or Summer and get it under control. And the back porch? It easily started out as an 8, but it's probably at a 4 right now. It's also on the master list to finish up once the weather warms up.

The bathrooms have never been too bad - usually a 2 at the most, but we're in the process of remodeling a couple of them, so we just don't use them at all. They're not being used due to the remodel, not hoarding, so I'm okay with them.

That leaves the big room and workout room downstairs. They're the ones that were flooded, and we've worked so hard on. They were probably at an 8 or 9 before the flood 3 years ago. I'd say they're still at a 5, but that's because I still have to unpack and sort the boxes that had been in the pod on the driveway. I got through well over half of them, but I still have plenty to keep me busy.

So there it is. I've laid it all out there.

We still have a lot to do, but we've made incredible progress over the last 2 years. I still can't believe it's already been 2 years, but it has.

The really neat thing? In 2 more years, we should be at no more than a 2 in any room in the house.

You can mark my words!

G'nite.

2012-01-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

I had every intention of coming clean about where I fall on the visual scale of hoarding I posted about last night, but it's going to have to wait until tomorrow. Each time I've started writing something, I've fallen asleep.

Tomorrow then.

Where do you weigh in?

2012-01-14T23:52:00.000-07:00

I know that I always wondered how bad a hoarding problem I had. I mean, I knew I had a problem, and I knew it would just continue to grow, had I not realized I had a problem with hoarding. But I still wondered exactly how I stacked up. How bad off am I?

The International Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Foundation has tests you can take to determine whether or not you have a hoarding problem. You can find them here, if you're interested in checking into it.

I tend to be a pretty visual person, so the thing that spoke the loudest to me was the Clutter Image Rating. Just scroll down a bit, and you'll find it.

The thing I found interesting was that there wasn't an image 6. Can't tell I have OCD, can you? Ever since I visited the site the first time, I have been thinking about whether or not they purposely left that picture out, or if it was a simple human mistake, and the pictures were numbered incorrectly. I go back and forth between wondering that and wondering, if it's a test. You know. To see, if people pick up on it, and then how many of them obsess over it.

Regardless of my warped thoughts on the whole #6 picture, it gives a really good visual idea of where a person's hoarding might fall on the scale.

Good news.

2012-01-13T23:44:00.003-07:00

Good news.

I don't have skin cancer.

I didn't realize how much I'd been holding my breath waiting for today's appointment until I got the news. Now that I know that the new growths on my face that just made an appearance a couple months ago are benign, I am so relieved I feel weak. And achy.

My body apparently decided to celebrate with a pretty decent fibro flare. That's okay. I'll live. This fair skinned chick doesn't have any suspicious moles or nasties to worry about. The fibro ain't nothin' but a thing.

The best part? No meltdowns from Hopper for 2 full days.

Things are definitely lookin' up!

Now if Tebow can just lead the Broncos to victory tomorrow night, the weekend will be complete.

Me and my hangups.

2012-01-12T15:53:00.000-07:00

When the court visitor was here last week and looked in Scooter's closet, she said, "Wow. OCD much?" She thought Scooter had arranged the closet, but I told her I had. I explained that it just made things so much easier for Scooter to find what she needed at a glance. I had all of her clothes sorted and hung neatly. Starting at the left were the long-sleeved blouses followed by short-sleeved blouses, short-sleeved t-shirts, long-sleeved t-shirts, pants, dresses and skirts, and each section was arranged by color. To me, it just looked nice and neat. It makes things much easier for Scooter to see what's available in her closet and to pick out what she's going to wear for the day.

I was thinking that her closet was the only one that looked like that, when I realized all of them do. Hopper's closet has one of those wire closet organizers installed, so it's organized a bit differently but even the coats in the coat closet are organized by who wears them with the winter coats to the left and lightweight coats to the right. And the linen closet looks amazing, if I do say so, myself. Everything is folded neatly and in its place, and looks great. Best of all, things are very easy to find.

When any of the closets start to get messy and disorganized, I find my anxiety level goes up. It's just disconcerting. Maybe it's because they're the only truly finished areas in the house. All I know, is that I have to have them looking neat and organized as much as possible.

It can be a real hangup for me.

Almost 2 years ago, I wrote about the struggle I was having with my hangers. I had so many different types of hangers that I was compelled to sort them every time I passed them by. I had to have a different color for each person in the house, and it drove me absolutely nuts when the colors were mixed up in the closets. I wasted so much time and energy on them.

At the time, I realized that the best thing for me to do for myself in regard to the hangers was to start over from scratch, and I gave myself permission to buy all new hangers for our tops. It was hard for me to justify the expense, but I'm so glad I felt I was worth the small cost. It has helped tremendously.

At the time, I thought I could get away without doing anything about the pants and skirt hangers. Well, that's not entirely true. I did get rid of a hodgepodge of pants hangers (at least 4 different styles and 4 different colors), but I still had 3 different colors and 2 different styles left. I've found that it's still too many choices for me.

In the last 2 years, we've had black, opaque and clear hangers that had the pinch things on them that opened like a clothespin to hang the pants or skirts. The clearest ones were supposed to only be used for Scooter's clothes, because her pants and skirts are the lightest weight, and they'd be least likely to break the hangers. Then the black pinch ones were Hoppers, and the opaque pinch ones were Scooter's. Hubster's hangers were black, but instead of pinching open and closed, there was a little part that went over the clothing and then a silver piece slid down over the plastic to hold the fabric in the hangers.

It's bothered me over the last 2 years, but it hasn't bothered me enough to do anything about it.

Until today.

This past week, I realized I've been wasting a lot of time and emotional strength and energy on these stupid hangers. It was frustrating when one of Hopper's was used to hang my clothes, because none of mine were available, or when some of Hubster's clothes were hung on Scooter's hangers and were heavy enough they snapped the hanger in two. Never mind the amount of time waste looking for the 'right' one to use when I had something to hang.

I've tried for years to make the hangers work. But now that I've come to the conclusion that they aren't working for me, I've decided to do something about it. I realized that it was worth it to buy pants hangers in bulk on eBay, so I'm not obsessing over the mismatched hangers anymore. I will donate the old mismatched ones. The new ones will take the stress over who is using whose hangers away completely, and they'll cut down on the time looking for the right hanger to nothing. The choice will be gone.

I'm already looking forward to their arrival next week. It will just be one less hangup for me to deal with on a daily basis.

I can deal with that.

I feel like I'm in a Carol Burnett sketch.

2012-01-11T23:25:00.000-07:00

Remember in the sketches on the Carol Burnett Show how Carol's eye would twitch and twitch and twitch when she was stressed out? Yeah. That could be me. My right eyelid has been twitching for over a week now, but it hasn't been nearly as funny as the sketches on her show.

Hopper was marginally better today, but it was a pretty narrow margin. The antibiotics haven't really had time to make much of a difference just yet, and she still melted again today.

I was able to squeeze a few loads of laundry in, but I'm hoping to get a bit more done tomorrow. I've got several things I am wanting to write about on my blog, too, but I can't seem to concentrate enough to put more than 2 words together.

Tomorrow then.

Twitchingly yours,

Tomorrow is another day.

2012-01-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

Sure enough. It's a sinus infection. Antibiotics started tonight. Hope they kick in quickly, so Hopper is back to her meltdown-free self, soon.

Very long, very stressful day again today, and now I can't keep my eyes open. I'm sure the anxiety meds I took are playing a role, but the first time in 2 days I feel like I'm finally starting to relax.

Hoping tomorrow is a better day.

Is it hot in here?

2012-01-09T22:36:00.000-07:00

Today wasn't a good day for Hopper. She doesn't feel well, but on top of that I think reality is setting in that she's done with school forever. She finished right before Christmas break, and it's hitting her hard that she's not going back.

Days like this are just emotionally exhausting. The day was filled with several meltdowns, and it was hard on all of us. Her hoarding tendencies were also very apparent.

She'd been loud today, but it wasn't anything really worse than normal. That is until I brought her backpack upstairs, so we could switch out the contents for the new one she got this weekend. I could not even explain to her that I just brought it up, so we could get it ready for her to use, before she started screaming, "NO!!! MY STUFF!!"

On the surface it appeared as though she was freaking out simply over the fact that I had picked up her backpack. In reality, it was because she was afraid I was going to take her papers out of the backpack. She's very possessive about her things, which is very typical for someone who hoards, and I can handle that just fine. The thing I can't handle is her screaming at the top of her lungs right in my face.

I'm hoping I can get an appointment for her to be seen tomorrow. I'm thinking she may have a sinus infection. This is typical meltdown behavior, but it's not typical for her to have a meltdown complete with an hour of screaming at the top of her lungs over paperwork. She's gets crabby just like others do when she's not feeling well. I'm hoping that ridding her of her sinus problems will help with her mood.

I don't know how many more meltdowns at the top of her lungs my ears can handle.

Tired. That's all.

2012-01-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

Long day today.

Celebrated the Bubster's birthday today. Enjoyed the time with the kids. Came home and watched an amazing Broncos game with Hubster and the girls. And ached all over.

I'm not sure, if I'm getting what the girls have, (they were both feverish before they went to bed), or if it's just a firbro flare, but I've been pretty much exhausted, achy and wheezy all day. I'm sure the asthma is just kicked up from being at Bugster & Bubster's house. I've got a severe allergy to dogs, and they've got 2, plus they have 4 cats and a rabbit. The dogs were outside, and they vacuumed before we got over there, but I just don't think it takes much.

I'd love to get allergy shots, so we can get a dog at some point, but I don't know, if my allergies are too severe for them to help. We really miss having a dog. It kills me when we go to Bugster's, because their dog used to be ours, and I can't pet her or be around her at all. She has a tendency to pant in your face to get attention, and that always takes my breath away. It makes me so sad, because I know she misses me. She was my buddy.

Maybe someday.

But today I need a dog today, like I need another hole in my head.

Retail therapy.

2012-01-08T00:27:00.000-07:00

Took the girls shopping today. It's the first we've been out together in forever. It was so much fun, but I'm so tired. It's amazing how tiring shopping can be, isn't it?

We had a blast. The girls did an amazing job paying for their purchases, and it was such a fun day.

I'm just dead to the world tired tonight. I decided to take the time to post this pathetic little tidbit, because I'm trying to commit to do a daily blog post, but now I'm off to bed.

I'll check in again tomorrow.

Happy Sunday, everyone!

If you think a black eye is good, how about head to toe bruises?

2012-01-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

Things were tough for Scooter her first few years of life. She was considered medically fragile and ended up hospitalized with pneumonia or asthma, if we even dared to take her out in public. She was so ill so often that I would have constant nightmares of bringing her home from the hospital in a body bag. It was horrific. If it were not for her strong desire to live, I don't think she'd have survived her many close calls with death.

She was willing to fight to stay, and fight she did.

Scooter's indomitable spirit was crucial to her survival and development. If she hadn't had the fight in her that she did, she'd have never learned to sit. Granted, it didn't happen until she was 4, but it happened! And walking? The doctors felt it was out of the question, but they didn't know her like we did. We knew in our hearts that she was going to walk someday. She took her first ever steps 2 weeks before her 6th birthday, and she never looked back. We gave away her wheelchair when she was 7.

Her strength and determination helped her beat the odds time and time again.

Scooter's frustration over not being able to sit up, not being able to eat solids until she was 5, and the constant illness, combined with her lack of ability to communicate was very apparent. She often lashed out. She would reach over when she was angry and pull someone's hair as hard as she could, relieving the victim of a small handful of hair each and time.

She hits herself in the head when she's angry. When she is upset and smacks herself, you can hear a gut-wrenching thud from the other room. It's a horrible sound. For years, she's had not only a bruised lump on the back of her right wrist but on her forehead above her right eye, as well. When she was little she had bangs to help cover the ugly bump. Mostly, it was so other kids wouldn't gawk at her, but the issue of someone reporting us to CPS for something she did to herself definitely played a role in her having bangs.

But these aren't the only examples of Scooter's temper problems and our concern that we'd be reported to Child Protective Services.

Because Scooter couldn't sit up until she was 4, she was in the crib until we felt it was safe for her to be in her own bed, but it frustrated her to be so immobile. When she wasn't in the crib, she got around pretty darned well. She did what we called "the backstroke" across the floor to get anywhere she wanted in the house. Lying on her back, she would raise her elbows above her shoulders, firmly plant them on the floor and pull her body with her head cocked, looking over her head at her destination. As a result, she had no hair on the back of her head at all except the occasional stubble where some of her hair was trying to grow back.

Her crib was the only place we felt she was safe, if we couldn't be right there watching her. So if it was time for Hopper's bath, or if we had to use the restroom, Scooter was in the crib. We felt we had no choice. Her safety was of utmost importance.

For several months, maybe a year, she hated being in the crib, if anyone else was awake. She would let us know of her displeasure by retaliating. At times she would take her diaper off and smear it around, (thus, another reason for the 20 bottles of rubbing alcohol), but other times she resorted to hurting herself. She would put her arms and legs through the spindles of the crib and beat them until they were bruised.

