Insta-Mom

New Year, New Blog

2010-01-02T09:58:00.001-08:00

I know. I'm one of those annoying people who keeps changing where I blog. I'd be peeved if I were you, too.

Here's the thing, though. This space just isn't me anymore.

You see, in addition to the whole step-mom reference, Insta-Mom was supposed to be a reference to the change that happens in all of us once we have kids. How we wake up in the middle of the night and instead of just rolling over and going back to sleep we panic because the baby hasn't woken up yet. How we hear "Mommy" in the store and immediately turn around, even though we know our kids aren't with us. How your friend calls to cancel your coffee date and doesn't even need to explain why because you already know she was up all night with a sick kid because that bug is going around.

But for some reason, I couldn't shake the overwhelming stepmom part.

Don't get me wrong. I love being a stepmom. I wouldn't trade any moment of the last seven years with Aaron.

But in being a stepmom, I am constantly reminded of his other mom. The one who, I'm fairly certain, spends countless hours plotting new ways to punish my husband and make our lives miserable, regardless of whether it's good for her son or not.

Ask me how I really feel.

I don't expect anyone to understand. I just ask you to humor me on this one. I just can't blog here anymore. I can't be this person anymore.

Remember in this post when I told you that until I figured out where I was going, I'd be rejoining my joy circus.

Well, that's where I'm going to stay. At The Joy Circus. It needs work, but I hope you come with me.

Admission is free and the clowns are adorable.

Gifts

2009-11-11T07:19:00.001-08:00

I have been thinking about this post for a long time now. As January approaches and I start to think about my twins' second birthday, I can't help thinking about Maddie, and this post.

I've never asked Heather, but given that Maddie was born just shy of 29 weeks and I went into labor with my twins the first week of December at 31 weeks, I'm pretty sure we had close to the same due date.

I look at my boys--my running, talking, ornery, curious boys--and I think of Maddie.

And as I begin thinking about their birthday plans, exactly two months from today, and I think of Maddie's birthday today, I am reminded of how very fragile it all is. How very different it could be. How very easily their birthday could mean something entirely different.

So for a long time now, I've been thinking about this post. Thinking of what birthdays mean, thinking of experiences that were so close and now so far apart, thinking of Maddie.

I have been thinking of how to make this post positive. How to celebrate rather than mourn. And I have found it hard because three little lives that were so close are now so very far apart.

But today is a birthday, a day to celebrate. Birthdays are days to remember not what we have lost, but what we were given. Birthdays are my favorite days. My days to make sure my children know just exactly how much they are adored (knowing that they will never really grasp how much they are adored.)

Through cloud that hangs over today, I am reminded that birthdays are about celebrating. Celebrating what we have been given. Gifts like this.

And gifts should always be celebrated.

Happy birthday, Maddie. Today, we celebrate you.

Where are you going, where have you been?

2009-10-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

This post has been a long-time coming. This I know. But I haven't had it in me--it being the words, the effort, the interest...any of it.

I have excuses. Plenty of them.

I'm busy. I know...we all are. But seriously, from 5 AM until 10 PM or later, I don't stop. When I'm not working, I'm taking care of my kids; when I'm not taking care of my kids, I'm working. Not that I'm complaining--at least not about all of it. My kids are my greatest adventure, and for the first time in years, I'm (mostly) enjoying my job. But still, can-barely-come-up-for-air, non-stop, crazy busy.

I'm reading. Like, real books. Books not written in rhyming iambic pentameter with characters named "Sam" or "Thing 1." Books for work, yes. But still...I'm (mostly) enjoying work, so I'm (mostly) enjoying what I have to read. And I have the excuse that I have to do it.

I am making myself sane again. I have been off anti-depressants for over a month without wanting to escape to Mexico under an assumed name or imbibing an unreasonable amount of alcohol. I have only thought of the "s" word once since quitting the pills. I have found a doctor who knows how to treat me, and my symptoms, and who doesn't make me diagnose my own thyroid problem (yep, add that to your PCOS and smoke it). I am figuring things out and becoming a person I like again, that maybe my family can like again. Or at least that we like some of the time.

I am doning my superhero cape and saving the world one helpless kitten at a time.

Okay, maybe not a cape or kittens. But the rest is true.

So there hasn't been room or time for posting. I've been okay with that. I'm focusing on the here, the now, the tangible. It's good for me. It's what I need now.

I also know that part of putting myself back together is writing. When I think back over the last thirty-and-then-some years, it has been my constant, the part of me that was always there lurking in the corners. The thing I could always turn to. When I'm angry I write letters that I never send, I wrote every night that I traveled through Europe, I even used to write bad poetry now and then.

But I don't know if that writing space is here anymore. I held on to this place for over a year because I desperately needed it. Good writing, bad writing, dull or interesting, comments or no comments, it was an outlet I needed, a part of me I needed to recapture. Maybe it still will be. But right now, I don't know. I don't know if it's the forum I need, if it's authentic and true and me.

