mud and seeds

We just got back from a 4-mile walk on the bike trail along KGB Road. Little Dude was King Dude since he got to ride in the stroller almost the whole way while the girls rode their bikes and we grown-ups hoofed it. Boss only crashed twice and I only needed the inhaler once.

Spring right now means that the snow and ice have melted into giant road-ponds and mud-ruts along the sides of the road, there is trash everywhere you look, and the kids change out of muddy clothes at least twice a day. It also means the dog's back outside, and the grill's not just a dormant piece of backyard clutter anymore. We've started some seedlings for this year's garden: tomatoes, spinach, romaine, beans, sugar snap peas, cilantro, green onions, and cherry tomatoes, so far. I think this year we'll try growing potatoes... and hopefully I can get my hands on some rhubarb to transplant.

In the works are: the ballet recital at the end of May at the PAC in Anchorage, a trip to Nome for Taylor Booth's graduation, Girl Scout Encampment at the fairgrounds in Palmer, Girl Scout 6-day camp at Togowoods near Big Lake, and ever more soccer. I'm also hoping to make it to my 20-year class reunion in Nome during the Midnight Sun madness. Obla-di, obla-da.

3 Years, Life in the BDP

Tonight I was clicking through the PH emails I get, reading other people's stories about their treatments, meds and so on, and I realized that it was three years ago this week that I was tumbling down into the Big Disease Pit. I'd been diagnosed a few weeks earlier with another lupus flare and pulmonary hypertension, I was on prednisone, K was working in California... and I started coughing up blood. I had to haul the kids to the ER with me, send them away with friends, then I was admitted for pneumonia. Rough. I think the best memory I have of those days is when all my girlfriends came to visit and make me laugh... thanks again my friends, it still means a lot that you were there.

My doc has taken me off of Revatio, my only "real" PH medication. She said it tends to lose effectiveness in patients after about a year or so. It's made me a little nervous, because Revatio has been my security blanket and I worry that my pressure will go back up. I mean, it's nice having fewer pills to take but I don't want to take any chances... She believes Cellcept will handle the disease process all by itself but I won't be convinced until I have another echo. I'd actually rather have a right heart cath, since most PH patients have one yearly, and it's been over two years since my first one. My docs are consulting with the PH specialist in Seattle who oversees the ANMC cases of PH, but I wish wish wish I could just fly down there and talk to him in person.

Yes, worrying about anything will make any kind of pressure anywhere go up. For now I'll just not think about it so much, and celebrate another year above ground!

44!

Happy Birthday to a loving, hard-working man, the World's Greatest Dad, Kevin.
XOXO,
Your wife and cage full of monkeys

ash plumes, ice rinks

I just now acted on a strange impulse to give myself a haircut. I hacked off the dangling wavy front-ends of the A-line bob I had. The look just wasn't working for me anymore. Not that I know what my "look" is. Maybe... AFA:Almost Forty Apathy... or GTWAM: Give This Woman A Mirror.

I went to a baby shower yesterday, and even with my weird hair, bored kids (no husband, no sitter) and early departure (Girl Scout Skating Day) - I had fun seeing old friends again. Martha, Julie, Nicole and some other friends were there. R wanted to see the baby, because he thought it had been born already. I showed him Kyla's belly and he was pret-ty impressed. T was silent and still, wistfully looking around at a house way bigger and nicer than her own. As we were leaving she talked it through, reminding herself that in the years to come we'll have more space and little luxuries. BossLady was bored, then hungry, then set on asking every 5 minutes if we were going yet.


We skated for an hour with about 200 Girl Scouts and had fun. Though I won't likely go back if I have to prop up a kicking/dangling 35-pound boy while I'm leaning forward and trying to stay vertical, surrounded by flailing children and other AFAs and GTWAMs.

The volcano, Mount Redoubt, has been erupting for the past seven days. The first warnings were issued months ago, so I think most of Alaska was ready for it. Flights are all tangled up, ash fell all over Anchorage and a few other places, but our area hasn't been affected much. K got to see a huge ash plume after an eruption yesterday afternoon. He was in Soldotna, east of Redoubt across Cook Inlet, for a hockey tournament. Keepin' the dream alive...

Tuesday

On Tuesday, my nephew and his big fan club in Minnesota found out that he had GREAT results from his bone marrow biopsy done on Sunday. All of the chemo and the miserable side effects have done the job... we are so happy for Abe!

Also on Tuesday, the grandma of one of my best friends died. Ruth, as I remember her, was small and thin and elderly but everything about the way she carried herself showed how tough and confident, wise and caring she was. She had a face made for smiling. Even though she had a very long life I think everyone who knows her feels what a heavy loss it is now that she's gone. Goodbye Ruth, I won't ever forget your smiling, knowing face.

