Stepford Crazies

All That Matters Is That I Will Have Gone to More Colleges Than Sarah Palin

January 25, 2013 by Queen of Spain 10 Comments

My treatments continue. They continue frequently enough that I joke I’m going to move into my rheumatologist’s office during treatment week just to make the commute easier.

All I need is a shower. I mean I’ve got my comfy pillows and blankets. There’s a tv. A fridge. I’m all set!

But as my life continues…as this ‘new normal’ continues…I need more.

Right now, I’ve become healthy enough to wake up, get the kids to school, take myself to treatment, come home, maybe cook dinner if treatment didn’t kick my ass too much, and rinse, lather, repeat.

Non-treatment weeks are better. I can handle some very light housework. Like maybe picking up some toys around the house, a load of laundry here and there. Dinner, dishes. You get the idea. But it all depends on the day. We’re trying some physical therapy, but that too depends on what my body is up to that week. Right now it hates the cold and all the pools are too cold for water therapy. I need a HOT TUB in order to exercise. So I walk the dog, but my doctor doesn’t really want me walking on concrete a ton so Nicky and I don’t go too far. We’re also eating rather well around here. I’m even working with a dietician to try to get these steroid side effects under control.

occasionally I go to a store. I say ‘a’ store because that too is about all I can handle. Well, that’s not entirely true. I could probably push myself and go crazy and run around all damn day but who are we kidding- I tried that and it only landed me admitted to the hospital up the road every few weeks. So while I might be capable of more, I’m limiting myself. Make no mistake, I loathe limiting myself. But I’ve learned I must if I want to live.

But part of learning my limits is also knowing when to expand them ever so slightly.

So as I start my next round of treatment, I will also be starting to close a chapter in my life I’ve been trying to close for twenty years.

TWENTY YEARS.

What many people may not know is that I never finished my degree.

I was one of those interns that interned herself right into a full-time gig. I was on-the-air reporting at 20 and anchoring by the time I was 22.

As a matter of just wanting to finish I tried to go back several times, but work always took over. There ended up being a string of universities and community colleges from Michigan to Ireland to Florida to California where I tried to wrap up what I had started.

Now I find myself disabled, IV in my arm every 2.5 weeks, and needing something more in my life than the endless string of lab results. No really, that’s what I get excited about these days. Lab results. Want to know what my last C-reactive protein was? I can tell you…

I can’t handle much. I can’t type for long, as my fingers cramp up. I can’t physically sit in class, so I have to attend only online courses that allow for me to make my own schedule around the days I’m doing well and the days I’m not doing so great…but I can handle a bit. And by ‘a bit’ I really mean a tiny bit. If I can sit here and read while being pumped full of IVIG, there is no reason I shouldn’t be reading a textbook. That’s my theory anyway.

So as of today, I’m officially, and once again, a student. I’m not much of a student, but I’m a student. 6 whole credit hours. Enrolled as ‘disabled’ which, I won’t lie, hurts a bit emotionally to check that box. But I am a student. Which is a step up from being incapable of getting out of bed, incapable of getting the kids to school, incapable of getting myself to the doctor. Slowly…slowly we’re adding things.

The kids are excited…they want me to do homework with them, at the kitchen table just like they do. I think they envision us all using crayons for projects together which makes me grin.

My husband is laughing, knowing that eventually I will have to leave the local community college online learning for a UC online learning system and he’s DYING at the thought I *might* graduate from someplace like USC (which pains me to type) … having been raised an Irish fan through and through.

My Mom is proud of me. This is a big step for her daughter who was losing organs left and right not too long ago and is now, finally, doing something for herself instead of trying to make sure everyone around her is still OK after the ‘crisis.’

She’s right, of course. Moms are like that. I’ve spent so long trying to get healthy but as the doctors worked to figure out HOW to get me healthy, I worked to make sure everyone around me was ok. That was my only concern. Because no one was ok. We’re still not OK. We’re adjusting. And I finally had to take a step back and realize we’re never going to be ok until I learn to make myself whole…to make myself happy…to make myself ME first.