I am pressing the pause button for now. Even if just for a small moment in the grand scheme of all life's moments. I am pressing pause here. Until I decided what to press next.

And I'm rejoining the circus that waits for me away from here. The carousel rides, lion-taming, and three-ring madness I have lazed my way through for too long. I am buying a ticket to experience it all.

My joy circus.

That's where I'll be until I know where I'm going next.

Fire

2009-09-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

The last time I can remember the sky looking like that was seven years ago. I stepped out of the church, walking under the smoke-darkened skies to the waiting black limousine. Everything around me was hazed with orange; the air stank of ash and fury.

For seven years I have dispassionately waited my way through fire season. I have watched billowing smoke clouds form on the horizon, numbly hoping a generous wind keeps the skies above me blue. For six years the season favored me, didn't force me to remember.

The morning we came home from the hospital I remember the uncharacteristic stillness of the June skies. No wind, no bird song, no passing cars. Just stillness and quiet.

I don't remember what day the fire started. But the smoke gradually crept over the mountain tops, and on the day we buried him, an expanse of smoke stretched from horizon to horizon, obscuring bright blue with a coat of ashy brown.

But more than the thick wisps of grey, I remember the sun. The distinctness of its edges. The orange cast it shed on everything around me. Its angry scarlet color.

This fire season has not been so generous. On Saturday, we wound our way up the freeway toward home, driving into the darkness of a sunny late-summer evening blanketed in smoke.

And there it was. The perfect sphere of fiery orange in the sky. So calmly and so distinctly coloring the world with wrath.

The stillness of the morning my father died stands starkly in my memory against the fury of the day we put him in the ground. As the earth pressed down on him, the skies pressed down on us. The world out of joint, the wrath of the fire in the hills mirroring the wrath of some unknown force against his untimely death. The arbitrary viciousness of those fires something I felt so keenly, reviled so completely. Understood so deeply.

I silently wept as we finished the drive home last weekend, the sun falling close enough to the western horizon to again become an indistinct yellow mass against the whitening blue. I wept for the sadness of these days, for the smell of the air and the oppression of the skies. I wept for the empty wrath I learned to understand seven years ago. I wept for the cruelty of this season--for angry skies and hopeless families and loss.

Depression redux

2009-07-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

I let myself forget to take my pills every day. Maybe I'd take them every 36 hours. Maybe every other day. I was still taking them, but I let myself slide. And I did it because I want to believe that I don't need them.

I was wrong.

It started small--there would be days that I found myself getting frustrated more easily, snapping a little more. But it wasn't that bad. It was still better.

I meant to call and get the refill, but I got busy. I couldn't get five minutes on the phone. Then the weekend came and the doctor was no longer in.

I did call. Monday, just before lunch. But it was too late.

I don't know if it was the confluence of events on a particularly bad day or if I just saw it as bad because I was no longer viewing it through the filter of anti-depressants. But I found myself going down that road again.

Frustrated, hopeless, angry.

I yelled a Noah for something so minor. And while I was yelling the sane person in my head asked me what the hell I was doing.

That's how I know that things have gone to far. When the voice of reason is powerless to control my actions. When my boys look at me while I lash out, the depth of the wounds I am creating showing on their tender faces.

J.R. came home, and I left--to give myself a break, to give my children a break, and to break the seal on a new bottle of pills.

I opened them as I pulled away from the pharmacy, my hand shaking like an addict desperate for a fix. Comical in my frenzy.

I couldn't get all the damn cotton out as I tried to leave the parking lot. At the first stop light, I returned the bottle, laboriously fished out the wad cotton, and while trying to extract a pill so I could face my family knowing I was medicated, managed to almost drop three.

I may as well have been trying to chase down my winning lottery ticket as it blew away the way I scrambled after those three pills.

I don't like things this way.

I don't like waiting over an hour in the doctor's office each month for her to spend 30 seconds giving me permission to keep taking the pills.

I don't like thinking that my world view is altered by a filter of prescription medication.

I don't like believing that the only way I can be a bearable wife and mother is to take pills that alter my brain chemistry.

I let myself believe that this is just one symptom among many of my PCOS, though I have yet to find a doctor near me who knows as much as the books I read on the subject and can tell me for sure. But believing that lets me believe that someday I'll find the doctor who can help me deal with this properly. And that lets me believe that someday, things won't be this way.

This isn't to say I'm not doing better. That the last six months haven't brought vast improvement to our life. I am. They have.

I no longer think about getting in the car and driving until I won't be found. I don't scour Google for information on how to adopt a false identity, how my husband and boys can escape this life. I read bedtime stories again and play games after bathtime instead of wondering how I will make it through another day of the same thing.

So many things are different, better. But they are different because of a pill, not because of me.

That part is hard to accept. It is hard to reconcile who I am, who the pills make me, and who I want to be.

For now, I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I find peace in the things that have changed for the better. And I find hope in the thought that eventually the steps that I take won't be illuminated by something I find in a bottle.

