Category: Family

  • nancy is an asshole

    Several weeks ago now, I crocheted myself a jute purse. It is cute, and I am in love with it. It went with me to Kansas City and fits perfectly under an airplane seat, and it went with me through all three Universal Parks a week and a half ago.

    I love it.

    I don’t love that it sheds pretty badly. I’ve tried sealing it with mod podge, I’ve tried heat blocking. Nothing helps. It is going to shed. It’s not a problem with the outside, but it does get all over anything you put in it, and it’s the perfect size for both my camera and laptop so that was a big problem.

    So, I decided to finally line the whole thing. Here it is before lining:

    Yes! It has a pocket! A really great one.

    So, we went and got felt for the lining because I knew that would be easy on my camera.

    Jared was kind enough to sew the actual lining part into one piece, on the condition that I do the hand-stitching into the bag:

    All went well, until Jared was sewing away and here comes asshole Nancy, above, literally to bat the THREAD OFF THE SEWING MACHINE WHILE IT WAS SPINNING….

    Nancy took off with the thread in her mouth… got all the way to the other side of the house before Jared caught her and pulled the thread away.

    Or, so we thought.

    The finished bag is fabulous. Solved the shedding problem; here is the lined bit before I lined the pocket:

    I did decide to line the pocket, and it is all the better for it.

    This was all last Saturday. Today is Thursday.

    Nancy was low-key missing most of the week. I didn’t go looking for her, I saw her sitting in a chair yesterday morning, but I didn’t worry about her. She is not a social cat in general and will vaguely tolerate Jared’s picking her up to harass her, for very brief periods.

    Jared likes to cuddle cats. Nancy only just tolerates it occasionally.

    But yesterday, Nancy pooped outside her litter box for the first time in a couple of months. It was a problem previous to us getting two more litter boxes. But it hadn’t happened since. And I noticed, too, that she had black drool coming out of her mouth.

    So we thought maybe she had been eating her own poop or Bess, our other cat’s poop? That was all we could think of.

    But, she was also clingy. She came up and sat by me, but her fur was raised like something was wrong, too.

    It is not normal for Nancy to be clingy, so finally we decided about 8:30 last night to get her to the vet.

    We managed to get to our vet here in Carrollton at 8:30 before they closed at 9 last night, saving us a trip (and lots more in fees) to the emergency vet in Atlanta, thank goodness.

    They took Nancy straight back, and took us to a room. We were just starting to tell the vet tech the sewing story, that she did get into something last weekend, when the doctor came in and said, “I found this? I don’t think she’ll lose her tongue.” And set the surgical utensil with attached string on the table:

    *sigh*

    Apparently when Jared yanked the string to get it away from Nancy last Saturday, the string had only just broken, with a good portion of it lodged around her tongue. The string was deeply embedded in her tongue, and the black stuff was infection.

    So, Nancy got an antibiotic shot, and has to eat canned food for at least a week which means she has to be isolated from the other pets for that time, and we are out $230 which makes my homemade purse I love a lot more expensive than the $35 it had set us back to that point.

    Dumbass cat.

    Anybody want a cat?

  • something to say about tylenol and autism

    I have something to say about the stupidity that is going rampant in this country……

    Above is the ultrasound photo of my oldest when I was 16 weeks pregnant with him, in 2006.

    And that now young man is 19 years old. And he is autistic.

    And he is brilliant. And he loves his family. And he loves his dog Trixie. And he loves video games.

    And he happens to be in the honors college at his college. And his grades are stellar. He is majoring in philosophy, and because philosophy is so easy for him he is adding a second major, statistics, likely at the end of the semester.

    He has his driver’s license. He has a strong circle of good guy friends who are very good to him.

    He loves to play D&D. And, I think he likes school.

    And, you know what, he doesn’t just love to look people in the eye. He will do so with me, but I’m pretty sure that’s because at a fairly young age I told him he should do so.

    And his life really does pretty much revolve around video games- the next one coming out, the reviews, all of that. He’s pretty singularly focused.

    And he’s got slight tactile issues that I won’t go into here.

    And you know what else? I’m pretty unconcerned with why Porter is the way he is.

    You know why?

    Because he is literally one of the best men that I have ever met in my entire life. It utterly astounds me that I got so lucky as to be his mom.

    And you know what else? I did not take Tylenol during my pregnancy with him. Except during literally the hour that he was born, because due to my spinal fusion I could not have an epidural.

    But labor was fast, and I’m 99% sure that Tylenol never reached my bloodstream, and certainly not his.

    The whole premise behind the Tylenol and autism thing is that it is yet another way to shame women, to make them question their choices about their bodies.

    Tylenol did not cause my son’s autism. It offends me to even worry about why he has autism.

    But for sure, nothing I did in my pregnancy caused him to be the way he is.

    And even if it had, I’m damn proud to be his mom and if I went back and told that 26-year old version of myself that this beautiful baby she was staring at the ultrasound picture of, that that baby has autism, I’m damn sure she would be through the roof proud when I told her what else that baby is capable of. And that she gets to be the one he calls Mom.