Spring Break aka Winter Craziness

I'm up late, it's been a long day but there was one last load to dry. It's been a long week, actually.

I think I forgot to mention how my appointment went last month. The biggest issue was reducing the number of meds I'm on, and since my pulmonologist says my PH is autoimmune-related, she's taking me off of Revatio (vi-vuhhhh, viagra) and sticking with Cellcept. The rheumatologist also decided to discontinue Fosamax and not do Reclast at all, since I'm not at very high risk for an osteoporotic fracture (yet). I have low bone density in my spine, but not my hips. So I got a reminder to keep up with calcium and a scolding for flaking out on Advair.

Two weeks later I had a follow-up 6-minute walk after reducing the Revatio dose, and I did better than I've done, ever, on a 6MWT. I walked over 2000 feet, and I stayed at 100 on my O2 sat. I have to repeat the walk next week I think. It means I get to joke around with Ray, the Respiratory Therapist. Or talk politics and religion.

We've been busy! The school had some fun events (movie night, Dr. Seuss' Birthday, Pastries for Parents) during the week before Spring Break. On Saturday, we visited Nanny in Anchorage for her 84th birthday, and we also stomped around 4th Avenue to watch some of the Iditarod's ceremonial start.

On Sunday, we drove out to Nancy Lakes Recreation Area and snowmachined in to Red Shirt Lake to camp in a public-use cabin that K rented for two nights. I think it was supposed to be an idyllic, peaceful wilderness experience, but the offspring saw it as an opportunity to sound their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world.

The day after the Red Shirt trip was done, T had a soccer scrimmage... On Thursday, K and the girls headed back to Nancy Lakes for an overnight snow-shelter-building adventure. The spot they chose wasn't fit for an actual snow cave, but they dug a big hole, and used a lovely blue tarp for a roof!

Today I let the kids loose at Rascals, an indoor jumping-playground. That was a very long hour and a half but it was well worth it. The best part of it wasn't jumping at all but riding in circles on the Plasmacars. AND FINALLY, we met up with Brenna and her boys (yay! cousins!) at the Wasilla Pool for a couple of hours of splashing around. R only lasted until his lips got blue, but the girls and their cousins were the last ones out of the pool.

Now, I think I need to sleep for a couple of days.

el nino

So what about the other kid?
He is charming. I've heard several people say that they would steal him from me if they could. Maybe it's the short, dark and handsome thing, maybe they like his dimples and his squinty grin.
He still says some things in his own funny way, like "I already HAD gwefdist!!", or "I aftergot my BOOK MAMA!!". He can't make the "rrrr" sound. He does okay with letters and numbers, but it takes a lot of prodding to get him to sing the ABC song. His particular gifts seem to be: jabbering constantly in a very high-pitched voice, gesticulating, and being either absolutely infuriating or ridiculously entertaining. And yes, his sisters call him "Eyeball".

middle child

Mini-me's conference was yesterday. First grade is a breeze for her, but I could tell from what the teacher was saying that it's not boring. She's able to challenge herself, she's great at math, but LittleK's favorite thing to do is write - stories, letters, illustrated journal entries - and she's pretty good at spelling too, for being only six. Mini-me. Karma.

first-born

T does have a mild case of scoliosis. It's about a 7-degree curvature, nothing worth worrying about. Her pain has lessened and she's not missing school, soccer or ballet anymore.

We went to her "Student-Led Parent-Teacher Conference" today. I'll just take off my Bragging Hat and state the facts... she's advanced, in every subject. She's conscientious, hard-working, she gets along with everybody and she doesn't have a shred of arrogance. Wow. She makes mistakes like every student does, but I'm happy to see that because it means that it's not all one big cake-walk.

an ache, a water park, potty humor

FEBRUARY, what??? It seems like winter was humming right along, there was snow, the kids were always outside... then January happened and we all just fell flat on our faces. Oh maybe not K, he's always on schedule and working out... but the rest of us are kind of out of it.

T has an aching-back problem. All she wants to do is sit with a heating pad pressed against her back. K took her to the doctor today, and there's a possibility she has scoliosis. We'll know more tomorrow. She never had this problem before last week, and it's hard to watch her be so bummed out and inactive. She's missed another day and a half of school and now has a tangle of missed assignments to make up.