If she was angry that we put her in the crib, so we could shower, the length of her legs and arms were absolutely black and blue by the time we toweled off. It was terrifying. If we left the house, we had to keep her in long sleeved shirts and long pants even when it was 100° outside. Anybody seeing a child in a wheelchair, who couldn't even sit up, with the bruises that Scooter sported would have assumed she was the victim of child abuse.

We told the doctors what she did, and they believed us. But still. Would that be enough? We went as far as videotaping some of her tantrums for our own protection. We were terrified of somebody seeing her bruises and reporting us to CPS. I have no doubt that an investigation would have been launched, and if it hadn't been, I would have really questioned the integrity of the local CPS unit.

Scooter was hospitalized a few months before her 4th birthday due to another bout of asthma and pneumonia. While she was hospitalized, the doctors ordered a PH probe study to test how often she was experiencing acid reflux. The results were not good. It didn't matter what position she was in, whether she had just eaten, or whether she was sleeping or awake. She was experiencing heartburn over 80% of the time.

She needed surgery to correct it. The doctors didn't want her going home without having the surgery. So once the pneumonia was cleared up and the asthma was under control, they booked the OR. She had a fundoplication. It's a surgery to wrap her stomach around her esophagus and give her a sphincter of sorts to replace the esophageal sphincter she was born without.

Normally, I stayed overnight with the kids when they're in the hospital, or we take turns, but this time I was sick. We didn't want Scooter to catch whatever ailed me, so Hubster spent his nights at the hospital this time . By the 6th night or so he was exhausted from the nurses constantly coming in through the night to give her meds or breathing treatments and then putting in a full day at work. He needed to get some sleep, so he stayed home that last night. She was to have surgery in the morning.

I was still getting over my illness and didn't want to compromise her recovery, so for the first time ever, Scooter was alone at the hospital overnight. It was the only time she ever has been, or ever will be, alone overnight while hospitalized. She desperately needs one of us to be there with her. The hospital is a big scary place for a kid to be alone.

When we got to the hospital a few hours before the surgery, the next morning, three nurses came running down the hall to meet us. We didn't know what was going on, and we were a bit startled. What was wrong? How serious was it?

MrsHubster! MrHubster! Wedon'tknowwhathappened! We'resosorry! Wedidn'ttouchher! Wedidn'tdoit! Wecameintotheroomandshelookedlikethis! She'scoveredinbruisesfromheadtotoe!!

We walked into her room to see that Scooter was indeed covered in bruises. These were the same type of bruises that we covered up during the summer for fear that CPS would take our daughters away from us. And the bruises were deeper and uglier than any that she'd had to date.

The hospital had two types of metal cribs they used. Some cribs had round rods. Others had rectangular spindles. The rectangular spindles were about 1" by .5", and although they were not sharp enough to cut anyone, they were definitely sharper than the rods. Scooter's crib happened to have the rectangular spindles this time.

She glared at us when we came in. She was mad. She'd gotten so upset that neither of us stayed the night that she put her arms and legs through the spindles and flailed. It had to have hurt. The bruises were so deep, and they were such a dark black. They lasted for what seemed like forever but in reality was just a few weeks.

It absolutely broke our hearts. We felt horribly guilty that it happened, because we weren't there with her. It was our fault. On the other hand, we were also completely relieved. The nurses were relieved, too. They knew we had no intention of suing them.

It hadn't even crossed our minds.

For the first time in months, we felt like we could breathe.

We knew that this incident would be recorded at the hospital. It would be recorded in the file at her pediatricians'. And it would be kept in those records until she was at least 18 years old. This incident would keep CPS at bay, should we ever be reported. We finally had proof we didn't cause the bruises on her arms and legs. The relief we felt was immeasurable.

Between Hopper's black eyes and Scooter's black and blue marks, we had a constant cloud of fear under which we lived for years. The anxiety from that came rushing back to us when we first learned we needed to get guardianship of the girls a few years ago. It just kicked into high gear the last few months as we began this journey.

After the chat with the court visitor the other day, the relief was once again palpable.

We have nothing to fear.

And in a few weeks when we go to court, it will be official.

And we will be able to breathe deeply once again.

Raise your hand, if you think a black eye is a good thing?

2012-01-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

When I was on the phone the other day the court visitor, she seemed so surprised that we were anxious over the impending guardianship. We explained to her the exact reason for our anxiety when she was here yesterday.

Most of our lives as parents have been fraught with a certain amount of anxiety above what the typical parents experience. If it wasn't one thing, it was another. Part of it was just normal childhood stuff that made us catch our collective breath. Other times, it was typical childhood booboos that happened often enough that it wasn't really typical. Other times, it was thing way beyond the norm - like the roughly 5 dozen hospitalizations our two youngest experienced amongst other things.

We moved cross country so often in Hopper's first 2.5 years that the doctors never seemed to think she was having a problem with ear infections. We'd have to start the count all over from the beginning in order for the doctors to feel she qualified for ear tubes, and by the time she did qualify, it was time for us to move once again. By the time she was 2.5 and had her first set of ear tubes, she'd had right at 3 dozen ear infections.

The constant ear infections caused Hopper to walk like a drunken sailor when she started her upright journey. Walking down a hallway meant she would wobble from one wall to the other in an attempt to keep on her feet. Even after the surgery to insert the first set of tubes in her ears, she ran into everything. Every. Thing.

She started attending preschool shortly after her 3rd birthday. Early intervention and all. And she ran into everything. Most of the time, she ran into things at home. For a few years, one eye or the other was blackened every couple months or si during the school year, and we knew that each and every one of her black eyes was recorded in her permanent file. We lived in fear of the school officials calling child protective services on us with every bump and bruise that showed up on her pale little skin.

One day Hopper's teacher called in a panic. She was on the verge of tears. She was talking so quickly it was hard to understand what she was saying.

OhmygoodnessJudy! I'msosorry! Iwasholdingherhand! Idon'tknowwhathappened. Youknowthosemetalpillarsthatseparatethedoubledoorsattheschool? Wewerecominginfromrecess,andIwasholdingHopper'shand,andIdon'tknowhowithappened,butsheranrightintoit,andshehasahugeblackeye!

I am SO sorry!!

I started laughing.

I couldn't help it.

I was so incredibly relieved, and I know it sounds horrible to be relieved that your child had yet another black eye, but it was so much more than that. I knew that Hopper was fine, and it felt like I could breathe for the first time since she'd started school 4.5 years earlier. She had finally gotten a black eye with someone else watching her. This would be recorded in her permanent file. We knew then and there that we would not be accused of causing her frequent black eyes. She was a very active kid with poor balance that just happened to run into things a lot. And if it happened when she was with professionals, and they wouldn't be found liable, then we knew that we wouldn't either.

We knew that CPS wouldn't be knocking on our door to take our children away from us, because Hopper had an inordinate number of black eyes. But we still didn't know, if they'd come after us because of Scooter.

But that's a story for another day...

Nothing but net.

2012-01-05T01:51:00.000-07:00

The visit with the court visitor went better than we could have ever expected. It felt like we'd known her forever, and she loved the girls.

We were very honest with her. We explained that we are recovering hoarders who are still working on dehoarding the house. She said that she didn't consider our house to be a hoarded home. That it was nothing compared to other people's homes she's been in where there were hoarding problems. I did tell her that we'd gotten rid of probably more than half of what we need to, so it's a huge improvement. Still. It made us feel good to know that we have come as far as we have, and it makes the final goal feel totally attainable at some point.

I was still stressed today before she got here. Hubster was, too. The tension was thick in the air, and it caused all of us to snap at one another a bit. I think that's a normal and natural reaction to stress, albeit a frustrating one. The stress dissipated much like a fog beginning to lift the longer the we spoke with the court visitor By the time she left, all of us were quite relieved and things were back to normal.

She said that this is a very simple case, and once she gets her report submitted our attorney will be able to get a court date for us. She said we could expect it to be as late as March, because the dockets are so full right now. But at least we feel like we can breathe. In fact, I am relaxed enough I can't seem to keep my eyes open.

It's off to bed for me.

If I can wake up enough to get in there, that is...

As The Stomach Turns

2012-01-03T15:37:00.002-07:00

My stomach is once again riding the anxiety merry-go-round after having made a safe dismount recently.

Got the call a bit ago that the court visitor will be out tomorrow afternoon.

I feel like I haven't been able to breathe since I spoke with her. She was very nice, and she tried to reassure me, when I told her of the anxiety since we started the proceedings. She asked me why we were so stressed. I told her that even though we know that the chance of something going wrong is .00000001%, that the mere thought of that .00000001% going wrong is enough to stress out parents who absolutely adore their children. That we have every intention of keeping them with us for as long as we're capable of taking care of them and the thought of not being able to is very stressful.

She told me not to worry. She's been doing this for years, and cases like ours are considered a 'slam dunk'. And while my head is so incredibly relieved to hear that, my heart and my gut are churning.

Ugh.

Well...I'm off to get something done before her visit tomorrow.

Nap time.

2012-01-02T21:59:00.000-07:00

The other day, I worked on something that's been hanging over my head for several months. When she came down for Bugster and Bubster's wedding this summer, my sister got some skirts and sundresses for Scooter. Scooter loves skirts of all lengths, but she especially loves broomstick skirts and the like, so we were thrilled when my sister found these for her at a garage sale when she was visiting.

The only problem was that neither sundress fit right, and the skirts were a little too big around for her. So a couple of nights ago, I used the seam ripper and took the bodices off the 2 sundresses. My eyes were killing me by the time I was done, because I am at the age when I'm seriously needing bifocals, but I got them off without too much hassle, and I didn't even slice the tip of my finger open with the seam ripper. I'll call it a win.

My sister also picked up a little babydoll-type blouse that fit Scooter sort of funky. The bottom of the blouse wasn't really flared much. It had a bit of a crisscrossed halter look at the top and tied behind the back with little off the shoulder sleeves that drove Scooter crazy. So I took it apart. I took the halter and ties off, added some elastic to the back of it, and I made it into a little skirt. Scooter will wear it with a pair of leggings underneath, and she's thrilled to have yet another skirt to choose from when getting dressed.

I have a couple more skirts I have to make some adjustments to today, and I've got to do a little mending, but the sewing machine won't be on the table by the time evening hits. It will be put away downstairs in it's semi-permanent place once again. Actually, I had at least intended to get it put away when I started writing this post a couple of days ago, but I didn't finish my mending like I thought I would. If I don't get it wrapped up tomorrow, I will get it back downstairs. At least the sewing machine is put in its case, isn't taking up table space, and is waiting patiently for me to decide what to do with it.

I had to go downstairs last night to look for the elastic for the skirts and to grab some thread. When I was looking for the elastic, I found 6 bobbins for my sewing machine that I hadn't seen in years. I was so excited! This will make my life so much easier! It's been rough working with only 1 or 2 bobbins over the years. They've already been put in my sewing box, so I'll know where they are the next time I use my sewing machine.

When I was downstairs looking for stuff in my craft area, I so wanted to just start sorting things again. It's the first I've felt like that in quite awhile. I just wanted to get lost in sorting for a few hours, but the boxes are going to have to wait. I need to make sure that I have as much done as I can to be ready for the guardian ad litem's visit to the house. She's not going to care how much I need to sort in the craft room. The laundry is a much bigger priority, and the 3 loads I got done yesterday barely dented the pile.

The pile looks comfy enough to jump in, though. Sort of like a leaf pile without all the dust and scritchy scratchy things.

Maybe I'll just pretend it's a bed and take a nap.

It's official.

2012-01-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

Sort of.

Christmas Eve's mail included paperwork from the attorney letting us know that he had petitioned the court on our behalf. Things were finally in motion. We knew to expect more soon, but we didn't realize how soon that would be.

Last week's mail included more paperwork from the attorney letting us know the name of the court appointed visitor who will be working on the girls' behalf. Her report is due to the courts by January 17th, so she will be calling us to set up a meeting with the girls very soon. We're assuming we'll be hearing from her in the next couple of days. I think all the court offices are closed tomorrow for the New Year holiday, but I wouldn't be surprised, if we get the call Tuesday. I guess we'll see.

So that which we have dreaded is upon us.

So far, we're surviving. My stomach didn't start flipping over the paperwork that came on Christmas Eve. In fact it came as almost a relief, because it was finally here. We can now deal with it in the present instead of as an unknown future thing. The paperwork that came yesterday, though? Yeah. Not quite as much a relief. At the same time, the anxiety meds are doing their job, and I'm actually doing okay with it all. For now. We'll see what happens when we actually have a court date.