I married a con man

2009-07-25T22:10:00.000-07:00

I am a lousy decision maker. J.R. knows this about me. And yet, whenever there is a decision to be made I often get the response, "Whatever makes you happy."

What would make me happy is not having to make the decision.

I once got really pissed off at him after that response. Wouldn't you know, the bastard responded with true sincerity about how my happiness is the most important thing to him and he's okay with whatever will make me most happy.

I have heard this many times since then. Always sincere. Always frustrating.

Fast forward to today.

We are going to finally (read: three years later) put rubber mulch in the kids' play area. However, doing so requires digging out the rock-hard clay dirt we have here...3 inches deep over a 500 sq. ft. area. It has not dropped below 100 degrees here in nearly two weeks. We got about 1/4 of it done in three hours before we were withered beyond recognition.

We were having dinner with family, so we had to get all showered and primped (okay, so I was the only one primping). While I dried my hair, he laid on our bed under the ceiling fan, cool for the first time today.

One of J.R.'s jobs is to be ready with a pair of tweezers any time I am drying my hair and find a grey. The first time I turned off the hair dryer, screeched "Honey, I need you now!" and pointed to my head as he came hurrying in, I think he damn near divorced me (apparently grey hair is not a life-shattering crisis in his world...whatever).

Now it's routine.

So today, when I turned of the dryer...

"Honey...?"
"Do you have a grey hair?"
"Um, yeah. Can you come here?"
"Really?" He's exasperated. I can tell. But I don't care. It's a grey hair, and I'm not getting colored for two more weeks.

I fumbled through my hair trying not to lose sight of it, seeing if it was long enough to pluck myself.

"Why don't you just blend it in and forget it was ever there?"
"Yeah, because that's gonna happen. Oh wait, I think I've got it...yep, gone. Nevermind."
"Good. Because I wasn't getting up for you anyway. I'm comfortable."
"What? But I thought my happiness was the most important thing to you. Having grey hair does not make me happy."
"It is about your happiness. How can you ever be happy if your husband doesn't accept you just as you are--grey hair and all."

And now I know, in all sincerity, that my husband is full of shit.

My sentiments exactly

2009-07-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

I hate shopping for greeting cards.

Don't get me wrong--I love sending a kind, heartfelt sentiment as much as the next person. But finding that one succinct and meaningful card in a store full of poorly written, wannabe poetic sap is often tests the limits of my tolerance.

So while catching up on my reader today (figuring it's the perfect time as no one will be posting for a while since they will be busy in Chicago drinking and wishing I were there), I read a post at Slice of Pink about the Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco.

Trust me when I say that when Janet tells you to check out artists, you really should. So I did.

And I discovered 16 Sparrows. Any place that has the slogan "Sarcasm folded in half" has to be checked out.

I found my next moving announcements...

My kind of "romantic" card...

A to-do list I really need...

And the perfect congratulatory card for that person who got the promotion you've been working for all these years (or whatever other occasion strikes your bitter fancy)...

You can check out other artists--many of them quite lovely and unsarcastic--at the Renegade Craft Fair website.

Capitalism gone wrong

2009-07-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

When I moved into J.R.'s house six years ago he had Dish Network. Four months after our wedding when we moved into our first house together, we just moved the service with us.

I hated it. When it would rain, we'd lose TV. If the wind blew to hard, we'd lose TV. If the receiver thought you looked at it funny...you get the idea.

So two years later when we moved into our "forever home" (and by forever, I mean our "we'll live here for ten years until we can move out of this godforsaken plot of hell" home), I refused to keep Dish Network.

Being the sucker for a price lowering bundle that I am, and not having access to DSL in our ~~godforsaken plot of hell~~ neighborhood, we chose to get regular cable TV with our cable internet.

It was fine for a while. Until J.R. started playing fantasy football. And we only had the regular channels for football. We waited two years for cable to catch up and at least get NFL Network.

No dice.

So last year, for J.R.'s birthday, not only did I give up my lovely money-saving bundle, but I coughed up an obscene amount of money to DirecTV, the only company that not only has NFL Network, but that also carries all the games each weekend.

Yep, I love him thaaaaaat much.

This year, we saw that DirecTV was offering a 10% off offer for early orders. So last month, I ordered our football package.

Only to find out a couple weeks ago that several families we know not only got 10% off, but got Sunday Ticket and Super Fan for half of what we paid for just Sunday Ticket.

Being the cheapskate that I am, I called DirecTV yesterday.

Here's roughly how the first conversation went:

Me: "Hi, I'm paying twice what my friends our for NFL Sunday Ticket. Can you fix that for me?"
DirecTV agent: "According to the information in your account, I can offer you another $20 credit in addition to the 10% off."
Me: "Okay, but I'm still paying almost twice what other people are."
DirecTV agent: "That's all I can offer you based on the information I have here."
Me: "Well, then, can I talk to a manager who might have more information?"

And she did the whole please hold while I get someone, blah-blah-blah, click....dial tone.

While up to that point she had been very nice, mistaking the hold button for the hang up button is just not cool.

