• we have another dawg!

    Well, I don’t actually know that we have another Dawg. It’s not his top choice. But, Liam did get into the University of Georgia! Yay! So he does at least have one place to go next Fall.

    I am so very, very, very proud of this young man. He has worked so, so hard these last two years in particular, doing the International Baccalaureate program at Carrollton High School. And he’s done it while doing marching band, and learning to play the bass trombone, and I can’t keep up with the number of clubs he is in (and an active part of).

    Liam is a great friend to his friends, and he is just so very smart. His work ethic is the best of any individual I have ever known in my life. I worry about him quite a bit though, as he works himself too hard.

    This kiddo of mine has had a job every summer since he was 14 years old. He has more common sense (and financial sense) than anybody else in our household.

    He declared his prospective major as accounting at UGA but as we understand it he would have to apply to the Terry College of Business in his second year should he go.

    It has been a good day. I got some household organization situated during the day.

    And the Carrollton Trojans won! Next week is against Grayson at home.

    I don’t normally go down where the band parents are waiting for the band to come into the stands….lots of them stand on the track by the football field. But tonight before the game as the band was walking onto the field for pregame I went down and snapped this, of Liam:

    It’s not a great pic. I was in a hurry and frankly flustered to be on the sidelines and well. Whatever. I used Topaz to focus their faces.

    This was the shot of the night, though:

    It was nice to get out of the press box hallway for a little while. I snapped this shot of the band in the Amp before I went down to the sidelines to wait. The press box hallway is my hangout while Oliver does the instant replays and Jared helps with the broadcast kids on Friday nights.

    I snapped the pictures, but the whole point of going down was to meet Liam and give him a giant Mama hug. He’d texted in a big group text to let us know he’d gotten into UGA but he’d stayed at school between school and the game tonight. So I’d said congratulations, but I didn’t want to wait until he got home from the game for the hug.

    The hug was 100% worth it.

    It was a good day.

  • protein bar in the bed kind of morning

    I don’t take photos like this very often. But as I draft this post it is 11:18 AM and I am eating my favorite kind of Kirkland protein bar in the bed. Because it is that kind of morning.

    And as it happens, I went to bed in the most awfully despondent kind of mood last night. The kind where I become uber dramatic and morose about the future; I will not repeat what was said.

    It was the kind of morning where I did not set an alarm; Jared woke me up long after he’d woken the boys up, to get me to take my morning medicines. He knew he had to do this because if he did not, I might or might not actually take said medications (note: it was my thyroid meds so the likelihood of me taking them was high. But still).

    And because Jared loves me and spoils me rotten, for breakfast because he knew comfort foods were in order, he brought me a baggie of Cheez-It’s and my favorite Kirkland Chocolate and Peanut Butter Protein Bar.

    And I promptly fell back asleep until after 10 AM.

    Because it’s difficult to maintain hope right now.

    But, I do have two goals for today:

    1. finish the stitching on my newest jute bag’s liner
    2. Get my jewelry collection back in order, because it is in the kind of embarrassing state that does not reflect my feelings about it.

    That’s true, actually, about our house and my body, too; both are in the kind of embarrassing state that does not reflect my feelings about either of them.

    Jared told me, as he frequently does, to “be kind to yourself” before he left.

    So that’s today’s goal. Even if today is starting at 11:28 AM.

  • bet my back is more messed up than yours

    I referred to it a little on the 12th but last week, on the 12th, I had a check-up with my orthopedic PA.

    I’m not really sure why I even go. It’s not like there’s more surgery I will ever let them do to me, even if my neck discs are seriously degenerating.

    The photo above is my back as it looked on x-ray on Wednesday, November 12. 

    It’s pretty crazy. 

    And that whole top curve wasn’t there when I was a teenager or young adult. I assume that is what 4 pregnancies (yes, there were 4 even though there are only 3 boys) and years upon years of laying-in-the-bed-depressed depression will do to me with my brand of scoliosis.

