01 April, 2009

I thought I already passed this class....

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

Why do moms get their stomaches all tied in knots when their kids have a problem, or are having trouble with a class? Is it just me? Or do all moms do this?

This is pretty typical of how the kids are sleeping this week.

We've been able to revisit Romeo and Juliet this term...term paper editing tomorrow night!

I told the boy and girl about a year ago that their science homework was to the point that I couldn't really help explain things to them anymore....it doesn't seem to matter. I hated physics in high school and hated it more in college...so guess what they were in Washington, DC while it was being covered and sick for the explanations? Right. Physics. Laws of motion. Newton and crap. Ugh!

I know how important some of those concepts are, but it's the last week of the term and all work has to be in by Thursday. Guess what the boy is having trouble with? Yep. My favorite subject!
The dear hubby hates math and I get stuck with explaning those concepts to the kids, why can't he explain the science? Oh yeah, he didn't take that much science either! Crap!

The kids were both sick with high temperatures the week before spring break and missed a week before that because of their trip so it's crunch time. They only have a few days to get their work done and caught up, and now mom is running a temperature and has been for 2 weeks despite all the anti-inflamatories I normally take. :(

I guess it's nice that I finally have a temperature to break...it means my immune system is finally trying to fight the illness. But my lungs were much happier a few weeks ago. Now coughing hurts, thinking hurts (what's new?) and hell, even sleeping hurts.

Since this is the last week of the term, hubby and I also became grandparents for the last few days to obnoxiously robotic plastic dolls that have a VERY high creep factor. Ick! If babies looked and acted like this, the human race would be dead within a generation!

The girls little 'boy' was Jack, and no, the eyes don't close, it's always got that creepy Chucky stare.

And the boy's, "little darling" girl was Jill...told repeatedly and often to shut up.

This excercise seems somewhat futile for my children. They already got the point. They are in no way ready to be parents and don't want to be.

Mom and Dad have had some fun, though. Telling them all those grody infant stories of when they were babies!

At least this way they've heard about the joys of exploding diapers and 4 am feedings before they had to experience the fun for themselves.

from grandma puzzled goddess

30 March, 2009

Even goddesses get the blues...

Some goddesses are puzzled by this...like me...

I always thought that losing mental capacity, and knowing it, would be the worst disability to face and deal with. It's tough, it's grueling, and it makes you feel like an idiot most of the time, but you learn to live with it. Pain has this wonderful tendency to cut your cognitive abilities by large amounts and your brain functions become all about getting through the next moment or the next required task. If you are old enough to remember skipping records, it's kinda like that...repeating the same groove, over and over and over and then maybe getting beyond it to fall into another one.

Weirdly enough, my family and I have learned to live with this. The hubby and kids finish sentences for me and play 20 questions with where they think my argument was going. They put up with me snapping at them and then realizing I've been a bitch and apologizing. They put up with the days I just can't do much and all the times that plans have to be changed, or mom can't go, or mom has to be so drugged out of her mind to go that she becomes a happy pill popper hyped up to the gills who won't stop talking. I just don't think adding more crap to this is fair.

But then again, I stopped believing life was fair a LONG time ago. Karma really sucks, and I must have done many really dreadful things in other lifetimes...if this is what I deserve in this one, I've really screwed up somewhere.

For some reason, my immune system doesn't much like me. The doctors, as usual, can't seem to figure out what syndrome or disease or whatever it is that is causing things. I was finally told that my thyroid has settled into a disease called Hashimoto's Thryroiditis. Along with the fibromyalgia, and now my uveitus, all of these conditions are linked to an immune system that is attacking various areas of the body, but no one can figure out why. None of these immune disorders have very good tests, and the few tests they can do have all been inconclusive. Go figure. (An upside, at least I now know I don't have syphilis! *gee and did I ever think I did?*)

I mean, the other 3 or 4 things that are going on are physical and people can relate and figure out. I did some ripping of my rotator cuff it looks like, so I'll be seeing an orthopedic specialist for that. I have some cervical spinal degeneration so I'm seeing a PT for that, and the chronic daily debilitating migraines which everyone seems to know how to cure with the snap of their fingers and figures I'm too dumb to have tried just about every cure on the f*cking planet for...(sorry for getting hot, I may NOT have heard about the cure that worked for your brother's, sister's cousin's niece yet, but after 35 years of research, I've tried most of them and it's irritating that people don't give me the benefit of not being an idiot...but then, I know it's human nature to want to help...I really do...I just get frustrated by it all.)

Back to the immune system though...for those of you following along with the story, there will not be a happy ending, this I somehow already figured out. Ya think. ;D

It wasn't explained to me very well, if at all (I really don't remember it!) that the cortisone shots into my eye socket would further damage my eye. I knew that my sight probably would not come totally back to where it was before my immune system decided I didn't need a left eye, and that I would eventually lose more sight, but I thought the cortisone would improve things a great deal more than it has, and on top of that, the cortisone actually is giving me cataracts.

So with every shot I will lose more vision and the world through that eye will become hazier. I'm hating that I've turned into a fricken whiner about it. I thought I could take blindness, and it's only one eye, but I can't see clearly enough to read without a great deal more light nowadays; I'm having trouble seeing the computer screen, I can't paint and illuminate the medieval stuff I want to; I can't take photos that aren't fuzzy, no matter how I adjust the camera. Every time I turn around I discover a new thing that is impacted by my lack of sight in that eye. I make jokes about what mom can't see today to the kids to cover for the fact that I'm scared sh*tless and really don't want to lose any more sight. And, as usual, the eye looks perfectly normal.

I guess that most of us can look forward to cataracts when we're in our 70's or 80's...and nowadays the surgery for them is fairly routine...unless you have the retinal scarring (sneaky eye) that I do. But the hubby looked up the reasons and hows of cataract surgery and now we are both wondering why they are waiting to do it on my eye....so that's my next question for the eye experts at Casey Eye. Why do we have to wait for total blindness to overtake that eye before we put a plastic lens in place of the protein lens that is clouding up? Does the swelling in the back of my eye have to go down first? So that's the question that I'll be asking when I next see them in May.

Oh yeah, to drive at night they suggested I get an eye patch. Driving one eyed is perfectly legal and the patch would help the glaring reflections I get on that side from the oncoming headlights flashing in the cataract. R still isn't buying letting me drive at all though. He says it's to protect me and the other poor fools that might be sharing the road with me...maybe he's right.

from the pirate goddess

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