In the meantime, I'll try to keep on keepin' on. I'll try to get caught up on the laundry and attempt to get the girls' rooms under control once again. It really doesn't take a lot for them to get messed up, but at least it only takes a fraction of the time to get them back in order that it used to take. The frustration comes from the fact that Scooter would keep her own room fairly clean, if it weren't for Hopper 'helping' put things in there. She just opens the door and lobs whatever is in her hand at the time into the room and then shuts the door.

I'm also going to make an effort to do a daily blog post again, a resolution, if you will. Posting has been such a huge help over the last couple of years, and I've really missed it and the imaginary friends I've met while blogging. While I will be trying to post daily for awhile, I know I'm not going to have the mental wherewithal to read blogs until we're through this guardianship situation. Hopefully, I'll be able to catch up here and there once this big stressor is behind us.

Until then...

Wishing everyone Happy & Healthy New Year Blessings!

My skewed perception of things.

2011-12-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

During a conversation the other day, a friend asked me how much I'd gotten done in my dehoarding process. When I started listing everything, she gently interrupted me to clarify. What did I have left to do to finish dehaording the house?

Upstairs, (which is really just the main level and not actually up), I still have the porch and garage, as well as the study. I guess I should add the storage shed in there, too, but I did dehoard it fairly well last Spring. I just want to go through it again and purge it of the things I know we will no longer use. Downstairs, the boxes of books need to be unpacked and put away in the workout/book room, and the big room that will be part craft area/part family room still needs done.

She asked me what it felt like to have so little left to do overall. I was a bit stunned. Not because of what she asked, but at my reaction to her query. I was dismayed at all that I could see that still needed done. It didn't help that it felt as though I haven't gotten a thing done since Mom left last April. Granted, I have had a lot going on. The wedding. The hospitalizations. The guardianship. But I felt like I failed, because I just haven't acomplished a single thing for months.

I chewed on our conversation for a few hours. I just couldn't get it out of my head. Then a thought popped into my mind. I remembered the 40 boxes of paperwork that I worked so hard to sort in October and the first part of November. It was such a relief to know that I had actually accomplished something monumental in the last several months. Granted, I still have a monumental climb in front of me, but at least I'm starting from over halfway up the mountain this time. I'm not at the bottom looking all the way up.

I thought about a lot of things during and after our conversation. I was a little surprised to realize that aside from the study and the remodeling that needs to be completed in the bathrooms that I have successfully dehoarded the main level of the house. Granted. There's light cleaning and dusting that needs to be done, but maintenance is to be expected. It took me a bit of guard when it dawned on me that none of the rooms I've already dehoarded need more than a picking up and a thorough dusting. None of the upstairs rooms should take more than a couple or 3 hours to be thoroughly cleaned and ready for the holidays.

Now, if I could just stop procrastinating the whole getting started thing, I'd be in good shape.

:::shrug:::

Maybe tomorrow.

Maintaining. My grip on reality.

2011-12-09T21:46:00.000-07:00

Ha.

Like I've had any real grip on reality lately.

My anxiety meds had to be upped, because my stomach decided to do the roller coaster thing and not turn off once again. I've had to take the faster acting anxiety meds more frequently than I would like, so I'm hoping the full effect of the higher dose kicks in soon. I hate feeling like this.

I recognized one of the major factors to my anxiety the other day that, for whatever reason, I couldn't see before. Adding to the stresses of the guardianship situation, is the big unknown that begins in January.

Since Hopper is 21, she is aging out of the school system, and she graduates next week. At this point, she's been on a waiting list for services since she turned 14. Unfortunately, she may still be waiting another 5 years. Granted, the wait could be over in 6 months, but we won't know until we know. You know? So it means that she will drop from going to her day program 5 days a week through the school to going only once a week through private pay.

I'm afraid it's going to be hard on her. She loves going to 'work', and even though we're trying to prepare her for what it's going to be like, I don't think it will really sink in until she's stuck at home most of the week. My stomach turns when I even think about it, because I don't want it to be hard on her. After 18 years in the school system, there's bound to be an adjustment. Who knows? Maybe she'll handle it better than we're imagining.

In the meantime, I've been trying to keep my mind off things and trying to keep busy. I've got some deep cleaning to do for the holidays, and we've still got to decorate and put up the tree, but I've been struggling with it all. I need to get back on my Vitamin D again, since don't have regular exposure to the sun this time of the year and I'm feeling the effects of SAD. Hopefully, the D will kick in and help me kick this thing.

I helped Scooter clean her bedroom last week. It wasn't too bad compared to what it used to be like, but it was the worst it's been since I got it dug out at the beginning of this journey. So we cleaned it from top to bottom. Dusted. Vacuumed. Swept the floor. Rearranged the toys.

It took less than 2 hours total. That was exciting and encouraging. It used to take the better part of a week to get it clean, and it would quickly revert back to chaos within a week or two. To know that her bedroom has been maintained since last May is amazing to me. I spent so many hours over the years trying to get to this point that it still seems a bit unreal that I'm 'here'.

It's probably because I'm not 'here' everywhere else in the house. Still, I'll take what I can get.

Yesterday, I got her winter clothes out of the plastic boxes in the closet and put her summer clothes away. Then we went through her closet and dehoarded. Once again, I was surprised at being done within 2 hours of starting the job. I bagged up a kitchen trash bag full of clothes that will be picked up tomorrow.

The bag included several clothes that Scooter no longer wears, but the best thing is that I was ready to get rid of some clothes from my childhood. I wore some of them when I was in junior high and others when I was in high school, but I no longer feel it necessary to keep them around. I realized that Scooter will never wear them, but best of all, I realized they no longer had a hold on me.

After Scooter left for school today, I did go back into her closet and got rid of 5 more things that I know she'll never miss. She had chosen to keep them, but she hasn't worn any of them in over a year or had outgrown. I know she will never even know. I could have probably taken even more out without her knowing, but I only took the things I knew for sure she would never wear again.

One was a Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt that she wore to school at least once a week about 5 years ago, and she wore it around the house all. the. time. She loved it , but she only wore it on one occasion last year, and I know that it was time for it to go. There was a little tutu looking skirt that she's outgrown in the last few months, but she has another one that fits, so it won't be like she even notices it's gone. There were 2 long sleeved t-shirts she wore under other clothes to add an extra layer when it was cold, but we just got her several light weight long sleeved thermal shirts a few weeks ago, so she doesn't need them. And lastly there was a little black shirt that had been Bugster's when she was much younger. Scooter's worn it less than a handful of times in the last few years.

Time to pitch it!

We'll go through the clothes again when I put her winter clothes away and get her summer clothes back out of storage in a few months. Hopefully, we'll be able to get rid of a few more of her unused clothes then.

I'm hoping to get the house ready for decorating this weekend and maybe even get the tree up.

I'm thinking little bit of Christmas should chase the SAD away...

Not much to report.

2011-11-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

The anxiety meds are doing their job, and I'm feeling much less anxious and better able to cope with all that's going on.

However, we've been sick with the crud, which has kept my progress at, well, under ideal. I'm not sure, if this is the flu or not. We've been totally exhausted. Absolutely no energy at all makes it more than difficult to accomplish a single thing. We haven't had high fevers, but we have been feverish. Then again, we didn't get high fevers when we had the swine flu a couple years ago, either. :::shrug::: It's enough that we're miserable. I guess we don't need a name for it.

::::cough::::

::::cough::::

::::sniffle::::

::::sneeze::::

To top things off, my extended family has been going through an awfully lot lately, and my heart hurts for all of them.

In the last 6 weeks or so a sister in law lost both her parents, a niece lost a pregnancy, 2 different cousins lost their husbands, and a brother in law lost his brother. And while none of it directly affected me, thoughts for my loved ones weigh heavy.

We've been a bit nervous for Bugster. She quit her job a few weeks ago, because her paychecks were bouncing. Job + bouncing payroll checks is not a good combination. One employee was behind 4 paychecks. Another was behind 6. I just can't imagine working for 8 and 12 weeks without pay. Bugster stayed longer and more loyal than either Hubster or I would have, but she's just can't stand the thought of someone else being put in a bind. We're glad she's out of there, but we can't help but worry for the kids a bit. It's a parent's job, right?

I did get back in touch with a friend I'd lost touch with about 8 years ago. It was wonderful getting caught up, but she's had it really rough. Just a lot of family problems in that period of time, including losing her fiance just weeks before their wedding. My friend doesn't have computer skills and is totally intimidated by them, so she took his daughter's word for it that her fiance had died out of state. Except that he hadn't. He's alive.

I would want to know under the same circumstances. And I would want a friend to tell me, rather than finding out from someone else, so I felt like I had to say something. It was one of the most difficult calls I've ever had to make, and I hope I never had to break news like that again. As hard as it was to hear, my friend was thankful I cared enough to tell her. I just hope she heals quickly.

I debated long and hard before telling her. I polled a few friends and family about whether or not they would want to know. Everyone I asked said they would want to know, if they were in her shoes, but some would not have told her to spare her feelings. How about you? Would you have wanted to know?

On a different note I've made a little bit of progress. I've finally frozen all but the last cookie sheet of tomatoes. I'm just waiting for them to ripen, although I may try my hand at fried green tomatoes. I haven't had the energy to try them just yet. At this point, they'll just be fried green tomato chips, since the tomatoes that are left are just tiny. Still. They'd probably be good along with some fried zucchini as a snack or on spaghetti.

No word yet on the guardianship front. I'll be calling the attorney this week to see where we are in the process.

And once again I'm so very thankful for the anxiety meds, since just writing the above sentence made my stomach start with the flips again.

Have I mentioned we're ready for 2012 to make its entrance?

Immobilization. It's not as fun as it sounds.

2011-11-05T11:07:00.000-06:00

What I didn't mention in my last post from a couple of weeks ago is that I've really been struggling lately. I said that we had a really long and stressful day getting state IDs and flu shot and all the week before and made 7 pints of salsa. And I mentioned that I was still getting things done.

However, my effectiveness as a person slowed to almost a complete halt during the days after that outing. Dehoarding stopped. Most house work and laundry came to a screeching halt. Yep. I have been pretty worthless.

The night before we spent the day getting the documentation for the girls that was needed my stomach started churning. Flipping. Rolling, if you will. Nonstop. Like I had a hamster on a wheel in the pit of my gut. It didn't stop at all for over 2 weeks.

You know how your stomach jumps when you see a baby almost fall headfirst down the stairs? Or you see a ball roll out in front of you in the street while you're driving, and you notice a small child in your periphery? Or you witness an accident caused by an erratic driver?

Yeah. That kind of flipping.

When my stomach did finally stop flipping it was short lived. As in about 18 hours or so. And then it started up again. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. Even when I was expecting a call, I'd nearly jump out of my skin when the phone actually rang. I felt like I was trembling all the time, but when I would hold my hand up to check to see, if it was shaking, it wasn't. I was just shaking on the inside.

I made an appointment to see my doctor, but I had to cancel the first one due to bad roads. The last thing I needed to do is get in a car and drive on ice in the condition I was in. I knew I needed help, and that I was having a problem with anxiety. I also knew that I didn't know how to make it stop on my own. That I needed help. Because when your stomach is flipping and turning all the time like that, it's hard to concentrate. To eat. To sleep. To function.

The doctor confirmed that I was suffering from anxiety. The only other time I've had anything even close to this happen was when I had a reaction to a medication a few years ago. I have to wonder, if that reaction made my body more susceptible to anxiety. I guess it doesn't matter. I have it now.

We met with the attorney on Monday. Plunked down the $500 for the court costs, but we won't actually have to pay the attorney's fees. Hubster signed up for some sort of legal plan through the company he works for last year, and it pays the attorney. And although we could technically do this on our own, we'd much rather have the expertise a lawyer can lend to the situation. I shudder at the thought of what the anxiety would be like, if we weren't going through an attorney!

I have no doubt that the stress is due to the whole guardianship thing, and I believe it will go away once everything is completed. I am thinking I'll likely start 2012 in a totally different state than I'm in right now, but until then I'll stay on the meds the doctor prescribed. They've already helped tremendously, and it's been less than a week.

Thursday, Bugster came over, and we made salsa together. Once we tasted the salsa I'd made awhile back, we realized that it wasn't going to be enough to get us all through the winter. So we made a day of it and canned 14 pints and 1 quart, since we couldn't find the last of the pint jars. We're set until next Fall when we'll likely make more from the tomatoes, peppers and onions we'll hopefully have in our gardens.

I'm still behind on housework, but I know I'll be able to get it done in plenty of time for the home visit. I won't have all the dehoarding done, but I'm confident that we'll pass with flying colors. I'm sure we'll be granted guardianship, because the best place for the girls to be is with us. In their own home. With their family. And when I look at each part of the guardianship process individually, I know we'll do fine. But the whole of it is more than overwhelming.

Hubster asked me out on a date the other night. We need time to reconnect and get away from the stress of it all, so I jumped at the chance. Hopper and Scooter are going to spend the day with Bugster, Hubster and Frank after we all do a little shopping together. We haven't all been out together in months. In fact, Scooter just started back to school this past week after the whole fiasco of the hospitalization, head-to-toe rash, and weeks of steroids to get the allergic reaction under control. So we need this as a family. All of us.

