thanks to shirley for bringing this to our attention

Another gardener needs our help!

http://www.thecasualgardener.blogspot.com/2012/02/please-help-me-say-no-to-garden-tax.html

************************************************************************************************************************

ok, guys- let’s do one of the many things we do best- i commented/petitioned and i urge you to as well.

by the way, is anyone esle jealous of her beautiful flowers???

climbing out of the hole- one more time

last saturday i had a really really bad reaction to some medication i took. it was so bad and so frightening that i didn’t even want to write about it here. it was so bad and so frightening that i have been on edge all week long. it was so bad and so frightening that i got into a very dark place about my whole health situation.

on friday morning, i decided to try to turn it around. instead of writing about how terrible it was, i would be grateful that it was over. grateful for my support system. grateful for all the good in my life. grateful that i did pull out of the medical crisis and grateful that i will (hopefully) have no lasting damage from it.

but i ran out of time on friday, and every time i thought of what to write it just sounded too pollyanna-ish.

i have been here before, and i have written about it before. i would prefer this not to become The Blog Of Chronic Whining. i do have so much good in my life, and it’s important not to lose sight of that, even when things are hard. *h and i tried to remember together the last time i had a “good” day- meaning a functional day, where i didn’t end up bedridden for part or all of it. you know what? *h thinks he remembers a day, and it was 2 months ago. i couldn’t even remember that recent.  that’s heavy stuff, right?

but, in a classic case of ‘it’s always darkest before the dawn’, just when i felt like it couldn’t get very much worse, it didn’t. just when my kids were starting to unravel from the stress of having a non-mother, i started pulling out of the hole. when i started to lose hope, it came and tapped me on the shoulder and smiled at me.

and i know this may be a big turn-off for some of you, but it also reaffirmed my faith in God. because when i was in that pit last saturday, and i was just saying over and over ‘helpmehelpmehelpme…’ and i didn’t even know who i was asking for help. and i didn’t know who even could help me. and i was hallucinating and blacking out, and i started to pray.

not a formal prayer, obviously, but just begging God to please please help. and just a sense of knowing that i can’t really explain that even if no doctor could help and no medicine could help and no person could help, that God could help. i sure didn’t know if he would, but i knew that he could. and when i came back to myself, i realized how tremendous that was. that few people are blessed with having those moments of pure truth. that we think we believe or we want to believe, but we really aren’t sure. but, even though i wasn’t sure where i was, and i wasn’t sure how much time was passing or what exactly was going on, i knew in a very deep and true place that God was there with me and that if he wanted me to get better then i would. and if he didn’t, then he would be there to watch over my family.

i wish i could say that a sense of peace and tranquility descended over me, but that didn’t happen. i was tormented because i didn’t have the illusion of control that people normally have. i wish i could say that i ‘let go and let God’, but i didn’t really do that either. what i do know is that i was able to trust *h to handle things. what i do know is that i was able to accept that just because God hears your prayers doesn’t mean you always get the answer you want, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t listening.

and i know that when i am in the fire, i am not alone.

what i  know is that people are way more resilient than we realize.

but i wish i didn’t have to keep seeing evidence of that.

but at least i seem to be out of the hole. let’s hope i stay out!

what we actually DO about our budget

the last post brought out so many great suggestions about being careful with money, i thought i would share a bit of what we actually do, as well as some of what we aspire to do (or at least some of us aspire to do) and what we continue to wrestle with. apologies for not addressing the final few comments- i’ll catch you up on where i’ve been the last few days in a later post…

we eat at home, as a family, every single night. in fact, when we hear about families who don’t do this, my kids are always a bit puzzled, like ‘but then when do those kids eat? and who do they eat with?’ (i know, a dangling preposition- cut me some slack…) we make dinners at home, mostly from scratch, if you don’t count that i use things like canned tomato sauce (it would be literally impossible to grow and can the amount of tomatoes we would need to keep us supplied with sauce unless i owned a multi-acre farm, so i continue to take a deep breath and make walmart very happy every time i walk in…). my older kids have started to help with making suppers as part of their chore rotation, so i feel like i am preparing them to go out into the world one day and become good spouses. i know their future spouses will thank me we also eat every lunch either at home or packed from home, and this helps use any leftovers from the previous night’s meals, if there are any. and yes, i use tupperware (or whatever brand i have…) so i can re-use the containers.

