bewildered by grace

So I have some strong and totally ridiculous views on certain aspects of Christmas. For instance:

-I don't think that you should mix and match Christmas light colors. Pick a color, or a series of colors, and stick with it. I don't hate all LED versions of lights, but I really don't like the red, orange, and blue ones. They remind me of those chili pepper lights you sometimes see in Mexican restaurants. Okay, I might dislike all LED lights. I love those really fat old glass lights that glow with wanton disregard to your skyrocketing electric bill. I prefer them in the red, green, yellow combination, but have seen some red and white, and even green and white ones that are super cute too. They remind me of my childhood. I actually despair at Bella growing up in a world where only LED lights exist. The only time it is acceptable to mix the above mentioned lighting colors is if you're adding white icicle lights to a solid color. Someone nearby has their house trimmed in red, with white icicles everywhere. It's gorgeous. NEVER, under any circumstances, change the color of your lights in the middle of your roof line. Don't be lazy. I know you grabbed the wrong color at WalMart. Go change them over.

-Our tree has only white lights on it. Only white lights are acceptable. Decorations are mostly red, green, and gold. I have a couple of white ones, and one really special one that has a tiny bit of blue on it, but otherwise the colors are coordinating, though almost none of the ornaments are. The wrapping paper used on any gift under the tree, must meet the color criteria of the tree above. We found gorgeous blue and silver wrap this year, and we left it for slightly less beautiful, but matching, wrapping paper. This is when Peter laughed at me and called me a Christmas Nazi. He's not wrong. I have issues. My mother has multi-colored lights on the tree. She always has, she always should. Her tree would look wrong with white lights. I understand this is unreasonable, but it's the way it is.

-Christmas carols are classic for a reason. They live forever for a reason. I think Justin Beiber should possibly be sued for his version of Drummer Boy. You do not need to make a carol current, or cool, or different. That song has been beautiful for much longer than he's been alive and I find his version almost disrespectful to Christmas itself. I have no problem with making a new Christmas song. There are quite a few that I really love. I'll do a post soon and we can all share original Christmas songs we love, that'd be fun! But under no circumstances is it okay to totally change the feeling of, say, O Come All Ye Faithful so that it's "trendy" and "you". If you're famous and reading this - don't mess around with what is already great. Also, if you're famous and reading this, I need to update my privacy settings.

Speaking of Christmas carols, my favorite might be O Come O Come Emmanuel. I've actually never been able to pick a favorite. I do really love this one though. I love the haunting sound of it, and I adore the lyrics.

So here's the conundrum: So far, my favorite is the Bethany Dillon version. I have a feeling that there's a better one out there, but I haven't found it yet. For that matter, I can't even find a link to the one I like - it's not on YouTube that I can see. Get it on iTunes. You won't regret that dollar. I just LOVE the last verse of it, even though it breaks my cardinal rule of Christmas songs (don't ever change the original lyrics!). See? I'm flexible! She does a beautiful job on it, and the best part about it is that she doesn't rush it. I HATE speedy versions of this song.

So this challenge will be twofold:
Find me a better version of this song that isn't speedy or obnoxious.
ALSO
Tell me your favorite Christmas song, and your favorite version of it. I plan on listening to nothing else tomorrow and I'm needing to update my playlist.

I really adore Christmas. I love everything about it. It's almost a feeling you get when fall starts closing its doors and winter shows up. In BC that happens in one foul windstorm that shakes the house and then a week later it's +15 for a couple of days and then it's all over. Winter sets in and I wake up to frosty windows and a smell in the air that makes people drag out their Christmas lights. 


I think the world would be such a better place if people were the way they are in December. I mostly hate January and February, and even March is just cold and I'm miserably waiting for summer, but December is a perfect month. It's that everything that happens in December is an occasion. Nothing is just another day; it's one day closer to Christmas Day. We are having two tree decorating parties this weekend. The one with just Peter, Bella, and I will be about moving our breakable decorations to the top half of the tree, and eating snacks and listening to music and watching Bella's face when Daddy lights up the tree. I love it so much. Christmas was great before Bella. It's completely magical now. 


I found this amazing kid on YouTube through Becky, and this is a pretty cool rendition of Drummer Boy. I think his mittens in the video make it for me. Bella loved it. But it got me to thinking, I bet there's a bunch of amazing Christmas music out there, that I don't know, that could be playing in my living room this month. So I'm going to post my very favorite version of one song, and you are welcome to one-up me with a song/video/link to a better version of the same song. I'm going to do it a bunch of times this December, maybe close to everyday. Think of it as NaBloPoMo, but late. And not as consistent. And in a theme. 


Without further ado, here's my favorite version of Drummer Boy. I love EVERYTHING about this version. I love the build of it and I swear to you, when he sings, "So to honor him" I tear up. Every year. And the bagpipes? Totally freaking genius. 






PS - Robyn. Justin Beiber needs to have a chat with Josh Groban. That man knows how to sing a Christmas song. And his hair is way nicer.

This morning I woke up and my friend had posted about being "gutted" at seeing the front page of the New York Times. I had to look - and she picked the right adjective. It's horrifying.

Terrorists control most of Somalia right now. They are an Islamic insurgent group and have decided that they are taking a stand against the indoctrination of Western ideas into their Islamic society. That includes refusing aid of any kind if it comes in the package of anything other than Islam. It includes refusing immunizations for incredibly preventable diseases for their children. It includes refusing food from groups like Unicef. It includes the execution of foreign aid workers. They are hemming their people in, refusing outside access of any kind, and starving their own people to death. There are over 500,000 children who are dying of starvation while other people die to bring them food that they're not getting, because it's coming from white hands. The UN is launching investigations into organizations bringing aid because so much of it is being skimmed by known terrorists. It's illegal to aid terrorists, obviously. So if 20% of the food goes to dying children then we stop that 20% because it means 80% is aiding terrorists. To say the situation is complicated is a mass understatement. What on earth do we do? How can we help? It literally looks hopeless.

I'm going to draw a pretty controversial parallel here, just because it's something I can't stop thinking about. You should know I want to be wrong. I want these two things to be separate. It would make me feel so much better about myself and I'd like that. But I don't know that I'm wrong.

