Just what the doctor ordered

And in my favourite mug too.

Please excuse lack of words, peeps. I may purge later in the week. For now... this one's knocked me around a bit. Has surprised me, actually.

More later.

Because I need this

I needed to blog these photos today.  I need her today.  In all her precocious precious princessish-ness. This is what our past week has looked like. I am full. I really don't need anything more.

Smile.

"Steadeeee, Jazzy, steadeeee..."

ENOUGH with the camera, Maamee!

And because I need this (why can't I have a pie as good as I bake, 

baked for me when I need it?):

And now.... It's Monday

It is here.

And it is excruciating.

Panadeine and heat packs front and back.

In the grand scheme of everything, this is nothing. But it was something.

This is a pain so familiar, so worn. It is avoidable. It is unavoidable.

Time to go bear hug my girl.

On being late and endings.

I was a couple of days late. So I did a test. As you do. A line. A shockingly "there" line. That was last week.

Then the niggling premenstrual taunts began a few days later. A stab of pain here. A creep of an ache there. For three days now, I have wondered, which of these moments would bring the beginning of *that* familiar colour? And, just as they do at the beginning of all pregnancies, each one has so far amounted to nothing. A rising and passing of pain.

In a successful pregnancy, this is stretching of the uterus and surrounding body bits. This pain/awareness happens as a matter of biological course.

In someone like me, who is on Ride #14, it readies me. Prepares me for the most likely imminent conclusion. Of course, we have done this many times before. The most recent time was this past January, quite similar to how it has happened this time, I must say. I count my blessings today as I did then. And the two times before that. Thank God for Lolly.

Today, we are packed and ready to head out the door for the day. Fun times with my little family of three (plus one, out there somewhere, far away today). I am prepared for The Colour. The line has gone, I tested again today. Pad is in place in my underpants.

I am prepared and ready. Must remember to pack the heat pack.

Saw like an eagle

The LGBB is in possession of a new book. A brilliant little Scanimation hard page book called "GALLOP!" They are fantastic and this one had become a firm favourite even before the end of the first day Daddy brought it home for her.

On reading it to her tonight, Lolly decided to do the actions for Steve's benefit instead of climbing into bed.

Steve: "Can you.... gallop like a horse?"
The LGBB gleefully gallops animatedly around her clothes-strewn floor.
Steve: "Can you.... run like a dog?"
She runs on the spot, ad-libbing some panting like a dog.
Steve: "Can you.... spring like a cat?"
Some joyous springing, as light as a cat on its delicate paws, ensues.
Steve: "Can you.... swing like a monkey?"
The LGBB does her best Curious George monkey-arms, loping her room, face full of smiles.
Steve: "Can you.... soar like an eagle?"

Lolly plonks on the bed beside her Dad, thinks but a moment, and then makes a sawing motion using her left hand to saw through her right arm.

And he didn't even laugh, so as not to stifle her creativity.  What a bloke.  I'd have been in FITS OF GIGGLES ON THE FLOOR.

Tabbarse

Well, I will just get right down to it and admit....

The "new" cat is a royal PITA.

I have never been quite this annoyed by a living creature before. Unless you count Jazz in her hey-day. Hmmm. Actually, yes. It's possibly a tie. To put it this way, our plumber was here last week (ooops.... sorry, was that rubbing it in, Steve(tropolis)?) and he asked - when Jazz bounced in and ricocheted back out, Tigger-style - how old our bag of beans was. I told him Jazz is coming up six in October. He looked sympathetic and said simply, "Well.... she's not likely to change now is she?" and I said, regrettably, no, I didn't think so. And we both watched her in silence as she attempted to impale herself by slamming into a fence post while playing fetch. With herself. I guess that's one good thing about Jazz: she has learned to make her own fun.

