The week behind, the week ahead (Day 9)

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Merideth

It’s been a wild first week of school. I’m a little crazed.

I love my classes. They seem to be going well, but I feel like I’m racing all day on Tuesday and Thursday. I don’t have time to think, let alone write about what I think.

Merlin went back to school today and seems to be in good spirits. One of the IV places on her arm is bruised and swelling, so I think we’ll take her in to have it looked at. We got the bill for the MRI ($736) and for the hospital portion of the angiogram ($900). We’ll see anesthesiology and individual doctor bills trickling in. Grandmommy sent us $1000 to help cover the cost. Dr. Waldron went over the angiogram with us today ($25), and I’m afraid I was a bit short with him. It’s just because I’m anxious, and there are no straight answers. The images pretty much confirmed what we already knew, but they were much more detailed. He’s going to set up our consult in San Francisco. That’s all the Tangle news.

Let’s see if I can put together a rundown of the last week before I fall asleep at the keyboard.

Sunday – We were supposed to have lunch with Kathryn and Paul, but it had to be pushed to supper. We made our own pizzas, and they gave us a $100 HEB gift card on our way out the door. William went directly to HEB and bought lunch supplies for the week.

Monday – School holiday. We met Will’s parents in Fredericksburg for breakfast and went to the Nimitz Museum, which was really cool. I was in a foul temper because my house was a mess, and school was about to start, and I spent the last of my cash ($30) on drinks for the kids and gas to get home. I’m not in any way worth being around right now, but I think about sad things when I’m on my own, so I’m seeking company anyway. I expect to level off some soon.

Tuesday – Merlin’s angiogram and the first day of school. I zipped from hospital to campus in a whirligig all day. Linda gave us $40 to buy takeout for supper. I used $20 to put gas in the car, gave the other $20 to Will and had dinner with Melissa on my way back from my evening class.

Wednesday – We were supposed to have a dr. appointment, but it got canceled an hour before. Will had his class covered, so we drove to Sonic and got a drink and a snack ($13). I met Erin back at the apartment, and we did some running around. B came over, and we all walked Town Lake. It was fun, but my kids were at home aggravating each other, so we only did the 3 mile loop, and when I got back, they were both in a dark mood. I went to pick up Will because we were supposed to go to a department meeting for ACC, but I was too worried about the kids, so we came home, and I made stroganoff, and we sat together like civilised people and had a quiet supper.

Thursday – I had Mountain Goats tickets (bought back in October), but Merlin wasn’t feeling well, and we put off deciding what to do, and by the time I got home from class around eight, we were all ready for a night in. We checked email for the tickets, thinking we might just go and stay an hour, but they had sent Will an email saying that the tickets were mailed. We never got them (maybe they went to San Antonio?), and we had too many other things on our minds to think to check earlier. We ordered Pei Wei ($36) and bought stuff to make ice cream sundaes at HEB ($30) and watched hours of “Community.”

Friday – Grammy and Grumpa came to visit, but they got in too late to see us. I walked over to Lisa M’s to split a bottle of wine and a pizza. I left Will and the kids to fend for themselves, and I think they just grazed.

Saturday – I bought a few ingredients ($40) and made crepes, and I got to hog the little baby as soon as I was done cooking. Had a good visit with grandparents.

Sunday – I took some cheese, jalapenos, beer, and the leftover wine from my house out to Erin’s, and we all made our own pizzas. They were delicious.

Monday – Today. I taught class, bought $120 of food at HEB, paid the utilities ($56) and the Home Depot card ($240) off, got $20 in quarters, printed my credit report, and discovered that my MacBook Air is pretty much dead. It’s been slow to boot up for a few days, and I haven’t been able to keep it running long enough to back up my photos and documents. I’m not sure how much I will lose or when I can replace it. I made green enchiladas for supper, biked to Black Swan for Yoga.

And so to bed.

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Day 14

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Merideth

Yesterday was Merlin’s angiogram AND my first day of classes at ACC. It was wild. We checked in at 8am, she went under at 10:30, and she came out at noon.  I waited with her in the while the parade of people came in to talk to her about the procedure, and it was kind of hilarious. When the doctor asked if we had any questions, I was silent. Having researched the procedure thoroughly, I knew what was going to happen. Sort of. I couldn’t help the image of a toilet snake coming to mind every time it was explained, which led to quite a bit of anxiety on my part. Never dismiss the power of analogy. Anyway, it was clear that the doctor was supposed to explain the procedure, and now he was at a loss as to how to begin since I didn’t have any questions. (I had no desire to hear the screeching of wire against porcelain in my head moments before they ran a tub up through my daughter’s major arteries. I was terrified he would poke through somewhere and cause new problems, even though I knew, academically, that the risk was small. I kept my mouth shut. No curiosity here, no sir!) William finally took pity on him and asked him to explain the procedure, and when he was done, Merlin looked him in the eye and said, “Wait, what! You’re going to do what, exactly?” When he misunderstood her concern and said it should be perfectly safe for a person of her age in good health, she clarified, “But, I’m going to be totally asleep the whole time, right?” She repeated this question with the recovery nurse, the anesthesiologist, the nurse on duty for the procedure. Everyone who tried to talk to her about the procedure got the same response: “But, I’ll totally be knocked out, right?”

