April 6, 2008 - I've HAD it!

Okay, I know I've been complaining about my sister a lot lately, but this time, seriously, I've about had it!

I tacked on $150 a month to her rent for groceries, toilet paper, soap, etc, because she wasn't helping buy anything. I told her before she got paid the time before last that she needed to buy toilet paper. She didn't. I ended up having to use money I had set aside for gas to buy tp, because she blew her check. So, she gripes and moans about having to pay $150 a month for that, saying I don't spend that much, and she wants to know how much of that $300 total a month I spend on stuff she doesn't use. So I told her, "Let's see...I bought a $10 pack of diapers, some deodorant, and tampons." But wait. She uses the deodorant and tampons because shes' too lazy to buy her own. So that means out of $300 worth of groceries and stuff this month, $10 was on stuff she won't use. If she gripes next month, she can buy her own darn soap, tp, deodorant, tampons, food, etc.

Okay, so that's not all. My sister has two jobs. One part time, one full time. She pulls in more money per month than I do, by far. But who do you think is always borrowing money from whom? And I have more bills to pay! I have $120 a month car insurance bill that she doesn't pay! I have other bills that she doesn't pay!

Oh, wait, it gets better. Sarah was scheduled to work from 8:30-4:30 on Saturday at the full time job, and from 5:00-10:00 at JC Penney. She went out partying on Friday night, and then called in sick to both jobs! Then, she showed up at home, showered, got dressed, and went out again at 8:30 last night! She was supposed to work from 8:30-4:30 again today. But she called in AGAIN! And now she's out SHOPPING! Did she bother to call me and let me know that she was okay? NO! Did she stop to think that, having not heard from her in 22 hours, I might be a bit worried? NO! I am just so SICK of her irresponsible, teenager attitude! If she calls in to work because she's hung over ONE MORE TIME, she's GONE! I'm serious. She can pack her sh*t and leave, and I'll throw a party in her wake!

I am SICK of cleaning up after her, cooking for her, doing her laundry, picking UP her laundry, throwing away her trash, supplying her every little need, loaning her money, then having her nit pick about just how much she OWES me, having her complain when I want to DO something. I mean, heaven FORBID I should ask her to watch Brianna for a night so I can go out and DO something anymore! The only time I get to go out anymore is if Mary takes Brianna, or if I pay a babysitter. And then, it's usually with my SISTER, because she doesn't think it's RIGHT for me to go out by myself, and considers it her duty to go out with me! I mean, yeah, it's nice to be able to hang out once in a while. But it's also nice to get out on my own and feel HUMAN. To go out on a date once in a while! I am just so completely SICK and TIRED of all this cr*p!

I'm dead serious. If she pulls a stunt like this just one more time, she's gone. I don't care if I have to scrimp and save every penny, or borrow from Mary or Damien to make ends meet. I'd rather do that and not have to deal with her antics. That is IT!

April 3, 2008 - Thinking About Becoming A Parent?

Thinking of Having Kids? Do this 11 step program first!

Lesson 1
1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2
Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...

1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.

Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3
A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...

1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM-10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2. Eat cold food with one hand for dinner
3. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
4. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
5. Set the alarm for 3AM.
6. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM, make a drink and watch an infomercial.
7. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
8. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
9. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
10. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out...

1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons.

How does that look?

Lesson 5
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.

1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6
Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.

1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7
Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat.

1. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight.
2. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9
Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, theT eletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10
Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhereyou go for the next four years.

You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above.

You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

March 30, 2008 - So cute!

Okay, so, yesterday was an extremely fussy day for Brianna. She refused to nap in her crib. She didn't like being on the floor. So I put her in her high chair, so she could watch her cartoons from a different angle, then I went into the kitchen. I had a peach cobbler in the oven. I took it out, came back into the living room, sat down to check my email. Five minutes later, I looked behind me, and htis is what I found:

March 29, 2008 - Not Much New Here

Well, there's not much new here today. Brianna has a cold, which is making her miserable. On top of that, she's not adjusting well to nights in a new apartment. Tonight, she started falling asleep on the floor by 8:00pm. I would've put her to bed right then, if I hadn't needed to give her her meds still. So she ended up going to bed promptly at 9:00, which is supposed to be her bedtime. Well, she fussed for almost an hour, until I went upstairs and got her out of bed. I cuddled her for a few minutes, then took her back up, put her down, and hooked her back up to her feeding pump. She fussed off and on from that time, which was about 10:00pm, until almost 12:30am. She would sleep for a few minutes, then wake up and fuss for a few minutes. Sleep. Then fuss. It's both heart wrenching and frustrating, because she needs her sleep, and I need the break and the peace, but I can't bear to hear her crying. It's so frustrating trying to do it all alone. It's times like that when I really miss Damien, and having his help.

