Well, That Escalated Quickly

I hate when this happens. 

I get a thought or idea in my head. Something special. Something that I feel is meaningful, but others don't. And yet I need their help to pull it off, so it falls apart. And then I fall apart. Or explode. Or a bit of both.

Today was one such day.

We watched Baby Bug today, and I was able to finish up a handprint/footprint painting for both sets of great grandparents, and for her other grandmother. Each painting consisted of no less than 3 footprints and no less than 2 handprints. And while that doesn't sound like any big deal, it's no small feat with a 1 year old. And we had so much fun doing it! She was really enjoying herself, and so was I.

We laughed about the fact that I got paint on my clothes, and she got some on her paint clothes, too. We talked about each of the characters in the paintings, and she was very proud of all her hard work! We talked about her giving her painting to her other grandmother. (The great grands live out of state). It really was a lot of fun.

She was getting tired, so I held her while she napped, and I drifted off a bit myself, because once she starts that deep rhythmic breathing once she closes her eyes, my breathing follows suit. It's rare that I can keep my eyes open when I hold her when she's napping. I thoroughly enjoy the snuggles. The time goes so fast. Why is it that babies are little for such a short time?

The plan when she woke up from her nap was to take pictures in front of the Christmas tree, so we could take it down. I want her to be able to see pictures of what she looked like when she painted these masterpieces. I wanted her to see how proud she was years from now when she looked back at her former self holding her paintings. I wanted to give her parents a picture to go with the paintings she did for them, because they are little for such a short amount of time. 

And I wanted a picture of us together. Because years from now when I look at it, I want to be able to feel her little arms around mine. To breathe her in again as I look at the pictures. To remember all the fun we had. 

But nobody would help me.

Bugster got off early, and I asked her, if she could help. She said yes at first, and then she changed her mind. I asked Hubster, but he's having a bad Parkinson's day. He's been cold all day. So he spent most of the day under a blanket in his recliner. And by the time he realized I needed help I'd been talking about for weeks, Bubster showed up to pick up Baby Bug. 

And things just fell apart. I asked Bubster, if he would help. He jokingly said 'no', because he says that a lot. But he also didn't do a thing to help me. And of course, when Baby Bug saw her daddy, it was all over. And she wouldn't sit with me for pictures. So they went home.

And I was left with all sorts of emotions that I wasn't prepared for. Disappointment apparently wasn't enough. I went straight into self-loathing, self-hatred, and every negative memory from every single negative experience in my life flooded in at once. And I exploded. Which made me hate myself even more. 

I'm just done. 

I'm done with having a Christmas tree in my living room for 4 months. I'm done with falling victim to my high expectations, (who knew a snapshot was a high expectation?). I'm done with my husband having Parkinson's and life being so incredibly different than what it was supposed to be. And I'm done with asking for help. 

I'm just done. 

I'll Take "A Side of Frozen Claustrophobia in Limbo Land" for the win, Alex.

Christmas came late this year for us. Or really early. I guess it depends on how you look at it. We were all finally feeling well enough to celebrate Christmas in mid-February. We still have our tree up, because we have to get a couple of pictures of Baby Bug with some cute little paintings we made for her parents with her hand and footprints. It will be good to get the tree down soon. I'm starting to feel claustrophobic. We will have Baby Bug over tomorrow, so we will get it down this weekend.

The bad thing is that I've been feeling a bit more claustrophobic in the house lately. 

The good thing is that I've been feeling a bit more claustrophobic in the house lately.

As much as I hate the discomfort of the feeling, it always leads to a surge of dehoarding, and I'm really beyond wanting to get it done! However, I'm far enough behind again that I'm feeling frozen. I just need to get moving. Once I do, I'll thaw out a bit and will start accomplishing things again. So tonight, I will make a master list of things that need to be done in the near future and another list for the not-so-distant future. Lists always make me feel better, because I feel like I know where to start. It gives me a visual of what I've accomplished when I mark something off the list. And yes. I've been known to add something I've accomplished to the list after I've done it. It's still a record, and it helps.

Hubster's Parkinson's has left him exhausted all the time. It doesn't help that we have been sick more often than not since October and had to cancel Christmas week after week after week. But now that we're all feeling better, I need to kick it into gear. It's so easy to let his exhaustion be contagious, but I can't afford to do that. 

I need to propel myself out of the Land of Limbo. 

The mind is willing...

but the flesh is weak.

Especially today. And yesterday. And this past week.