So I called back (slightly less patient this time for having been hung up on), got another agent, and went around the same circle again (in spite of asking for a manager first).

When I finally did reach a manager, the conversation went something like this.

Me: "Hi. So did your agent give you the background to my situation?"
Manager: "Yes."
Paaaauuuuuuse.
Me: "So, um, can you understand my frustration and is there anything you can do to help?"
Manager: "We already gave you the best deal we can offer you."
Me: Much exasperation trying to explain the complete lack of logic of charging two different prices for the exact same service.

And this is where it gets good.

Manager: "We offer the best deals to our most valued and loyal customers."
Me: "So basically what you're telling me is that I'm not a valued customer?"
Manager: "Well, we have some people who have been with us for eight years.":
Me: "And since you are the only carrier with this football offer and we switched to your company for it, so we have every intention of staying with you for at least that long."

Wait for it...

Manager: "Yes, but the NFL package costs us $4 billion a year. The people we make the best offers to have our best packages. You only have our most basic service."

And that's when the conversation hit the skids.

You see, back in January, things got a little tight financially in Insta-Land. It seems that having two babies at one time is twice as expensive as the one you planned for (shocker, I know). And that extra expense really piles up after a year. Not to mention that the six-seater car we responsibly bought knowing we wanted to expand our family worked great until we had to get two toddler seats into the middle at the same time and have access to the back seat. So there were the new car payments and the old student loans and the creeping in from the background credit card debt that we had never had before.

So we reevaluated, and I chose having a fancy cell phone and monthly weekends in the travel trailer at the beach over having 500 channels that didn't get watched anyway.

Sure, I miss out on all the cool cable shows like Hung and The Closer. There are times I would stop coloring my hair forever for ten minutes of CNN or an E! True Hollywood Story. But I knew it wasn't permanent. Mostly importantly, though, we felt like we were doing the responsible thing by trying to erase our debt.

Not that all that information would have changed things for Mr. Manager and his $4 billion dollars. Nope. I was flatly told I was not valued, and I didn't spend enough money to deserve a discount.

Fine. I don't agree with the policy, but I get it. But to tell me it's because I choose not to spend my money on TV? To more than imply that I am not valued?

Bite me.

I'm wondering if grocery stores will start this kind of policy soon. Oh, you don't by lettuce every week--then it's going to cost you twice as much.

What about the electric company? Oh, you don't use as much power as your neighbors. Well, then it's going to cost you more when you do decide to run your air conditioner this summer.

The worst part is that I adore my husband, and watching him on Sunday afternoons as he flips through all the games while checking his fantasy football score on the laptop every thirty seconds is just plain endearing.

I won't take away from him the few hours of fun and relaxation he gets from that.

So, my cheap ass will be coughing up twice as much money as those "valued" people this year to make my husband happy for sixteen weeks. Because DirecTV is our only choice--and so they can tell us to bend over and smile about it.

And that sour bit of ethics will likely be the hardest hit we see this football season.

More ranting:
This is the same company that charged us $80 extra to install because we had our house pre-wired for satellite and they had to drop the wires through a wall rather than drilling a hole in the side of my house. Apparently sticking holes in things is cheaper than actually trying to respect and work with what someone else has tried to do to preserve their property.

Grace

2009-07-19T12:31:00.001-07:00

When Palmer went into the NICU, I couldn't imagine anything worse than watching your child struggle for life. His breathing rate was between 140-160 breaths per minute for most of the first week of his life. With every rapid breath, his chest strained, revealing his tiny rib cage and the sharp angle of his collar bones.

The first evening I saw him, he laid gasping in an incubator, so small, with so many tubes and wires. None of the nurses told me I could hold him. I would have been too afraid to, anyway. Instead, I reached in and held his tiny fingers, the fingers that had grasped mine as they rushed him away from me three days earlier, and reassured him between spells of uncontrolled tears that mommy was with him, willing him to continue to fight.

I don't know if it was that night or the next that I stood on my mother's front porch desperately asking my brother what would happen if he became too tired to keep fighting. He reassured me with talk of nurses and machines and other medical jargon.

But I already knew all that. What I was trying to express was the fear that he would become too tired not just to keep breathing, but too tired to breathe ever again. I couldn't say the words, though. So I put the fear away in a dark place, unmentioned to others, and after Palmer came home, where I never hoped to meet it again.

During those 10 restrospectively short, but nonetheless agonizing days, I never imagined that something could feel worse.

Until April 7. When a child with the soul of an angel lost the fight to breathe. And the world as it had always been for me ceased to exist. When two parents, who I only knew by the degrees only possible in this internet world of ours, experienced the reality of the fear I never could find the words to express.

I didn't meet Heather until the day of Maddie's memorial. I do not know her or Mike in the sense that most of us consider "knowing" someone. I never experienced the joy that was Maddie.

But as a NICU mom, as a mom who worries with every cough if her NICU baby will be okay this time, their loss opened up the place in me where that fear had found a home. And I can't, I won't, make it go back there again.