aside from getting pizza once every few months as a very special treat, we don’t ever eat out. i literally can’t remember the last time my kids were in a restaurant. the last time *h and i were in one was when we went to detroit for my oldest son’s engagement and my grandma took us all out to lunch along with my son’s fiancée’s parents. the last time before that was when we first came to seattle and ate at the indian restaurant. remember i posted about it on the blog?

i make menus for a month ahead of time, both to limit impulse buying and to be able to stock up on things i know i will be needing when they go on sale. this way i can buy 8 pounds of grated cheese when it’s a great price and divide it up and freeze it in meal-sized bags and then take it out as needed. score! i buy as many store brands/off brands as i can, although i am really trying to just rely more on fresh things so i can get away from that canned mindset altogether. maybe when i’m feeling better (soon!! please let it be soon!!!) i will be up to doing some canning and some dehydrating and that would be great to really move us in the direction i want us to be in…

we rely on lots of cheap protein like eggs, and use things like cheese as an accoutrement more than as a feature food. we fill out meals with lots of veggies- my family is crazy for fresh salads, but we also try to serve potatoes or rice or pasta as a cheap (i know: junky) filler. maybe one day i’ll be able to say beans or lentils or spilt peas, but for now it is what it is…

we do freecycle- both as givers and receivers. we (read: i) love to go to places like value village when we “need” something- like a new baseball mit or pajamas for me or other stuff that i won’t mention because certain people hate that i shop there and certain people would be mortally embarrassed if i confessed here publically that i bought certain (non-gross) items at a second-hand store. oh well. more money for the budget.

we’ve never had cable television, don’t watch TV (although i am a big fan of netflix), and don’t see commercials. that’s great for cutting down on commercial-driven behaviour, and great for keeping our entire entertainment budget under $15 for the month for the entire family. and let’s not forget that, since we watch homeschool stuff too, part of that money is a legitimate school expense for at least 2 kids. we make great use of the library, and we request so many things (which they are awesome about getting for us) that sometimes i think they may come to hate us one day. but for now they don’t even seem to notice the armloads of books we carry out every week, and we get smarter and smarter on the city’s dime. nice, huh?

i will only pay full price for something in the most dire circumstances. we use the cheapy brands of anything that works as well – in my opinion- as the “better” brand, and if my teenagers think otherwise, they spend their own money to buy themselves what they want instead.  i do turn off lights (*h thinks i’m a bit obsessive in this regard, but i am supposed to be the CFO of the house…) i make my own laundry detergent, make long distance calls from my cell phone on sundays when it’s free, send *h to the store when i’m in a buying mood, and taped the following onto my kitchen cabinet:

want what you have.

don’t want what you don’t have.

spend less than you earn.

************************************************************************************************************************

what i aspire to: being more self-sufficient without breaking the bank to get there. i wish i could say i am willing to suffer more than i already do in order to save money. but honestly, i am so physically uncomfortable so much of the time just existing that the idea of turning down the heat even more (i currently wear pajama pants and wool hiking socks under thick skirts. i wear at least three shirts, at least one of them always a sweater or sweatshirt, while my kids play outside with no coats on because they claim it’s nice outside. hmmm. )- makes me cringe. i take a few hot baths a week to get my muscles to relax when the muscle relaxants and pain killers aren’t working, so the idea of giving that up to save money makes me want to cry. we could wash less dishes, but then we could have to buy more disposable stuff (my kids would LOVE that!).

i aspire to using more fresh, unprocessed ingredients (that would entail shopping more often, which isn’t possible right now- but this is what i ASPIRE to- not what i am capable of this minute- right?). i aspire to incorporating more whole foods and grains into our diets. i aspire to growing more of our own food and learning how to be more independent.