I'm ready for some decompression.

I dream of Rip Van Winkle.

2011-10-23T00:59:00.000-06:00

I'm making progress and have gotten a lot done in the last week, but I feel like I'm in serious need of a couple weeks' worth of sleep. Just straight through for two weeks.

Ever feel like that?

I don't see it slowing down enough to sleep for 2 weeks straight anytime soon, but that's okay. I'm getting things done that need done. I'm making progress.

Friday of last week we got our flu shots, got state ID cards for both of the girls and got a bank account set up for Scooter's direct deposit for when she starts getting SSI payments. Then Monday I got Scooter's application in for SSI and got replacement social security cards ordered for each of the girls.

I worked on paperwork a bit for a couple of days and then headed into the kitchen to work on tomatoes from the garden. I got 9 dozen tomatoes washed, blanched and peeled to further process.

I made some into a base for homemade chili for when it gets colder outside. I made chili a few weeks ago with tomatoes from the garden, and we couldn't get over how much tastier it was than when I've used fresh tomatoes from the grocery store. There really was no comparison, and I want to recreate it as much as possible when I make chili again when it snows. I'm actually looking forward to the colder weather just so I have an excuse to cook a batch up again!

Several pounds of tomatoes were diced, along with onions and bell peppers to make salsa. I used my new canner for it, and I have to admit it was fun breaking it in. I'll really put it to good use next year when we have more to our garden than tomatoes, but I'll be happy with an abundance of maters next year, too. The rest of the tomatoes were frozen whole to be used as I need them over the course of the next few months. I'll definitely be using them to make homemade tomato soup. There's nothing that tastes quite as fresh and clean and yummy as that, and I can't wait!

We've been babying the tomatoes we had left in the garden for the last few weeks as it's gotten colder outside, and they were actually still blooming. Unfortunately, it got cold enough that the plastic we had up didn't keep enough cold out, and the leaves started to freeze, so today we cleared out the tomato beds. Thankfully, we only lost a couple dozen tomatoes to the cold, but it was hard to take. The tomatoes are so tasty I hate to lose a single one. Still, there were several dozen on the plants still, so the loss of the 2 dozen is just a drop in the bucket. There are plenty more.

Tomorrow, I'll be wrapping the greenest tomatoes in newspaper and putting them in a box in the garage where they'll stay cool. I have it on good authority, (Thanks, Mom!), that I should have fresh tomatoes ripening for several weeks, and I may actually still have some left in late December or even early January. I'm really hoping that's the case. It would be great, if we could get them to last that long!

I have to be honest. I am looking forward to having the tomatoes done and out of my hair soon. It will just be a relief to have them done, so I don't have to worry about letting them go and them being ruined, because I got busy and put them off too long.

I'll have to do something with the pumpkins from the garden, too. We had so many tomatoes that the pumpkins didn't go crazy, but we did end up with 4 small ones. I am hoping to make a pumpkin soup with one and bake the others, so I can make them into pies or pumpkin rolls for the holidays. I've never tried pumpkin soup before, but I want to try it. I think it will be fun. I'm just glad pumpkins last awhile, so I can finish up the paperwork before getting to them.

We brought the two pepper plants in that still have little peppers on them. I'm hoping I can get them to grow indoors, so I can harvest them and use them in the chili I'll make a bit later. I'm not worried, if they don't do any more growing, but I'll be thrilled, if they do.

In the meantime, my bed is calling me from the other room. It's been a long day, and I doubt I'll get a full 8 hours tonight, let alone a full 2 weeks.

One can only hope...

And let the stress begin...

2011-10-13T00:02:00.002-06:00

After countless hours of sorting paperwork and getting rid of more than 40, (I really should have counted them), boxes I finally found the birth certificates I've been searching for weeks to find. I only have 2 or 3 boxes left to sort through that have come in from the garage. Granted, I'll have to re-sort some of the stuff I've set aside to scan or to keep, but it's mountains less than I had a few weeks ago. I can handle it.

I also still have all the paperwork that was already in the study before we started bringing boxes in from the garage to sort. Thankfully, there are only about 7 boxes or so. There is a chance that I will actually be able to get through the rest of the paperwork by the end of October. That would be huge. But, I have other things happening, so I won't be disappointed, if I don't finish it all up by then. I know I will be done with the paperwork and have the study completely cleared out by Thanksgiving.

Again. Huge.

In the meantime, we will be putting the social security card found earlier and the birth certificates to use and start the process of getting guardianship of the girls.

That's right.

Guardianship.

Apparently after a child with a developmental disability has finished with high school, their parents are no longer in charge of their medical, financial, or other such life-changing decisions. They're treated like any other adult. They have the right to refuse medical treatment. They have the right to spend their money as they see fit, so if they want to do nothing but buy cookies and nothing else, they have that right.

So this summer when Hopper broke her leg, if she had not still been in school, we could not have signed for her to have surgery. If she had not consented to it, the doctors would refuse to treat until they had the court's okay to treat. The delay that getting a court order could take could mean the difference between life and death. And we get that. We will never allow either of the girls to go through something so horrible.

However, it still somehow feels wrong that a parent has to get guardianship to be able to make the same decisions for their disabled children that they've made since they brought them home from the hospital as babies. It's a bit of a slap in the face. It feels as though your parenthood is somehow being siphoned away, and you will now just be called, 'guardian'.

Thankfully, it's just a legal term.

We will always be the girls' mommy and daddy.

And nobody can ever take that away, no matter how hard they might try.

So for the next couple of months while we go through getting permanent guardianship of our own children, the stress level is going to go up. It will involve attorneys and court visits and home visits and . . .

Yeah.

So let the stress begin.

We're ready.

Er.

Almost.

October is a gypsy...

2011-10-10T16:55:00.000-06:00

I'm still working on paperwork. I still haven't found the birth certificates nor the other social security card, but I'm still looking. Broke a tooth in my sleep while I was grinding away the other night. Dental appointment tomorrow.

In the meantime, I've come across a bunch of school papers from 39 years ago from when I was in the second grade. I didn't even remember who my second grade teacher was, and I'm not sure I ever would have, except one paper had her name on it. I can tell she was a tough teacher based on the number of red marks on my pages.

It's been a bit odd seeing my middle name on some of my school work, because it's spelled wrong. In fact, it was spelled wrong until I was twenty. When I was born the nurse didn't think my parents had the right to spell my name the way they wanted to, so she corrected it to how she felt it should be spelled. Can you imagine anyone being so arrogant as to think they had the right to do something like that?

My parents had no idea how to fix it, or if it could be fixed. So I asked about it when I was at the courthouse so many years ago getting our marriage license. I found out that misspellings on birth certificates can be fixed at any time. Free of charge. So I surprised my folks and had it fixed. Granted, it was twenty years late, but they appreciated it.

Even though it took awhile to get used to spelling it right, the way my parents intended all along, I am so very thankful I asked for it to be corrected. It felt right. It was right. Looking at my name spelled the way it was when I was little looks so...odd. So wrong. It's funny how it looked right for so many years, but now it no longer does.

Oh well.

I do have something that does look right. Right now, even. I came across this cute little poem about October in my school papers, and I thought I'd share it...

Happy October

I'm still alive in spite of being buried under a ton of paperwork.

2011-10-05T16:16:00.000-06:00

I'm still working on paperwork. I've been putting in 8 to 14 hours a day on it, and I've made huge progress. The boxes of papers in the picture I posted earlier spanned an area 5 wide, 3 deep and to the ceiling in the back 2 rows. At this point, the boxes take up an area 1 deep, 1 wide, and the stack only goes about 2/3 up the wall.

Unfortunately, the picture didn't include all the paperwork that needs to be tackled. There's more current stuff, (from the last 5 years or so), on the other side of the study. It needs to be addressed, so the study can be fully organized and functional.

Several people, including The Hubster, have suggested ordering the birth certificates again. And while it might be easier in some ways to order them, I'm hoping I will have found the ones I'm looking for by the time the new ones would have arrived in the mail, anyway. Because I can't just go down to the courthouse and pick them up, since the girls weren't born here, it would take several weeks for them to make an appearance. I know we ordered a new birth certificate for Hopper a few years ago, and I'm sure to come across it in the newer stuff that still needs sorted. I still need to locate Scooters, but for the life of me I can't remember, if I ordered a new one for her then or not. I guess I'll find out soon enough.

While I was sorting through boxes this weekend, I realized the main reason I don't want to order the birth certificates is for totally self-serving purposes. If I order them, I won't have to finish the paperwork anytime soon. And I really, really, really need to get through this paperwork. It's been hanging over my head and weighing me down for far too long.

I actually came across paperwork from the bank account I had in high school!

Did I mention how long it's been holding me back??

Far. Too. Long. That's how long.

As a result of the hours I've been putting in on paperwork, I haven't been online much at all.

I've ignored my friends and family.

I've failed to return emails.

I've neglected my blog.

And unfortunately, I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, I will continue to update the sidebar with the shredables count.

I hope to be back to blogging daily, returning emails, and interacting with friends and family again within a week or two...

Definitely by Thanksgiving.

I am also hoping to be finished once and for all with paperwork, so all I need to do is maintain things.

Here's to hoping...

Don't think I'm going to make my deadline, but at least I have pictures.

2011-09-27T18:36:00.001-06:00

*Every cancelled check and check blanks for bank account that we closed 26 years ago before we got married.

*My metal Pinocchio lunch box from grade school.

*The test results from Hopper's DNA karyotype that changed our lives so completely 21 years ago.

*Unopened Sesame Street and Highlights For Kids magazines from 15 to 18 years ago.

*Card from Hubster's grandmother from 1997. It still had the $5 she sent for us to buy ice cream in it. We did.

*Birthday card from Hopper's 4th birthday from her uncle that still held the $5 he sent her. That was 17 years ago.

*Box from mug Hubster and Bugster got me for my birthday when I was expecting Hopper. Mug said, "I Y my job like I Y having my finger slammed in the car door." with an adorable note from Hubby on the inside flap.

*The beginning lines of a story Bugster started to write when she was about 10. "There was a boy named Jack, who didn't know the difference between a Life Saver and a nickle. He was a very lonely little boy." And that's where it ended. I would have loved to have read more.

*Bugster's beginning music book for French Horn and her beginning, intermediate and Christmas music books for flute.

*Plastic glasses from a comedy show we saw in our first year of marriage.

*The boxes from Hopper's first set of hearing aides.

*The assembly instructions for the wheelchair Scooter used until she was 7.

These are just some of the many, many things I've found in the boxes of paperwork I've sorted through the last couple of days.

I set a goal to get through all the boxes of paperwork in the study before the end of September, but I'm not sure, if I'm going to make it or not. The whole situation with Scooter set me back a bit, so I will probably have to be okay with finishing up in October instead.

After

And just so you don't have to go searching for the before picture, or clicking on a link to see it, I've uploaded it below.

Before.

In the meantime, I can see the back wall of the study where the boxes were stacked 3 deep and all the way to the ceiling. The first row is completely gone, and the second row no longer reaches the ceiling, but I still have a long way to go.

I sent 4 more bags of shredables out the door this morning after sending 7 bags out yesterday for a total of 25 grocery bags of preshredded for the month of September. I've also sent 4 huge black contractor bags of trash out that consisted of paperwork I could throw.

I've been able to let go of things I've hung onto for years in the hope that I would eventually fix them. The most liberating of these items has to be the story books that were torn up. I always felt such a huge obligation to repair them to the best of my ability and practically laminate each page with tape, so they couldn't tear them again. I did manage to do this a few times with some of the books over the years, but more often than not, they were just tossed in a box. I am sure some of the missing pieces of pages I never found ended up in someone's digestive track somewhere along the way. I didn't check too closely.

I'm just glad that I was finally able to dispose of them guilt-free.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not responsible for everything that goes wrong. It's not my job to fix it all. I don't have to save everything associated with our children's lives to be a good mom.

It's better to throw it away than to throw my life away worrying about it.

Paging Mr Man. Mr Red Man?

2011-09-25T14:43:00.001-06:00

Two weeks ago, when Scooter had to be admitted to the hospital with the fear of a blood infection, they had to put her on some strong IV antibiotics. One of those antibiotics is called Vancomycin. It can cause what is known as Red Man Syndrome. It is basically an intense flushing of the body due to a histamine response to the antibiotic.

We were told it's not necessarily an allergic reaction, but she needed antihistamines each time she got a new bag of antibiotics, so we could try to get the redness under control. When she was discharged from the hospital that Wednesday, we noticed that the redness was worse. We asked, if she could have more antihistamines, but there was only an order for it to be administered by IV, and her IV had already been removed. We decided not to wait for the doctor to write more orders, and just took her straight home and got her
started on them at home.