I emailed Heather in the weeks afterward with an idea of something I wanted to do, but I didn't want to infringe on their plans. I didn't expect to hear back--after all, who was I but a complete stranger with no right to take a claim to what they are experiencing.

I did hear back from Heather, though. And what I learned from that reply has carried through the weeks since--there is a grace in Maddie's family that we should all be so fortunate to witness.

It is that grace that has brought about the Friends of Maddie, an organization committed to helping NICU parents and babies through donations of support packs.

We all have organizations that touch us, and because they touch us, we choose to support them. All I am hoping for by writing this here is that one support pack will be donated, that one NICU family will receive reassurance that someone, somewhere, understands the fear they feel.

I wasn't so fortunate as to be Maddie's friend before April 7. But there will never be a day in the future that I am not.

Things I learned yesterday

2009-07-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

My mom and I took the boys to the Natural History Museum yesterday. After my encounter with insomnia the night before, I was seriously second guessing the trip. But Noah knew we were going, and there's no backing out on a four-year-old.

Since museums are supposed to be all educational and stuff, I thought I'd share a few things I learned.

I would much rather check Google maps before I leave than have a navigation system.

Driving on five freeways to go anywhere is absurd.

The lowland gorilla is not endangered.

The wolverine is almost extinct. (Someone should probably tell the University of Michigan.)

I know a lot more random information about animals than I thought I did (with the exception of gorillas and wolverines).

The sound of two cranky 18-month-olds screaming carries really well in a museum.

Some people think that it's easier for you to steer your double stroller out of their way than it is for them to walk slightly to the side to avoid you.

Cleaning dinosaur bones might be the most tedious job on the planet.

California history is as boring to me now as it was in fourth grade.

Going to a museum with Noah is unbelievably fun.

Palmer and Vaughn are completely unintimidated by a giant stuffed polar bear.

Palmer knows how to growl. At polar bears.

My husband has never been to a museum...and is incredibly good at playing the "but you always do these things while I'm at work" guilt card.

Palmer is fascinated by butterflies.

Vaughn is more interested in rocks and dirt and the water dripping from the irrigation pipes on the ceiling.

You may not think you'll need your camera to go to a museum, but then you'll learn that they have a butterfly pavilion, and you'll kick yourself over and over as you watch your adorable children chase butterflies. Or play with dirt.

Hippos and whales are genetically related (I actually learned this on TV, not from the museum, but I thought it was really interesting).

It is possible to survive a day at the museum with three children on four hours of sleep.

Photo borrowed from the Los Angeles Natural History Museum website

Public service announcement

2009-07-14T01:42:00.000-07:00

It is 1:45 AM. And I'm awake. Wide awake. And thinking about my 6 AM wake-up call from to sweet-cheeked little boys who will smile and reach for me from their cribs as I walk into their room. In four hours.

And in the meantime, I'm wide-freakin'-awake. The girl that could put Rip Van Winkle to shame most days.

So I thought I'd take a moment to stop by hear with a little announcement.

Late night TV...sucks.

Extreme Makeover: Blog Edition

2009-07-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

I have an absurd number of post ideas bouncing around in my head, but I spent all last week at a training for work and learned so much. So now, there is just plain too much bouncing around in my head. I'm trying to sort and file it all so I can get any of it out coherently.

In the meantime, I wanted to show off my new design courtesy of Katie at Lemon Cherry Blogs. I feel all dressed up...now I just need to write something worthy of the new digs.

Also, within a few days, you should be able to arrive at my site directly through www.instamomblog.com. I am sooooo fancy now.

Until then, feel free to leave compliments on the new awesomeness.

Low tide

2009-06-17T02:00:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday

2009-06-13T02:00:00.000-07:00

It was shortly after I had moved home and decided to pursue my teaching credential. We were driving home from dinner. I don't know if it was raining--probably not--but I remember vividly the darkness of the interior of the car the blur of the lights around us as we drove down the freeway in my dad's Explorer.

In the only dream I've had of my father since his death, we were driving in his car, me sitting behind him, talking to each other. It is such a familiar scene, replayed nearly every weekend for most of my youth. I can play it in mind's eye over and over, even as my memories of other things fade.

This particular night, we were talking about my career, my future. At that time, I still had the fleeting hope that my aim in moving home would come to fruition--that I would save enough money to move to San Francisco and re-enter the publishing industry I had left behind in San Diego.

He had other ideas for me. And that night, driving home from dinner, he suggested that when I had finished my credential, I should consider earning my Master's and becoming a school administrator.

I remember my immediate reply to him was no. My father had been a school administrator since before I was born. I knew the time commitment of the job. I knew the stress the job brought with it. And even though I didn't know that only a few months later my father's commitment to ethics in leadership and education would kill him, I knew that I didn't want to follow his path.

Almost five years ago, I changed my mind.

And today, in a perfectly poetic stroke of life's pen, on what would have been my father's 66th birthday, my Master's in Educational Administration is officially being conferred.