***********************************************************************************************************************

what we still struggle with: what to pay more for because i believe it is a worthwhile expenditure. for example, i believe that grass-fed beef is better for you. there are a thousand reasons why this is the case, but the father away you get from corn-fed factory-raised beef the more the health benefits increase and the health negatives decrease. but in reality, this type of meat is more expensive. if we had unlimited money, do i believe it’s worth it? absolutely yes. but here’s the equation: we have a limited grocery budget and hungry bellies to fill. we have medical insurance and prescription coverage that will cover us getting sick from the food we eat,  but no grocery supplement that will cover healthy food to keep us healthy. so, what to do?  that’s a sick sick equation, isn’t it?

here’s another: i believe that not only are eggs from free-range hens healthier (they are, but only if they actually free range- not if they are in a factory with a little trap door that leads to outside that they have access to for 2 weeks before they are killed), but they are much much more humane. i can put my money where my beliefs are here- but only partially. i can certainly pay $3/dozen for humane eggs as opposed to $1 whatever for factory eggs. but that only works for the first certain number of dozen. we use 3-4 dozen eggs, on average, a week (more if i do a lot of baking). so, that extra few dollars adds up quickly. and if i have to drive out to a farm, that extra expenditure compounds even faster. isn’t my family’s health priceless? of course it is. but so is being able to afford our mortgage.

have you ever noticed how sickening it is that principles are a luxury item?????

i can buy a steamer ship full of cheap toxic toys from china for like $8 but to feed my family one good quality meal of grass fed meat costs about what i would spend on a normal week’s grocery budget.

so, we took the plunge and got chickens. we used our discretionary income from about 2 months and got a coop. and then we got hens. and then we fed them and took care of them. and then, because i was not a good steward and because our dog is a dog and because because because of a million different reasons, we now have 3 hens instead of 7. so we can buy more hens. and it’s still cheaper than the extra money for eggs. but not really if you figure in the price of the coop. but it is if you figure it in over the long term. but not really if we lose more hens. but it is if we keep it going for a long time.

and on and on it goes, until you get dizzy, and you just want to stop. but you also just want to do your best.

and *h already said we aren’t getting a cow. or even a cow share.

and not a llama or a goat either.

so, what are your thoughts on the upside-down-ness of cheap food being so expensive in terms of the toll it takes on your health and our society? and do you think it’s paranoid/fanatical of me to think that we should be able to do better? ( i think *h leans this way.) and is there any reason- short of big government-big agriculture-big manufacturing- big whatever that you can think of that this would be so?

in the meantime, here we are on our little homestead with our little family and our little chickens, trying to do our best. and you can keep those ideas pouring in. because i’m certainly never too old to learn.

pinching pennies just hurts your poor pennies

ok- joking aside, i’d like to get your feedback/suggestions/perspectives on a topic that’s sometimes hard to talk about face to face.

and that topic is money.

i’ve asked people how they make it financially and had them smile beatifically and say, “we manage.” that’s beautiful, but unfortunately not helpful at all in drawing up a grocery budget.

i like to be open with my kids without putting adult worries on their backs. we are not doing worse financially than we were; in fact, we should be doing better. but we are trying to be more careful and more mindful about how we spend our money. our bigger kids are already aware of this, and they don’t ask us for things unless there is a real need. this is good; i want them to have a healthy respect for the value of money. what i don’t want is for them to have an unhealthy aversion to spending or a paranoia about getting their needs met or a feeling that there may not be enough to go around. so the trick is to find a balance between sticking to a budget and being generous enough to not be stressed about money all the time. the four oldest use their own money for extras, and even the two littlest are getting into the idea of saving money that they get for birthdays etc. to use for treats and extra things they want.