Last week while waiting for the ferry, we took Bella to the little park at the terminal. There were two kids, I'm going to guess aged nine and six. They were both so obese that they couldn't play. The little girl ran exactly the way Bella does. Like a speed walk, because Bella hasn't figured out the slight jumping motion that is intrinsic to actual running - this little girl physically couldn't do it. She was trying to ride the carousel, but the moment her dad went to push it, the amount of weight and lack of muscle tone literally didn't allow her to stay on. The motion of the carousel turning forced her off, as though her dad was pushing it sixty miles an hour. He tried again and again, and she flew to the ground over and over and you could tell it wasn't connecting with him. "Hang on!" he'd yell as she hit the ground. I couldn't look.The word 'abuse' popped into my head and I couldn't think of a good reason to make it leave. Maybe it was genetics. Maybe. The six large take-out containers of deep fried food that the mother was holding indicates otherwise, but I guess there's always that possibility. You don't see those kids over in Somalia though. The ones that are genetically predisposed to be huge. They don't exist there, why do they here? I don't know - I'm asking in earnest.

I'm asking how those two things can exist simultaneously. I'm asking how one is better than the other. One is seemingly about religion, one is about....what? How can we literally eat ourselves to death on one half of the world, while they starve on another? Because we can afford it? That's hardly an answer but it's the only one I can think of. Not only can we afford it, we think it's actually a basic human right to eat what we want, when we want, and not have to pay the consequences. Am I being unfair? Childhood obesity is killing our children. Starvation is killing theirs. They're refusing aid. We're refusing to eat something other than McDonald's. Both governments bear huge responsibility. It should NOT be cheaper to get a cheeseburger that is so far from actual food that it doesn't rot, than it is to get some chicken and vegetables that haven't been fed or sprayed with chemicals. How is what we're doing different? We make it impossible for poor people to eat healthily. Those poor people get a myriad of diseases that come from eating nothing that isn't chemical and fat at its core and they die from those diseases. While costing the government untold amounts of money in health care.

It's something I've been thinking about a long time: this question of entitlement. It's a basic human right to eat. It isn't a basic human right to eat something different every night of the week, regardless of when it's in season. Because lets face it, if we stopped demanding the exact same food all year round in our grocery store, it would be less likely that those vegetables would need to be artificially produced. It would mean that local farms could actually make money. It would even mean that the food you ate every day would taste better. Our economy would improve. Organic would stop meaning expensive. Eventually it would. I've been trying lately to eat organically, and do you know what I've discovered? You can eat it for about the same amount as you can eat crap, but you can't eat exactly what you want all the time. You might not eat meat with every meal, or even every day. Why do I balk at that, even now?

I'm the "king of sinners", as the saying goes. I was mad at Stupidstore for not having cilantro just yesterday. I have asparagus in my oven as I type this and I don't know who grew it and I know it was sprayed with chemical. I actually don't even know what asparagus looks like growing naturally. I don't know when any of my vegetables are in season, and I eat crap. I've fed it to my daughter for no other reason than that it was convenient at the time. I'm going to crack a diet Pepsi in just a few minutes because I like it and it's not even my first one today. And to a certain extent that's okay. It's okay to go out to eat and to enjoy what you put in your mouth. But I wonder about all this. I don't have answers that bear any intelligence at all. I want some country to storm the borders of Somalia with tanks, killing terrorists left and right dragging food and medicine behind them. I doubt that's a real answer.

I just can't stop wondering if we're as far removed from the terrorists in Somalia as we'd like to think we are. They're killing their people, we're killing ours - we're even using the same weapon. Don't get me wrong. Even typing it makes me want to rebel against my own words. Except that I don't see how those words are wrong. I'm wrong. I'm entitled and I'm guilty and I'm wrong. And though I don't need to feel guilty about being born on this side of the equation, I can't not think about the other. I can't turn my tear streaked face away from the photos because they're too hard to see, as my brain thinks of what it would be like to watch Bella die in my arm, so so slowly. But I should also think what it would do to my heart to see her get so huge that her body shuts down because it can't cope with what I'm feeding her.

So here I sit. Trying to find a conclusion that proves that we are better than they are. I don't have one.

