Star Wars, Bones, and Bad Hair Mama

Happy Halloween from Chez VT.

An Aside, or the Apple Sure Ain't Far From the Tree

I went to use our family computer, and my seven year old (who is saving up for something called a PSP? PCP?) had typed this into Google:

"How to make money."

Ahem. Maybe we ought to focusing on teaching our children more SPIRITUAL values. Sheesh.

Working Nine to Fiv....I Mean 9:32

This week is kicking me ARSE, my friends! The tax attorney I occasionally do a bit of work for asked me to do a 2-3 hour research project. TWO TO THREE HOURS! Doesn't sound like much, right? Holy freak train. For me to actually use two to three hours of down time, when I would usually be reading People, drinking copious amounts of Franzia Crisp White, or licking Peanut Butter Cups, just about KILLS me. What's even worse than working is the THINKING about working. My GAWD! How did I ever manage to have a job before without hurling myself in front of the nearest Suburban?

So thank you, PVT, for having a full time job. I just wouldn't make it.

And in true moi spirit, I have already spent my earnings long before my check's been cut: I went out with the church ladies last night for a lovely dinner (Catholics, people! That means wine, margaritas, good food and no Bibles!), and bought this:

I just love Michael Starr shirts. So stretchy and comfy, yet a little bit snazzier than a stay-at-home mum should wear. Bah hah hah.

And then (now I'm back into PVT's earnings! Thanks, honey!) I was of course compelled to buy some Estee Lauder wonder cream, to combat the saddish-late-thirtyish-mum-feeling-the-effects-of-copious-Franzia-Crisp-White look I've got going on lately. Which of course qualifies me for the free gift.

See? There is still plenty of good in the world. But you probably knew that.

Next Right, Chocolate Galore. Really.

Oh my GAWD, you say! Enough with this vale-of-tears crap! I know, my friends, I know. But I must tell you one thing I've learned:

Before I had my bitty glimpse into the land of sh*t really does happen, I always wondered what was the "appropriate" thing to do when I heard a friend or acquaintance had suffered some kind of loss. Card? Call? Keep quiet, since they may just want to be alone?

Well, my unscientific response: call, email, chat, WHATEVER. Just let that person know you are thinking about them. Soon. That's all. You don't have to say the right thing. There is no right thing to say. Just let them know you are there. You may catch them on a day that is filled with sunshine, hope and sprinkled donuts; you may catch them on a day where the future is laid out in front of them like a gray, half vacant strip mall. It doesn't matter, though. Just the fact that they know you are thinking about them what counts. I found out today a friend had known for a while about my little sad radar blip, but hadn't emailed, called, anything. That hurt. Crying into your flat gin and tonic is one thing; crying into it believing you are all alone SUCKS DONGER.

And life goes on. Thank goodness I have these various shenanigans to distract me.

Forever on the Dance Floor

I know you've seen this video, but humor me and watch it again.

I have played it so often that my son just shakes his head and rolls his eyes. It just makes me so HAPPY. It has gotten me through the three pregnant girls at Chic Fil A; our pregnant neighbor; various newborns; it has gotten me through Pam being pregnant; it has gotten me through having to watch - forty times - the episode where freaking Dora's mother has twins. Come ON.

I don't know what will face this young couple in their lives. Being the solipsist I am, I see everything through the prism of my own little loss right now and wonder: will they have to suffer through a miscarriage? I fervently hope not; I wouldn't wish that on anyone, not even a Mrs. Hitler. (Well, maybe just her.) But I suspect that whatever challenges face these two, they will get through. Beautifully.

The Tough Keep Shopping

Apparently Someone is trying to convince me He still exists, because I got this in the mail yesterday:


Woo hoo! I have spent enough to have earned Level Two Nordstrom Fashion Rewards!


