Entries

09/11/01

Submitted entry: Well, unbeknownst to most of you I sort of temporarily abandoned this journaling enterprise. Part of me had decided that I really had very little interesting to say - and frankly that could still be true, and another part of me had come up with an idea with the help of Paul and Kite for a book based upon an offline journal that I am about to start. But after this week, I’m in a place where writing - where communicating is something I could really use.

Of course there’s the obvious - part of me just wants to avoid writing a journal entry because of the tragedy that happened this week. It sounds crazy and selfish but it seems as if all that can be said has been said. It was a horrifying thing to wake up to. In fact, I didn’t even know what happened when I started the day. Our routine of listening to the radio seems to have fallen by the wayside. This Tuesday I woke up early and called my client in Yonkers, NY. After several tries to get through where I checked and rechecked the number I was dialing I finally got through and was put on hold and listened to some people concernedly talking about some airplane. When I asked my client how he was doing he broke the news. I don’t think it really sank in at the moment and so instead I made some silly joke about it being like a bad b-movie or something. When I heard it on NPR and then from a friend who called it started to become more and more real. At that point I began to worry - not about my safety from terrorists in our neck of the woods but for what everyone we know here continues to worry about - what George Bush’s reaction is going to be and what trouble that is going to cause for the world. Paul was expecting to have a friend over and he decided that he didn’t want to have her over after all and so instead I called and cancelled with them. Then Paul wanted to go to see his granny and so we got in the car and headed over. Good move as I could really use some help with childcare. Not only was I somewhat of a mess emotionally but the headache I woke up with was rapidly getting worse.

So where am I now? Anxious would be a good word. I feel a sense of general anxiety which I am applying towards anything that I can possibly worry about. What might those be?

The disasters of course are high on the list. I am reminded of it quite frequently for various reasons. You can’t go anywhere without being reminded whether it’s the tv in Wal Mart or the clerk at the thrift store. Everyone’s talking about it.

Then there’re the cats. I don’t know if I mentioned (or wrote since then) but with the flea problem we had earlier in the summer we bought some Hartz Advanced Care flea treatment (the stuff between the shoulders you buy in department stores). Big BIG mistake, that. Within hours of administering it to four cats - Claire, Anita, Shelly and Harriet they were all acting weird and sick. Claire, being the scrawniest progressed the quickest. The next night she was having trouble getting around, didn’t want to eat or drink. I looked up the product on the net and found that there were a number of lawsuits against Hartz for just this product. They suggested washing it off them and we started washing cats. Claire continued to worsen and we called a vet who suggested we give her pedialyte to keep her hydrated and just wait it out and hope. We did that but it wasn’t enough. Claire died. Meanwhile Shelly and Anita started losing weight and looking unkempt. Harriet, mysteriously, looked fine. Last week Shelly couldn’t really get around and so we started everyone on wet food. Shelly improved but Anita didn’t. Last night we took her to the vet who gave her a steroid shot which seems to have helped. He was somewhat hopeful that that, combined with the feeding of liver to the cats, would help them get through it. Shelly looks way better as does Anita. We’re still worried, though.

Meanwhile, Paul appears to be allergic to cats - not so much the ones he grew up with but it’s helping that they prefer to be outside most of the time. But if that wasn’t enough there was a family of cats - mom and two kittens - dumped in the neighborhood. Nobody else was doing much about them except one person who kept dumping them all out of the neighborhood. The kittens kept bugging the neighbors plants and so we’ve taken them in. They’re now living in the office which is now off limits to Paul. With frequent vacuuming he seems to be okay with them in there. We’re trying to adopt them all out but so far haven’t had much luck. Meanwhile we’ve spayed the mom and put her outside as she seems to have some particularly irritating dander for Paul.

It’s no longer working for us, also, to have our sleeping arrangements - the futon we had mildewed a few months back and we’d been sleeping on the floor which previously had been tolerable for us all - with one of us sleeping on the comfy couch. Sadly that hasn’t remained that way. Sage and I are having back trouble and I’ve developed a worrisome twinge that goes from my armpit to my wrist. It’s definitely time to get something to sleep on. We’re going tomorrow to the store to buy a bed - they’re out of futons and we need something now. We’re leaning towards a full or queen size with a twin sized one that could go right next to it for Paul (that we could later move to his own room if he was ready for it. Me being the hypochondriac I figured for a while it was some serious horrible thing - a swelling of a lymph node or something but thank goodness a friend of ours had a look and it appears to be a pinched nerve/pulled muscle instead. But you know me - I was figuring on it being something really horrible. What it seems like now is some combination of sleeping on the floor (it started two nights ago after I slept on the floor and had a particularly uncomfortable time of it) and an emotional thing like what happened when I went to the powwow last summer and bottled up all my emotions from that resulting in my experiencing horrible shortness of breath (anxiety attack?) for several hours thereafter.

Yup, you guessed it, I’ve been “stuffing” my emotions - or had been for several days - about everything that happened on Tuesday and my concerns about what will happen next. It took me until today to even be able to cry about it which I’ve felt like doing since Tuesday but was never in a place where I felt comfortable (depending on the company I was keeping or where I was). It helped a lot to be able to do that but I know that there’s more where that came from so to speak.