In spite of being on antihistamines every 4 to 6 hours, the redness was getting worse and was looking more like a bad rash. Her poor stomach felt like leather and sandpaper at the same time. She was covered over her entire body, except the lower arms and legs. She was miserable. The rash was hot to the touch, it stung, and it itched like crazy. She started steroids that Friday night to try to get the rash under control.

Ha.

By Sunday, the rash started crawling up her neck and onto her face and scalp. We took her into the urgent care clinic. The doctor said he figured that her body was overwhelmed with antibiotics that didn't have an infection to work on, and it just couldn't handle it. He said to continue the steroids and antihistamines, stop the oral antibiotics she'd been sent home on and to have her see a dermatologist as soon as we could.

We got an appointment for Tuesday and waited while the rash got worse.

The dermatologist said that he thought it was an allergic reaction to the antibiotic she'd been sent home with from the hospital. He also said it could still be the Red Man, as there are instances when it has a delayed reaction and gets worse about a week out from the original episode. (Her reaction started within minutes of being on the Vancomycin, which is normal, as far as Red Man goes, but the delayed reaction definitely fit in with the timeline of the rash).

He increased her steroid dosage and prescribed an steroid ointment for the rash. He also told us to use an amazing hypoallergenic cream, and he'd see us in a couple of weeks. Within a couple of days, the rash on her trunk started to fade as she started to peel like she'd had a sunburn over her entire body. The sheets on her bed are covered every morning with little pieces of peeled skin when she gets out of bed.

And while the rash looked better on most of her body, we watched it creep down her arms and legs. She looked like she had Scarlet Fever or something. The good news is that her doctor said her pneumonia is gone, even though she'll still have a cough for a couple more weeks.

Thankfully, it appears as though her rash has stopped growing and has all but disappeared. Her skin is still a mottled purple and looks like raw hamburger or something, and she's still peeling, but she's feeling so much better. The ointment and cream have helped tremendously, and we are so very grateful.

It's so good to see her smiling again!

Now, I can hopefully get over the temporary paralysis that seems to set in when there's a big medical stressor like this.

Life, loss and letting go.

2011-09-18T13:13:00.001-06:00

For years, I've had trouble holding onto things.

Obviously, or I wouldn't be a hoarder, right?

Now that I'm back on my medicines and thinking more clearly, I'm making hard decisions about some of those things. With other things, my decision is not to make a decision right now.

For example, I've decided not to get rid of the ultrasound pictures of two of my pregnancies that ended in miscarriage. I didn't get an ultrasound the third time. By then, I knew what was happening, and I didn't want the heartache of seeing what was happening on a screen. I didn't want a picture to remind me. I don't regret that decision, but I also don't regret the decision of getting the pictures of the first two.

The pictures still bring me back to the loss I felt at the time...

The physical and emotional loss of the miscarriages themselves was hard enough. After all, we'd wanted every single baby I carried. But to be told that the little sac was empty was about more than I could handle. To know that our little ones had stopped growing just shortly after conception somehow made it worse. To know that they'd never even had a chance just killed me.

It also made me feel like I had nothing to mourn. That I hadn't actually lost a baby, because there had never been a heartbeat. It didn't help that others actually told me I'd never been pregnant, since the sac was empty. That I didn't lose a baby.

But I did.

Three times.

I don't know, if they thought they were helping by minimizing my loss, but their words made it no less real. If anything, they made it worse.

So I've kept these ultrasound pictures all these years. They are the only proof that we lost our babies. The only proof that they ever existed in the first place. Somehow, I feel that letting them go is saying they were never important to me. That somehow it's saying I didn't love them. That I didn't start thinking of names, imagining the nursery, picturing our babies' little faces in my mind the very moment I knew I was pregnant.

I'm still not there. I might be someday, but only time will tell.

In the meantime, I've made some progress.

In the last several days, I've sorted through two small boxes that had each held six boxes of baby wipes, two apple boxes, and two 18 gallon totes full of paperwork. I've filled two huge black contractor bags with trash and ten more grocery bags with shredables. Five of them went out the door on Friday, and the rest will go out the door tomorrow. The stuff I've kept has been sorted into 3 categories.

A small crate holds bills, paystubs and medical miscellaneous that I will scan and eventually toss into the shredables. A small box holds greeting cards and letters from loved ones that I will eventually scan. I don't know that I'll actually ever throw them away, but I will be scanning them, so they aren't lost forever, if something should happen to them. And the third is an apple box less than half full of drawings the girls did, stories written, IEPS and other miscellaneous things I'll be scanning when I get to it.

My goal is to discard as much as possible once I've scanned it. Normally, I would try to scan it all as I sort it, but I've got to get through the boxes as quickly as possible, so I can find the birth certificates and social security cards I need. If I could just go down to the courthouse and order more, I would, but all 3 girls were born out of state from where we live now, and it's not as easy as it seems. It would take several weeks and $30 to $40 each to get copies, so I'll just keep working on the paperwork and scan things later.

I'm making progress. It's slow, but it's steady.

And I'm learning to let go.

With an ending reminiscent of LOST

2011-09-14T20:15:00.000-06:00

Imagine, if you will, that for the last six years, you've watched your favorite television show develop into something you could have never envisioned. You've watched actors come and go. You've watched love blossom between your favorite characters. You've watched as the plot thickens before the mystery is finally revealed. You've laughed. You've cried. You've gotten to know these characters, and you love them. They feel like a part of your family.

You've become emotionally invested in the program and it's characters.

Then betrayal hits.

The producers of the show, in their infinite wisdom, decide a fate so cruel. You find out what you've been watching is only a dream. It didn't really happen. You get angry over them wasting your time. Wasting your emotional investment.

Welcome to our world...

Only in our world, it's a dream we can live with and we're thrilled with the outcome.

The reports finally came in on the blood tests.

The blood culture had apparently been contaminated somewhere along the line. Scooter does NOT have an infection roaming the hallowed halls of her little blood vessels.

Somewhere, between the needle prick on her arm that lead to that fateful phone call, and the lab, the blood culture was compromised.

Our shoulders are carrying a much lighter load tonight, as Scooter is sleeping a sound sleep tonight without nurses interrupting to take vitals. Without beeping machines. Without tangled wires. Without fear.

She is still sick. She's still needing antibiotics and breathing treatments. She still has pneumonia.

But it's *just* pneumonia.

It's funny how a parent can be relieved that their child has pneumonia, but considering the circumstances, we're beyond relieved.

We're also a bit angry that Scooter had to endure big time, heavy duty antibiotics, when she didn't need to. That it cost us a couple of days of our lives. That it may cost us big bucks, if we have to pay the 10% deductible for the hospital stay.

But mostly, we're just relieved.

Above all, we're relieved to know that Scooter should be able to kick this pneumonia to the curb with the antibiotics she's on. That she was protected from ... well ... horrible things. And I'm thanking God that she's going to be fine.

We are beyond grateful that the hospital acted so quickly when they thought Scooter had a potentially deadly infection in her blood. They took it just as seriously as we did, and it's good to know that we can count on our local hospital to come through for us like that. The doctors were all absolutely incredible, and again, we're thankful.

We're eternally grateful to friends and family who have been there, praying for us, and for emotional support that helped us through this in ways they can't fathom. Thank you!

And lastly, we're so very thankful for our very comfortable beds to snuggle in tonight, and for soft pillows on which to lay our heads.

We are indeed blessed.

And we are so incredibly, incredibly thankful!

Scooter update.

2011-09-14T11:37:00.000-06:00

Got a call at 10:35 Sunday night from the emergency room. Apparently, the blood culture they'd taken on Sunday when Scooter went in by ambulance to the hospital started growing something. We needed to bring Scooter back to the ER immediately.

Since she's been in, she's been on round the clock IV antibiotics. We still don't have the results for either the type of bacteria that is in her blood nor for the echocardiogram, which will determine whether or not she has an infection in her heart valves. Hoping to get answers to both of these today. Answers will help determine when she gets to come home.

She's doing quite a bit better, but she's getting sick of the hospital, the poor thing.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. They mean the world to me.

I'll be back soon.

Sigh

2011-09-13T01:47:00.001-06:00

at hospital with scooter. blood cultures from yesterdays visit are growing. to b e admitted for iv antibiotics. needing to rule out mrsa and incfected heart valve. please pray.

The Perfect Storm, or Why We're Sort Of Ready For 2011 To Go The Way Of My Get Up And Go...

2011-09-12T12:02:00.000-06:00

We've had a relatively healthy year, in spite of Hopper spending a week and a half in the hospital and 8 weeks in a wheelchair with her broken leg this summer. When I say we've been fairly healthy, I mean we've had fewer than our normal number of colds and stomach bugs. Some years, the girls have missed 3 out of the first 4 weeks of school, so overall, we really are doing well.

Friday seemed no different. The girls were doing well. Scooter had missed a couple of days of school last week due to female problems, so it didn't really surprise me when she decided to take a nap on the couch. She just seemed a little tired. We all need a nap from time to time. I honestly thought nothing of it.

Saturday morning found Scooter horribly congested. By Saturday night, we were giving her nebulizer treatments to open up her lungs to help her breathe better, and gave her some of the nighttime cold medicines that help a person sleep while they work on the congestion and stuffy or runny noses. We were a little surprised that we had to give it a second time, because usually one dose is plenty. When the second dose didn't work we pulled out the big guns. We went with the cough syrup with codeine, and she was finally able to get some rest.

She slept in Sunday morning, and I was just thankful she was getting some rest, so it wasn't a surprise when she didn't come out of the bedroom until 10:00 or so. She came out and curled up on the couch, and Scooter never curls up on the couch. She sprawls. So I knew she definitely wasn't feeling well. I gave her a nebulizer treatment hoping it would help, but she still seemed off. I noticed her coloring wasn't right, so I checked her with the pulse ox. Sure enough, her oxygen levels were low, and I knew we needed to take her in to be seen.

I went in the bedroom to call the pediatrician's office to see, if they had any openings, and to wake Hubster up. When he heard what was going on, he said he'd get showered really quickly and take her in, and I said I'd get her dressed. He headed to the shower, and I picked out some clothes for her to wear.

I decided to just help her get dressed where she was, rather than making her walk all the way back to her bedroom. She was already short on oxygen, or her lips wouldn't have been blue, so I figured it was the safest bet. I got her clean underwear on and told her to keep standing, so I could put her bra on. I didn't even get it up on her arms before she pitched forward.

I realized she hadn't just lost her balance.

She was out.

I tipped her back, so she'd fall toward the loveseat to cushion her fall. Once she landed, she started twitching, and her eyes started rolling back in her head, much like Hopper's did during the Vagal Response she had at the hospital.

Crap! Here we go again!

You know those little toys that collapse when you push up the bottom? They're ones when I was a kid were wooden, but I've seen plastic ones in later years. The figure on the top of the base is rigid, held in place by taut string, and the moment you push the bottom of the base up, the string is no longer tight, and the character collapses. You know what I'm talking about, right?

That's exactly how Scooter looked.

It was terrifying.

I got her to the floor and laid her down as best I could. I started screaming for The Hubster, but he was in the downstairs bathroom, and he couldn't hear me. Hopper started yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!" in her best hysterical scream, and he still didn't hear her. I told her to go down and get him, so she stood at the top of the stairs and repeated her cry for help between sobs. I told her once again to go downstairs and get him, and somehow, she was able to hear me.

Hubster came running upstairs, and by the time he finally got up here, Scooter came to. She was disoriented, but she was awake and breathing. We realized that she needed to be seen in the emergency room immediately, but we also knew Hopper couldn't go. She was a bundle of yelling nerves. She needed to stay home, and it was going to take a few minutes for Bugster to make her way over to sit with her, so we could leave. And neither of us was comfortable with driving her without someone in the backseat monitoring her the entire way.

We called 911. The paramedics were there within moments.

Poor Hopper was in hysterics, crying. As much as we tried assuring her that Scooter would be fine, she couldn't seem to fathom the possibility. Having 6 paramedics in the living room didn't help a bit. She was terrified. She knew I was scared, and I knew that didn't help, so I tried my best to stop the shaking in my voice.

Once the paramedics realized Scooter was stabilized, they helped her out to the ambulance. Hubster rode to the hospital in the front of the ambulance, while I stayed home with Hopper and waited for Bugster to show. It wasn't even 11:00 yet.

I got ready as quickly as I could while trying to calm Hopper's fears. By the time Bugster got here, I was ready to go. I was shaking as I got in the car to drive to the hospital and had to thoroughly concentrate on driving, in order not to speed or get in an accident. That was the last thing I needed.