On Friday, we go to BC Children's Hospital one last time. I have one last pink ferry voucher in my bag, one last list of questions for the doctor, one last chance for a trip to Olive Garden with the transport paid for by the government. 
On March 25th, I put a syringe of Propranolol in Bella's mouth for the last time. The other day she needed Tylenol and fought me giving her medicine and it made me happy. It means that everyone was right. She doesn't even remember those months where she had to learn to deal with it, to suck it up (literally). She's happy and silly. She's incredibly smart. She's super small. I bet she still doesn't weigh 25 pounds and I'm just over stressing about it. I'm done stressing about a lot of things. She's currently jumping up and down on the couch saying "No B-S!" Possibly because I just freaked out over hearing an ad for anti-depressants on TV that said that one in five of us are mentally ill and undiagnosed. I may have called the ad a liar and said they were spreading BS to the masses. Bella has hopped up on my soapbox unawares - which makes me laugh. She makes me bust out laughing every single day. Maybe I could get her a little sign and we could go picket some pharmaceutical company. Anyway, I digress - again.
In the spirit of not stressing about things, we are making this last trip a celebration. Bella, my mom and I. My mom has come with me to almost every last one of these appointments. At the beginning we would sit at the ferry on the way home and I would sob my eyes out and she'd hold Bella and we'd talk. We'd try and go shopping before those early scarier appointments and pretend everything was fine. One time, we sat in a hospital room with Bella strapped to heart monitors and we prayed together for a long time for Uncle John. I would take her out for dinner - once to this stupidly fancy place that we rolled Bella into in her stroller. She napped - we had wine and dinner. We've taken turns while Bella needed to be walked around the ferry because she was crying, then because she was learning to walk and we would break our backs leaning over to help, now to chase her as she runs wildly all over the place and says "hi" to everyone she sees. I don't know how I would have done those trips without my mom. She's cried with me, laughed and shopped with me, helped me to get my questions in order and asked her own and remembered the answers when I was too stressed out. 
So on Thursday, as a thanks to my mom for being so amazing during all those early trips we are going here for the night. We're going to take Bella swimming in the amazing pool and then order Indian food to our hotel suite. The next morning we'll have breakfast in the restaurant and drive to Granville Island to run around and shop and look at stuff. Our appointment is at 2:45 and then we'll probably go for dinner one last time and get on the ferry and laugh at how Bella doesn't want to nap and how crazy she is. I'm looking forward to it. Can you believe that?
We do have to talk to the doctor about possible laser treatments for Bella's mark and when that's a feasible thing if it doesn't go away completely on its own. Now when she goes to sleep at night she "prays to Jesus" to "please heal my little mark and make it all better". Part of my spirit, I can't lie, whispers to Heaven, "Seriously, how can you say no to that? Just do it. Please? C'mon..." I guess I know where Bella gets her little "salesman pitch" that always makes us laugh when she wants something. 
We're hoping the mark goes away on its own and it may yet, but I think we've decided that we'd like to take care of it before she could get teased over it, if it comes to that. I have no idea what that entails or costs or anything like that so we need to figure some of those things out. I need an ophthalmologist referral in Nanaimo to do check-ups on her eye and make sure everything is progressing fine there. When her face went still right at the beginning, it did some permanent damage to the nerve that controls her eyelid. When she's super tired it droops slightly, doesn't blink quite as quickly as the other one. Unless she's exhausted, you probably wouldn't know it, but it's one of those things we keep an eye on.  We've never noticed much difference in the way of actual eye movement but your eyes develop pretty slowly so we will probably still check on that every once in a while. 
That said, it's pretty likely that after Friday afternoon - we're done. She's fine, it's over. I think that deserves a celebration. I'm so happy she's okay - so happy that we didn't damage anything with all the steroids or the heart medication. We've decided to take this summer and all just have fun together. We are doing little day trips with her, and taking her to the beach and throwing her a cowgirl birthday party next month, which of course I'm going a little over the top about. I love pony rides - it's going to be great. Can't wait. 
So that's it I suppose. One last Bella update, one more trip to Vancouver to finish things off. One more time. 

We are driving (DRIVING!) to Wyoming. Next week. With Bella. In the car. To Wyoming. A little fuzzy on your geography? It a road trip long enough that if you could draw on the planet with a big red marker, you could see that road trip from space. Bella is going to be in the car with us. Did I mention that already?

I remember last year, the idea of a 14 hour plane ride nearly drove me to drink. I couldn't imagine keeping her in one spot that long. I was CERTAIN that I would end up in a tiny airplane bathroom bawling and holding my screaming child. She did beautifully. Just perfectly, couldn't have asked for anything better. There AND back. And this time, we have a portable DVD player. And folks, I am heading to the library and plan to fill half my car with exciting DVDs. She's gonna love it. The other half of the car is going to be filled with children's Gravol. Don't judge me. It's Bella in a car for 18 hours.

So far, the plan of attack involves an evening ferry out of town and then do most of the trip through the night. And the Gravol. If we can catch the 8pm ferry, we should hit the border around 10:30. By the time she wakes up, we should only have about seven or eight more hours. Eight hours is only two more hours than I strapped her in a hiking backpack the other weekend. She can totally do it. Plus, Dora and the Backyardigans and the Veggies, and Guess With Jess are all coming and will be hooked up to the DVD player. It'll be fine.

At this point I welcome any roadtrip advice or even meaningless comforting lies about how totally great this will be.

Sunday afternoon I will be taking my last pill. I don't expect to enjoy Monday evening much when my body goes "hey! Where's my stuff!" for the first time, -and I expect to hate Tuesday.  I'm willing to have next week as a whole, be a total wash.
I've dropped from 8 pills (not counting the other medication that I quit a couple months ago) to one pill in 8 weeks and as they don't make smaller pills and I don't want to deal with compounding I'm going to quit and tough it out until the withdrawal is over. I don't have to work next week so that'll be a big help. This last drop has been pretty intense. Today I had the worst brain zaps I've had yet, was nauseated enough to take gravol during the day and not care if I was tired, and a screaming headache.
In total, I will have been on medication for ten short months. For not being depressed in the first place, I have a hard time with that number, but it is still a smaller number than my doctor wanted. My taper has been aggressive and I've paid for it (so has Peter and anyone else unfortunate enough to encounter me on a Wednesday). I'm ready to be done. Three more pills. Three more days.
I wish I felt better about the way it all went. I still feel unresolved about the doctor, still want to egg his office some days. I'm still mad and guilty and I still have trouble remembering things that I did only a few months ago. I have no memory of events that I should be able to easily recall. I'm still getting stressed out too easily, still having trouble multitasking, but hopefully those things will start to slowly get better when my body adjusts to having no medication. My family are all saying what a drastic change they've noticed in me since my starting to wean and that's good. I still spend all my time wondering how I got here, upset at what I've said and done, and guilty over things that I can't change now.
I'm tired. I have to tell you though, when I can get myself to relax and fall asleep, I sleep like a dead person. It's the best sleep I've had since those early pregnant sleeps where you're not quite to the sick phase but you just sleep 14 hours a day because you're so exhausted from trying to produce a human. That exhaustion never goes away, but your ability to sleep will, and then it's downhill unless you can get addicted to a batch of anti-depressants and then fall asleep after dropping your nearly lethal doses to something your body is supposed to be able to handle. If I could quit the nightmares, I'd be golden. The other night it was trying to escape from Russian Mobsters in Tokyo who wanted to rape me, but I was so blind drunk in my dream that I kept stopping while running away and looking at these amazing shoes for sale in the night market, then remembering these guys wanted to do horrible things to me and running again. This is strange in that I don't know any Russians, have no idea why they'd be cruising around Japan, have never been to a Japanese night market (though the Thai ones are cool) and have also never been blind drunk. Or raped (thank God).
Then it was humpback whales who ate Bella because she fell out of a window while looking at them. I'm scared of whales, did you know that? I think they're amazing and majestic and so beautiful, but if I were kayaking and came across a humpback whale, I would pee my pants and probably have a heart attack and drown while the whales ignored me. I was swimming in Hawaii once and I looked down to see a huge sea turtle beneath me and I lost my mind. I was on the beach hyperventilating with panic while marveling at how beautiful it was in about two seconds. Poor turtle. Seriously, what did I think it was going to do? Chase me? Geez. Sometimes when I'm swimming I think about all the creatures that I'm sharing a body of water with and my heart races so badly and I feel so tiny and insignificant, and okay, edible, that I have to go lay on the beach and have a Smirnoff Ice and calm on down. I love to swim - there's something so free, and so quiet about being suspended underwater - just don't be stupid and think "Holy crap! I'm in the same water as like, thousands of whales, some probably within a couple of miles of here. Robyn saw killer whales on the ferry last week (jealous!!!) and those whales could easy be near here by now".
Now that you're all sure that I'm insane and really should be on some form of medication, I'm going to go and mix my powdered cement supplement with some water that I should be drinking WAY more of, take two natural relax supplements (that I may keep around the house forever, because I'm, well, me) and a couple of omega and DHA supplements, a prenatal vitamin (because EVERY woman should take them - always) and crawl into bed and finish my book. And pray that I sleep dreamlessly. Goodness, that would be fantastic. Three more stupid pills.