Yes.

She remembers going down to the room and waking up in recovery. She said she asked the time and finding that it was 12:30, she said, “My mom’s not here,” and cried. I got there about 2:00 and brought pyjamas (Critically Useful. She’s still wearing them.) and books (Not Necessary.  William set up the computer, and we watched Pretty Little Liars and Castle.)

Anyway, we got there at 8, and I waited in the radiology waiting room with William and Linda as long as I could and then left for class at 11:40. Will called me as I was pulling into the ACC parking lot at noon. I was eight minutes late for class, and we were all locked out because they’ve put my class in a computer lab(?!) The person in charge of the computer lab addressed me in Spanish (mucho gusto!) which I had the presence of mind to reply to in Spanish, if a bit formally (con mucho gusto.) Go on and develop the intrigue, I guess.

It occurred to me that I did not have an ACC parking permit and that I might be towed.

Class was good. The students were lovely and very patient with me.

I raced back to the hospital to find Merlin flat on her back in recovery, but in good spirits. When I thought to leave at 4:30, she started crying. She was bored, I know, and tired, and ready to go home. I know. I wish I had cancelled class. I wish I had scheduled her angiogram with a thought toward my schedule and our finances, but I was only thinking that it should be done as soon as possible, so I found myself in a very unfamiliar position. I stayed with Merlin for another thirty minutes, thinking that I might just miss class if it came to it. She calmed after a while and began to get worried that I’d be late for class. I told her that I wouldn’t leave her so upset and that if I missed class, I missed class. When she seemed alright, and I had secured a ride home for them (Thanks Blair!), I went ahead and left. I arrived ten minutes before class, realized once again that I don’t have an ACC parking permit, went to my classroom, and saw that it was occupied!

I thought that strange.  Several of my students were milling about outside, wondering when the class would get out and whether we were in the wrong place. I took the opportunity to go to the bathroom, and when I came out, one of the students said, “I think maybe that’s us.” There was no professor in the class. They were all students waiting for me.

Ha.

Class was pretty awesome, I think. They may have all thought I was a big dork. No matter. I’m looking forward to the semester.

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Tired

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Merideth

This is Day 16, and there’s really only two weeks left. I’ve been working like a crazy person to get everything ready for classes. More tomorrow.

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Meditations

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Merideth

I don’t sleep.

I don’t talk about it much. It doesn’t seem worth discussing. When I was a child, I could sleep though anything. I slept deeply, like the sleep of a rock or a tree, a complete withdrawal from human interaction. Once Merlin was born, she slept with me. William was a bit anxious at first, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I needed her baby breath against my neck every bit as much as she needed milk from my breast.

We used the expensive crib to hold clean laundry.

I know that people disagree, and I know that there are problems often associated with co-sleeping. I’m not interested in debating the fine points with you. Or with anyone. I have, ever, done as I thought best regarding my children, and often what I thought best was the option that left me most free to be my own true self while I took care of them. My own true self slept like loamy dirt Before Children. My own true self has slept like desert sand since, shifting, rippling, listening. The shape of my sleep is constantly changing. I have excellent hearing, and I wake (to some degree) with every unusual sound.

So, for thirteen years plus, I haven’t slept. I think it is a small price to have paid, to hear my infants humming in their sleep, to hear my adolescents talking in theirs. I’m listening right now to Merlin protesting injustice in her sleep (so like her!), to Gavin struggling to breathe deeply, to William’s uneven cadence. Even the cat has his own simple and deeply satisfying rhythm.

I miss sleep sometimes, surely, the deep, dark feeling of striking air below the surface. I chase it even though I know I will always stop short of catching it. I take allergy medicine or melatonin; I drink whisky or wine; I go to sleep and wake two hours later, seeking water, seeking sound. Though I am often desperately tired (desperately weary, just now), I don’t want to take anything stronger. I don’t want a full night’s sleep. I don’t want my (admittedly imperfect) vigil chemically broken.