Scooter and Hubster were waiting for me in Scooter's room. She'd already had her blood drawn and was hooked up to an IV. A short while later, someone came in and did an EKG, a strep test, (we have a tendency to not have any pain or fever with strep, and my brother suffered from Rheumatic Fever as a result of untreated strep due to a total lack of symptoms when he was little), an x-ray of her lungs, and got a urine sample. It felt like and eternity as we waited for test results. About 2:00, the doctor came back in and let us know that all the tests looked good. We were a bit surprised that the x-ray didn't show anything. We figured she had pneumonia as quickly as things hit her. Even the doctor was surprised.

He said she was definitely dehydrated, in spite of drinking a ton of water throughout the night, and that she had bronchitis. He started her on antibiotics, so it wouldn't turn into pneumonia and got her started on her second bag of fluids. He said he wanted to keep an eye on her heart rate, as it was running high (117 to 135bpm), but he figured it was from the dehydration and fever. He said we should be able to go home in an hour or so when the second bag of fluids was gone. Her heart rate had gone down some after the first bag of fluid and the acetaminophen, and he figured it would just continue to go down.

He came in around 4:30 when the IV was almost empty and said he was a little concerned about her heart rate. He said the only other thing he could think of that could cause her heart rate to stay so high like that was blood clots. Was she on birth control pills, by chance.

Yes. She was.

He sort of talked himself out of running a blood test that would show markers, if she was at risk for blood clots. He said that he figured it was just due to the dehydration, and that we should make an appointment to see her cardiologist just to have her checked. He said someone would be in to finish up paperwork, and we could go home.

Less than 2 minutes later, he came in apologizing. He said he felt like he couldn't take the risk and not run the test. That they could use the blood that had already been drawn, and the test would be finished in 30 minutes or so.

We were relieved. The doctor told us he just wouldn't have been able to sleep that night not knowing and wondering, if he sent her home prematurely. We agreed. We wouldn't have been able to sleep a wink either!

An hour or so later, he came back in to let us know that the test results were in. They showed that the markers were indeed elevated that would indicate potential blood clots. She would need a CT Scan to rule them out. The test would only take about 5 minutes, but it would take 20 to 30 minutes to have them read.

An hour and a half later, we asked, if the results were in. Sure enough, they were, and the doctor would be in to talk to us.

Emergency rooms are always busy. I just wish they'd be realistic about times. Go sit in this room for 3 hours, and if you're lucky, a doctor will be in to talk to you. Having tests run? You can count on at least a 6 hour emergency room stay on top of your wait in the waiting room. By ''30 minutes'', we really mean "2 hours".

But I digress.

The doctor came in apologizing for keeping us so late. Thankfully, the CT showed she did not have any blood clots, and we were all (including the doctor) incredibly relieved. However, he said that the scan did show something the x-ray didn't pick up.

She has pneumonia.

He said to just keep up on the breathing treatments and cough syrup, to make sure she got her antibiotics daily and to follow up with her regular doctor. He said he figured that she'd had a mild febrile seizure that was brought on by the dehydration and a spike in fever and was complicated by her low oxygen. It was a perfect storm.

We left the hospital to come home around 8:00, grabbed something on the way home to fill our bellies and had Scooter in bed with all medicines on board in short order. She woke up this morning feeling much better. She still isn't feeling well, and her chest is still tight, but it's a far cry from yesterday.

Still.

We are ready for 2011 to be done.

We need a fresh start.

My get up and go got up and went.

2011-09-10T14:35:00.000-06:00

I've been a bit discouraged lately. I've fallen out of some of the good habits that I worked so hard to establish. It's not that I'm actively acquiring things and adding to the hoard that lives in my house, but I've noticed my thought process isn't working nearly as well as it has at the height of my dehoarding. And while I realize my oomph and will for reaching my goal will ebb and flow on a daily basis, I have to admit that I'm tired of the ebb. It's lasted too long.

When we got the word that Hopper had broken her leg and would need the emergency surgery back in June, I started to stumble. That stumble turned into a free fall the moment I thought she had died in my arms and continued through the hospitalization and rehabilitation once we got home. When Hopper seemed to be getting back to her old self about 6.5 weeks after she broke her leg, the speed on the free fall slowed quite a bit, but I was still in a descent.

A few ago I realized why I was feeling so out of control. With everything going on this summer with Hopper's leg, Bugster and Bubster's wedding, and the situation at school for Scooter I had completely forgotten about taking my meds. It explains why I've had such a hard time getting back in the groove of things, and why I can't seem to think straight.

I've noticed lately that I'm struggling with making decisions about getting rid of things. I've been second guessing myself, and as a result, I've put off dehoarding and even writing in my blog I've been so discouraged. I've felt almost paralyzed as a result of my indecisiveness, and it's driving me crazy. I want to get things done like I did at the height of my dehoarding. I want to get this stuff out of my house.

I started back on my meds a few days ago, and I will be diligent about taking them daily from now on. I can't afford to be paralyzed mentally like I've been. I feel like I'm trying to make it through quicksand. Like I'm being crushed to death by the weight of the pressure. Hyperventilating. Unable to draw a breath into my lungs.

So yeah. I won't be forgetting my meds again anytime soon.

I'm slowly but surely finding my way out of the dark.

I made my way back into the study the last couple of days. I sorted through 3 more rather difficult boxes, with at least 95% of the stuff going into the shredables, the trash or into a 'get rid of' box.

I do have to admit that I was excited to find some things I saved over the years as a reminder of just how far the girls have come. I found Scooter's feeding tube and feeding button she had to have when she was little, along with Hopper's ear pieces from the hearing aides she wore when she was much younger. (We donated the actual hearing aides years ago). In another bag, I found the images from when Hopper had her heart repaired as well as the spare coil they didn't have to use. I joked around that we needed to keep it, in case she needed an oil change.

Mom didn't laugh, but I thought it was funny.

And as odd as it seems to keep these particular things, I don't know, if I'll ever be ready to throw them out. They represent some major milestones in the girls' lives, and they're a physical reminder of just how much we've been through as a family. I want to make them into tasteful Christmas ornaments for our tree.

Don't look at me like that.

It can be done!

Hubster took 9 more bags of shredables out the door yesterday, so that makes 72 grocery bags of preshredded documents to have left the house since I started this journey 18 months ago. I updated my sidebar to help me remind me of just how much I have accomplished. It just helps to see that sometimes.

I did use the portable document scanner the other night that Hubster got me for my birthday this summer. I can't explain how truly wonderful it was to scan some of the paperwork and then put it directly in the box to shred. I felt like I could breathe just a little bit deeper with each document that found it's way into the shredables.

I like breathing.

I think I'll try to do it a little more often.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention, but who's the Mother of Necessity?

2011-09-06T20:27:00.000-06:00

You've probably all heard the adage, "Waste not. Want not," right?

It's an awesome saying, and a wonderful way to live. That is, if you're not me. From the time I could remember, I have felt a moral obligation to not waste stuff - to find a use for anything that had any use left in it. I think I can squeeze use out of things that really have none left, and seeing the potential for practically everything is really cluttering to the mind.

I'm sure part of it came from growing up in a large family with not a lot of extra to go around. And I'm sure the fact that we've always been a single income family has played a role as well. But I think it's deeper than that. I think it's part of who I am to the core. Part of where I came from...

My grandparents raised their family during the Great Depression. Times were so incredibly tough then. At a time in history when women just didn't work outside the home, my grandmother cleaned the schoolhouse after hours to help make ends meet. I've heard stories all my life about how ingenuous she was. She absolutely amazed me my entire life. I adored her.

One of the things Mom has told me many times, is how Grammy would pick up left over construction paper off the floors when she was cleaning. Because this was during the Great Depression,every inch of available paper was used by someone. Nothing went to waste. The pieces of construction paper were often just slivers, but no piece was too small. She gathered them religiously.

Money was so incredibly tight during the Great Depression, that Mom and her brothers and sisters got one new pair of shoes a year. By the time the school year was over, the shoes no longer fit or had huge holes in them. They were all but abandoned, but that never seemed to be too much of a problem, for summer had arrived, and the kids would run around barefoot.

Shoes weren't the only luxury for my mom's during the Great Depression. Clothes were, too. Grammy made most of the clothes for the entire family. Socks were darned until they were so well used they were literally falling apart. Clothes were handed down from the older kids to the younger until some clothes were worn by every child in the family, regardless of their gender. Like many women raising families during the Great Depression, my grandmother used feed sacks and flour and sugar sacks for fabric to make dresses for the girls and dress shirts for the boys.

But that wasn't enough for Grammy. She wanted to take away the sting of poverty. In spite of the fact that the girls knew their dresses were made from feed and flour sacks, Grammy wanted to make them special. She wanted her girls to know how much they meant to her. To know that they were more than their current economic status. So she got creative.

When it was time to make dresses for her daughters, she would painstakingly separate the colors of construction paper and put them in a large vat of boiling water on the stove. She would then add the flour sacks that she'd thoroughly washed beforehand to the water. Once the sacks, which had been opened at the seams to make a flat piece of fabric, had boiled long enough, she would rinse them and hang them to dry. Then she would get busy cutting out dress patterns on beautifully colored fabric and start sewing.

By the time Grammy was done, the girls would each have a beautiful new dress. Mom said it made her feel so incredibly special, that Grammy would go to all that trouble for them. It would be apt to say in this case that necessity truly was the mother of invention!

However, things have changed. Drastically. Overall, Americans today don't know what it truly means to need something. I know it's not the steadfast rule, but even in these rough economic times, the vast majority of homes have at least one computer, one cell phone and one car, if not two or more of each, plus cable or satellite television. We just have access to an overabundance of stuff - especially clothing. We can buy at thrift stores, garage sales or from the clearance racks for just pennies on the dollar, and that doesn't even count the bags and bags of clothing people give away every day on Craigslist or the different online free groups that are out there.

Unfortunately, hoarding and overabundance go hand in hand. Sort of like the Titanic and icebergs. It definitely makes the waters a little rougher for me to navigate. It doesn't mean I can't or won't be able to keep my head above water.

It just means I have to learn how to swim.

Someday.

2011-08-31T00:02:00.000-06:00

Scooter finally went back to school this week after having been sick all last week, and Hopper started her day program again, so I am trying to get back into a routine. It's been easier said than done, but then again, it's also only been 2 days. And I'm trying to do the caffeine withdrawal thing again, without much success. I can't seem to do an extended hospital stay for the girls without getting hooked on soda again. I think it's because I'm afraid to sleep at the hospital, because I'm afraid the nurses will miss something I might catch.

I know.

I'm a control freak.

A control freak who's addicted to caffeinated pop once again.

It could be worse. I could be drinking a 6 pack or a 2 liter bottle a day, but I'm drinking less than half that. The rough thing is that I'm not sure, if I am going to try to get it out of my system before I get through my mountains of paperwork or not. It is what it is. I either will, or I won't, and I'm not going to stress over it.

The paperwork, on the other hand, is a totally different monster. I will be stressing over it until I get it finished, and I've got to get it done as quickly as possible.

Well, that's not entirely true.

I just need to find the girls' birth certificates and social security cards. So if I find them, I can take a breather from the rest of the paperwork, if I need to.

So I worked through some really rough boxes tonight. I only got through two of them, and although I feel accomplished, it wasn't easy. Although the first box was easier than the second.

The first box had an assortment of paperwork. There was everything from old water bills to telephone bills that spanned several years, and bank receipts. It also held old hospital and doctor receipts as well as school papers, art projects and notes from each of the girls.

It was fairly easy to sort. If the art projects didn't have a name on them, and I couldn't tell who had done them, I tossed them. I saved some of the hospital and doctor bills/notes, if they had vital information on them, so I can scan them. For the most part, things were either thrown in the trash into the shredables, and almost all of the few things I saved will be scanned and then tossed.

I have to admit I felt pangs of guilt when I saw some of Hopper's papers in there. The school papers that I decided not to save weren't really the issue. It was the pages upon pages of her notebook papers that I threw that gave me pause. While I was going through them, to make sure there wasn't anything I was going to keep, I pictured her as a little girl piling all her special papers that she was so very proud of on top of Mom and Dad's piano stool.

For a moment or two I physically felt the same panic I used to feel when I would pick her papers up and put them in a box to hide them from her. I always felt guilty picking the papers up and taking them away from her when she wasn't looking, but if I hadn't we'd have had papers piled to the ceiling years ago. There was just so very little she ever asked for that I felt bad taking one of the few things away from her that she enjoyed so much. I didn't feel like a very good mom, for sure. And all of those feelings came rushing back tonight as I was going through the boxes.

The feelings of unease carried over into the sorting of the second box. I absolutely abhor boxes like this one. It was a mix of paperwork, little toys the girls loved, necklaces, bracelets and mouse turds. There were a couple of tins in the box that I didn't save to use, but I did put with the scrap metal to recycle. And 90% of the stuff in the box went in the trash or in the shredables, but that doesn't mean it was easy to sort the stuff out.