I’m headed down that road now. And I couldn’t start down that path until the doctors figured out how to stabilize me. To make sure my organs were safe. To convince me I wasn’t going anywhere, that this was under control, relatively speaking, and life could move forward.

Life can move forward now.

For me. It’s going to move slowly, but it’s going to move. It’s going to move differently than it did before. I have to feed my mind. I have to do more than fret and hand-wring. There are going to be ups and downs with this and I am learning to build those ups and downs into my life plan. From my long-term life plan to my daily life plan. I’ve done all I can to try to take care of the kids, of my husband, of my family. I have done very little to take care of me.

That seems strange to write when all of this ‘crisis’ has been about me. Me. Me. Always about me. But trust me, in my head it’s been nothing but what it’s done to everyone else. What I have done to everyone else. What I continue to do.

So the next chapter starts as the others come to a close. With doctors having found a plan…finally. Finally after years we have a plan that appears to be working. Slowly. Very slowly. But working. With those I love doing what they need to do as life goes on. And with my stubborn self having learned limits, a bit of patience, a ton of self-control, and a new way of operating as a woman, wife, and mother with a chronic illness.

Scratch that…as a woman, wife, mother, and student with a chronic illness. Hopefully we’ll add graduate to that list this time around.

Filed Under: #SUCKITLupus, Auto-Immune Menu, Stepford Crazies

The Power of One

January 16, 2013 by Queen of Spain 14 Comments

I’ve been careful about leaving the news on while the kids are home. With the school shooting and other tragedies, it’s just been too much for them to see.

So imagine my surprise last night when a piece I thought was rather benign on the pollution issues in Beijing caused tears and hysterics in my living room.

My 9-year old son could not believe what he was seeing. He wanted to know how the earth could be so dirty and polluted and how we, as humans, could let this happen.

Is it the cars?
The factories?
All the things they make, like my Nerf guns?
Why don’t they care?
Why can’t they stop it?
What if that happens here in Los Angeles?
What about our country?
Why do businesses care more about money than fixing this?
Why isn’t ANYONE DOING ANYTHING?

And the tears were streaming. And I did my best to calm him down and tell him many people were trying to do things, but every country was different. And every country had different rules. And even in our country people are fighting those rules.

He thinks those of you fighting the rules are horrible people. He thinks anyone against EPA regulations aimed at helping the earth are good and true and just and he does not care if that means some people don’t have a job because they at least will be able to breathe and drink clean water. He tells me OTHER jobs can be created with new inventions that keep the planet CLEAN. He does not care if that means he does not get a certain toy, he no longer needs it or cares.

The images haunted him all day and night and he would periodically stop his video game to ask me how many people might get sick from that smog. How many people might die. How plants or trees might help.

Then at bedtime, as I tucked him in…he began to softly cry again. He didn’t think there was anything a 9-year old boy could do.

I told him he was wrong.

And now, dear friends, I want to show him he’s wrong.

Help me find things a 9-year old boy can do to help – from planting trees to raising money to joining Greenpeace to… whatever.

Show my son he can make a difference. Show him the power of one and how it then multiplies and creates a movement.

I KNOW there are others like him…others that are devastated to see pollution take over what he calls ‘those mountains that are so so beautiful I can’t even see them’ and ‘all those trees that they keep cutting down instead of letting grow big and tall…it makes me so mad Mom I just want to hit my pillow.’

Show him. Show him instead of hitting his pillow he can DO SOMETHING and it WILL MATTER.

Help me show him – leave a comment with your ideas. Please.

I know he can do something amazing with his passion and his talent.

Filed Under: Count Waffles, Feeling YaYa, Stepford Crazies

The Chicken Came Before the Egg

January 8, 2013 by Queen of Spain 7 Comments

I’ve been spending many days and nights around here researching ways to get this body of mine back into tip-top shape…and I’ve come to only one answer in defeating Lupus:

Chickens.

Somewhere in Santa Monica, at a nice desk near the ocean, my husband just laid his sweet head down on his keyboard and is wondering when the sweet relief of death will come save him from this life of marriage to this crazy lady.

Now hear me out just a minute or three here. Or go read something else, I don’t really care.