What does this mean? Well, I get "Early Access" to the Anniversary Sale, and an "Invitation to the Holiday Private Shopping Event," which doesn't do me dog doo here in Tulsa. But I do get "Complimentary standard shipping for Nordstrom purchases, in-store and online. Up to $10.00 per transaction." That's RATHER interesting. And get this: "If you’re experiencing a fashion emergency, a Nordstrom specialist will be ready to assist you anytime, day or night. Simply refer to your Fashion Rewards membership card for the dedicated phone number."

A FASHION EMERGENCY? My Gawd, I love Nordstrom.

The Fashion Rewards go up to Level 4, where you get free alterations, access to "specially designed shopping packages," and "personal concierge services." Personal concierge? Hmmm. I'm sure if you spend enough, they'll shut down the store for you while you shop naked for Jimmy Choos and diamond tiaras. And Blake Nordstrom himself keeps refilling your glass of Veuve Cliquot, and gives you frequent rubdowns and foot massages.
Things to aspire to.

Where I Do Not Even Say the "M" Word

I am trying to look on the BRIGHT side around here, my friends! Now I can enjoy happy hour, and once I shed a couple of pounds of baby weight (holy F bomb. You thought losing baby weight was depressing? Try losing baby weight without having had the baby. Talk about insult to injury!), I can shop again.

Look at this beautiful little plum:

I would wear it for Thanksgiving, if we actually got out of our pajamas that day.

In unrelated news, my darling daughter was EXPELLED from her Mother's Day Out program. She didn't bite anyone; she just was so MISERABLE the entire time, and the teachers didn't know what to do with her. I just don't have the heart to look anywhere else right now, much as I would like to have 3 hours to eat bon bons and read US Weekly.

I guess it's better than her being 15 and expelled for smoking something under the bleachers with a boy named Blade, right? And today at her 15 month check up, the doctor, divining from her growth chart, predicted she was going to be TALL and SKINNY. With that in a girl's future, I'm not even sure she'll NEED school.

Road Trip of Sucky October '09

The VT's made a rare escape from Okie-homa to the thriving metropolis of Kansas City, Kansas to visit a Great Wolf Lodge. Woo hoo! I can't say I was terribly impressed with Kansas and Missouri, but as PVT pointed out, this would be like going to the Great Wolf Lodge in grey, drippy Chehalis, Washington (RV-and-green-moss capital of the Northwest) and coming away thinking Seattle sucked. Right.

Oddly enough, our dear neighbor Ravishing Red Ann and her family - Enrique, her jujitsu-practicing, steely-minded attorney husband who fights for the rights of animals and the otherwise downtrodden in his spare time (but that's another post entirely, Enrique!), and her two peaches-and-pixie dust daughters - decided to go too, KNOWING we were going to be there at the SAME time! And lucky for that: they saved us from imploding in on ourselves sometimes, and also took pictures to evidence that we were indeed there:

And here, all of us trying to survive a dinner en famille:

It was good to get away, good to just be with ourselves, tantrums over arcade games notwithstanding. Though I couldn't stop two twin thoughts from shuttling back and forth in my head, ping pong balls lobbed to the ground every time: where did my baby go? And: will we be stupid enough, crazy enough, to leap again?

I Guess This Would Be the "Effin Pissed" Stage of Grief

My parents sent me this lovely Miscarriage Mary, now lovingly displayed in our front yard:

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. Whacko Catholics and our statues and figurines.

The minions were duly impressed with Miscarriage Mary, but got a lot more excited about her box:
Yes, someone is ALWAYS naked around here.

Last night I became unhinged after I learned about this chick. Have you heard of her? (That sound is PVT groaning.) Apparently she was on the Real World San Francisco. Like me, she had her first child at 28, her second at 30, her third at 32, and her fourth at 34. UNLIKE me, she got to have her fifth at 36. And now she is expecting her SIXTH at 38. I'm sure she is a lovely person, the freaking wench.

Ahem.

Retail Therapy and Gateway Drugs

So what does a girl do to get her mind off recent events? She shops, of course. Fortunately there is a new store here in Tulsa...a Barney's, perhaps? Neiman's? Maybe a lovely little Anthropologie? A Juicy boutique? Betsey Johnson? NORDSTROM ITSELF?