I'm a firm believer in loving where you live, which is really easy for me. I remember vacationing in Coombs as a girl. I remember getting a pair of white cowboy boots at one of the kitschy little stores that surround the main square when there was still a huge ferris wheel in the center. I wore those boots with a short baby-doll dress for my birthday so you can date that accordingly, if you wish. I live here now and every spring when the Alberta and Saskatchewan license plates start showing up, I grumble with the best of the locals about how, "You've seen Oceanside, now go home!" Secretly though, it's amazing to live in a place where people want to vacation - where I used to vacation. Yes, it means that on a sudden Tuesday in June you can't get anywhere near Coombs market to get your organic veggies, but hey, look at the view here! I can cope. Begrudgingly.

A few days ago, Peter and I did a "tourist at home" day. I love being able to have these, and I enjoy them every time. We packed up Bella and drove the fifteen minutes to Parksville and enjoyed the sunny view while watching the clouds come in over Mt Arrowsmith, threatening rain. Our first stop was Qualicum Cheeseworks, and no matter how many times I go I have so much fun. It's the Saskatchewan farm girl coming out in me, a piece of my DNA that I'm so happy Bella has inherited and Peter doesn't understand as I breathe in the glorious smell of a working farm. Yes, that smell is manure, but somehow when mixed with fresh spring air, hay, dirt, and the musty woodsy smell of an old barn, it becomes an intoxicating perfume to me.

I'm sure they'd be just as busy if they charged for parking or admission, but I love that they don't. This was the first time we'd taken Bella, and folks, she LOVED it. She went wild. She chased a duck who was well mannered enough to not bite her fingers off, as I would have done. She squealed at baby chicks and asked politely to be left in their cage with them for all eternity. She kissed a sheep on the nose and saw a calf born two days ago. The best part of the day was when we entered the bunny pen and while I was cuddling the most adorable little rabbit, Bella asked her Daddy if she could "please kick a bunny?" I kid you not. She unfortunately inherited her father's DNA which involves seeing some kind of sport with a complicated rule system and a high incidence of total disaster during every day activities. I guess the gorgeous little lop-eared creatures sitting peacefully in the sun just begged to be punted. I thought they were so adorable I could just cuddle them making squealing noises forever, but once the critter in my arms decided I had taken things too far by kissing it's cute wiggling nose, it leaped from my arms and went running about the enclosure. Bella stopped asking to abuse the animals and giggled uproariously. Apparently they just weren't moving enough for her.

We ended up in the shop while Bella ate her weight in cheese samples that they make fresh on the farm. I had two tiny spoonfuls of the berry cream cheese that they make and held myself back from buying them completely out of stock. Bathing suit season is just around the corner but oh, the texture of that cheese and the taste of fresh berries just makes me think of croissants and forget about the sight of my love handles in a pair of cute jeans. I could bathe in that stuff it's so delicious. In great news, I found out that they sell organic beef in small portions so I'll be back a few times this summer yet I'm sure. The wonderful lady behind the counter did not comment on the amount of cheese we consumed (we're a family of little will power) and instead offered us a few wine samples. Peter responsibly frowned at the time (it was still well before lunch) while I headed over to the bar and sampled some local gooseberry wine, which made me think of a picnic on the beach with some fruit and bread, and perhaps some of that berry cream cheese. We ducked out after buying a new cheese knife and a cute magnet before I lost total control and ate and drank and shopped myself into oblivion.

From the farm we were off to Little Qualicum Falls to show Bella where Daddy asked Mommy to marry him seven years ago and started the chaos we now call everyday life. She's obviously still far too young to care, but it was special having  her there. We took a bunch of pictures and Bella ran around kicking pine cones which turned out to be a wonderful substitute for those poor bunnies. I shot some video of Bella and Daddy playing the above-mentioned complicated game (this one involved seeing if you could whack Mommy with the pine cone) that I'm sure I'll watch when she's off in college refusing to answer my calls. It occurred to me that days don't get more perfect than this as we acted like idiots in the car trying to keep Bella awake during the short drive to Coombs Market. We got parking in front of the General Store (imagine!) and we wandered around looking at things that I've seen a million times before, and bought in other countries. It was a joke with my family when I traveled that everything I brought back from some exotic place like Japan, Nepal, or India, could be found and purchased with ease at Coombs. It used to make me so angry but now that I buy plane tickets with much less frequency than I used to, it just makes me happy. We shared lunch and found out that there is now a new Italian restaurant in Coombs and as I am as big a sucker for pasta as I am for delicious cheese, I'm sure we'll include that as our next stop.

To think, people from the prairies spend heaps of money to get here, and this is where I live. I saw my first smattering of Alberta, Washington, and even a Colorado license plate on the way home and I couldn't help but laugh. Welcome to Oceanside. You really should just move here.