I am not a martyr. I take a lot of joy in listening. Sometimes it is an exhausted, hysterical joy; sometimes it is a quiet, peaceful joy. Either way, I know joy when I hear it.

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Frittered Away (Day 18)

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Merideth

“Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.” ~Thoreau

Today we got a parking ticket ($20). It was only a matter of time. We have the suburban, and Will has been taking it to work before the parking meters start and bringing it back after, but today was Saturday, and he didn’t have to go to work, so we forgot about it and ended up with a ticket. I probably won’t have to pay it until February, but it’s annoying, nonetheless.

I went to bed about 4am and stayed there until 11, though I wasn’t asleep for all of that time. I spent probably an hour listening to people in the house. I don’t know why I do that.

I spent a profitable hour walking with my sisters, had coffee with Blair so she could ride in my little car, had coffee with Debbie, and bought black beans, milk, and tortilla chips at Fresh Plus ($9). We had black beans and rice for supper and rewatched some Downton Abbey with the Aguirres. I think, maybe, I’ve had enough of a day to sleep.

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Day 19

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Merideth

I had a productive day working on the house and transcript requests and lost applications. I cleaned out the kids’ closet. I was in full on battle mode. I got their desk set up, but Gavin accidentally knocked it off its support and tore the screws out. :( It was an accident and it’s fixable, but annoying.

So I stayed home and worked and made progress (I think. It’s kind of hard to tell.), and then Gavin came home and broke the desk, and then I took him to therapy, and his session went well, and I sent him out to the car to check my phone for messages from JD because I was expecting a call, and I told him to wait for me there because I wanted to talk to his therapist for a few minutes, and he came back three minutes later, so I wrote the check to his therapist and went out to the car to find that he had locked my keys inside.

I’ve only had the car for 48 hours, and I haven’t had a second key made, so I tried not to completely lose my mind with Gavin as I walked him home so I could borrow Merlin’s phone (Mine was locked in the car.) to call pop-a-lock to come open my car for me. I paid them $40, which would be an annoyance in February and is a disaster in January. It’s fortunate that I was too distracted by the house to go out and buy groceries today or else I wouldn’t have had the money in the bank to pay for it.

I called my sister while I was waiting in the cold for the locksmith, and she suggested that it could be worse: Gavin could have lost the key on the way to or from the car. I admitted that every time I walk across the mopac bridge when I walk around Town Lake, I have to make a conscious effort to suppress the urge to throw my keys or my glasses over the side. She suggested that my kids are simply a manifestation of my self-destructive urges, and I have to say, I’m giving the hypothesis some credit.

Anyway, I got into my car, went to pick up Gavin and assure him that everything was OK (It was really an accident after all.), and we sold an old iPhone at Gamestop for $70. We went to P.Terry’s and got burgers and milkshakes for everyone ($25), and I came home to rewatch Downton Abbey with JD while the kids shot Nerf guns at each other and made entirely too much noise until Gavin got hurt, and I put an official stop to all the Fun.

All my autodrafts have cleared except the insurance, which is going to be high this month because of the change to full coverage and the pro-rated Jan/Feb combo payment ($122). I have money in the bank to cover it, and I have about $50 cash and only eighteen days left to payday.

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Scheduling, Skills, and Habits (Day 20)

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Merideth

I would have opened my vein and poured a pint of my blood on the kitchen floor to avoid going to the 6th grade fundraiser this evening.

My blood is boiling anyway with petty anger and disappointment, and it would be happy to get out, out, out, and I might feel better for it, but I won’t do it because I know it’s just petty anger and disappointment, and the display wouldn’t benefit anyone, really. And I’d have to mop the floor again.

But Gavin is excited to go and see his classmates, and even if they don’t connect with him, I know he wants to feel like part of the group, so I’m spending money I don’t have on a movie I don’t want to see on a school night. In January.

In the end, it wasn’t so bad. A friend gave me her tickets because she and her husband ended up having other commitments, and so I took her son and Gavin. I spent $23 on a beer, two cokes, and a queso. The movie was only an hour and a half long, and as I left I felt as I often did when the children were small, and I was exhausted from keeping up with two toddlers, and I’d worked myself up into an angry anxious mess about leaving the house. Two truths I finally settled on back then: It costs $20 to leave the house, no matter what you do. Leaving the house is (almost) never as bad in reality as it is in your mind, and it is usually worth the trouble in the end. It’s funny that no matter how long I’ve known these things, I still need reminding.