I want the best possible food to go into the bodies of the people who live in this house. Heck, even those of you that just visit. Eggs are a great source of protein- which the doctor says I need A LOT of. The doctor also wants to see almost NO processed food, no chemicals, no dyes, no … well, nothing.

Now, shopping organic and finding recipes and all that fun grocery love is all well and good. But it sure is missing that certain…JAZZ HANDS quality. The one that makes me want to leap out of bed (and mark these words- I WILL LEAP OUT OF BED SOMEDAY) and get a great and healthy breakfast going for the family and myself. You know, after I have already worked out during sunrise and walked the dog and packed lunches and sat quietly with my tea and book, awaiting the husband and children to come downstairs from their slumber.

Yes, THAT Is how I plan on starting my life over once my body cooperates. Early morning exercise! Nothing but fresh, home cooked food! Total organization!

And where does it all start? The chicken, or the egg?

THE CHICKEN OF COURSE!

Which means I want a chicken coop and chickens. But I’d like the magical kind that get along with my dog as though they are best friends and have zero nasty stink …oh, and clean up after themselves.

See…I already have the cute ranch hand:

So really I would just like cute, fluffy, egg producers in my yard that cause zero issues and require zero care. OH…and the home owner’s association won’t mind or notice.

My daughter would be so so so happy if we got chickens. My son will freak out initially but only for about two minutes. Then he will freak out about all the other animals around who might hurt the chickens and then we’ll have to fortify the chicken coop with military grade fencing. But THEN it will be ok.

The point is. I want fresh eggs. I want fresh air. I want clean water. I want food that does not come out of a box. I want the chemicals OUT of the systems of my family (and your family’s systems too) and I want us all to live like we were meant to live: naturally.

Well, naturally within reason. I still need some take-out here and there and a good mani/pedi.

I’m not saying let’s start a commune in my very tiny backyard or anything (although that’s another idea I have for when this whole chicken thing doesn’t pan out) I’m just saying I think half of the reason my body is not fighting as hard as I want it to fight against this disease is a lifetime of food-flavored food being shoveled into my system. No really…FOOD-FLAVORED FOOD instead of fruits and veggies and meat that has no FAKE ingredients hidden inside.

We’re trying things out over here. It’s not easy. We like our junk food and we like our packaged food – but we are working on buying the cans of veggies with organic stuff inside and totally LESS sodium and with NONE of the things on the label we can’t pronounce. Or that Count Waffles CAN pronounce but he heard it on ‘How the Universe Works.’

Back to the chickens.

Who wants to buy me a chicken coop, chickens, and then come take care of them for me? I just want to pet them and eat their eggs.

Also…if the HOA asks, we got a TENT and that noise is simply our silly dog Nicky doing his new IMPRESSION of a chicken. We’re training him to be a Hollywood dog.

Totally plausible. We live in LA.

Filed Under: #SUCKITLupus, Hippo Diet, Kaiser, kill me now, Stepford Crazies

…And Some of You Just Eat Chicken Soup

January 6, 2013 by Queen of Spain 3 Comments

I just want to get a cold like a normal person.

I want my husband to be annoyed I whined and whined until he said ‘FINE’ and picked up yet more tissues AND more chicken noodle soup, even though clearly all I have is a COLD and I can go get them my own damn self.

All I do have is a cold. I CAN go get things my own damn self.

But then again, I can’t.

My doctors did not even want me in urgent care- too many germs. The ER? Hell no…WAAAAAAY too many germs.

Despite me feeling strong and despite my overall health improving greatly- my immune system needs to be destroyed every so often so they can rebuild it stronger, better, bigger, more advanced….we have the technology! (Did I mention it’s 3:23am and I haven’t slept in days thanks to steroids and new drugs to take care of this cold/virus/thingy?)

Anyway, this time around our timing was off and that miscalculation has cost me dearly. Imagine being the ONLY ONE in the house – where elementary school children live – who gets PINK EYE.

In other words, if it’s going around you can BET I will be catching it. Leaving me in this horrible position of feeling strong enough to maybe help out around the house a bit….throw in a load of laundry, pick up some toys, disinfect that tea-cup I touched. However, every time I use energy I sacrifice precious healing power.