It is a degree I will likely not use in the eight years I live in this town. But a degree I earned nonetheless, because seven years ago, my father set me on a path he could not stay to watch me traverse.

Today, it's official. I did it, Dad.

Book club makeover

2009-06-12T10:51:00.001-07:00

At the last book chat, we had some visitors. Actually, many oddvisitors. Some even with webcams. Sadly, I missed most of the drama, but I did kindly asked a young "French" boy named Evan who was "looking for fun" to leave the room so a bunch of old married hags could play literati.

(Okay, so maybe I didn't quite say that since not all of us are married and I'm told that none of us are old in spite of how much I whine about the wrinkles on my forehead. But you get the general idea.)

We also were somewhat, um, frustrated? that over 20 people voted on the book but only six came to chat. We get that not everyone can make every chat. We're fine with that. But what bugs us is the idea that people who have no intent of participating are influencing the decision-making process.

So the Insta-Book Club is getting a big of a makeover today.

The new process:
I will post the selections for the month here. You can take the time to look over them, read about them, ponder your choice. Then, instead of polling in the side margin, you can email me at instamomblog {at} gmail {dot} com (note that this is a new email).

I will post the winner here, and the chat date. I will not, however, tweet or post the chat location. Far too many odd visitors this week. Instead, I will email anyone who is interested.

So if you want to be in book club, whether you vote on the book or not, please be sure to send me your email address so I can include you in all correspondence.

With that said, here are this month's nominees...

Very Valentine: A Novel, by Adriana Trigiani
The Abstinence Teacher, by Tom Perrotta
Rise and Shine: A Novel, by Anna Quindlan
A Bump in the Road: From Happy Hour to Baby Shower, by Maureen Lipinski

Take some time to check them out, then email your vote to me. I promise not to cheat in favor of the book I want.

Enjoy your summer reading!

Cherry picking

2009-06-10T02:00:00.001-07:00

First...don't forget the book club chat tonight at 7PM Pacific time. We'll be chatting here.

Now for pictures...

Heartache

2009-06-07T22:43:00.000-07:00

Today was my nephew's birthday, so we met at our favorite orchard with all our kids to go cherry picking. I expected to come home tonight and write about it. Instead, I find myself needing to write about something else.

Because as we were walking through the orchard, I caught sight of a little girl out of the corner of my eye. A little girl being pushed by her mommy in a little pink car.

I looked twice, expecting something that couldn't have been there. But it wasn't until I turned to get a better look that I realized who I was looking for.

I expected to see Heather's hand at the end of that blue handle. I expected to see Maddie's face smile up at me.

But it wasn't them. And my heart broke open again.

I had been thinking about Maddie on my way there. About how the sadness of this never seems to diminish. About the aching pit that comes when I open my heart to this and about knowing that I can't close it. For so many reasons, I have to let myself feel and remember it.

During the summer, I rarely know what the date is. I came home to find out that today is June 7. Two months.

No, the sadness most certainly doesn't diminish. Nor does the number of times each day I think of Mike and Heather and their Maddie.

Keep remembering. Keep holding Maddie in your heart, even if you never met her. Just remember.

Rain

2009-06-04T02:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I made myself get out of bed, forced myself to have breakfast, and faced a day I hate facing every year. I knew I would work my way through the day and let the tears take over after everyone was tucked snugly in bed.

This year it felt different, worse. Perhaps because you expect it to hurt on the first year or fifth year or the tenth year, and not the seventh year. Perhaps because of the profound grief I have been touched by in the last several months.

So I busied myself. The carpet of the classroom I'm moving into for next year is beyond filthy. Our maintenance staff will clean it, but I wanted it "my" clean. My mother-in-law gave us a carpet shampooer for Christmas a few years ago (yeah, read that one over a few times), and J.R. thought it might be a good idea to shampoo the carpet.

I nabbed a sitter and figured cleaning would be exactly the therapy I needed.

I was wrong. I forget sometimes that where I work is filled with memories of my father. We worked for the same school district. I went back to that school to work a week after my world collapsed. I work with people who want to talk about their memories of him, no matter how much I don't want to. I stood outside the classroom two doors down from my own when I got the call that my grandmother, my father's mother, had died--only eight months after his death and largely because after his death she chose to quit living.

Yesterday, I played the music extra loud. And I tried to think of anything else, but I couldn't. His memory was pervasive. I cleaned and cried.

In order to fill up the carpet shampooer, I had to walk about 100 yards to the only faucet left on that side of campus that hadn't been shut off for the summer. On the first three walks back to my classroom, I watched the clouds rolling in.

Of course, I thought to myself, it's going to rain when I have to drag myself across campus every 15 minutes for water. Figures.

On my 17th birthday, my parents asked me what I wanted. I couldn't think of anything. And so I asked my dad to give me rain.

I grew up in the desert. The dry, windy heat wears on me. I have never been happier than when I lived in England where I could count on regular damp and gloom.

I jokingly asked my father to make it rain on my 17th birthday.