    The only real comment the orthopedic PA made was that indeed, there is significant degeneration in the discs in my neck. Such that actually, there was a blank space where there should have been a disc at the base of my neck in front, actually. 

    That’s probably why my neck hurts when I transition from standing or sitting to lying down in the bed. 

    And maybe I should feign terror at the utter basic breakdown that is my spine, that is my body.

    But to be honest, it’s just my normal. I’ve dealt with this since I was 6 years old, way back in the back brace days.

    At least I’ve spent the vast majority of my life without the large lumbar hump that was on the left side of my back as a kid.

    My orthopedic PA says she doesn’t measure degrees. She says she’ll know when she should refer me to her surgeon, and he’ll measure degrees then. She knows– rightly– that people obsess over degrees of curvature when– also rightly– degrees don’t necessarily mean a damn thing, especially when there’s rotation or some other such craziness going on.

    She didn’t say this time, though, that she’d never see me needing surgery again.

    Not sure I would do it though. I’d have to be in an awful– a very awful– amount of pain to agree to give up the mobility I have in my upper back and neck, and that’s what would happen with more fusions.

    I’ve had probably 2% of progression in the last two years. She says that’s pretty stable for my particular situation. So much so, that she won’t worry about x-rays when I come back next year.

    I did get another referral for physical therapy. I still know a lot of the exercises I was taught last year but I haven’t been super reliable about it since I got depressed and had very bad mental health in the Spring and summer. And of course, I did have a whole hysterectomy in May.

    All you people with normal bodies, it must be nice.

    When I look at this photo of my x-ray though, it makes complete sense as to why I have mental health issues AND why I have been the object of not-nice men.

    Easy to prey on the already weakened.

    As my oldest would say, “It is what it is.”

  • moral bankruptcy

    Arapaho National Forest

    I’ve been pretty strong and determined the last few days; since the 12th, actually. Able to hold my head up and all that. Last night, the facade crumbled.

    It all had to do with the newest jute purse. It’s going to be big enough to hold both cameras but Jared makes my liners. And I wanted him to make a round pocket large enough for my GF lenses. It was a random thought I had not long before we sat so Jared could look again at his measurement notes to cut the felt and canvas.

    And Jared had reservations about the fact that I wanted the pocket to be round, and I pitched a fit.

    Jared said he had been expecting the meltdown, when I came to enough to realize what was happening.

    I am so very lucky I married the man I did.

    And, I wore my hair in pigtails on Friday and yesterday afternoon. And apparently the trope is universal; a guy on the square gave me a big smile and someone at the football game (a man) “complimented” the style on Friday night.

    sigh

    It’s been an experiment, this hair thing. Not a sexualizing sort of thing; having even just below chin length hair is still a novelty and it’s fun to be able to do anything different with my hair after years of baldness and super short hair.

    But even as strong as I am, I have limits. And the realization that I have been objectified by the person I’ve written about is still very, very painful.

    It’s still painful in the same way that the realization that the whole situationship was really one giant trauma bond is.

    I am strong, and I put on a brave face. And I never have to see him again.

    And that is hard too: working through a trauma bond is a process.

    But it’s not the first time I have done this breaking of the trauma bond, even with this person, and I will be fine.

    Jared said last night that getting together with him in October 20th was progress; last December I had no earthly idea what to expect. This time, I was prepared with boundaries.

    But really: what kind of professional as successful as him (especially in his particular field with the connections he has) meets with someone he at least at one time pretended to care about, knowing this person is on SSDI and is desperate for a job, and offers absolutely zero assistance?

    Someone who is morally bankrupt, that’s who.

    But then, moral bankruptcy with that particular history is a given.

    I like to think the best of people. Maybe that is where I went so wrong.

    When someone tells you who they are the first time, believe them.

    Because it actually serves this person’s ends and ego to have me in an economically disadvantaged position. I am well-aware of this fact, too.