My cold, of course, caused a nice ear, nose, and throat infection which got into my chest and caused a nice upper respiratory infection which they either like to call ‘walking pneumonia’ to scare you or I now have walking pneumonia. But I’ve had that shot (flu and the pneumonia one) and at the first sign of any issues I get a nice bed at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial up the road.

But you see how all of this just started with me having a cold? One normal, stupid, booger filled, run-of-the-mill cold?

Kids are on edge worried I’ll land up that road in that bed. Husband is taking it well, knowing we’re only at ‘Defcon 1’ as it was dubbed tonight.

I’m on oodles of antibiotics and for the first time in two years I feel like I JUST HAVE A COLD.

STAND DOWN PEOPLE.

But Lupus is a cruel bitch that way. Auto-immune disorders are all sneaky sirens. They have you believe you just have a typical runny nose and cough and !BAM! suddenly you are occupying that bed up the road as they work to get the infection out of your lungs instead sitting on the couch in your pj’s playing new video games Santa brought.

So I will keep taking these antibiotics and resting on my couch. I have a date with a nine-year old to play some video games this morning.

Then later today this seven-year old and I have a rematch:

And if the stars align, this hot stud and I will do some quality napping just to make sure EVERYONE stays healthy…

It beats that bed up the road by far. That stuffy place doesn’t even let my youngest come in…

All for a cold.

Filed Under: #SUCKITLupus, Feeling YaYa, Stepford Crazies

2013: The Year of NOW

January 1, 2013 by Queen of Spain 4 Comments

Cue the confetti…

2013 is the year I reclaim my life. It is time to become a better ME, with Lupus and with everything I have.

I know New Year’s resolution can be lame…but this one is different. I’m actually on the brink of a breakthrough. Stop me if you’ve heard THAT before…

You see, there are people who live with this disease (and the many other diseases that decided to come along with it) and spend their life in and out of the hospital (been there) and undergo surgery after surgery (been there) losing organ after organ (been there).

But I’ve decided I’m done.

Yes, just decided.

It helps we seem to have found the right drug cocktail, even if we haven’t found the right schedule. It helps that I have been pumping good plasma into my veins for a year. It helps that when I physically feel better, I can actually sense the change in my body, in my mind, and even in my rest.

When you live with pain for so, so long you certainly notice when it is gone. But you notice EVEN MORE when it comes back.

I spent 2012 doing some very important things…learning my limits. Learning how to balance all the things I need to get done, all the things I want to get done, all the things I just can not do.

That may sound so simple to you, but it’s really hard for me.

Now I need to learn how to make the most of my new normal and make sure I am being the best wife and mother I can be to those who have sacrificed more than they should to make sure my life is comfortable and to make sure I had the space I needed to figure all this out.

Appropriately the my family we spent New Years’ Eve putting together a puzzle. Most of New Year’s Day too. It’s still not done. It may never be done. But every so often now we walk by and add another piece to the finished product. Slowly. Adding to the new normal of DONE.

Because eventually this puzzle will be done. It may always be a puzzle. It may always be in our home, in my body..but it doesn’t always have to take up the whole kitchen table. It doesn’t always have to be the major factor is EVERY DECISION.

Nope. It’s time to reclaim our lives for US. We’ll carve out a place for Lupus and all its luggage, but it gets a corner or a closet and we all move on with it in tow.

2013: The Year of NOW

…it’s time.

Filed Under: #SUCKITLupus, Feeling YaYa, Stepford Crazies

One Helluva Lesson For Christmas

December 26, 2012 by Queen of Spain 9 Comments

10:45pm on Christmas Eve and tears were streaming down my face as I helplessly drove around our neighborhood trying to WILL a major store to be open.

Every single emotion leading up to 12/24/2012 at nearly 11pm was pouring out of me. The illness. The pain. The toll on my family. The issues going on in my life unrelated to Lupus, my inability to work, my Aunt being sick, an Aunt I was missing terribly who I lost the year before, other family being too far away…every emotion just exploded and I had to pull over into an empty parking lot to cry.