Hoping for a break from the asthma flare and the back spasms now that I'm done with the flu. I'm ready to get started!

Maybe watching Baby Bug tomorrow will pull the kink out of it! She will at least put a huge smile on my face!

Size Matters.

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The cursor mocks me while I sit here trying to figure out where to begin. . .

I'm ready to get really busy dehoarding again. And I'm ready to start blogging about it again, because I find I hold myself more accountable when I do. I feel like I have more control over things. And I've got to take the control back from the things that have been controlling me, so I'm back. 

Don't get me wrong. I haven't relapsed to the point of no return. My house is not overflowing to the point it once was, but it's definitely not where I want it to be. I've just been...busy. For the last year. A Baby Bug does that to grandparents, and I'm not complaining! I just have to readjust my focus a little. And I did that today...

For our 16th wedding anniversary, we bought our first bedroom set. Before that we had a hodge podge of furniture that didn't match, and we made due. And after 16 years of marriage, we decided to take the plunge and buy a bedroom set. And the bedroom set is gorgeous! We had seen several beds that we liked while we were out shopping, but when we turned the corner and saw the one we bought, we both gasped audibly. We'd never had an experience quite like that before. We knew this was our set. 

The bed is what sold us. It's a gorgeous 4 poster canopy bed. Instead of the canopy going in a square around the bed, this canopy has all sorts of pretty metal curls that meet up in the center of the bed. It's an absolutely stunning mix of gorgeous oak and metal work with posts that are a good 6" in diameter at the largest. Just. Stunning.

At the time we went shopping for it 15 years ago, Hubster wanted to try a king-size bed, because we'd always had queens up until then. And we've had a love/hate relationship with the size ever since. We like that fact that we both have room to stretch out, but we both hate that we have to climb over a hump in the middle of the bed in order to reach one another. It makes any sort of snuggling difficult. More than anything else it takes up an awful lot of room in our traditional, small bedroom. 

And its size makes it really hard to maneuver around. Especially for Hubster. The Parkinson's has made us realize that we have to rethink how we go forward. For instance, we won't be using glass shower doors after all. We had gotten some for both our bathtub and for our shower, but now we can't use them. They're not a really good idea for someone who has balance issues, and Parkinson's causes balance issues. So we will need to sell them. Besides that, it looks like we may need to combine the two bathrooms into one. Neither of them is really conducive to free movement, and free movement is necessary. 

Which brings me back to our bedroom set. 

We made the very difficult decision today to get rid of it. 

::::2 points for making a hard dehoarding decision::::

Go us!

It's going to take some time to make it all happen. We will need to do a complete dehoarding of our bedroom first. The bedroom itself isn't too bad, but you don't even want to see the closet! (Well, maybe you do, but I don't know that I'm going to show you). And we need to do a major purge of clothes that we will never. ever. wear. no. matter. what. size. we. are. We are giving ourselves permission to put ourselves and our future first. 

And our future looks amazing!

Time changes everything.

They say that time changes everything, but it's always been a bit of a paradox to me. It rushes. It stands still. It messes with your memory but also firms up those magical moments in your life and allows you to reminisce about them as though they happened yesterday. 

I have a lot of those magical moments in my life. Some are amazing memories: Meeting Hubster for the first time. Getting married. Almost passing out at the amazing news we were expecting Bugster and then welcoming her just a few months later. Anticipating Hopper's arrival. Opening the best birthday gift I've ever received when having Scooter. Some are just plain awful. And while there's no need for me to remember them just to write them in a blog post, I will keep them tucked away. They are a part of me. 

I will instead just focus on those wonderful, magical memories that I've been so very blessed to have. I'm able to open them over and over again and live the days like they just happened. And there's one in particular that I will enjoy reliving time and time again.

It was when I finally got to meet Baby Bug...our precious little granddaughter...

Bugster had been fighting high blood pressure the last week or so of her pregnancy. She wasn't bedridden, but if it didn't come down right away by lying down, she needed to go in for a BP check. She took her blood pressure multiple times a day with a little wrist cuff, and it always went down when she rested on her side until the day it didn't. So she packed her bag for the hospital. (I know. She should have had it done. But it always seems like "The Day" is never actually going to arrive, and when it comes a week before you're planning on it, it catches you unaware). So she and Bubster headed out to the hospital. 