So I’m sure that all the anxiety I’m feeling about this - and that of everyone else in the world (the atmosphere is weird all around, wouldn’t you agree?) is being sublimated into wherever it can get out - will the car make it until we get it fixed, will the cats live through this poisoning, will we find a home for the new cats in the neighborhood?

Paul’s needing to see the dentist soon - he appears to have at least one cavity that hurts him now when he eats. He’s okay with the idea in theory (not knowing what it really is all about). My plan is to go with him to the dentist and have him work on me first so he can get an idea of what happens.

I realized today during an acupuncture treatment that a lot of this has been chemically induced or enhanced, anyway. I am still using caffeine - 1-4 cups/day of coffee and that can’t be good. Up until yesterday I was also taking a vitamin suppliment that contained ginseng which the acupuncturist, also a chinese herbalist, strongly recommended me to stop and thought it could have lots to do with how I’ve been feeling lately. So I decided to cut down and eventually (hopefully) quit the caffeine and she promises to help me with my energy levels through acupuncture and herbs. I only had one cup today and had a cup of tea this afternoon instead which I thought at the time was a mistake and at this time I’m realizing was correct. I did great all day but now when I’m tired but still caffeinated is when my worries can get the best of me.

Meanwhile there are several good things happening in our lives:

First, I’m not in NY. For the past month or so I’ve been very seriously considering flying up to Yonkers to visit this client of mine. And had things gone as planned I would’ve headed up sometime a week or two ago. Meanwhile, one of Sage’s clients called and asked if he could move her deadline forward. As my work’s flexible I decided to hold off on going to NY and have since permanently cancelled this trip and any subsequent business trips.

A friend of ours’ daughter, who wasn’t really getting along with Paul several months ago is now getting along much better with him and so he has another playmate with cool parents. We’ve seen them several times over the past couple of weeks and have made several trips together including one to the Discovery Center and library last Thursday.

Saturday we had several friends and kids over including a couple we hadn’t seen in about 8 months. What a great time - five kids age 18 months to 6 years old all playing together. At one point they were all in Paul’s (newly linoleumed) playroom painting on huge sheets of rolled-out newsprint together.

Along those lines, the mom of our friend’s daughter and I are hatching several plots ranging from seeing if we can do a short library storytime series through renting a local house to use as a playhouse for all our homeschooled kids with various rooms: art room, music room, kitchen, playroom where all of us parents could share resources and perhaps give workshops (for parents and kids) as well.

So you can see how it’s been a sort of roller coaster ride for me. I think meditation will help and I had a short time of it today and hopefully will get back on that train soon. I always feel better when I do it but haven’t quite got it down yet as to doing it regularly.

Oh, and I almost forgot - the project Paul and I and Kite came up with. Lately Paul’s been grasping the idea that all water eventually goes to the ocean one way or another and has mentioned that he wants to walk down the creek here to the ocean. Kite and I talked about it quite a lot and realized that we could do just that with him. I told him “no” initially but we all realized that while it may be too early for us to plan a walk-straight-through trip with him from here to the Gulf of Mexico we can certainly walk it in stages with Sage picking us up and dropping us off as we do various bits a little at a time. As we get farther from home Paul gets a bit older and more capable of the longer, overnight journeys that will be necessary later in the project. I like it because it’s a perfect unschooling project. I challenge you to name any school “subject” that isn’t covered in a prolonged walk down a watershed. And my plan is to write about it as it goes (offline) for future publication. We’re just waiting for this latest paycheck to get in so we can have the engine in our little Geo replaced - seems like the rings and/or valves are shot and we’re burning tons of oil now. I keep meaning to do a net search on rebuilt motors for it - I found one a while back for $1600 and another just recently for $1200 but haven’t done any real thorough searching yet. As this car is going to be our ride to/from where we leave off in this project we’ll need it before starting.

Oh, and the flea problem is over as far as we can tell. Our last resort was to put down over 50 lbs of salt on all the carpets. It didn’t seem to work as well as people promised and after a week of having it down we decided it wasn’t working. We vacuumed it up, and I think in vacuuming we ground it deeper into the carpet - at least that which we didn’t suck up with the vacuum. And so in a couple days after that the fleas were dramatically reduced. Then we pulled the (ugly green shag) carpet out of the playroom and that seemed to be the end of it completely. I’ve only seen a couple fleas in the past few weeks as compared to as many as 3-5 on me in the course of my waking up to go to the bathroom at night.

I don’t know if this happened since I last wrote but Paul seems to have weaned himself. He decided one day (after four days of not nursing) that he was all done nursing and on his birthday two days later he had a short couple of nurses and then he hasn’t nursed since. Paul has done really well since then and is learning quite well how to go to sleep on his own. However, it seems to be the end of the afternoon nap except when we’re riding in the car. Yet another reason I’m not keeping up with this as I should - that was the time I did much of my writing (both work and otherwise)

And as I expected, it did make me feel a great deal better to write about all this. Do you all feel taken advantage of now?

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