The lights of the Toys R Us sign in a dark parking lot are depressing as hell when you are the only Mom sitting under them.

Only a few moments before, as my husband and I unpacked the sea of boxes delivered to our door, did I realize the NUMBER ONE gift my daughter asked for was missing. The tracking for said package showed it was ‘in transit’ and ‘should be at your door.’ Yet there was no confirmation it was delivered and no trace of it once it entered the shipping facility on December 12th and was scanned.

The one thing she asked Santa for. The one thing I knew I ordered well in advance and OF COURSE was in one of the gazillion boxes sitting there. Because why would I check? That would be way too smart. This was NOT HAPPENING.

It was also the one thing I totally OVERPAID to get because she wanted a very specific color.

I opened the door to my car and threw up under the Toys R Us sign, which was now turned off. Leading me to believe there was an employee lurking somewhere. And I was entirely prepared to bribe this magic employee with everything in my checking account to let me in to buy a Furby.

A glimmer of hope sprang forth as the puke came out- my brain realizing the lights clicked off means SOMEONE IS THERE but not reaching my stomach in time, which was convinced that after months of shopping online (so as not to setback my recovery) and planning and planning (so as not to overdo it and setback my recovery) I had failed to orchestrate the perfect Christmas for my kids.

Now understand this about my kids and read this with every bit of heart I am going to tell you with: they do not deserve an ounce of whatever God or Goddess I pissed off to turn my life into this series of now comical and always tragic events. The karma or payback or whatever it is that is messing with Aaron and I can not and WILL NOT be bequeathed unto them.

They are too kind. They are too good. They have been through too, too much for small kids.

I would shake hands with the devil himself to ensure they never have to endure another day of the hell chronic illness and hospitals and treatment and surgeries have given me. Sign me up. Send over my soul.

When I realized that toy was missing something in me cracked. And it was not pretty. Life can fuck with me but it will not fuck with my kids. Sure they will have their own experiences that will be successes and failures but it will sure as hell NOT be tied to this life I juggle so they don’t even see the cotton ball and bandage when they walk in the door from school and I have had treatment. I won’t allow it.

Of course there was no employee magically turning on and off lights at the toy store, and I then spent the next 20 minutes driving in a circle around our town crying more but plotting how to GIVE HER that #1 Santa gift without a shred of disappointment.

After a few harebrained ideas I came home, puffy eyed, with a plan where she gets to pick out the color of her toy via her Uncle and Aunt’s gift card – who live on an extremely remote island and can’t possibly find the very rare one she wants – the very moment the stores open. I changed the gift card to read ‘FOR YOUR FURBY’ and shot an email off to my brother and sister-in-law to warn them and then tried like hell to let it go. I had to.

This had to work and it would work because as my son keeps reminding me, ‘Nothing is perfect, ever…and that is a good thing.’

I probably sound insane as you read this. Putting so much stock in a gift from Santa. Wanting everything to be just right when I know it never is. But understand chronic illness is a lifetime of hoping you are doing enough for those you love despite your shortcomings. What I wouldn’t have given to be one of those Moms or Dads who can just go from store to store to store until you find just what you needed on your list and then off you go to another for that other thing.

I’m lucky if I can handle two stores in one day and when I do, don’t expect dinner to be cooked or laundry done or dishes cleaned. There will be take-out and me sniffing shirts before school hoping for a clean pile while nursing swollen ankles and bruises from toes to knee because I dared manage to get groceries and medication on the same day.

Don’t feel sorry for me though, that’s also not the point of this post. This is my life and I am very happy to be LIVING it…I’m throwing this all down in words because I realized that Lupus or no Lupus I wasn’t the only parent or sibling or partner or what not frantic over something this holiday season, knowing FULL WELL we need not be.

Which I could tell was on the tip of both my husband and my father’s tongues as I left the house Monday night but neither dare speak or try and stop me. I was in that non-rational, can not be talked to or reasoned with, get the hell out of my way I will throw a brick through a window and jump through cut glass and sell my body to come home with this fucking toy mode. Know that mode? Been there? Maybe not over a toy but maybe something else? Yeah…you know what I mean.