but back to the topic of budgets:

i have one friend who makes a game of seeing how much money they can save. she will go to buy food with her kids and come back gleeful with loads of distressed produce which they she will then sit and meticulously (sort of. i hope.) sort through to take out the bad stuff. she will turn rotting apples into applesauce and rotting zucchini into zucchini bread and squishy potatoes into yummy potato soup. but spoiling food grosses me out, and i’ve unfortunately passed that onto my kids, so this option doesn’t work so well for us.

i have another friend with a blog who chronicles how she feeds her family of 11 (soon to be 12- hurray!)- on like $600/month. the blog is www.oceansofjoy.wordpress.com. she recently moved to israel, but before she moved, she spent considerable time and effort finding suppliers for bulk products so she could save on the things she uses. i’ve seen over the years, though, that a big part of how she is able to feed her family so frugally is that they are used to eating and living frugally. just one example- they eat lots of beans and lentils. i’m slowly incorporating beans and lentils into my family’s meals, but it’s slllllllllllllloooooooooooow going, with a fair bit of resistance along the way. i’ve tried a few of her recipes (delicious, by the way!), but unless it’s an adaptation of something my kids are already familiar with, let’s just say the new recipe doesn’t get a lot of love…

in high school i had a teacher who was a passionate coupon-er. she taught us lesson after lesson about how she and her husband spent practically nothing on food and household items, and she brought in her coupon books and her receipts to prove it. this was before companies got wiser, so you could get travel sizes and sample sizes with coupons. so she would get a 25 cents off coupon for toothpaste. she would go to the store on double coupon day, so it would really get her 50 cents off.  she would get the travel size toothpaste for 49 cents, so the store would actually owe her 1 cent for each toothpaste she bought- and because she had stacks and stacks of coupons at any given time (she saved her own plus had tons of people who gave her coupons), she could make enough just off of the toothpaste to buy something else. but she would do that with like 70 different items. and then she would have enough to build up her coupons for that thing for a while, and to not need to buy it again. i was so excited about this, i remember going home and telling my mom so she could do it- and she said, “yeah- that’s fine if you don’t mind eating garbage bags…” and i didn’t get it then, but i get it now- i’m not feeding just me and my husband like she was. i’m feeding 5 kids, each with their own preferences. i know ‘hunger is the best spice’ and all that. i know that -in theory- if there are no options kids will eat what’s put in front of them. so in theory, i should be able to get 143 cans of cream of mushroom soup, on sale and with a coupon, and my kids should be  grateful to eat it. but i’ll tell you that this is simply not the case. i’m not that mom, and my kids are not those kids. i would have gone to bed hungry as a kid before i would have eaten something i disliked- not because i was bratty, but because it just grossed me out to eat food i didn’t like. even now, i would rather skip eating- even if i don’t feel well and need to eat- then eat something i find icky. sorry. i hate to be a princess, and i wish i wasn’t like this, but this is reality, so i’ll tell you that just because i can buy something for 2 cents at walgreens doesn’t mean i can serve it to my crew. but i think people who super-coupon are super cool…

another friend, who i look up to bordering on hero-worship ( and i know her really well- and i know a lot of her “stuff”- and i still think she’s all that! so, go E!), is just great about sticking to her realistic finances. if she doesn’t have something, so goes without it. her kids are still small, so i think it’s a bit easier. there’s no big person who “needs” ketchup and nobody who wants to make a certain recipe and needs ingredients and nobody who wants to invite guests but would be traumatized by the paltry spread you have to offer. she is great about making substitutions in recipes and great about adapting to what she can get at reasonable prices and great about working with what there is. i always feel like she has an abundance, even though i know realistically that she and her *h struggle financially like everyone else. whenever we are there, she feeds us well and healthfully. i never feel a financial stress, although i know she is super careful about money. i know she is frugal but i never feel like she is cheap. this is the kind of financial feeling i want for my family. but i think she has the kind of financial head that you either do or don’t. and it seems that i don’t.