Oh come now, girls. This is Tulsa. OKLAHOMA. There is a new...SUPER TARGET!

It really is a lovely Target. The grocery section is quite expansive, with a gorgeous bakery and luscious produce department. It is so brightly lit, clean and relatively uncrowded. There's a Starbucks in front. And when I was quite lost and forlorn, searching for boys' socks, not one or two but NINE - ATTRACTIVE - Target employees rounded the corner and asked if I need help. One almost took my hand, brushed away my tears, and walked me to the socks.

Well, it's not heaven. But if anything helps me to avoid a trip to Wal Mart, it is pretty freaking wonderful.

In other odd news, I have been taking Percocet for my post D&C cramping. I've found, though, that my physical pain really isn't bad. Apparently Percocet is for your MENTAL distress. When I'm on it, life is wonderful, my children are perfect, my Garbanzo is safe and happy in La La Land. When I'm off, everything is gray and flat. There is no hope, nothing.

Cripes, I better get off it! That's all I need - an addiction to painkillers!

At Least I Scored Some Percocet Out of This

All right, my friends. I am going to wrap up all this boo-hooing, all this navel-gazing (ha! ha!) melodrama, with this post. Guaranteed! Then we will be back to our regular programming of wistful retail dreams. I don't want to lose all 2.76 of you, my devoted readers!



After a night of no sleep, I got up at the atrocious hour of 5:05 am to head to the hospital for my D&C. Woo hoo! The IV was - laughably - the worst part: it took two nurses three tries to get the darn thing in. Aside from this minor trauma, and my inevitable gurglings of tears (Anesthesiologist: "Did you have a miscarriage?" Me: "Sniff, yes, hic...sniff, sniff."), the procedure itself went quite smoothly. It was probably a more relaxing morning than getting the kids fed and off to school.



And now...home. Empty. Void. Left with my questions (we'll get a pathologist's report in a week, which may or may not be illuminating), my wistfulness, my WTFs, my raccoon eyes.



PVT and I are terribly negligent chroniclers of our lives. Last night, I realized I had no pictures of myself pregnant with Garbanzo. So we took this, me in my red-eyed, puffy glory - too late, but better than nothing:


I look at this picture now, wondering: why did I spend this short time with Garbanzo fretting, worrying about swine flu, disinfecting, Purelling? Why did I not revel more in this new pregnancy and in the shrieking, rambunctious family I already have? If there is any peace I will glean from this loss, it will be from learning this stupid cliche yet again: have FUN with your kids. Let the spelling test and wet diaper slide. F*ck up a bit here and there, if it means you can enjoy it all a bit more. We cannot protect these rugrats from everything. But we must be the keepers and spreaders of joy in these gorgeous, raucous families we've already got. That we can control.

Miscarriage, Schmiscarriage

Goodness, my friends. It's only been a few days since I found out about Garbanzo, and all ready I am tired of myself. I am tired of reapplying my eye makeup all day long. (Did you cry watching Jim and Pam's wedding? I didn't think so.) I am tired of wondering why? I am tired of searching the blue sky, or the blowing trees, or my children's eyes, trying to discern: where, where did my baby go? Where did I go wrong?

(I promise you this isn't going to become some weepy, self-pitying, whiny miscarriage blog. Really. Just bear with me a few more days while I get some thoughts out of my head.)

Internet, if I heard about some girl who had four healthy perfect children, and then had a miscarriage, I would feel sympathetic, but as far as cosmic karma goes, it's certainly not too bad. I had an acquaintance who lost a baby a few hours after his birth at 35 weeks, and then lost another baby at 28 weeks. That is hell. This is not that bad, of course.

But my heart isn't listening to this practical voice. I know that I'm lucky. But I also know that in my relatively easy, pain free existence, this is the hardest thing I've ever had to bear.

I will always wonder about this one that I didn't get to know, that I didn't get to hold, that I didn't get to change or burp or nurse. I will always miss this one. I will always remember May 14, and what was supposed to be. I will always remember this fall. In one year, five, ten, fifty, I will always remember, and wonder.