Of course they were right. Of course I have the most optimistic, sensitive, and sweetest children on the planet who agonized over what they should give each other as siblings so very much it took my son an hour and 27 minutes to pick out three charms. Three charms that he knew his sister would love and that meant something to both of them. Yes, my son spent that long to make sure his sister would be happy and to show his love in charm form to her. And my sweet daughter? Months ago bought her brother a meteorite from a museum she couldn’t afford and has been giving me $1 per week for months to pay me back. Because ‘Mom he just has to have this, it came from space and I can be the one to give him something from space.’

Both frequently checked on the gifts they bought to make sure everything was still in order and when they finally unveiled…well….

…and here I was agonizing and making myself sick over a gift my daughter would receive, just not on the day she expected. She bought the gift card tale with gusto and can’t wait to get the exact one she wants. Her Uncle and Aunt are now heroes (you are welcome) and I am reminded once again that YES life has changed, but life is NOT over. LIFE is not DONE with me and I’m going to still screw up and kick ass and even learn that no matter how much I plan, SHIT STILL HAPPENS. And MOST of it has NOTHING to do with LUPUS! Imagine the hell out of that?!

I need to stop putting so much pressure on myself to ‘make up’ for these imaginary things I swear my kids and husband go through because I am getting an IV all day or because all the pills on the counter scare them. This is now LIFE. For better or for worse- and the guilt needs to leave as do the constant coddling and freak outs because I can’t make that field trip or I can’t volunteer in class or I can’t have that playdate at our house because I’m just too tired today.

It ends now. Before I take what is wonderful about everything that has happened and the bonds growing tighter and the love growing even stronger and I ruin it with trying to make everything ‘perfect.’

Because nothing is perfect. And that really is a good thing. It means we just need to be us, and I need not try to make things happier or more active or anything other than what we can handle and what we WANT to handle and do.

And you know what? I employed that outlook all day and had the best damn Christmas with my family. It was us. It was casual and laid back and odd and silly and surprising and filled with the one thing I know we get right every single time: love. That part has not changed and that part requires me to only be me. Filled with heart for this little family of mine that teaches me more and more every day about what it means to love and what it means to truly be a family.

Happy Holidays to you all. May you love hard and enjoy the pure magic in every moment of life. It won’t ever, ever be perfect, but it sure as hell will be real.

Filed Under: #SUCKITLupus, Feeling YaYa, Merry Merry, Stepford Crazies

Holidays: Hurting, Helping, and Holding Everyone Close

December 23, 2012 by Queen of Spain

I am feeling guilty enjoying the many traditions we partake in here around the holidays. ‘Torn,’ maybe is a better word than ‘guilt.’

Tonight our family filled out our ‘wishes’ for our wish ornament tradition and all I could think of were the families whose wishes won’t come true this year, no matter how hard any of us try. There is just no bringing back those we’ve lost. I’ve tried. I’ve tried since I was a child and my grandmother died. If there were a way, I would have found it by now…just out of sheer love and pain.

For those who are unaware, we are friends with Victoria & Alexis Haller, Aunt and Uncle to six-year old Noah Pozner. Noah was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School that fateful Friday and I want to make sure you know how to help.

There is a page set up so you can donate directly to Noah’s four surviving siblings. There is also a nationwide effort to help all of the children when they return to school after the break by simply hanging snowflakes around their new place of learning. Making them feel welcome and safe.

I can’t describe what it even slightly feels like to know someone close to this tragedy. Just watching a friend go through this from afar pales so greatly in comparison to what the family is experiencing, that a comparison can not be made. What I can say, is it has made me even more of a believer in the power of GOOD in our community.

Sometimes when it comes to blogging and tweeting and pinning and facebooking we only seem to have two modes: bitch and rally. Right now, we need every bit of rally we can muster. This is one of our nation’s most horrific tragedies, and one of our own has been touched.

I keep trying to make some sort of logical leap in my mind, about how every holiday season we all get a bit down and we all, also, feel that love and magic when we hold each other close. This year…this year is just so much different.

My family is a bit more screwed up than usual. My heart is a bit more torn than it was before children were murdered and I had to explain to my own children things I never want to explain again. My health has this awesome overall outlook but the waiting is unlike any torture on earth…provided the doctor is right.