Goodness sakes. I'm sick to death of being on this medication. I know, I'm sorry. I'll try not to whine. I'm down to 75mg which is actually pretty amazing Given that in February I was taking 400mg and two different medications. I feel more like myself most of the time. Wednesdays are total crap though, and are becoming increasingly difficult. I drop my dose on Tuesday at lunch and I'm usually in bed before my body notices that it didn't get all of it's dose. By morning? I'm not a good person on Wednesday as my body realizes "Hey!! What the?" and tries to work with less hormone than it normally has, which is way less than it's had in the past. I'm generally angry, irrational and overwhelmed not to mention totally exhausted. I fight a headache for the whole day and get zapped fairly frequently.

By Thursday I get zapped intensely and often one time after another. On a Thursday my mood is more even but the zaps are incredible. I can't deal with a sudden change in temperature, like walking outside, or opening the fridge. If I touch something cold (like go to pour Bella's milk) or drink something hot (like the coffee I refuse to live without) I will get a very strong electric shock in the base of my skull. Often they're bad enough that if I'm talking, I completely lose what I was about to say. I find myself confused and disoriented often. I don't love to drive on Thursday and funny things become really hard for me. Like sitting and standing too quickly or turning my head to look into the back seat to see how Bella is doing. Or shoulder check. Like I said, I shouldn't drive.

By Friday I feel not bad. My mood is controllable, the zaps aren't great in the morning but even out by afternoon and by Friday evening I feel good. Saturday is a give away. It goes either way. Lately, as the medication dose I am on is down, but the percentage that I give up every week rises (It's was a 33% drop this week, next week is 50%) Friday can be marginally better than Thursday, and Saturday can still be manageable but pretty crap. Sunday though, I am myself, and Monday is the best day of the week. My body feels fairly well adjusted to the new dose of medication, just in time for me to drop it again the next day and by Wednesday I'm a raving bitch again. Sorry for the language. The woman I talk to at Point of Return said that that's the actual medical term for it, and Peter reluctantly agreed that it was fairly accurate.

Robyn used to go to school for Monday, Tuesday and half of Wednesday. Luc, being the sensitive little guy that he was, used to be okay on Monday (he'd just seen her that morning), and on Tuesday you'd try and plan an activity or something to keep him distracted, but Wednesdays were just crap. Wednesdays he could throw himself on the floor at being gently told that ice cream was not a suitable breakfast option, and weep openly. We started using the phrase, "It's okay. Nothing's wrong, it's just Wednesday." Wednesday night by dinner Robyn would be home and he'd be great. It's funny how many things happen on Wednesday that we apply that to now.

In good news, the taper is hard, but I'm making it that way. I could go slower if I wanted to and my zaps would be fewer, my moods more even. But I'd have to look at that pill bottle for longer and I just can't. In two weeks, I could possibly be done. I might see what my work schedule looks like and wait for Peter to have a day off at home with me and take my last pill the day before. Then I know I'm ok if I have a rough patch. I'm praying that it'll just be another drop, but I'm scared of that. I may just load myself up on Gravol and try to sleep through it. But I'll be done.

I still am having trouble remembering big stretches of time over the last few months, but my health feels better, and I've been managing some very occasional exercise. In dropping the meds, and starting to actually care what I eat and what I look like, I've lost seven pounds so far with not very much effort at all. At the worst, I was only ten pounds lighter that I was the day I went in to have Bella. I remember not caring that I was going to be fat forever and never like the way I looked again. Now my disgust with my own body and the mental state that got me there knows no bounds, so that's a good thing. Any strong emotion that promotes action is a good thing since what we noticed most on the drug was my inability to really care about anything other than Bella. I noticed my horrifyingly messy house the other day and it upset me so much that Peter kicked me out to clean it. My old doctor would say that that proves my OCD diagnoses but he'd be wrong. It proves that I'm me, but still a little too drugged to deal with the overwhelmed feeling that a messy house has always given me. I know it sounds funny but those things make me happy to see returning. Bad self image is better than no self image. Plus those seven pounds gone make me happy. Really happy. Happy enough that if the sun shines, I might walk around Westwood lake tomorrow. Anyone want to come?

Except it's not, because it's Bella. And she's not me, just all the very best and cutest parts of me. Anyway, go see her blog - lots of pictures, if you've been wondering how she's doing.

Quick, because this post can't be just another link to yet another blog that I keep up on - I will add a little filler with what I would have used as Facebook statuses lately, had I been signing in.

Tonight when putting Bella to bed, I noticed that she has another diaper rash. Or diaper blisters as they are in our house. As I was smearing her private parts thick with cream she says, "Ooooh! Make-up! Thanks!"

Two nights ago Bella found some of Robyn's expensive makeup that she'd stolen and stashed away for later. My mom showed her how to put her fingers into the hot pink blusher, and then rub her fingers on her cheeks. Cute. So they leave, I wash her face and I'm putting her to bed later on and we're doing the whole, "night night toes. Night night tummy." and Bella all of a sudden strokes her cheek and says, "Night-night makeup. I love you makeup"

Oh dear. That kid makes me laugh my face off every. single. day.

She is also terrifying me with things that I didn't think we'd have to deal with until YEARS down the road. Like a love of Justin Bieber. Thanks Shelly.

Just got a call from Urban Beet. I won dinner for two at Urbana Pizza! This is good news in that we went there a couple of weeks ago and really liked it, and bad news in that my sorry butt should consume nothing but salad for the foreseeable future. 

It's also good news in that Peter and I could use a date night. Probably every other night for a year. It's one thing to have a baby, but to have a sick baby, followed by a crazy wife (even if it was the medication) plus all the ins and outs that being new parents entail, has been hard on us. We're not doing badly, not at all, but relationally, it feels a little like we've both been hit by a truck. And then backed over. We're discussing marital counseling, maybe once I'm off medication.


It's funny to put all of this out there. I found out yesterday that someone else reads my blog that I didn't know about. If you're reading, "hi Karen!" 


Side Note: if you're reading, you should comment! I like to know if you popped by. Also, I cannot type "popped" without typing "pooped". And it always makes me laugh, even though that type of humor usually doesn't do it for me.