so, here we all are. we are in this quasi-private forum where we can publicly share private stuff. i would like to know how you all make your budget work without making your family feel impoverished. i know it’s sort of tacky to ask people about money. i’m hoping that since you can comment anonymously here that you won’t be afraid to be honest and share your tips or your struggles. what have you tried? what has worked and what hasn’t? what do you love about being on a budget and what do you hate?

we spent so many years living in the false reality of credit cards that our sense of how much money it takes to live is all skewed. we never had a realistic budget since we always knew we could dip into credit if we needed to. and i say this in public here as a cautionary statement. because credit debt isn’t just about money. it’s about changing your mindset about how you live. it’s about feeling entitled to things you aren’t entitled to. it’s about getting things before you’ve earned them and having no sense of what your true standard of living should be. and because all of your contemporaries are in the same boat, you look around and see that they all have x or do x (poor maligned letter x- it’s so often used to hold the place for something bad…)- and i’m not talking about ‘keeping up with the jonses’.  i’m not talking about fancy vacations and fancy clothes and fancy jewelry. i’m talking about whether your kids should feel embarrassed that you buy secondhand clothes. i’m talking about whether your friends would judge you if they came to your house and your dishes were all chipped. i’m talking about your kids bringing home-baked snacks instead of pre-packaged (do you know that some school don’t allow this?!??!?!) to school and not getting made fun of.

i could go on and on, but the point is- when you are used to a falsely- inflated standard of living through credit cards, and then you try to back up and live within your means, even though your means might be completely adequate, your standard of living will most certainly change.

and that’s what i want to hear about.

what is your standard of living like and how do you finance it? what does your budget look like and how did you make those decisions?

nosy? yes. but my inquiring mind wants to know.

and then there were three

i’ve missed this blog liked i’ve missed fresh air, but i’m kind of sad that i have nothing especially poignant to say.

dakota has killed another two chux (yes, chooks- i know..)- bringing the new head count to three. i picture in my head the Count from Sesame Street in his black cape with lightning bolts crashing behind him and his eyes flashing, saying, “three! yes, three! lovely! chickens! three! mwa hahahaha!!!!”"

or elmo with his chalkboard, patiently explaining as he draws with his puppet arm (by the way, why is it so endearing that you can see the wire that moves the arms of the Sesame Street puppets? the should be something that would drive me crazy, but i really just find it so quaint…), “ok kids: we started with 7. can YOU draw a 7? 7. straight line on top, slanty line down. you try it. good. now take away 2. see elmo do it? take 2 away. now we have 5. can you say 5? elmo can say 5. let’s say it together, kids. fiiiiiiiivvvvvvvvvve. good. 5! now take away 2 more. do you know how many are left? 3! that’s right! oh, we are so good at math! wasn’t that fun?!?!”

anyway, it happened the day after we finally assigned names to the chux and put on ankle bracelets so we could tell them apart. since we got them for eggs and not for meat, there is no need to not get attached to them (aside from the obvious problem that our dog likes to shake them to death and we can’t seem to keep them alive for more than a few weeks at a time, but i digress)- so, there you are. we took the plunge. we gave the names. and i watched through the kitchen window as one of my girls put up one heck of a fight (did she know she didn’t stand a chance?) before she did and was carried around the backyard like a chew toy for several hours. very dignified.

luckily, we have found 3 of the 4 carcasses (carcarrci???) and disposed of them. i actually kind of hoped when i couldn’t find the first two bodies that they had been carried off by eagles or something. maybe they would be a meal for some majestic creatures, and at least i knew my chux would not just get dumped in a landfill like a pile of old 8 track tapes. i was trying to be very philisophical circle-of-life and all. but it turned out dakota had just hidden them to play with later, and even though i had looked in the bushes and had looked for disturbed mounds of dirt indicating recent burials (how tidy could a dog be, after all?)- i couldn’t find her secret lair of evil. at some point, 3 of the bodies turned up and *h disposed of them.