The girls and I went to H2Oasis in Anchorage on Saturday for an absurdly-delayed birthday event (they have September birthdays). They each invited a good friend and we all had a blast. T's back was either not as bad as usual or she was just ignoring it. My nephew was celebrating his tenth birthday at H2Oasis that day, so we got to see lots of relatives. I got up the nerve to go on the Master Blaster slide (with Boss' little six-year-old friend) and also got talked into going on the other huge slide... kids are brave. I think it was brave enough of me to be seen in public wearing a swimsuit. Yikes.

R and his dad met up with some Lynden friends that day and went ice-fishing. I don't know where they went, other than it was somewhere in the Matsu area and they had a 40-minute snowmachine ride to the lake. Little Dude didn't catch any fish, but he did poop on the ice. What an adventure, potty training! Being 3, he's sort of preoccupied with that particular bodily function and he thinks it's perfectly appropriate to talk about butts during dinner. He's learned his numbers pretty well and yelled from the bathroom the other day, "MAMA!!! LOOK AT MY SEVEN!!!!"

cooped up and up late

Since I last wrote, a heat wave passed through and turned our driveway/front yard into an ice rink, like it was when we moved in last March.

We've had more mamavan adventures... During the deep-freeze week of 20's below, I got stuck three times - twice driving off the sides of driveways, and once backing into a snowbank. After the big thaw, there was a backwards slide-to-the-trees/forward slip-to-the-ditch maneuver after I attempted to park in the driveway. I waver between humble gratitude for the man who keeps saving me and eye-rolling annoyance that preventive steps weren't taken. No wonder so many Wasilla people drive monster trucks.

Thank goodness we're now back to normal January temperatures. The car smells better when it's below freezing.

Now we're coming to the end of a week of sick children. It was the return of the Barfovirus. R was first, then I think two days went by uneventfully before BossLady and T were heaving. They both missed school the past two days. So that brings their grand total of days attended in January to NINE - thanks to 3 holiday-days, 2 weather-cancellation days, 1 inservice day, and 2 barfing days. K's still not on a daily flying schedule, so we all feel like we've been stumbling over each other and the dog for two long months.

Speaking of the dog, he hasn't run away since his 20-below overnight expedition. The woman who brought him to her house that night said he had icicles on his coat and was almost run over a few times. We now know how fast Craigslist ads work - and we also don't take his collar off anymore!

I had my echo done, the pressure has gone down into the 40's. (happy dance!)
I won't officially get the results from my doctor until February 18th, though, because the black-ice, school-cancellation day was also the day I was supposed to drive into Anchorage to talk to her. I also had another bone density scan done, but those techs don't give hints about results... Overall I seem to be doing MUCH better and I'm thankful for it.

a trim and a skate

Today was a "Professional Development" day for the teachers in this district, the first of two long weekends this month for the kids. So we had a lazy morning, then talked Little Dude into getting a haircut at Auntie Brenna's... toned down the Animal look.

We also went ice-skating with Brenna, Wyatt and Wilson on a pond down the street from their house. R got used to hockey skates after about 10 minutes and a few tears, BossLady can glide without doing the ChopChopWobbleFall, and Wyatt really liked being pulled in the sled. It was a good day.


Quyaana to Brenna, you're so good to us!

homesick!

It's so peaceful here right now. I think I stay up ridiculously late just because it's peaceful after 9:30pm and I'm a hoarder of quiet, solitary moments.

K's on a schedule this month that's been taking him to Nome & Kotzebue from about 7pm to 3am. I'm kind of jealous... I haven't been up there in almost four years, and I miss that feeling of a place that's a part of me. The kind of place with streets and houses and shortcuts and skylines you've memorized, people who remember you and everything you ever did there, places where your kids played, all that. I'm sure K doesn't feel the pull of Nome in the same way, but it's got to be fun flying that old familiar approach and seeing the city lights, Anvil Mountain, the old softball fields...

T is bound and determined to move back to Laramie at the first opportunity. She told me she wants to buy our old house back, go to college at UW, and get some horses. I guess she feels the same way about Laramie as I feel about Nome.

Tomorrow, I'll have another echocardiogram done. In October the pulmonary arterial pressure was 54, which is almost unchanged from the October 2007 result. Next week I go in for a bone density scan to see how decrepit my bones are, then I'll get to talk to the doctors the same day. I'm hoping for some new strategy on getting that pressure down, and also a prescription for Reclast instead of Fosamax. Chemical Mama.

out with the old...

In with the new! I made a few changes... the "Heard at my house" column was too long so I archived it in the previous post. The old slideshow can be found on this page . I considered changing the entire look of this blog but really, I'm too lazy for that. I need the time to finish that neverending baby blanket.

2008 Heard at my house

"Daddy, why are toots funny?"

"Don't bite the table. DON'T!!"

"That's not a ball, that's a potato."

"What if every car on earth was a hybrid?"