My mom, who had flown down to be here for her newest great-granddaughter's arrival, and I decided we'd better get that last coat of paint on the nursery room walls while we still could. (Frank finally moved out about 10 days prior, and there's no way Bugster could do any of the cleaning, let alone the painting in her condition). I was just putting the finishing touches of soft pink paint in the closet when Bugster called. 

She was crying.  

Bubster had run down to the cafeteria to get them something to eat really quick when the doctor came in and told her that they needed to induce her. And even though she was expecting it, it took her off guard to hear it while she was alone. And all of her pent up emotions that had been carefully held in check for 9 months rose to the surface during the phone call. I don't think she was scared as much as she just wasn't quite mentally prepared. But by the time the phone call was over, she was ready to get the show on the road.

So we packed up and headed out, too. We ran home, (had Calamity, who was supposed to be helping us paint but settled for keeping us company, follow us to our house, so she could follow us to the hospital), changed clothes, and waited for our friend to head over to watch the girls for us. It felt like time stood still, went in slow motion, and whizzed past us all during that half hour. It's amazing how you can almost see time in instances like that. 

We stayed at the hospital for a couple of hours and left when Bugster asked us all to clear out. Her main intent was to get Calamity to go home, and she wouldn't leave, if we didn't. The last thing we needed was to stick around and have Bugster's blood pressure rise, so we went home and relieved our friend who was watching the girls. We watched tv for a bit, called to say goodnight to Bugster, and went to bed. I wondered about the sanity of crawling into bed at the time, but Bugster assured us that she was doing fine, and there wasn't anything else to do.

The moment I actually drifted off to the Land of Slumber, the phone rang. It was Bugster. She was crying again. They had given her the medicine to start the induction. It was given in the hope that she wouldn't need pitocin. And it had kicked in. Hard. Like Transition Hard. And she was alone. Bubster had run home to get some creature comforts for his overnight stay and to feed the cats. She had told him to go but regretted it the moment the contractions took over. 

Her blood pressure was rising even more, and it was time to make a decision. She could choose to try an epidural to keep her blood pressure down, or she could opt for magnesium. Neither was her first choice, but the natural birth she had wanted wasn't going to happen. She decided to give the epidural a chance, since the pain was causing her blood pressure to rise. 

By the time Hubster and I made it to the hospital, (we left my mom with the girls, because we couldn't get ahold of our friend to sit with them again. She'd absentmindedly turned the ringer off on her phone.), Bubster was back at the hospital, the epidural was in place, and Bugster seemed at peace and out of pain. 

Hubster took advantage of the quiet of the waiting room at 1:00 in the morning to read and snooze, while I waited in Bugster's room waiting for the dragging time to quicken a bit, visited quietly with the doula and hit the pain pump for Bugster's epidural when she grimaced in her sleep. I wanted her to be as comfortable as possible. I knew what was coming. She didn't.

When the nurse came in to check her progress a few hours later, everyone was shocked to find that Bugster was ready to go! The medicine had done it's job, and the epidural allowed her to sleep through every bit of labor! Time went into warp speed again. I woke Hubster up, so he could go get Mom, called our friend, who had since turned her ringer back on, and waited impatiently for them to get back to the hospital. They were just in time. Hubster and Mom came in to give Bugster a quick hug and tell her she was going to do great and headed back out to the waiting room. 

What seemed like moments later, a doctor came running from across the ward behind them. He yelled out asking the nurses where he needed to go. Hubster immediately recognized it as Bugster's room, and I know time had to have absolutely dragged for them while waiting for news. In the meantime, we were stuck in this time warp, where poor Bugster had to wait for the doctor to come in. Baby Bug could wait no longer to make her appearance. The doctor no sooner donned his paper gown than she appeared.

She was beautiful. She had a headful of downy black hair. And she wasn't moving or crying like she should. Time stood completely still, as I reassured Bugster that she had done an amazing job and listened to her and Bubster talk about how alert and beautiful and quiet their little girl was. I'm glad they got to see her look at them. I'm glad they had that special moment with one another, because what I saw was not as encouraging, and time stood perfectly still, in spite of the clock on the wall ticking above the noise of the nurses working on the baby.

I realized I was holding my breath. I needed to hear everything. I needed to hear her little cries. And my breathing was much too loud. And time stopped in its tracks. Moments later, we heard those beautiful little mewls that newborns make. And those beautiful little mewls turned into even more amazing little cries. And then she came over to meet her mommy and daddy for real. 

And she was breathtaking.

She IS breathtaking. 

She takes my breath away every time I see her. 

Every time I hold her. 

Every time I think of her. 

And time ceases.