but i guess the corollary to that is that one of the bodies is still missing. hmmmm…

so, our fluffy jeffrey dahmer/charles manson/son of sam is loving having chickens. sophie is very nonchalant about the whole business. i’m sort of kind of not really but maybe thinking about getting more to add to the flock so we can still get the amount of eggs we were counting on come spring (hopefully). we’ll see.

healthwise, MJ is not the panacea i had hoped for. like big pharma stuff, i will have to experiment with dosages, variations, etc. and see if i can tweak it into working better. i wish i would wax poetic and say things like, ” my pain continues to whisper to me in the night. it comes like a gentle breeze that caresses my skin and billows the silk of the curtains with its touch…”

really it’s more like:

pain hurts. it’s like a 285 pound football player jumping on your back and riding around on you all day long without a break. you can’t find a position that doesn’t hurt, can barely get anything done, and everything takes 98x the amount of energy it should. it’s not just the physical sensations of pain that break you down; it’s the mental strain too. it’s the idea of falling short of every goal every day, even when you’ve already pared down your to-do list past the point of what’s acceptable or reasonable or functional.  it’s having to take your medical situation into account for every decision you make. it’s watching your life happen without you in it, but you are too tired/too sore/too beaten down to even care that much. it’s being relieved when it’s not as bad as it could be, but never really getting to a place where you’re happy because it’s good. it’s watching the disappointment on the faces of your family and looking in the mirror to see someone you don’t recognize and wouldn’t want to know. it’s checking in with your body every once in a while to see if there’s a single place that doesn’t hurt and coming up with bizarre gratitude lists like, “yes- the middle knuckle on my left pinkie doesn’t hurt right now. my right shin doesn’t hurt too much. almost my entire right foot is ok. oh- and both of my earlobes are ok. score!” it’s passing the computer day after day and wanting so badly to write on my blog and knowing that all i have to talk about is how icky i feel, which is getting boring even for me.

ho hum.

but at least my dog didn’t shake me to death…

but enough about me- how are YOU?

me, jody brass, and mary jane

first and foremost i want to thank all of you for the beautiful things you said over the past few days. i’m sorry i didn’t have a chance to respond, but if i was feeling well enough to have written back, please know that i would have. i’ll try to get to the comments section over the next few days. now that my fingers aren’t swollen painful sausages anymore. yay!!!!

i want to tall you all about the medical marijuana deal, but since the laws are written with room to drive a mighty big criminal prosecition through, people are still pretty cagey when it comes to the whole topic. everyone is very helpful and kind- but on the down-low.

so, i’m going to tell you about someone i know quite well. let’s call her jody brass. she has chronic health issues, and she sometimes has flare-ups. sometimes these flare-ups are quite bad, eerily similar to the sitaution i posted about the last one or two posts… jody brass needed to get her hands on some medical marijuana, or mary jane- let’s just call it mj…

after hearing each and every single person- and i’m not even exaggerating!- tell her that their mj dispensary was the absolute best, jody brass decided to just go to her local dispensary, which is like 5 blocks from her house. jody called first to get her paperwork in order, found out that they have an ATM machine in the lobby it’s cash only- who knew?- made sure that someone there could help her understand the diffreent products, varieties, etc. and then got in the car and went to a different place from the one she called. oops.

ok. she was still somewhat stiff and in pain, but she was ok. she ws optimistic about this new wonder-med.

she went in- horrible parking- showed her paperwork (they called the doctor’s office to confirm that she was indeed a real pateint with a real problem and a real authorization to get the mj- and was allowed into a back room. which was actually a middle room which was visible friom the front of the store.

it kind of looked like a jewelry store, with display cases, and a little portable greenhouse on the side witha few plants inside (clones, they are called- how frightening is that- maybe the plants could come alive and kill you if you get out of line???). jody told the lady that she didn’t want anything smoky since she has kids in the house. so she was shown the edibles.