"What if candy was just as healthy for us as vegetables?"

"I wish we had xray vision."

"So, when can we buy a horse?"

(grinning)"Me, eat, boogeh, Mama"

(R, in the car) "UG BUG!! UG BUG!!"

(sister to brother) "EYEBALL! STOP BITING THE COUCH!"

"HEY! Get your head out of the dryer!"

Happy Frigid Holidays

Merry late Christmas! We had a good Christmas day and night, my sister and her family came out and livened things up for us. Though the girls are reaching the skeptical age, Santa's status here is still Believed. He brought some good stuff this year, and got some sugar cookies in return, along with some carrots for the deer. We gifted ourselves with a new TV, and I think we're all still in shock... we can't seem to turn it off for more than an hour. A good analogy would be upgrading from a rotary-dial phone to a satellite phone. Or going from a doghouse to a 3BR/2BA/2car.

Goodbye to 2008! I wonder what makes a person not care so much about New Year's Eve... Losing the whole Twentysomething lifestyle for sure. Getting old. Below-zero weather. Feeling worn out after 12 days of school vacation, 5 more to go. I need to shake this feeling that every day is just another $#%^@# chore.
Okay so here's my list of aspirations for 2009:
talk to my Grandparents more often
organize
wash the dog
organize
learn lots of things from Martha Stewart
knit ... no more blankets!
take walks
garden in a productive way
organize
get piano and violin lessons underway
send cards and presents out EARLY yeahright

That's enough for now I think.

I'm going to heat some water in my Christmas Kettle, make some tea and plant myself on the couch to get in a few more rows on the baby blanket I started when my baby was still a baby.

school break, hockey night

All-children, all the time. Actually, ALL of us are home, all of the time. If I explain that, I'll probably jinx it and K will have to fly all week.

I certainly jinxed the Fecal Catastrophe situation by blogging about it... ick. A Category Four happened yesterday, with a total of four clothing items contaminated. How do kids get poop on their socks? How does the stuff squish out onto just the bunched-up elastic waistband and no other part of the pants?

We went to a hockey game on Friday night, (Junior 'A' Hockey) Alaska Avalanche against the Fairbanks Ice Dogs. It was their pink-jersey night, when they auction off jerseys to benefit breast cancer awareness; one guy did a strip-tease while the auctioneer was bringing in bids for his jersey but I don't think that hockey-pants-crotch-sweat helped raise the price . Maybe Misterguy was watching, I don't know, but each time the music blasted during face-offs, he would race to the aisle and shake it UP. He grabbed the railing and moved his little hips and got some attention... then he pulled his shirt way up to show off his pecs and pranced around in front of about 40 people. It was funny at first but I think that was the Little Miss Sunshine moment.

So we've really been enjoying all of this family-time. The girls haven't had a throw-down yet, their snow-fort is getting bigger and bigger, and every night has been a popcorn-and-a-movie night. I don't think we'll be headed back to the rink anytime soon though.

Blog, Interrupted

This is what happens when I leave the house for six hours a day. No blogging time.

Tomorrow night will be the big shiny concert night for the band, the choir, and the 5th grade classes. Last Tuesday's concert went really well, the kids all sang out and the music teacher and I got mini-poinsettias. There was a car on fire in the school parking lot about a half-hour before the concert started... it belonged to one of the substitutes, and it burned up because of an electrical problem. R still likes to talk about the CAR, on FIRE, and the MOKE!

Hearing the band rehearse today reminded me of 5th grade, Mr. Hill in his powder-blue polyester tuxedo, and the impatient tap-tap-tapping of his conductor's baton on the music stand... the plodding tempo of all of us beginner musicians trying to make it to the next measure. Elementary bands always suck. Listening to them is hilarious, and torturous. I hope my kids get to be band geeks too, really.

Happy Belated Birthday to Uncle Brian! We might get your (and Missy's) birthday card in the mail along with the Christmas cards.

There are 10 days until Christmas... We have a decorated sparsely-limbed tree up. Instead of wandering around somewhere north of Palmer looking for a tree, this year K found a U-cut lot about 5-minutes' drive from here. It was pretty fun except for having to listen to a grumpy daughter moaning over and over, "Let's just go to Home DEEpo-o-o-o". She has an appreciation for full, symmetrical, beautiful trees but those don't grow in the woods around Wasilla. So, now I just have to finish up shopping for gifts and I have to make some cookies.