So much feels broken and I’m the type of person destined to FIX. Control. Fix. Control. Fix.

I’ve let go so much of the control, and am slowly beginning to take back what I can handle…but I still can’t fix. I can’t fix other people, they have to fix themselves. I can’t fix other relationships, they have to fix themselves. I have to let my children become the amazing young adults they are on their way to being, without my overbearing influence. And I certainly can not fix everything our country needs in order to stop another tragedy.

I feel like I tried to take on health care with my own health problems. The election with my gender and my convictions and my determination to see what we all started be FINISHED.

Fix. Control. Fix. Control. From the small to the HUGE it is just what I do. It is just WHO I AM.

Or is it who I was? It’s as though everything was taken out of my hands, I was forced to take a deep breath, and then just sit and watch.

It’s maddening. And fills me with fear and pride.

I’m doing my best to put my health at the top of the list so I can better care for those around me when they need it and when it’s required. Also because I’ve finally realized the healthier I am, the more I can take back of my life. The real life. Not this half-life. The life where I can be on my husband’s arm at a party, or take care of him after surgery.

Where I can take my children to a mall or a store without a cane or a cart for help walking…the life where I don’t have to space out my pain killers and pills just to be able to drive carpool to or from school. The life where I can even volunteer inside the classroom without worry of a germ or bacteria or infection that will land me in the hospital.

The life I want more than anything else. The life that seems so much more simple after December 14th, because I am even more grateful for what I DO have.

I didn’t think that was even possible. I had become so accustomed to being thankful for surviving what I had been through these past two years that adding to the thanks and gratefulness seemed over-the-top.

But when you can feel your heart being ripped from your chest for a friend who last helped hold your hair while you threw up at a strange karaoke bar in Silicon Valley, you know there is always something more to be grateful for.

So I’m asking you to rally. No, I’m telling you to rally.

Keep any of the blog drama to yourself. Now is not the time.

Keep any of the usual behind the scenes status updates ‘accidentally’ gone public deleted. Keep the links hidden.

Suck it up and act like adults about every single matter concerning this. Do not second guess. Do not wonder out loud on twitter.

Be respectful. Be rational. And overall, rally like that blogging community I KNOW you can be when one of us needs it most.

There will be time for all of us to fight about gun control and politics – you can COUNT on that. I’m not asking you keep things without opinion. I’m asking you to rally. And to rally hard.

Hold those you love close this holiday season. Help in any way you can.

For our @VDog. For her family. And, most of all, for Noah.

*In the spirit of this post, comments are off.

Filed Under: Feeling YaYa, Merry Merry, Stepford Crazies

Actions, Words, And Insanity

December 20, 2012 by Queen of Spain 3 Comments

I don’t think many of us have stopped thinking about Sandy Hook. Which, in a way, I am grateful for because our country seems to have such a short attention span as of late we tend to move on to the next bright and shiny object before the last one has had time to figure out what happened.

December 14th, 2012 should never be just another one of those days that is pushed away and referred to as an aside by some street reporter at the next school shooting.

Because make no mistake, there will be another.

I hope with all my heart we never see another, but it seems any sense of unity or togetherness or willingness to do what it takes to stop the next is slipping away quickly.

I awoke to a post by a conservative woman recommending, against every law enforcement training and instructions I have ever been told, that we should be teaching our six-year olds to RUSH and ‘dogpile’ the next armed assailant that enters a school.

As a mother my blood boiled more than I could handle, and given my health I screamed and shouted as much as I could on my phone before finally pulling out of the school parking lot. You know, where I was dropping off my kids where they go to learn things like math- NOT HOW TO DIE. I had to get it out, because as the days roll on, it seems the fringe is once again attempting to co-opt the conversation and lead the country down the crazy path. One that has zero business at the adult table. One that is devoid of any common sense. And one we can not afford to listen to this time around.

As suspected, my fears were realized later in the day when this gem of an article popped up at the National Review. Another fringe/ultra conservative woman but this one was clutching her pearls and blaming the feminization of schools for the additional deaths in Sandy Hook. Had there only been big, strong, men around….we poor, defenseless women wouldn’t be ‘sitting ducks’ – as though this were some pioneer settlement or something.