they had lots of different kinds of cookies and junk foods. they had sprinkle cookies and lemon tarts and danish looking things. they had lollypops is regular or sugar free or organic. they had tea and tinctures and something else…

the lollypops were $5 each and there were tootsie roll sort of things that were $7 that were supposed to be really strong. the thing with all of this stuff, though, is that one does not necessarily need a whole one. so the tootsie roll thing, for example- she said to start by eating half (after she heard that jody had no background in mj she said maybe even start with 1/4)- so the prices my actually reflect multiple doses… i won’t even tell you how much a dose of certian migraine abortives can be, but let’s say it can be signifigantly higher (and we have really good insurance)…

*ed note* i must add in here so you don’t miss it- the prices are actually suggested donations for upkeep of the co-op. one is not buying mj, per se. i don’t know if that’s even legal, although someone with a prescription can legally (under state law, but not federal) be in possession of a certain quantity of mj… so one signs a deal with the co-op that they are authorized to grow on behalf of the med. mari. patient, and then the patient is allowed to choose from their products, and one makes donations in suggested amounts to help them pay for supplies, rent, etc. clear?

so, jody bought about 6 lollypops and 5 tootsie rolls. she waited until she got home and everything was taken care of and then she nibbled of the magic tootsie roll (like alice in wonderland, right???)- and ate 1/2 of it. i have it on good authority that it tasted like a tootsie roll with tea mixed in. not yummy for a treat, but that’s good. this stuff is supposed to be medicine.

so- results: made her very tired. made her woozy. didn’t help with the pain so much. she ate and ate although there was no sensation of being hungry. she threw up after supper.

had a lollypop before bed (strawberry). and to be technically correct, they are called lollypoTs. again, not great pain relief, but very tired, and slept great. so, it was worth it for that so far.

next day. migarine hung on in spite of whatver residual mj stays in the system. all day long she took pain meds to cope. at bedtime she took another 1/2 tootsie roll. again, another night of blissfully deep sleep.

soemone told her that it can take a few days for the effects to build up. sleep, however, is regenerative, so more/better sleep is already a plus. the excruciating pain she was in is subsiding with some changes to her meds. she’s hanging in there and will continue to report and is happy to take questions.

as for me? dakota the wonder dog killed two of my chickens. my amazing family kept the house running like a well-oiled machine while i was non compos mentis. my indoor seeds have actually started to sprout, giving me hope that i actually can be successful at something.

and i wrote two fan letters, which i mailed out at the end of last week, but forgot to tell you about. is that very junior high school???

the state of the nation

here’s a round-up of the last few days. i’m going to write it here because i want to share it with you. i want to remember it. i want to be able to look back on it so i can remember where my head was when i made certain decisions. i don’t want to forget it. i want you to be encouraged if you are ever in this place. and i want to look back and be encouraged too. because i know i’ve been here before. and i always get out. but sometimes that’s hard to remember.

sunday was a nightmare. but i should back up. (make a screeching noise here kind of a cross between a car accident and film being violently rewound. there. now we can start.) two appointments ago, i left my neurologist with a handful of prescriptions, most of them refills of stuff i have already been on, but a few newbies he wanted me to try to help me with some new problems and some exacerbations of old stuff. as i left he said cheerfully, “make me proud!” and winked- very sports coach to star athlete and i ate it up. because i AM that star athlete! i AM that star patient! even though i always fail, even though my body and my brain NEVER respond like they’re supposed to, even though i come in with my own research and my own ideas, which most doctors hate and are threatened by, at my core, i do want to be that star patient- the one who the doctor loves and dotes on and gives extra time to and brags about to the other doctors. i want- oh you have no idea how much i want- to be that star patient. so when i left his office and he said that my eyes were glistening and i was like, “ok. i’ll try!!” and i really did.

i really did.