Anyway, other than that, not much new here. Same old struggles, same old frustrations. You know the drill.

March 26, 2008 - Quick Update

Just a quick update for you all who might be curious as to what's going on with us. We got all moved in to our new apartment. Took about 5 days of moving stuff, and a couple hours of cleaning, but it's all done. We've got most everything unpacked and set up, too, and it's starting to feel like home.

Brianna's Walkabout is ready for pick up. But since the PT is gone all week, we don't get to pick it up until April 3rd, when we see her next. But I'm excited to get it. And we have room for it now, in our new aparment :-).

Other than that, nothing new. A lot of emotional stuff going on for me right now, but I won't blog about it here. If you have access to my other blog, you can read about it there. Thanks for checking in!

May 17, 2008 - Brianna's Smiles

"Brianna smiles. It lights up her face. Her eyes glow, her cheeks dimple, and those four little teeth peek at me, barely risen above the gums. She kicks and coos, and I swear she must be the happiest baby in the world."

I wrote that a few months ago when I was taking a writing class through the community college. It was part of an "image notebook" we had to keep: in depth descriptions of things we saw, felt, heard, tasted, or smelled throughout the week.

Of all the things about parenting that there are to love, it's Brianna's smiles that I love the most. They're always so open, and so freely given. They're so contagious. And she is completely unable to contain them. Even when she's pouting, you can make her smile. She might go right back to pouting after the smile, but she can't help but smile, regardless.

Today, Brianna was exceptionally giggly. Standing in line at the pharmacy at Wal Mart, waiting to pick up Brianna's formula, Brianna started to get fussy. All it took to have her laughing was a dip. Just a lowering of my right arm, a raising of my left, so that she was tipped upside down, and she was giggling and smiling again.

Later, we took a lunch to my sister at work, and sat and visited with Auntie and the cook, who is a friend of mine, and Brianna was kicking and stepping and arching away, happy as can be. After a while, that gets to be tiring. Especially when she starts tryign to knock us both backwards. So, I started dipping her again. She started laughing and smiling again. I had her sitting on my knees, my hands behind her back, dipping her back and forth. Every time I would raise her up, she would roll her eyes back in her head and tip her head back again to show me that she wanted to go backwards again. She took such glee in such a simple action, it was wonderful.

Later still, creeping up on bedtime, I was playing with her yet again. Doing the same thing. And she was busting out into gales of laughter. Uncontrollable belly laughs, the kind that you can't help but laugh along with. And in that laugh, I didn't hear a baby. I heard a little girl. And I had to face the truth: my baby girl is growing up. She isn't a baby any more, no matter how much she may still look like one, and no matter how much I want her to still be one. She's learning to do things, taking in her surroundings, and becoming so much a little girl, I can't help but look ahead to the years to come, and imagine who she will become. She's such an amazing little thing, and her capacity to learn and do things is as yet untested. It's only been 2 1/2 years since the car accident. Studies show that brain injuries can continue to heal up to 4 years after the injury. So by that token, Brianna can still make some amazing progress in her growth and development. Not to mention the fact that she's not quite three years old. To me, there is still hope for the things she might one day be able to do. Granted, she will more than likely never perform brain surgery, or any kind of surgery for that matter. But she could learn to talk. She could learn to put on a pair of socks. There are still so many things left that she might yet learn to do. And all of those things flash through my mind every time Brianna smiles.

March 13, 2008 - Brianna's Chair

Okay, so the big news of the week: we finally had Brianna measured for her manual wheelchair! We're going for the metallic purple frame with the black upholstery and lavender accents. And it'll have her name embroidered on the seat back. It will take probably two months to get the chair, from the therapists writing the letters, to the doctor sending the referral to insurance, to insurances approval, and the creation of the chair. So maybe by Brianna's birthday, we'll have her wheelchair! That would be so awesome!

In other news, we get to start moving into our brand new 3 bedroom apartment on Wednesday. Well, not brand new. But new to us. It's in the same complex, just with an extra bedroom, a half bathroom downstairs, and a few extra feet of living room. So MAYBE we will have room to put up the dining table, even with Brianna's therapy equipment in the living area.

While this new three bedroom means more room, it is still a two story, and it is still not wheelchair accessible. So I really need to find someplace more suited for our needs. Towards this end, I intend to go down to the housing authority and fill out paperwork to be put on the HUD housing list. Where Brianna is disabled, we'll be bumped to the top of the list. That way, we can maybe find a three bedroom one story house and be able to afford it. That would be awesome. Have a third bedroom to put her therapy equipment in, and still have it one story, so dragging out the equipment isn't a total hassle. Plus, I could set up my scrapbooking stuff in the extra room, too. So it'd serve dual purposes.

So that's the news on this front. What's new with you?