I suppose this is grief: the rawness eventually fades, but the hole is always there.

Chocolate Through Tears is My Favorite Emotion

My dear friend and neighbor Ravishing Red Ann brought me these yesterday:

Knowing someone is thinking about you, coupled with an obscene quantity of chocolate strawberries, doesn't eradicate grief. But it sure does help.

A Wee Bit of Sadness

My friends, I'm afraid someone Up There thought I was serious bemoaning the lack of "fun" in my life lately. I would gladly renounce fun, umbrella drinks, US Weekly and Nordstrom Itself FOREVER if I could somehow undo the sad news I got today: my garbanzo didn't have a heartbeat.

Thoughts are swirling, of course: did God think I had too much to handle all ready? Have I not been doing a good job with the rugrats I have? Did I inadvertently do something wrong? Was he a boy, and he really thought I was going to dress him in Colette's hand-me-downs?

It's harder to grasp since we saw the heartbeat last time, and everything looked perfect. I know this happens to so many women, but I was so cocky: I'm 8 minutes pregnant, announcing the news to the whole world - from my kids' teachers to the Walmart checkout dude.

We'll be just fine, here, of course. There's plenty of life and love faith to go around. But the future we had been envisioning is no longer, so the pining around here will be of a non-retail sort for a while.

Of Nooses and Severed Limbs

Cloudy, damp, dreary Sundays usually send me searching for the nearest noose. You say take your kids somewhere, right? But where are you going to take four kids on a dreary Sunday, besides Chuck E. Cheese? Again, the noose issue.

What really was getting me yesterday, aside from my obsession with tracking swine flu vaccine availability, is this stunning, saddening realization: I AM NEVER GOING TO HAVE FUN AGAIN. EVER. Four kids, five kids, what was I thinking? I am much too selfish for this! How am I going to keep five kids relatively healthy and well fed for eighteen years, let alone raise them to be somewhat pleasant and productive members of society who are marginally employable? NO CLUE. All I know is that that leaves no time for lounging by a pool with an umbrella drink and US Weekly.

Fortunately, as Scarlett said, today is another day and I feel much more optimistic. I even had a bit of fun buying a some Halloween decorations at the drugstore:

Amazing what a bit of faux blood and gore will do for one's outlook on life.

Because Every Family Needs a Token Trannie

Even if the little Garbanzo is a boy, I'm afraid he's going to have to wear some of Colette's hand-me-downs:

Because it would be such a shame to limit some of these frocks to JUST ONE body. Regardless of details like gender.

"Wellness" is Only for Rich People

Once or twice a year, I get an uncontrollable urge (yes, uncontrollable! Seized by passion!) to make the 89 mile trek to the sole Whole Paycheck in Oklahoma. Just to be surrounded by the luscious produce, the organic corn fed beef in the "charcuterie," the glistening salmon fillets, the scrumptious bakery products and aisles of supplements which promise you'll wake up 5'10," blonde, with the metabolism of a 13 year old boy...ah, it feeds the soul.

My excuse today was to track down these probiotic kefir drinks (I can hear PVT cringing from miles away), which I had read about in Cookie magazine. I've been suckered into the probiotic craze, but do believe that the acidophilus and probiotic drinks I've been plying my kids with for the past few months have been keeping them healthy (now what am I going to get for such hubris? We'll wake up tomorrow with a combo of swine flu, typhoid, ear infections and syphillis thrown in for good measure!).

So I found the kefir drinks...and I bought some vitamins...organic chicken sausage...cheese popcorn...magic water...the trouble is that despite all of the gorgeous things I DIDN'T buy (a $6 bag of organic lollipops! $5 organic juice boxes! $5 all natural pumpkin lollipops! $10 brie! $14 goat cheese and pesto pizza! $15 miracle immunity boosters for kiddies!), I STILL spent $90 on 6 things. So PVT won't even know how FRUGAL I really was.