This is when I became unhinged and my tweets and Facebook posts went off the rails. Angry does not begin to describe how the article made me feel. Offended doesn’t even slightly cover the rage. The author, Charlotte Allen, clearly has never seen me protect my children. Ever heard of the term Mamma Bear? Understand WHY it exists? Do you have any idea what I would DO for these two? ANY?

Allen also did zero fact checking (there were men in the building- she expected them to throw buckets or something, btw) and then insulted the memory and heroism of the women who GAVE THEIR LIVES saving children that day. Doing the exact thing she seemed to think only a man could do. Perhaps she thinks a man can DIE better, I’m not sure…but her linkbait, full of CRAZY post did what it was probably intended to do: rile up the feminists.

As a feminist and mother sometimes it seems some conservative women want to box me in. How can you be both? Don’t you hate men? Wait, you are a mother? I thought you aborted babies?

We don’t fit into their boxes and this confuses them. It can be hard to wrap heads around the idea that we love, have family dinners, take our children to school, help with homework, choose to be stay-at-home mothers and sometimes have no choice and must work to support our families. So when we ROAR just as loud to protect our babies, and willingly throw our bodies or do whatever it takes to save children, ours or others, it seems to not compute with some on the Right.

So when Allen wrote her drivel, throwing us back into the Romney-esq, 1950’s version of the America they all wanted us to go back to…with all males as the only possible heroes and the women just waiting to be saved…the Internet exploded in protest. And at the very least, my brain couldn’t handle yet another senseless and ridiculous blame game for what went wrong with society as a whole to lead to Sandy Hook.

Today it’s feminism, tomorrow it will be video games, next week it will be reality tv. When, if we are truly honest with ourselves…it’s ALL OF US and EVERYTHING.

And I want to be perfectly clear about the outrageous comments being thrown around as the entire world Monday morning quarterback’s what went on: these types of discussions have no business at the table as we attempt to assess, as a nation, just how to solve our gun violence problem. NO BUSINESS.

Yes, I realize what the President said. And I understand he would like all voices heard and I understand that we must look at everything. But we must look at everything REASONABLE and that has COMMON SENSE attached.

Children being taught to rush armed gunman against everything law enforcement has ever taught and women and children waiting for male knights on white horses to come save them are not reasonable nor do they have common sense attached.

And just to be clear, this also did not happen because GOD is ‘been kicked out’ of our public schools. First of all, a child may pray on his or her own whenever he or she likes in a public school. Quiet reflection is always allowed. Had a teacher lead my child in prayer while something like this was happened it would scare them further, as they are not religious nor would they understand what was going on.

And if your God isn’t around during school shootings due to some law on a book somewhere in some country, your God is rather weak. I suggest you shop for a more powerful one that can take out the law and the armed lunatic.

The bottom line here…this is NOT the time for your grandstand posts on crazy, far out, political dogma. This is the time for your grandstand posts on just how BOLD you can be when it comes to solving our nation’s crisis. On helping our nation heal. On coming up with ways we can all agree upon to make sure THIS NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

How many times can we all say this? This can NOT happen again, yet the more we do the CRAZY above, the more IT WILL. The more we only stick to our old ways, the less will get done. But that does not mean we let the fringe IN and that doesn’t mean we cave. Far from it. It means we fight like hell and we compromise. We are mature adults who should be able to solve this before more children die. We are mature adults who can come up with at least the start of some solutions while we work to fix the overall ills.

Let me repeat that: we are mature adults who should be able to solve this before MORE CHILDREN DIE.

I can not be more clear. If action is not taken there is blood on ALL our hands. YOU for not compromising. YOU for not listening to the valid argument of a gun owner. YOU for not accepting the stats on video games and kids. YOU for not doing more to fund mental health services. YOU for fighting against insuring 30 million more American through Obamacare. And especially YOU for adding insult to one of the most horrific tragedies of our time.

Enough is enough. It’s now time to get to work and act.

Filed Under: Holding Court, Stepford Crazies