Anyway. It's crazy how people change. And how they stay exactly the same and all the pieces in between that will drive you crazy, make you laugh, fall in love, or pull your hair out. Bella is changing. I don't have a baby anymore. She's a little girl. She has opinions on what she wears in the morning, whether she wants to keep her jammies on or wear a dress or jeans or what. She wants to wear my jewelery and make up all the time. The ear-piercing rule used to be, "when they're old enough to ask, and understand it will hurt." I was five when I had mine done, I'm sure she'll ask LONG before then. I predict this summer. She already asks, "Mama, bracelet? I want it?" when we're checking out at some store. She takes her little purse shopping and has opinions on what shoes she likes and the other day decided she didn't like marshmallows because although they tasted amazing, she didn't like being sticky. She is all things girl, and I love it. Love. It. But she doesn't sing to sleep anymore, and she mostly likes to fall asleep on her own, after a very short "snuggle" if I'm lucky. 

Peter is different, and so much the same. He feels the same about me. The things we fell in love with in each other have been buried under a lot of "Life" and we are digging though, sorting what's important as though we're beggars in a distant country, searching for something in the mess that we can save, maybe sell, or use to make a life. Some days there's a lot to find. Some days we sing Bella to sleep, Peter with his guitar, which she loves. I hold her in the dim light of her room and life is literally so perfect you could just bust apart in a million pieces with the beauty of it all. 


Then I freak out over nothing and ferret through my screwed up brain and try and figure out which thoughts are mine, and which are just the medicine. Sometimes I miss them and I boil over like an unwatched pot and make a mess. Peter gets the lucky job of cleaning me off, and usually himself, and trying not to take me personally. I told him today, that if it wasn't for Bella, I'd leave and come back when it was over. I'd find some place to hide with my pills and my vitamins and my wildly swinging moods and when I lashed out or freaked out or got brain zapped until I was so jumpy that I could kill you for the smallest imagined infraction, the only people who would feel it would be the squirrels I'd scare out of their trees. Sometimes, I'm scared out of my own tree, so it seems fitting.

It occurs to me that this is when people give up. That this is when a lot of people would decide that the means doesn't justify the end, and they'd part ways. Sometimes I want to go just to save Peter the upset of dealing with me. I'm angry and guilty and that seems to be about ninety percent of what I feel. As the medicine drops the angry goes down and the guilty goes up. At least the guilt is just mine. There's not a lot of what we started with some days, but somewhere underneath this nonsense is a foundation we built in better days, and I trust in the foundation. I trust the people who built that. I believe in the methods they used to build it. Although some days you couldn't tell from looking, not even from the inside, this is a construction project, not demo day. They look the same though don't they? For that period right before things get built, you can't tell if a house is being torn down or put back together. We're even doing some remodeling, though it's occurring to me now I'm taking this metaphor a little far.


There's things that we abandoned in the early days, or things that we allowed to be taken from us that we're willing to fight for now. Things that we know we can't live without. Mostly, we want to be a family and we don't want this life we've found ourselves in. I promised Peter a very long time ago that I'd never become the kind of wife who wanted nothing but a house, a white picket fence, and a mortgage. I want a life of adventure, and one of missions. I meant that. I mean it still. We said vows when we got married and nothing has changed. We've made them to Bella when we dedicated her, promised that she'd never come from a broken home and we meant it. 

This seems to be our song lately, the one Peter plays to Bella on his guitar quietly at night in her room as she looks back and forth between us and you can actually feel the Earth quiet around us and things go exactly right for just a few minutes. We belong to each other, and nothing changes that, not ever. But we belong to something more than ourselves as well, and the greatest peace lies in that. It's a peace I need so much more of, and one I'm learning to grab onto, trying not to remember a time when I didn't believe it was mine all along.

First, I realized that I skipped a category and now I have to go back and do a song that reminds me of someone, which I will, because this is fun and I'm liking finding all sorts of music. But I got crazy sick this weekend and just stopped caring.

You should know, kidney stones? It's actually true what they say. They hurt worse than labor. It's actually alarming. Except, when you're in labor, they will throw every conceivable drug at you. When you have a kidney stone, they tell you that it could be a muscle spasm (that doesn't allow me to pee?!?! Doctors are morons) or maybe an intestinal thing and can you pee in a cup? Then they stabbed me with a needle and forgot all about me. Oh, but for the pain, they recommended advil. And lots of water and rest. 

ARE YOU FREAKING SERIOUS!?!?!?!?

Worse than labor. Advil. No payoff at the end except finally the bliss of getting to pee. No cute baby girl staring at me with big black eyes, just a toilet full of pee and a little pressure off my bladder, but wait! I took some really old Tylenol 3 that I found and forgot that codeine makes me puke. So then I dealt with that. Aren't you glad you tuned in? 

All to say, I will maybe do another song thing tonight. Maybe tomorrow - I have a lot of Good Wife on my PVR.

Could also be under my happy songs. This was the song that Peter and I walked back down the aisle to on our wedding day. As we kissed, it was supposed to come on at that moment, loud, but I think there was some sort of malfunction. On the video though, it's perfect which is how I remember it. 

I remember Peter swinging me around up at the alter, after telling his dad politely to "step back" with his hand raised like a traffic cop. I loved that moment best, maybe even more than when he sang to me - I wish I could put that song up during this time. Maybe I'll figure that out here...

Strangely, I'd never seen the video. Now I like the song more.

This is going to be another really weird association, that makes no sense whatsoever. You should go to the bottom, click on the song and listen while you read - it was hard to explain, and I'm drinking wine again, which makes me wordy:

I remember going back to staff DTS in Kona, which was literally the very best time of my life - I wish everyone alive could experience that time. Pure bliss. It was so great that I couldn't even take it for granted. I knew every waking moment that I would always look at that time in my life and long for it back. 
Right after I got there I became friends with this girl, who incidentally had a car, though I didn't realize then that on a YWAM base, this is tantamount to celebrity. One thing Hawaii wasn't was beaches. The Big Island has surprisingly few actually, and any that are halfway decent are taken over by very expensive hotels. But, I now had a friend with a car, and we spent the first three weeks before the students arrived (and every weekend after they were there) taking off and sneaking into said hotels. It's amazingly easy if the pool is outdoors, and you're in a place like Hawaii, where everything needs a lanai feel to it so nobody bothers to build walls anywhere. The front desks and common areas of most hotels have no walls, thus, no doors, thus, no keyed entry to get to the pool. Grab a blue and white striped towel from the stack waiting, order a drink at the bar, and lounge. Or drive the half hour to a beach and get sand in your bathing suit. Tough decision. 