That darn cat, though, she just will NOT leave me alooooooone. So much so, the poor thing's name is now Tabbarse. Or Tabberzarse. It gives a slight satisfaction to be cursing while saying her name. If I sit down with a book (or print-outs - I'm usually reading and editing my own work), she comes and sits right in front of me and smooches her cheeks on the spine of the book. Or the pen I'm holding. Non-stop. If I wave her away and say 'NO!', it seems to encourage her all the more. And her cold little nose runs along my finger as I'm pointing her in the direction she should piss off move aside. As soon as I move, she is at my feet. Whatever room I am in, you can guarantee you will find the cat, perched on the closest high point adjacent to my head or where I'm sitting.

So now, not only do I have a four year-old who still is not keen on making her own arrangements with regards to playing (and the longest she has EVER gone is about 30-40 minutes playing on her own, in another room ohmygodohmygod it was so exciting!!!) and two dogs that fawn at every door and window to just catch a glimpse of me during the day, I have a crazy cat insistent on helping the others to drive me to within a millimetre of SAHMadness.
Tabby's meaowing for me begins at dawn and, while I used to be able to let her out for a play and she'd go and amuse herself outdoors until the afternoon, she has now decided that's not nearly as fun as standing at the front door and running her paws vertically on the security door. She makes it bang like an irate neighbour who's come to complain about the loud music (not... that that's ever happened... but I can just imagine it would sound like this).

If I succumb and let the cat in, she then meaows incessantly and gets under my feet, satisfied only when I feed her. Only thing is, she is overweight as it is and the vet has told me that she is not to have dry food ("Doesn't need it", he said, neither of us realising he had sentenced me to an endless run of putting up with a demanding cat who thinks her tummy is constantly empty, no matter if she just ate ten minutes ago). So she gets a can a day. Now, you try telling old droopy-tum and she'll just blink, shrug (her care factor about such matters is zero) and just meaow at you until YOUR ears bleed. And this is not to even mention the witching hour, that goes on for something like three hours, right after the LGBB has gone to bed. Tabby gets the spooks up and does flat-out sprints up and down the house. Not being a dainty slip of a thing, she hulks up and down on the floorboards sounding for all the world like a subwoofer kicking in with the bass during a helicopter scene from Apocalypse Now.

All of this being said, I have long since learned to look on such things as points of highlighting for me. There is something about her incredibly annoying insistence on being noticed - by me, in particular, for she doesn't go near Steve or Lolly but will actually try and be as close to me as she can at all times of the day and night (until bedtime, when she seems happy to retreat to her own bed) - that has really made me sit up and take notice. So she's doing her job well. A little too ruddy well, but nonetheless, I'm seeking to understand just why she's grating on me so. And she is going to continue to be the pain in my rear end until I work it out, just tipping quietly.

So I was on the phone to one of my teachers last week and I was talking to her about something I'm nutting out at the moment, to do with a certain pattern of energy that I have noticed (in a class setting) getting me all riled up and yet I say nothing and in fact am feeling a bit stifled. I know it's something I will keep coming up against - it will just be the same thing, different person, time after time and so far, there have been three people I have had to deal with this over so I know it's something for me to look into further - and I am working on figuring it out. I've also gotten into a bit of a rut with making time to seek my own guidance on things. I've become avoidant about doing any energetic work and I have been enjoying alcohol a bit lately (a great escapism tactic if ever there was one). Anyway, right when she was giving me some clues on where/how to start working this out, I had the dog (who represents loyalty) outside trying to bite and lung at the cat (which serves to highlight the imbalances in your life) through the window. We had to laugh, because it was virtually what we had been talking about - I have to work out where my loyalty is placed at the moment, especially in relation to what I am putting in to my intuitive senses and keeping myself balanced. If I don't, I run the risk of burning out/getting ill again, which was my pattern all last year.

I'll get around to it. I still haven't properly worked it through. I'm so gosh-darn tired this week, having not fully recovered from the other night when I had less than four hours' sleep (UGH.... don't ask.... but it involved a toddler's wet bed and being woken at 12.30am right at the end of my first 90-minute sleep cycle, so I then stayed awake until well after 5am).

If you are so inclined, and you have a cat gnawing at your energy (or otherwise making its presence obvious - more than usual), I recommend checking out the animal wisdom for Cat. I have just posted it on my Earth Healing blog. It is fascinating.