And it did. All day it rained in pleasant spurts, letting it soak into us between the showers. The air smelled dirt-sweet and the sky hung low and dark.

It became a joke for the rest of his life. My dad could do anything because he could make it rain.

On my fourth trip for water to fill the shampooer, the rain began. I stepped out of my classroom into a cocoon of clouds and dirt-sweet air, and I remembered.

I let the rain fall on me, took my time walking to the faucet and back, left the door open so the air could fill my classroom.

And I walked with a smile for the rest of the day, as it continued to rain on and off, letting it soak into me between showers, laughing to myself at the shared joy of an inside joke.

Because it was raining. And I know why.

Seven years

2009-06-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

June sneaks up on me every year. I know, it seems silly...it's always between May and July. And yet, May seems to fly by more quickly every year, and suddenly June is here. Damn June.

Seven years ago today I woke up in the middle of the night and watched my father die. I pleaded with him to open his eyes, to take another breath. I watched emergency services try to save him. I sat next to his still form in the hospital after the doctor's told us he was gone before he got there. I came home and cleaned boot marks off my mother's bedroom floor so she wouldn't have to be reminded of what had happened there it the darkest hours of the night.

Seven years ago today, I lost my touchstone, my true north. I have no words to describe what he was to me other than that one most poignant word...he was my dad.

Every year, June kicks my ass. My father's death, my father's birthday, Father's Day. But no father.

We are supposed to outlive our parents. But we are also supposed to see them into their old age, complain about the nursing care or their demands or the fact that they've moved in with us.

We are not supposed to lose our parents when we are only 25, before we dance with them at our wedding, before they have held any of their grandchildren.

For seven years, June 3 has come and gone, and a part of me still doesn't believe. He has been absent for some of the most significant events in my life, and yet it's hard to believe he's gone. I still hear him, I still know when he would laugh, and I still see him as he was the night before he died and the day after.

I think of him when the boys are playing baseball, and I know how proud he would have been sitting in the bleachers with us.

I think of him when my sons hug J.R.'s stepfather and grandfather, and I wonder if they know how precious their roles in the lives of my son's are.

I think of him when I look at Palmer, a virtual carbon copy of my father, who he will never know as more than a picture or a story.

And he is the reason I wish I had a daughter...so J.R. can know what my dad and I had. So his daughter can yell the football scores to him as he mows lawns on a Sunday morning. So he can get phone calls from her at college, asking what he thinks she should do. So he can dance at her wedding and hold her children.

Seven years. And while the days in between hurt less as time goes by, today never feels better.

Today always hurts one year more.

This? I can do

2009-06-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

I can come up with a million reasons why I haven't lost the weight from my pregnancy with the twins (or Noah) yet. None of them are really good reasons, though. I mean, sure, they are reasons, but really, they are more like excuses.

It's hard. Nothing ever works. And then I have days like today when I fully intend to come home and exercise, but then all hell breaks lose and it's 9:00 when I finally collapse in an exhausted heap only to realize I haven't exercised yet. See, I told you...excuses.

I'm usually skeptical about diet plans, mostly because I'm smart enough to know that those "Get thin quick" things never work. I know I don't need to diet, that I need to change my lifestyle.

Easier said than done, no?

The other day I opened up the MSN website and saw this 10 pounds in 5 weeks challenge. The only reason I looked at it was to be able to snobbishly comment on how incredibly unrealistic it was.

And then I read the challenge for the first week: plan and record your meals and walk more.

Seriously?

Because this I can totally do. It's summer break. I go to the park and walk while the kids play almost every morning anyway. And as far as planning meals...well, when it comes to planning, I'm your girl.

So I'm going to try it. 10 pounds or not, I gotta do something. And while I might need to do five weeks several times over, it's a start.

Because it's about damn time.

**********************

On a related note, my new friend Tent Camper has inducted me into ranks of the Hot Mamas over at the Hot Dads blog. So now, not only do I have to get rid of the baby fat, I have a reputation to uphold.

Just don't tell my husband. He's fairly convinced that BadAssDad was going to try to get me drunk and seduce me over bad karaoke. This will not help his paranoia.

But genuine thanks to you, Tent Camper. I'm flattered beyond words.

The first test I'm glad I failed

2009-05-27T14:25:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I posted that, given my family history of breast cancer, I was having the BRCA genetic test to determine if I had the gene variant that is linked to breast cancer.

And the news is...I don't!

I know this doesn't mean I will never develop breast cancer. In fact, I know this doesn't mean that I 100% don't have the gene. But it means I probably don't. And right now, probably is enough for me. Because "probably not" feels a hell of a lot better than "definitely do."

Child of my dreams

2009-05-22T09:14:00.001-07:00

It is only a few months after we had the twins. We are driving down the freeway, to where I don't remember. Somehow the conversation has turned to the fact that we have only sons.

"Well, you know, honey," I say to him, "We could always still adopt a girl."

"No. No we couldn't," is his instant reply. Four children is enough. We are happy with all boys.

I remember my heart breaking a little.