The toys were plastic. I could sterilize the toys. I actually set them aside to do exactly that for awhile. There was a little change in the box as well, so I did clean it with an antibacterial wipe and put it in the piggy bank. I figured it was cleaner than the vast majority of coins in the piggy bank once I got done using the wipe on it, so that was easy enough. It's not like anyone will be handling it with any regularity anyway.

I found a copy of a letter Hubster's great grandfather had written in the 1890s that had been translated from Swedish to English after he'd moved to the States from Sweden so many years ago. There was also a snapshot of me and Hubster out at dinner when we were dating and a grouping of pictures that came out of a booth where you put quarters in at a mall to capture the moment. Bugster is holding a 3 month old Scooter on her lap, and the baby is wailing. Hopper is over to Bugster's side, and is laughing hysterically at the noises coming out of Scooter's mouth. It's a precious picture, to be sure, and I'm very glad I found it.

I also came across a 110 camera with a built-in flash in the box. I'll stick new batteries in and try to take the last couple of pictures on the film and then get it developed. I have no clue what we'll find when we get the pictures back. It ought to be interesting.

Most all of that was easy, but I really struggled when I came across the necklaces and bracelets. There was a really cute necklace with wooden hearts and wooden spools on it that I had just loved on the girls. It had a white heart, red spools, and a blue cord, and it was just adorable. I came really close to trying to figure out how to get it clean, so I could let Scooter wear it. She's really into jewelry, and she'd have loved it.

I mean, I could have soaked it in bleach water to make sure it was clean. The bracelets, too. One of the necklaces had definitely been made by Hopper or Scooter. It had all sorts of wacky, fun, colorful beads on it, including a pacifier bead, and I could have gotten in clean enough for the girls to wear again. And then I remembered all the beads we have downstairs just waiting for the girls to make new necklaces and bracelets, and how I really didn't need to save any of them.

I probably would never feel comfortable enough to let the girls wear the bracelets and necklaces, even if I thought I'd gotten them clean enough. I'd likely just store them somewhere allowing them to make me feel guilty for not doing anything with them and not giving them to the girls and they'd sit there waiting for me to get to them. Someday. So I took a big breath, and I threw them in the trash.

Then I looked at the handful of toys I'd set aside to wash. I'm not sure what I'd have done with them. I probably would have bleached them til no color was left in the plastic all the while telling myself I was saving them for Bugster's babies. That she might just want to keep them for her little ones to play with. But she's going to want to buy toys for her little ones herself. She's not going to want toys that had mouse turds on them and she's not sure are clean enough for her babies. I don't want that for my grandchildren, either.

And then I realized the hoarder part of me was trying to take over. It was trying to make my decisions for me. To keep me feeling insecure. To keep me hanging on. To control me.

So instead of waiting to deal with the toys Someday, I decided to deal with them now. Today. I threw them all in the trash, and although I have a slight residual feeling of panic, they're gone, and they're not coming back.

I'll count it as a victory.

A small victory, but a victory, nonetheless.

And it didn't happen Someday. It happened Today.

Thank you, Mr Body Temperature Regulator Guy.

2011-08-26T11:46:00.000-06:00

Almost 20 years ago, I realized that every evening I get cold. Really cold. It feels like my body just shuts down, and when I get in that shut down mode, I freeze. When I sit down in the evening to relax, I absolutely have to have a blanket with me. I can never seem to walk around in just socks, because my feet get too cold, so I have to either have slippers or socks and shoes. It's maddening, because I'd love to walk around barefoot from time to time, but alas. It isn't to be.

Almost 4 years ago, I was diagnosed as having hypothyroidism. Even though my numbers were technically still within the normal range, I had many of the symptoms of having a sluggish thyroid (one of the main symptoms is one's body loses the ability to regulate it's temperature effectively), so the doctor started me on meds. The medicine has helped with many of the symptoms, but I still get cold every evening.

You know those microfiber blankets that are super soft and super warm? I sleep under 3 of those plus a sheet and a quilt year round. Well, except during winter months when we use the comforter instead of the quilt. I maybe wouldn't need quite so many blankets during the summer, if I didn't sleep directly under the window air conditioner, but I'd still need twice as many as Hubster. It's just a fact of life for me at this point.

I can always tell when I'm getting sick, when 3 blankets, the sheet and the quilt or comforter aren't enough to keep me warm. Besides my typical long-sleeved shirt to sleep in, I often need a hooded sweatshirt as well. Thankfully, it doesn't happen often, but there are times every few months when I have to heap even more bedding on the bed in order to sleep. Granted, I usually wake up sore from the weight of all the blankets, and I'm usually drenched in sweat from the fever breaking as well as the occasional hot flash, but at least I'm finally able to get warmed through and through.

So imagine my surprise a couple of nights ago when I realized that I didn't need a blanket when I sat down to relax before going to bed. Not only didn't I need a blanket, I didn't even need my slippers, and even the long-sleeved shirt was too much. I should have known something was up. I wish I could say that somehow, somewhere along the line, my thyroid suddenly started doing it's job and regulated my body temperature like it was supposed to, but no. (Remind me not to tip Mr Body Temperature Regulator Guy. He's doing a lousy job and deserves nothing!)

I ended up coming down with the bug Scooter brought home from school. I have been so tired. It's not like I'm tired from working hard. I haven't had the energy to do anything for a couple of days, and I've just felt punky overall. Sort of fluish. There was something going on with my throat. It wasn't sore as much as it felt like it was swollen, and I couldn't even stand to wear a super comfortable, super stretched out crew neck t-shirt. It was just felt too tight, even though it was several inches away from my throat.

The good news is that Scooter seems to finally be over it, except for the canker sore inside her lip. I woke up today with more energy, and I woke up cold. I think it means I'm past the worst of this, too, in spite of my throat still feeling off. I'm hoping to get some paperwork sorted today and work on the laundry a bit. I've got to get something done.

I need to get back in the dehoarding mode.

And how!

Self-preservation.

2011-08-23T12:03:00.002-06:00

My entire life I've dealt with varying degrees of depression.

In high school, I survived a suicide attempt.

After Bugster was born, I dealt with postpartum depression. I began feeling suicidal and started having horrible thoughts about hurting our baby. It scared me to death. I got help and worked through things until I was out of trouble, but it's something of which I've always been acutely aware, because I never, ever want to get to that point again.

A few years ago, I found out that I had a severe Vitamin D deficiency. Since I started supplementing with Vitamin D, I've found I don't go as deeply into the depths as I have in the past, and I'm so very grateful for that. The antidepressant I've been on for several years has helped as well, but the Vitamin D definitely had more of a positive affect on me than it did.

I know that depression will always be a part of who I am, and I know that there are certain situations, and unfortunately, certain people I must avoid to keep my head above water. I struggle with having to limit my friendships with certain people, because I do know that everyone needs a friend, but I also know that I can't always be it. It quite literally is for my own self-preservation.

When I was dealing with the postpartum, I had a friend who lived across the street from us. She and her husband were having marital problems, and she constantly harped about how horrible he was. I don't recall her saying more than a handful of positive things about him or their relationship. Granted, neither my husband nor I had a really high opinion of him, but that wasn't the issue. The issue was that the more I was around her the more I found myself finding things wrong with my own husband. Things that I used to just take for normal quirks and differences soon became arguing point.

I was shocked when I realized how contagious negativity was for me and how I had allowed myself to be drawn in. I slowly started to distance myself from her, because I didn't want our friendship to interfere in my marriage. Thankfully, we moved away less than a year later, but before we had a chance to get out of there, my 'friend' cheated on her husband and ran off with another guy.

I felt like I had betrayed my husband's trust by talking with her, by venting to her about every little thing about my husband that annoyed me, and it devastated me knowing I played an active part in it. I know the postpartum played a role in all of it, but it was still no excuse. I allowed myself to be drawn into her train wreck, and our marriage could have easily become a casualty.

Don't get me wrong. I know that not all marriages are good marriages. And sometimes, people need to vent. To confide that things aren't going so well, because they're scared, and they need advice, and they want reassurance. I get that. But there's a huge difference between an occasional venting and someone being negative about their spouse with almost every word they speak.

I knew then that the only way our marriage would work would be for me to stay away from people who were willing to regularly trash their spouses. It makes my heart heavy, and I want to help, but I can't. My husband and our marriage means the world to me, and I just can't go there. And to be blunt, Hubster is much more important to me than their problems and even than the friendship in which I may have an investment.

I made that mistake once, and I'm never going to allow it to happen again. My husband and our marriage is always going to come first. Because we really are that good together, and because he means the world to me.

Because we are worth it.

It's all a matter of self-preservation.

All my troubles seemed so far away...

2011-08-18T20:46:00.000-06:00

So I worked on sorting paperwork today. Remember the big mound of boxes in our study that I posted a picture of here? Well, I needed to get started on it.

I feel pretty good about what I got done so far, but I need to stop for the night. My back is hurting still from the other day, so I'm going to call it a night soon.

In the meantime, I was able to get 3 boxes sorted. Most of it went in the trash or the shreadables. The rest is set aside for scanning a little bit later. Hubster got me a portable document scanner for my birthday, and I just got it set up in the last few days. I am loving it! But I do have a lot to scan, so I think for right now I'm going to just keep a crate with stuff in it I need to scan. I'll get to it eventually, and this will give me a chance to get through the other boxes more quickly. I really need to get through them, too. I'm looking for birth certificates and social security cards. You know. Things that shouldn't be lost in mountains of paperwork.

But I have to admit that I laughed out loud at something I came across today. It was a hand over hand handwriting exercise done at school to help Hopper practice her printing.Now that I've scanned it, I'll throw it out, but it just made the sorting so worth it....

Mark played with the yarn in the yard yesturday.

Rejoicing.

2011-08-17T15:10:00.011-06:00

After 8 weeks of our furniture and doorways losing several layers of paint due to the erratic driving, meltdowns due to frustration from everyone in the family at one point or the other and walking single file and sideways to get around in the house, Hopper is finally out of the wheelchair! We are thrilled!

Hopper is finally back in her bedroom downstairs, and I can't get over how quiet the house seems now. Then again, every night for the last 3 week or so, Hopper would wake Scooter up from a dead sleep to tell her, "Go sleep!" She'd alternate telling Scooter to go to sleep and telling her how to sleep by waking her up to tell her to turn "This way!" And while it's funny in theory, it's exhausting for everyone. Nobody seems to be able to drift into a restful sleep, no matter how hard they try.

So we are indeed very glad that she is out of the wheelchair!

Being out of the wheelchair means she can navigate to the bathroom to use the facilities and to shower as well, so it also means we no longer need the shower chair or the bedside commode. After 8 weeks of emptying the commode several times a day, I selfishly have to admit that other than Hopper healing so well, getting rid of that nasty thing is my favorite outcome to date!

Hopper is back in her bedroom, but we've been so busy with school starting up and doctors appointments and the like that I hadn't had the time to get Scooter's bedroom put back in place. Granted, the room was only Hopper-free a couple of days before I got to it, but it was bothering me. I finished it up yesterday. I got everything dusted, the trundle put back under her bed, and even vacuumed all her stuffed animals while I had the vacuum out.

I got the antique secretary we keep at the end of the hallway put back in its place and moved the rest of her furniture where it belonged. It's amazing how much room a trundle takes up when a room is so small and there's furniture in there! It looked so much better, and I knew Scooter would feel so much better sleeping in her own pretty little bedroom again, but I realized we'd taken her chair down to Hopper's bedroom to make room for the wheelchair when she was convalescing. It still needed to come upstairs.

Foolishly, I decided I couldn't wait. Chalk it up to the OCD...

The chair has a storage compartment in the seat and is a cute little thing, but it's a bit too heavy for my sore back. So I was careful and rested the chair on each step as I came upstairs. I was then able to just push it along the floor til I got to Scooter's bedroom, and my back was doing fine. But then I couldn't get it in the doorway. Instead of just moving the antiques secretary to the side, I lifted the chair over it to get it into the bedroom.

Did I mention I was foolish?

I've had major numbness in my left leg today. Last night, the numbness was in the right. So I definitely tweaked the bulging discs in my lower back when I lifted it. The good news is that Scooter's bedroom is completely clean, looks pretty, and is a peaceful place for her to sleep. The direct result of which is that all of us get more restful sleep. The bad news is that I can't feel my left foot.

Oh well. I don't have anything special coming up that requires me to feel my left foot, so I guess I don't really need to feel it, anyway. I'll be spending the next several days with my best friend.

I may have mentioned her before....

I affectionately call her "Hot Stuff".

No! Not her!

I'm talking about my favorite heating pad.

Sheesh! Who did you think I was talking about?

The big Five O.

2011-08-14T00:06:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago, Hubster turned 50. With the hospitalization and the extra costs associated with Hopper breaking her leg, we haven't had much extra money to celebrate his big birthday in a big fashion. And although I could have thrown him a small party, he really can't stand parties. Guess that worked out well, but it left me in a bit of a quandary. I wasn't quite sure what to do to make him feel really celebrated. After all, 50 is big. It's worth celebrating.