  • the sun rose a little bit

    The stunning Grinter Farms in Lawrence, Kansas

    It’s no secret that I have been depressed for a while now.

    Apparently I just needed to go see my aunt and uncle, who moved to Kansas a while back, all by myself without the boys or Jared.

    The above picture was taken at Grinter Farms this past Saturday, just after some hot air balloons took off:

    The morning was stunning.

    But while Grinter Farms was nice, it wasn’t the photo op that made the weekend.

    It was spending time with the people I have known who I have loved and who have loved me and treated me as their own my whole life.

    It had probably been since before I married Jared that I had been to see them by myself.

    And while I was there with them, I remembered that life is not so bad.

    I remembered several craft projects I used to do on a regular basis, projects that would probably make pretty good Etsy store items.

    I remembered that consistency is the key to having a tidy house.

    Best of all: I remembered that I am loved. And very, very lucky.

  • nothing is in focus right now

    I took this photo with the X-S20. Apparently I am not so good as the selfie culture at making the camera work in focus with the full articulating selfie screen.

    Yeah. Depressed.

    Feeling my age, my ribs are on the move in a twisty way that isn’t fun feeling. Bored, tired of Carrollton.

    Jared tries. He took me out to the Marina again tonight, after taking me on our weekly outing for Burger King ice cream cones.

    Fun fact, at least in Carrollton, GA: You can get two ice cream cones for $2.12. That’s the main eating out we do during the week.

    And all that was well and good. Until I started in on how I hate Carrollton, how I want Jared to find another job so we can move to Atlanta.

    The same old same old.

    And I don’t know why, when I feel rejected, I go on this whole self-implosion thing.

    Something happened last week that made me change some plans in the next couple of weeks. And as it happens, I am going to see my aunt and uncle instead of doing the thing that I was going to do, and I will likely have a far superior time seeing them and being loved on and all that than I would have had doing the other thing, which was probably riskier than I really want to admit it likely was, to begin with.

    And I’m still mad about last December. Mostly because I’m mad at myself for thinking that inviting drama back into my life was a good idea at all.

    I’ve spent the last nine months pretty darn unhappy because of it. And had an arguably necessary-anyway hysterectomy because I got all freaked out about cancer risks because of that encounter.

    I guess in that respect, I should be grateful for last December. It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to worry about cancer risks if I hadn’t had that encounter last December.

    And mostly I go around mad all the time because it feels, to me, like just about everybody in my life has some sort of purpose, has their shit together, and I’m just sitting at home.

    And I guess it’s accurate to say that some of the people I have in mind do actually have their shit together.

    But none of them are married to Jared Price. I’m the only one who got to do that.

    And probably not many of them are told on a daily basis the things he tells only me.

    It’s about now in the depression cycle that I realize that it’s been about a week since I’ve done a gratitude list.

    The truth is, not much about my life has turned out the way I thought it would, or honestly, the way that I wanted it to.

    And I mostly walk around mad, angry at the world, and despondent because of it.

    And I think back to that 18 year old and I would tell her to ditch all the preconceived notions about how life should go. That it’s all about to change, like, tomorrow.

    But probably, she’d already known that for a good couple of years or so.

    Tomorrow is a new day. I’ll go volunteer in the city with “my ladies,” as Jared calls them.

    And then I’ll go see my aunt and uncle for the weekend, and probably have some yummy Costco mac and cheese, which I haven’t actually had since the last time I saw them, in February.

    And, I do actually realized how privileged it is that I was born into the family that I was born into, and that we can afford to feed ourselves despite the fact that I do not work.

    It does not negate the fact that I feel somehow that I am not living up to my potential, and there have been missed opportunities. And squandered opportunities. And lost time. and lost relationships.

    But tomorrow, I can try again.

  • nicu bay 20

    I am sitting here with Porter while he fills out the paperwork to take his driver’s test.

    Porter will turn 19 in just a couple of weeks.

    At this point over the past 19 years, I have said all this ad nauseum. But I am going to say it all again.

    I remember sitting in NICU Bay 20 at the University of Iowa Hospital about a week after Porter was born. It seemed like the monitors were going off constantly and I remember thinking “God, thank you for letting me be his mom for a week at least.”

    Oh Caroline, oh ye of little faith.

    This firstborn of ours has astounded me at every. single. turn.

    And this man— this man who wasn’t satisfied to have made the waitlist at UGA his first year, who really did want to show UGA he belonged there— this man will be attending the Honors College at UGA this Fall. We move him in on Friday.

    This man that is brilliant. And gentle. And kind. And loves his pup. And his friends. And his family.

    This man that fiercely loves his Mom.

    There are no words for how very proud I am of Porter.

    I wish I could go back and tell that 2006 version of myself all about the astounding things that baby would go on to accomplish. That breathing and a steady heart rate were just the start.