Anyway, I digress (and miss Hawaii, suddenly). This friend, the one with the car, had just broken up with her boyfriend and was sad about it, and I had just finished a really foul relationship that I'd gotten in with a guy who drank and smoked pot incessantly and who fought with me far more than he was nice to me. Don't ask. The last time I walked out of his apartment though he was crying and I was laughing with relief that I had a plane ticket in my name and didn't have to actually grow a spine and stop a really destructive relationship. All to say, I have been an idiot at many times in my life, none worse than RIGHT before I left for Hawaii, and I got there and ended up nursing my stupidity with the self-righteous feeling that said, "I'd have stopped seeing him. I wouldn't have done anything really regretful, or anything that my family and God and any female with half a brain wouldn't be ashamed to be associated with me for. I WOULD HAVE. Promise. Ahem."


My friend, who had a brain, was sad at the loss of a real relationship and listened endlessly to this CD, which I think might be the best break-up album of all time. So while she was sad and singing "And as for me I'm gonna hear the saddest songs and sit alone and wonder how you're making out" I was falling in love with Hawaii and the grace of God that plucked me from I am certain would have been a life-destroying relationship and plunked me straight into the best two years of my life. And for that reason alone, I will always love Dashboard Confessional. Their melancholy whiney emo garbage always takes me to Hawaii. Killer Taco's with the girls before we head to the beach or to sneak into the Hilton. Crushed into a backseat that was never meant to hold more than one bag of groceries, no AC in the heat, bathing suit under my shorts and tank top, and a bag with a good book and some tanning oil, and a piece of fruit that I'd stolen from the lunch line. It's a sad song, and yet, will always make me incredibly happy.

I'm trying not to be embarrassed right now, I really am. I'm wondering if I should save this one for the "guilty pleasure" song that I see down the list. Whatever. Now that I've seen the video, I know it has to go here.

 

It's so hard to pick just one! But I would have to say - this is it: 

I will have to thank Auntie Chris for this one, since I haven't been on Facebook, and wouldn't have known otherwise. I like the idea and lets face it, my blog has been a little on the serious/ranting side, so I'm going to take part. And I missed NaBloPoMo last year, so I'm in. Carrie!! You should do this! It would be a great way for me to get new music. And Trav. Why doesn't everyone blog anymore. I loved it so much more than Facebook. Ah well. Here we go:

Oh, I love it so very much. I could never pick an all-time favorite, but this is my favorite lately. I wish I could find you the video where they performed it at the Oscars but I think they keep a pretty close watch on those videos, since they're copyrighted. I'd never heard it before then and it was one of those songs that I just knew I'd love forever. I recently re-found it and it just warms my heart. For whatever reason it speaks to me right now, and often makes me cry a little when I hear it. Peter just learned how to play it on the guitar for me, and it's nice to hear his voice singing it too.

I have another appointment today. For a whole half hour, which is a lifetime in Doctor Land. It's like Candy Land, only the candies are different. Sorry - my sarcasm with the medical world knows no bounds. None. I have to pass a mental health assessment today. This raises the question again,

"If I am on drugs that can alter your personality, WHY are my answers regarding my mental health all you need to treat me?" 

I'm sure this will involve another lovely paper quiz probably one that I've done before. I don't know how far to "comply" with the standard operating procedure here, and how much to challenge it. Not much today. I only have five days of medication left. I can't tell you how much I hate sounding like an addict. He has to write a prescription, so I have to be nice. And mentally stable.

I'm making friends from all over the world, in rehab, as one friend affectionately calls it. An online forum community where anyone on anything can just chat about what they're dealing with. It's alarming how many of these people are Christians. A majority, I'd say. Scriptures are a part of their profile, things they're clinging to.


"He shall give sleep to His beloved - Psalm 127:2" one woman chants to herself desperately as she roams her house at night, wanting nothing more than to take a sleeping pill and escape into a blissful unawareness that most of us take for granted when our heads hit the pillow every night. She just wants to sleep. 


During withdrawal, my counselor was awake for 17 days. She quit cold turkey, in a rehab facility, and never closed her eyes for more than five minutes without waking up to pace again. She watched THREE cycles of heroin addicts suffer through withdrawal and leave rehab before her withdrawals ended. The staff said they'd never seen such torture and after that didn't allow anyone to detox cold turkey at their facility. They had to do it at a hospital, they were so sure she would die from it. 


I think my question today is, "Why am I finding more Christians in 'rehab' than anyone else?" 


Is it that they are who are strong enough to decide to kick the medicine bottles as opposed to just resigning themselves to a lifetime of pill bottles? I really doubt it. It's a nice answer, but probably not the true one.


In processing this all, I think the worst betrayal comes in WHEN this happened. It was incredibly difficult for me to tell Dr.X that I wasn't feeling okay. It was hard to call work and say that I was too worried about Bella to both work and worry. I needed time. That's not acceptable in our culture anymore. We of the Braun genetic line could teach courses on not being weak. We are tough. We can do it ourselves, or figure it out if we can't. 


I wasn't tough enough to do both. That wasn't a sickness, it was a fact. Life came at me and I took it a little bit harder than even I expected. I took it harder than some people would have - but that's not a sickness either. That's me. I'm emotional. I'm learning not to care that other people thought I took it "too" hard. Walk in my shoes and then give me your opinion on that. Until you have heard the words "Something is wrong with your child" you don't know what that will do to you. No clue whatsoever. This has been HARD on us, and I'm okay with that. Peter said after the one day we went to the psychiatrist together, "It was therapy enough to hear someone say it mattered, and that it matters still." I couldn't agree more.