My sister mentioned to me that she'd thrown a big party for her husband when he turned 30 and then again when he turned 40, but they didn't really have the money when he turned 50, so she had to get creative. She said that for 50 days in a row, beginning with his birthday, she gave him something to remind him that he was special to her and she hoped he had a good birthday.

A 50 day long birthday!

What an awesome idea!

So I took it and ran with it, and it's really been fun!

Not everything has cost an arm and a leg, which is really good, since I only have 2 arms and 2 legs, and that would only get me through 4 days! But I digress...

A few of the gifts I've given:

A strawberry rhubarb pie. His favorite. He's the only one in the family who likes them, so it worked out perfectly.

Some of his favorite candies that he hasn't seen since he was a kid. I found both Black Cows and Slo Pokes for him, so that brought back some fun memories for him.

I made his favorite sandwiches for lunch one day. Tuna salad with celery and apple chunks. They really are pretty good, but I really don't make them that often, so they were a treat.

Most things have just been little things to show I've been thinking about him. I've got a couple of things tucked away to give him that he's been wanting for awhile, but he'll get them a week or two apart with little things in between.

But there's 1 thing in particular he's really enjoyed, and it's lasted him awhile...

You know those yummy caramels called Riesen? I bought a big bag, counted 50 out, and attached a blank business card to each and wrote a different 'Riesen' I loved him on each card. He's not only enjoyed eating one of his favorite candies, but he's really enjoyed reading how much he's adored.

I hope Hubster enjoys the next few weeks of his 50th birthday as much I've enjoyed coming up with different ideas to celebrate him ...

Er. As much as I've enjoyed him ...

Um. That didn't come out quite right ... After all, this is a PG rated blog!

Maybe I'd better stop while I'm still ahead...

Happy 50th Birthday, Hubster! I love you!!

Whoosh!

Ready for the weekend.

2011-08-12T16:07:00.000-06:00

This week has been... How you say?

Hell.

Just lots of emotional stuff dealing with something that happened with Scooter. Trying to figure out how to proceed - if we should take legal action or what, and wishing that we'd had a hidden camera in place.

Dehoarding wasn't big on my list of things to do this week. The biggest one was just survival.

Survived. Tomorrow's the weekend. Going to enjoy the last weekend before school starts.

Sleeping in.

Relaxing.

Breathing in life.

Loving.

Recovering.

Living.

Monday. Monday. So good to me.

2011-08-09T16:19:00.000-06:00

At least I'm really hoping it will be.

Monday is hopefully Hopper's last visit to the orthopedic surgeon. If he releases her to full weight bearing status on Monday, it will make things so much easier around here.

It will end the need for a wheelchair, the wheelchair ramp, the shower transfer bench, possibly the walker and best of all...it will end the need for the dreaded bedside commode!

Don't get me wrong. They've all served their purpose, and we're very, very grateful to have had access to each and every one of them. However, at this point, we are more than ready to be rid of all of them!

Hopper has been confined to the living room, dining room and the Scooter's bedroom. The main bathroom would have been available for her to use, except that we tore it apart back in April. We were hoping to get the shower, toilet, and floor redone before Bugster & Bubster's wedding in July. Guess what we didn't get finished before Hopper broke her leg?

The result of us not finishing the remodeling project has been multiple trips up and down the stairs with the commode bucket every day since she's been home.

Lest one wonder, it's been just as fun as it sounds.

Another fun result of not having finished the bathroom remodel is the adventure that is getting her down the stairs to the shower. The wheelchair doesn't fit past the edge of the cabinet in the kitchen, so at this point in the journey, she uses the walker until she gets to the top of the stairs where she sits on her behind for the trek down. While we hold her left foot up, so she doesn't put any weight on it, she scoots down the flight of stairs. When she reaches the bottom, she uses the walker once again to get into the bathroom and onto the transfer bench in the shower.

We reverse the process to get her back upstairs and back into her wheelchair. It isn't nearly as physical a process for us as it was when she first got home from the hospital. She's able to help hold her weight more than she could then, but it's still exhausting.

To say it's been a bit disruptive to the norm of our everyday lives is an understatement, and we're all ready for things to get back to normal around here.

Whatever *normal* is.

OCD. What's it all mean?

2011-07-29T16:48:00.003-06:00

It seems I've always, always struggled with paperwork. Over the years, I have found that doing nothing often alleviates the distress of not knowing what to do, so I do nothing. As a result, I've ended up with a study full of boxes of paperwork that I will eventually need to sort.

I can't get all the boxes in the frame of the camera. There's another stack to the right, and there's another layer under the bottom layer of boxes showing in the picture. The 2 stacks in the right of the picture are 3 boxes deep. The other stacks are 2 boxes deep. And they pretty much all go to the ceiling and take up half the study. I definitely have my work cut out for me, but I shall prevail!

Hubster said he often feels frozen in a pattern of checking to see, if he locked the door, has his wallet in his pocket, has his keys in hand, and has everything else he may need before he can pull away from the house. He checks multiple times before he puts his vehicle in gear.

Hopper can't handle the stress of being without her strings long enough for them to go in the wash, so I have to wash them when she's away from the house, or she's totally out of sorts. Her palms get clammy, she gets red in the face, she has a minor meltdown, and nothing helps except getting the strings back in her hands.

Scooter can't sit still, if she sees anything tipped over on it's side. She can't keep herself from stopping whatever she's doing to upright whatever it is that has fallen. She also can't get out of bed without having all of her bracelets and necklaces on for the day, even when it means we have to remove them for her shower.

While only Hopper has officially been diagnosed with having OCD, Hubster and I realize that all 4 of us have tendencies toward it.

Back when we tried the pharmaceutical route for Hopper, we spoke with the psychiatrist she was seeing about it. I asked him about her strings. Over the years, she's had several grocery bags of shoestrings that she's used as a way to comfort herself, and if one is lost, or if they're in the wash, we see a totally undone little girl. She can't function. She can think of absolutely nothing else but the strings, and she's a total stressed out mess emotionally until she can pull them through her fingers once again.

The psychiatrist said that what she's experiencing is classic OCD. That she has an obsession with the strings, and that she has a compulsion to drag them through her fingers. She cannot stop thinking of the strings and the comfort it brings her to pull them through her fingers, and is compelled to get them as quickly as possible. The longer she's away from them the more stressed out she becomes. The stress continues to escalate until she gets hold of the strings and can draw strength and relief from them. It is instantaneous.

Her doctor explained that she has an almost physical need to hold the strings. It sounded much like someone being addicted to alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes. The sooner the object of the addiction is used by the person addicted, the sooner their relief from the symptoms of withdrawal.

I came across this interesting article on OCD and hoarding on Everyday Health. A series of hoarding experts tackle all sorts of questions about how OCD and hoarding are connected. I can really identify with a lot of what is discussed. So much of it is familiar to me, both from personal experience and observation of our girls and my husband.

The most important thing is that my husband and I have acknowledged that we struggle with these tendencies, and as a result, we're becoming better able to stop the madness and change our ways. I've also noticed that the greater the stress I'm under the more difficult it is to fight the urge to hang tight to every single piece of paper that comes into the house. With the stress of the last several weeks, I haven't had the clarity of mind to do much beyond surviving.

I'm looking forward to the stress subsiding a bit, so I can get back to dehoarding the house.

It's almost becoming an obsession....

A Day In The Life...also known as: My Husband. My Hero.

2011-07-21T00:58:00.000-06:00

The house is quiet.

For now.

It likely will only last about an hour, but I'll take it over the meltdowns that have happened daily since Hopper broke her leg. It's been a long 4 weeks since that happened.

I'm not complaining. At least I don't mean to be. I can't express how very thankful I am that she's doing so much better. And for the most part, I can handle the meltdowns. They mean she's getting back to her normal self, who absolutely hates being confined to a wheelchair and the frustration it brings. In ways, I'm thankful she's frustrated. It means she's not happy being stuck where she is, and she won't be comfortable staying in the wheelchair forever. She's got such an easy going spirit overall, that one could get the idea that she is fine with things never changing or with a lack of healing/growth on her part.

But I am honestly fatigued by the meltdowns. They wear on me. And while yesterday and today haven't been too bad, the last few weeks have been horrendous.

Bugster and Bubster had their wedding over the weekend, and I'm not sure, if it's a lack of sleep on the girls' part, (Let me break in here by saying the quiet was so quiet that I couldn't keep my eyes open, and we all took a much needed nap! Now...back to your regularly scheduled post...), or what, but the meltdowns have been plentiful. Saturday, the day of the wedding, Hopper probably had at least a dozen meltdowns throughout the day before the wedding. She had a couple more when we were at the park to break the pinata and then again at the ceremony.

Her meltdowns can be a bit contagious. And although Scooter hasn't has as many meltdowns as Hopper, Hopper's have triggered them. Sadly, Hubster and I are not immune. We normally have the patience to deal with a meltdown here or a meltdown there, but we've had no space between them in which to recover, and we've snapped a few times.

Hubby had his parents come over for a visit on Sunday while I was out with my sister and mom for a few hours. He wanted to give me a break, and he thought maybe it would be easier on me to have them over while I was gone, and I was all for both the break and not being here when they were seeing the house and all it hoards. However, it was a bit much for him to handle alone, and he said that he exploded out of pure frustration at Hopper. He didn't hit her. He didn't call her names. But he did yell at her. And he's got a big voice. It's not something that happens with any frequency. We try very hard not to yell at the girls, but we're human, and sometimes, when we've had no break from the stress, when there is no relief in sight, we've been known to yell. And while neither of us want to yell at the girls, we'd rather it come out as something loud rather than something hard like a fist.

And so, when I was away from the house, and Hubster was here alone with the girls, their moods, and their grandparents, he snapped. And his dad, in all his infinite wisdom, encouraged Hubster that maybe we needed to do it more often. After all, it caused her to stop her meltdown.

:::insert extra large eye roll here::::

Hubster put the girls to bed and then talked with his parents, who have never once showed an ounce of understanding for what goes on with the girls, either for us as parents or for our beautiful daughters. And how he didn't totally explode at his parents is beyond me. Instead, he asked a hypothetical question. He asked, "What would you have done, if I was out of control, and yelling didn't snap me out of it? Would you hit me? What if you couldn't or wouldn't hit me for whatever reason? What would you do then?"

His dad didn't have any answers.

He explained that every single day, grown people throw fits. That sometimes, "when Judy hurts my sensitive little feelings, I give her the silent treatment". That other times when an adult is going through a rough divorce, they end up murdering their entire families. And while these are only examples of fits that people throw, that adults with a normal mental capacity still have the ability to pull themselves into check and realize what they're doing. They can typically reason with themselves and stop throwing their fits.

However, the girls aren't typical. They feel the emotions that they feel when they feel them. They don't stuff them. The love, anger, sadness, happiness and joy they feel are more real than what most people feel, simply because they have no way of faking it. So when they're feeling overwhelmed, scared, sad and angry, it comes out in the form of a meltdown. And all we can do is allow them to feel it, even when they sometimes feel those deep emotions when it's not convenient to us.

So his mom asked, if we'd considered taking her to a psychiatrist. Had we considered drugs?

::::insert monumentally HUGE eye roll here::::

I know. Maybe I should give her the benefit of the doubt. She seriously could have just been brain storming and trying to help find a solution. So Hubster explained again that we had gone the route of the psychiatrist. That he'd put her on medication, and that when the medication didn't seem to be quite enough according to the psychiatrist that he upped the dose, and then she started getting physical. It was infrequent at first. She would only have full-blown meltdowns once a month. We figured it had to do with her hormones, but it wasn't long before she was having meltdowns more than once a week. By the time we realized the meds were the culprit in her uncontrolled rages, Hopper was getting physical with me 3 and 4 days out of the week, and each day consisted of 3 to 4 altercations with her trying to beat me up. She was on the medicine for 2 full years before we realized that it was the cause of the problems. So yeah. We tried a psychiatrist. And we tried drugs.

Yeah. They didn't work.

It was obvious at the wedding the night before that they both felt that the girls are not disciplined, and if we only (fill in the blank) that they'd behave better in public. The thing is, they're two of the most well behaved kids you'd ever meet. I'm fairly certain the inlaws came to our house thinking the same thing when they visited our home when Hubster was taking care of the girls while I was gone. I think they may have left with a totally different understanding of their son's family and the life we live.

Hubster wondered, if maybe, somewhere, they might get that we know how to handle the girls, that we might actually know what we're doing after all these years. After all, Hopper is weeks away from being 21. Only time will tell, if they took anything out of the conversation.

When Hubster told me everything that happened, I told him that he'd never been sexier to me. He shows me on a daily basis what we mean to him. We never lack for love. Ever. But for him to go so far as to explain things to his parents regardless of any sort of backlash, it speaks volumes about what he feels for us.

I just hope that his parents finally see it.