*****************

We started trying for a baby in July. I took a negative pregnancy test a month later. And another two weeks later. And another, and another. For two months, there was no indication that I wasn't pregnant. But also no indication that I was.

We saw my OB/GYN. Four months of Clomid to start, we'll see what happens from there.

And that's when J.R. and I made a pact--we would do nothing more than Clomid.

We were fortunate to already have our two oldest sons. We did not want to be selfish. They needed our time, our attention, our sanity. Four months of Clomid. That was it.

I was informed by a reproductive endocrinologist that my pregnancy with Noah was a "fluke," and I would likely never get pregnant again without IUI or IVF. Without the things that J.R. and I had sworn not to do. I was basically told "tough luck."

I was not reacting well to the stress, not just the infertility, but everything that was happening during that time. My blood pressure had shot up to unhealthy levels. We decided to quit trying until after the holidays. It had been a challenging five months, even without the infertility. We needed time to let it all sink in.

I began to investigate adoption. But with our life so intertwined with Aaron's mom, I couldn't accept the idea of another biological mother to answer to. Closed adoption is rare in the U.S.

A friend of mine was considering adopting a special needs child from China. International adoption seemed trendy and difficult, but also perfect. Maybe.

There were still those three more months we promised ourselves.

I started on Clomid again in January...not pregnant.

I investigated adoption agencies and countries. I bought books and requested materials.

February...not pregnant.

J.R. and I sat down and had a serious talk. We chose a country. Narrowed down the agencies. Said we would give it one more try.

March...our last month--my last chance--and I screwed up my dose of Clomid. I didn't even take half of what I was supposed to.

I filled out the paperwork. We began getting our papers in order. We made plans for the kids while we traveled, for when that day eventually came.

We knew we wanted to adopt a girl. I dreamt of her. I pictured how I would decorate her room. I browsed online for bedding. I fingered dresses in stores, knowing I would get to by them, if not soon, at least someday. I thought about hair brushes and braids and little bows. J.R. and I laughed about dating and make-up and teenage girl clothes. I dreamt of my little girl's first dance with her daddy at her wedding, a moment I never had and could only dream about for her.

I had to assure the agency that I was not pregnant. I couldn't do that without a test. So we picked one up on our next trip to the market. We came home, I took the test and left it in the bathroom while we unpacked groceries.

When everything had been done, I thought of the test sitting on the counter.

Two pink lines. Two defiant and impossible pink lines.

With those lines, a dream came true. But a dream was also shattered.

I didn't know who she was yet, but I knew she was mine. I knew she would come home to her two big brothers and live a life that would never have been possible for her where she had been born.

There was already a space for her in my heart. A space uniquely hers that no one else could fill. An empty space now.

There has not been a single moment that I have regretted getting pregnant with the twins. They renewed me in a sad and desperate time. They more than completed the family I thought I was meant to have.

They are my sons. My last and precious sons. My unlikely and unhoped for gifts.

But they can't fill that empty space. The space that hurt when I had to tell the agency "Not right now." The space that hurt when I got emails from agency mailing lists I'd joined.

It is not their fault. My four boys have given me more than I ever dreamed of having. I have more joy than I ever imagined possible. I know that had I never let myself dream, I would never dream of asking for more.

It is difficult to reconcile wanting more with knowing that I am content with what I have. It is difficult to imagine one more.

But I made that space. I let it open up, imagine, and dream. I can't make it go away.

*****************

We are watching Noah's tee ball game on Saturday afternoon.

"All the kids are cute out there, but those little girls are adorable," he tells me.

"You're the one who didn't want the stress of a girl," I tease him back.

"I never said I didn't want one..." His voice trails.

"We still have the option," I remind him. "It could still happen."

"We'll see," he says, looking not at me but at the field of children.

We both know it would take a small miracle for us to be able to support another child right now.

But in those words, those two small and simple words, there is hope.

Hope.

Guest posting and an open invitation

2009-05-21T08:27:00.001-07:00

A couple weeks ago, my friend Issa, sent out an email asking several people if they would be willing to guest post for her. You see, Issa's world was rocked not long ago, and understandably, she has days where she just can't find the words to keep up her blog.

I don't usually guest post. Hell, I have a hard enough time keeping up with posting on my own blog. Nor do I think that what I have to say is worthy of a lot of other blogs. But I wasn't about to turn down the one thing I knew I could do for a friend who is hurting.

I do think guest posting is important. If you read some of the other guest posts, you'll see that sometimes we all need a place to air the things we can't say on our own blog.

And with that in mind, I'm issuing an open invitation to all of you. If you have something you need to write that you can't write on your blog, email me at instamom {at} roadrunner {dot} com. Say it here.

In the meantime, get your browser over to my post at Issa's place.

Someday...

2009-05-13T03:00:00.000-07:00

Something Borrowed, by Emily Giffin

2009-05-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

Hey, book clubbers. We'll be reading Something Borrowed, by Emily Giffin.

Chat still on the calendar for June 10. Enjoy!