In other scheduling news, I made the appointment for Merlin’s angiogram on Tuesday, and I will not be able to be there. I know it’s just a diagnostic test, but they are going to anesthetize her, and I would like to be there. It’s the first day of ACC classes. I don’t know. I may try to call in for my morning class so I can be there for check-in and the procedure. Depending on how long it takes, I might even be there when she wakes up. It doesn’t make me happy, but I think it will have to do. How I’m supposed to teach class when she’s in the hospital, I don’t even know.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the craigslist car disaster, and I think I have to chalk it up to a problem of skills and habits. I have the habit of driving a junk car, but I don’t have the skills to keep it running. I have the habit of eating fast food, but I have the skills to cook great food, often better than what I’d order at a restaurant. I feel like there’s probably room to be more cautious about making sure I’m matching skills and habits, and if I was thoughtful about it, I wouldn’t make such a mess of things. Maybe we’d all move through life a little more smoothly if we could line up our skills and habits. It’s just a thing I’m thinking. I’ll let you know if I get anywhere with it.

Classes are going well. I love teaching Comp II. For the most part, I’ve adopted the Jeff Nunokawa strategy: short readings that are ridiculously complex. I’m feeling pretty confident that we can spend two weeks on each short story/paper combo and not waste any time. I met with my DevWriting mentor today, and he gave me lots of his materials to work with. He told me I should be blogging, and when I said that I was, he looked at me in surprise and asked, “Are you a writer?” Of course I am. But it’s a funny sort of question, and I qualified my answer. “I write for myself.” It’s taken quite a lot of time, but I’ve given up protesting when people say they like something about my writing. When a man at Bread Loaf whose opinion I utterly respect called my piece “gripping,” I just threw my hands up and decided I must be a writer, whatever that meant. And I understand that the goal should be to publish something. But… I just can’t quite feel it. I’ve always done things in my own time, though, and so, I have to think that I will have to feel that the time is right, that the material is worthy, and that I want to put the necessary effort into revision. Right now, I am content to spill my insides out. I’m writing to make sense of what I see and feel, not necessarily to entertain or connect (though I am delighted when these things happen). I write to live the life I want. Thank you for reading it.

 

 

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Riddikulus! (Day 21)

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Merideth

I bought Kolaches for breakfast on the way in to work this morning ($15), came home and finally put my kitchen to rights. The laundry and the dishes are returning to manageable levels. I paid the internet bill ($30), picked William up from work, went to a car dealership, and bought a car ($12,500).

That was my day.

We didn’t really intend to drive a car off the lot. I guess January is slow for car dealerships, though, so they were anxious to deal with us. We bought a 2010 Kia Forte with 20,000 miles on it and a service contract for the next 60,000. I’m a little panicky about committing to payments. They shouldn’t be a problem this semester since I’m carrying a full course load. Because that isn’t guaranteed for the summer and fall, I really want to do what I can to pay off all my other debt (which was the plan anyway, but now seems more critical than ever).

So, in a nutshell, I’m afraid to pay for a car, afraid to be without a car, and afraid I’ve done something foolish… again.

But, you know, I’m just going to keep pushing through.

I took the kids for a short ride to get milkshakes at P.Terry’s ($6) and then came home and made pesto penne for dinner. I’ve got food in the house, a car in my parking spot, a job starting up full tilt next week, $90 in the bank, and twenty days to go.

 

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Day 22

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Merideth

Long and strange day. I had a great class. Read Memento Mori with students. So, the rule of week one is: Blow their tiny minds. Not sure about what I’m doing tomorrow, but I have a pretty good idea.

I taught class, came home for a moment, went to the auto shop to meet Xavier and sell him my battery (which you will remember that he procured) for $50, went to P.Terry’s for a burger with jalapenos and a vanilla milkshake (my weakness) and then to visit with Lisa M. at work until the tow truck came to give me $295 for my car. Deposited the check, came home to nap for an hour, and then went to my 3 1/2 hour meeting for my new ACC class.

I came home to find that it was still Tuesday! and Shannon had made dinner, which was delicious. I drank a great deal of a box of wine and chatted with J.D. and Merlin while Shannon and William participated in political discussion that was beyond my ken.

I laid down with Merlin until her breathing evened out and tried to whisper her incredible worth into her ear. No clue whether it worked. Gavin was snoring when I left, but Merlin was lucid enough to say “goodnight Mama.”

I spent $5 at P. Terry’s and $4 at Starbucks. I paid $75 for the diagnostic work on my car and deposited the $295 check into my account. I have about $300, and tomorrow I will pay bills. I just took a benadryl and a melatonin, so I am hoping for sleep. Tomorrow I will teach poetry by an Iraqi war veteran and help kids write about true war stories – a most impossible and necessary task.

I have several new thoughts on the meaning of life, but I’m too tired to relate them. Hope they return to me tomorrow. Love to you all.

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