We've been having some dog issues lately. Just after it started getting really cold at night, while K was in Japan, I moved the dog in and went a little OCD trying to handle the dog smell and dog hair. I didn't realize (no experience here) that he was "blowing his coat" which basically means he was shedding every hair on his body to make room for more hair. The groomer I took him to was shocked at how dry his skin was (again clueless dog-owner) and said to feed him fish oil. That craziness passed, but Chena still needed some attention I guess, because he got into garbage, knocked things off the table while we were away, ate half a loaf of bread, stole pancakes... K's got him mostly under control now - I won't take him out to do his business anymore, he just runs away from me - but he's coming back around to smelling like a nasty old forgotten towel. I think that I like to think of myself as a dog-person, and tell other people that I'm a dog-person, but I am not, at all, a dog-person. I grew up in houses full of dogs and birds and fish, but none of that prepared me for having to actually be responsible for a smelly pet who steals food and runs away.

In the parenting department... we're celebrating Little Dude's slow but steady climb to the rank of Big Boy. We haven't experienced a Category Five Fecal Catastrophe in ages, or even a Category One really, since he's figured out how to poop in the potty, consistently. Peeing is not as easy to figure out I guess but he's catching on, little by little.

The girls are still enjoying school but they're pretty thrilled that they get a couple of weeks off, starting Thursday afternoon. Ballet and soccer are on hold until next month, and Girl Scouts will take time off after Saturday. I'm a little concerned about the fighting I know will resume at 4pm on Thursday. Maybe I can have K make a little penalty-box in a corner of the kitchen, and keep one girl there while the other one helps make cookies, then switch 'em out.

Happy Thanksgiving Recovery

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. We did - we spent the day in Anchorage with my sister and some of her in-laws. We became part of the extended McCormack family! Thank you to Carole, Joel, Carolyn and Peggy and Pat, we really enjoyed ourselves. I think the kids had the most fun digging tunnels in the snow...

I tried making a non-shortening pie crust for the apple pie I brought, it just didn't seem right. If I can find this stuff, I'll try it for whatever pie I put together next. I used to hate making pie crusts, but I finally figured out a few years ago that all of the ingredients and utensils need to be almost frozen for the crust to turn out. Duh.

In spite of all the encouragement blaring from the radio to combat-shop at 5am on Friday, I slept in and shopped instead at 10:30am. I heard that people were parked outside WalMart at 1am, to be the first to get in there and save big bucks. Well, I'm not an expert, but doesn't it cost loads of money to run all those Wasilla-style rumble trucks' engines for hours at a time?

The girl-cousins are easy to shop for, but I don't have a clue what to buy for boys ranging in age from 6 to 11. I'm at the point in my auntie-ness of just sending money. I know just what 3-year-old loud silly self-centered car-loving boys would want for Christmas, but for the older ones, I can't even guess. When I was that age I remember getting things like shirts. And socks.

So my brilliant husband figured out that the car needed some antifreeze. Now it warms up, yay! We only had to suffer through one city-drive with the kids fighting over whose turn it was to use the scraper on the inside of the windows. My next hope is for some studded tires, since the poor mamavan could only get two-thirds of the way up the neighborhood hill tonight. Hopefully the hill will be scraped and sanded tomorrow when we drive to the city for the Nutcracker.

here comes santa claus here comes santa claus

Thank you, State PFD Division, for approving my dividend application. Socialism is alive and well.

My first act as a Person With An Income is to turn up the heat a little. I can't function in cold air.

Next, who knows... a haircut, maybe? Some Danskos, a FILE CABINET, some fancy long johns, Christmas gifts... and 529's for the kids. It would probably be wise to get the car checked out, since the heater doesn't actually produce heat until we've been driving 65 mph for about 15 minutes. My New Year's Resolution will be to stop ignoring the check-engine light.

It's been FOREVER since I wrote last, because I didn't feel like it. I was busy, too, and K was in town so I got to detach myself from Mama'sBoy for three-and-a-half days in a row. I threw myself into accompanying the kids at T's school during music class. Now I can't get all of those Christmas songs out of my head. I even dream with those songs going on and on and on.

The students are all over the map: obedient, bored, psycho-hyper, cranky, musical, coughing, screaming, jumping, tone-deaf, content, fighting, eager, whatever. I practiced my stare-down with a few of the brats who were ignoring the teacher, that was fun. There were some really good moments all week, though, when they all got into it and just sang because it was fun and not just something they had to do. "I wanna keep SINGING!!" they'd say when the bell rang. One morning I brought Mama'sBoy with me - I stuck him behind me with his new train set and his lunch bag and hoped for the best. He did really well for about three hours and then started a slow melt-down. He climbed onto my back, then my lap (while I was playing a song), turned off the (digital) piano twice, and pulled out the contents of my purse, waving some feminine products in my face, saying "What's THIS Mama? What's THISSSS???"