Do you have annoying animals at your house? Pets who haven't grown up? Pooches who think they're people? Cats who won't stop crying? If you do, you have my sincere condolences.

Melting moments that make my heart seize

This is a backtrack to an old post from just before Ella's 5th birthday in January, 2009. It has flashed up at me a few times today in my blog widget, taunting me to click on the thumbnail of this photo of her and open it. For the benefit of new readers to my blog, this is a really good example of the peaks and troughs - this day was mostly in a trough, but seeing her always made the day have a peak! -  of living with only the memory now of a baby who battled for life (and lost hers) in the NICU.

Ellanor was listening to me as I took this series of photos this day. She was thirteen days old. Half way through her life already.

I counted thirteen needle pricks on her hand. And more on her chest (you can just see the ones on the side in this shot). The blue bruising from her hand is of course from said blood drawing. Her other hand looked the same. I remember wincing at the thought. There was bare little skin on her body (she was so early that the lanugo grew on her body after she was born and her skin would grow in folds like that of a roly-poly puppy over several days before she fattened into it, a process I witnessed several times during the month of her life, watching in fascination as she reached a more normal, survivable weight). How could they pierce the chest skin of my baby to take her blood? And her heels I haven't even mentioned yet. They were black and blue. Literally, black and blue. HOW COULD THEY NEED TO TAKE THAT MUCH BLOOD? my mind would scream. It sickens me even now, five years on, to remember her guttural mews of protest - her only way to defend herself, to cry out in pain for them to stop - and me, her mother, having to stand by and simply let them do it.

Dear holy hell, no. Stop, please stop.

I did make them stop once. I stood up, pushed the pathology cart away and told them to wait. I desperately needed to minimise her anguish, for I felt that the energy it took for her to endure it was literally sucking the life out of her. They did stop. That day. They told me this was why they didn't like parents to be present, "because it's too distressing for you to watch."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?? I would rather be here, thanks all the same, I told the woman calmly.

Thank you, Blog. I think you've just unlocked a portion of my book. Must make mental note to come back and continue on this memory. I'll leave it there.

I sat there looking through all the bruising, past the puffy eyelids with their bruising from the birth, and saw the most delicate, fragile yet infinitely resilient being I had ever laid eyes on. So, so, so beautiful. Achingly beautiful to me.

Giving birth to Lolly years later just confirmed this to me: Lolly was never fragile. But Ella was, fragile like spun glass. However, this was also her beauty. Not fragile because of her prematurity. Not fragile because she wouldn't have been able to "make it" in the world and been a push-over. She was strong as an ox; an interesting dichotomy that I noted even at the time. I could see it in her and so could many of her carers. No, instead, I think she was fragile because of her purpose. The weight of her message made her fragile.

I see this photo and it makes me pant. I am now breathing shallow, panting silently. It happens sometimes when I look at certain photos of her. And when I enlarge this one, in particular, on the screen in front of me, my heart quickens. I yearn to bundle her close. I want to point to the thrashing toddler in front of me, complaining that Daddy has just stopped Hi-5, and yell at her that she ought to be bloody well grateful.

Of course I can't. Of course I won't. But I wanted to note the other side of the "I hold my living child close because I know just how very much we have lost" coin. That is, some days I am nauseated by the thoughts that I project onto my second daughter. Why aren't you more understanding? Why can't you be more quiet during this time? But it's not Lolly's place to have to change nor my right to ever try to make her. She would be living up to the impossible: an older sister canonised in her death, forever the child who will be perfect and can do no "wrong". We all - me, Steve and the LGBB included - take our lives for granted, accidentally, as a matter of course, so very, very often. It's inevitable in going through the motions of living our daily lives.

But when I see the memory via a photo of my sweet creation and am forced to confront and remember it, visibly showing the marks of already having endured such pain just to exist in my world, I am impacted heavily. Physically. And vow again to ensure her pain and her life and her fragility will not EVER go in vain.

More than once now on this journey, I have attempted to find a way to hug my computer screen. It's easier with a laptop. But no less dissatisfying.