Instead of believing that, I believed that it made me sick. I believed that being so worried for my daughter was an actual chemical imbalance in my brain. This is astounding to me. How did I get there? I believe with all my heart that pharmaceutical companies are out to manipulate healthy people into believing they are not. If that sounds like a conspiracy theory, then I suppose it is, until you see the following quote to Forbes Magazine by former head of Merck (HUGE Pharmaceutical Company):


"It has long been my dream to make drugs for healthy people, so that my company can sell to everyone"


Thirty years later, a staggering number of us have responded to the ads we see on television and bought into the lies. There are a huge number of grief disorders now being put forward as actual sickness. I can't tell you how many people I chat with daily in 'rehab' say that they were put on antidepressants after someone they loved died. Why can't we just be sad? I have a friends who have lost babies, and the common thread is that they are expected to "get over it" so quickly. It wasn't even a baby yet, it wasn't meant to be. Maybe it was disabled and so God was really just being nice to you. Becky wrote recently that it never stops hurting to think about her dad. It still feels like someone should come in and re-write her story. One day, Someone will. Until then, we are allowing people to label our weaknesses as sicknesses. 


20% of children under five are being treated with some sort of behavioral drug. They have a host of illnesses. ADHD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. They're being medicated for it. With medications that NOBODY knows the long term side effects for.


My counselor took her Masters degree while under the influence of anti-depressants, pain meds, and sleeping pills. She completed everything except her final exam, which she planned to take in a different city after she moved. Randomly, or maybe not, she went to rehab before she took the tests. Once she was medication free, she went to take her tests and literally did not remember one single thing. Courses she had aced were gone from her memory. Her brain did not care that her drugs said Rx on them and were peddled by the television and a doctor instead of by a slimeball behind a dumpster with a baggie in his hand. Her brain lost the ability to store information while on "medication".


I wonder if 20% of kids one day will be sitting in high-rise offices, have great lives, kick their 'behavioral aids', and forget how to read? It's not a silly thing to worry about. Nor is the very likely decrease we will see in about 10-20 years in all forms of art. Artistic kids are more likely to be put on medication when they're young, but the same medications make them unable to create. It suppresses that exact part of their brain. 

Now we're not just letting people tell us we're sick when we're sad, we're letting them tell us we're sick when we don't happen to be the kind of four year olds that can sit in a classroom for 6 straight hours, five days a week. I can take one look at Bella and tell you that she is going to be that kid. She wasn't made for stillness. I'm sure we'll teach her to be still sometimes, but she's a creature of action, and I love that about her. But she isn't sick, and I will NEVER give her a behavior altering drug on the basis of a sickness that no doctor can prove exists. 

But I did let them do it to Bella's mommy. Worry for Bella became Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD - I even get my own acronym). When all we did was give her medicine and Peter's schedule didn't allow him to do it on a regular basis, I needed to give it to her myself. I spent SO MUCH TIME thinking about her medication, because I had to. Because it had to be taken at a specific time, and it had to be kept cold and on and on and on. It was easier to cope if I just did it. I could remember. But that meant that I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a medication to go with it. 

My little girl is up. Tomorrow night I will give her her last dose of medication. Friday, I will not put a syringe in her mouth. Not one time. I just sterilized about fifteen syringes, and just realized I can put them all away. I only need three more. Oh the healing that floods every corner of my body and mind when I think of that. When I look at her beautiful little face. I am not weak. I'm a mom. I am more blessed than I have any right not be, and am happier than I've been in about 18 months, and that's what I'll be telling my doctor in a half hour.

 

I'm so angry and hurt and surprised that I almost don't know where to leave myself. Um, brain zaps anyone? I've got more than my fair share today. I feel like I'm being electrocuted from the inside out. Being this upset doesn't help. I'd kill for a glass of wine if I knew it would make me feel better.

Today we had to meet with our doctor (the one who put me on 300mg Effexor and 100mg Sertraline). We told him we wanted to approach my health through more natural means, and that although at the time I didn't realize it my husband and family had noticed FAR more negative side effects to the medications than they've seen benefits. We said it as nicely as possible, that we'd made the decision as a couple and that we would like to start weaning off the medication. He asked for a scenario in which since being on medication I have acted totally uncharacteristic to myself.

Shortly after going on meds, I had to leave my husband for a week on a trip he was unable get time off for. I know it's sappy but we hate being apart. Even overnight. We usually laugh at each other about it. Just before leaving I told him that I wasn't sad to not see him, didn't think I'd miss him, and if that was how I was going to feel, we may as well get divorced.

When we told the doctor this today he said that it's not normal to not want to be alone and that I had separation anxiety and that it was just further proof that I was on the correct road - the hell of addiction. Nice.

I said, "but that's who I am! I always miss him. He's my husband, I love him, I don't like to be away from him."

"That's not your personality!" was his emphatic reply. His first act as my doctor was to put me on medication, and now he knows my personality? Enough to tell my husband who I am?! I'm furious.

The appointment digressed from there. We said that I was never depressed (true) and didn't understand the high dose. He said the dose wasn't high, it was therapeutic. Lie.  We asked about the negative side effects that can be caused by mixing Sertraline and Effexor. He said they were monitoring me. Lie. I saw him last on Jan 5th. Before that, every month. He's never so much as taken my blood pressure. I was also never made aware of the risk. I was told nothing about Sertraline but that it would help me sleep. In the end, he wrote me a tapering prescription for now so I don't have to worry about my meds drying up and going cold turkey in six days. He thinks I'm chemically messed up but he can't make me take the meds.

How do you deal with this? Other than getting a new doctor of course. Thank God my rational husband was there. He was angry but held it in until the car. If I'd been alone, I'd have slapped him. He'd have deserved it. I need to interview doctors. I need an ally over here, but I have NO idea where to start. Thoughts??

This is what the medical community believes, isn't it? They're so used to having answers that they have no idea how to be wrong. I'm broken and thank God they are there to fix me. Thank God for the pharmaceutical companies that have exactly the right medication to fix who I am.

I just found Point of Return last week. Just found out I was addicted last week. Just found out everything I was taking and what it does. I don't know a lot. I've never been to medical school in my life, I failed biology. But I AM the expert on who I am. And I am not broken.