one of the medications had to be gradually increased. he told me to go up every week (hmmmmmmm- the PDR said to go up only every 2 weeks, but the patient leaflet did say every week, and so did he…) so i did. 100 mg, no biggie. 200 mg liking it but no real results. 300 mg. do the screech noise again, but this time it should sound like the needle scraping across a record really hard. like a car trying to avoid hitting a toddler. like your pain receptors being stretched past their limits of tolerance.

i thought maybe i just had a hard day. so i did 300 mg again. and the next day was worse.

but i was just at the doctor. and he was so nice. and he was really trying to help me. and i really don’t want to be a pain in the neck. what if he drops me and i have to start all over agin to find a new neurologist after all the hassle of finding him? especially when i feel so horrible?

by the weekend i could barely get out of bed. i was too cold to take off any clothes to get into a hot bath, but all the layers of clothes i was wearing made it even harder to move. i sat on the kitchen floor while one of my daughters rubbed my neck and tried not to cry. when i finally made it to bed i decided that i would stay there rather than go to the bathroom, because it hurt too much to move. the only thing that hurt more than my bones were my muscles and the only thing that hurt more than my muscles were my bones. i took a boat load of pain meds.

i couldn’t  lift a pot of water to bring it from the sink to the stove because it weighed 8,000 pounds. i tried to take some laundry downstairs but dropped the entire basket in a cascade of dirty laundry down the entire stairs. i just stood there and watched it, wondering how in the world i could grasp that many individual items to get them into the laundry room. i think *h came and saved me. i took more pain meds.

i wanted to spend some time with the chickens, but i couldn’t get outside, so i just sat at my window and watched them. i called a friend to ask if i could borrow some pain meds.

i checked the PDR and it said that one of the side effects of this medicine can be breakdown of muscles. you can get a blood test to verify it, but if you have extreme muscle pain and fatigue, that’s what’s happening. since waking up for half an hour meant that i had to go to bed for another 4-1/2, i thought that might just be accurate. even typing on the computer hurt my wrists and fingers and was so tiring i had to keep taking breaks. more pain meds.

found out that to get my scrip filled for the medical marijuana (which we are calling m&m’s -ugh, the apostrophe!- or medical mashed potatoes) i need to get a washington ID. tried that once but was at the wrong branch, where they only did other state business, and have to go to a different branch, so i still have my michigan ID- so i would take care of that, but oh- i hurt too much to drive right now… *%#@#*$^&%^)^

i have started weaning down from the horrible neuro med, and since it has a half life of 58 hours, most of it should be out of my system by thursday afternoon.

the pain has been gruesome the kind where you lay in bed going over the reason why your family would probably be better off without you. i think that’s it’s so easy to forget how vicious pain really is, and that’s a blessing, because otherwise we’d all be curled up in balls hiding under our covers. i don’t think human beings can withstand that intensity of pain for long periods of time and still maintain their humanity.  you just can’t manifest compassion or dignity when you are suffering so acutely and so severely.

i was thinking when i was laying there, and the time does funny things. it distorts, where an hour will go by in minutes, and i think you doze off without even realizing it- the effects of all the pain meds, no doubt- or the time stretches out endlessly, and gives you time to torment yourself in your thoughts too. i was thinking about metaphors for pain. and they are all true. and i couldn’t think of any new ones. and i was thinking about how people who have suffered before me have really been able to encapsulate the experience and i am jealous in a way that i couldn’t think of any new way to express what was happening to me.

it felt like my bones were swelling and pressing outward (still does, but thankfully not as bad). my muscles are heavy and hard and knotted and my joints are stiff and rough and like when you try to screw the wrong size fitting on a screw and it goes on but it won’t tighten and you have some contact but it won’t hold and get the job done so it is just there but it’s wobbly and uneven. but it hurts. like that but not.

and i wish i could be eloquent and poetic in ways that would make people go,”oh wow- so THAT”S what it’s like” and they could see it without being there. because i don’t want any of you ever to be here. but i want you to know. because i want to bear witness for everyone who can’t speak up. because i don’t just want to lay in bed and suffer and then feel better and function and then get sucked into life and then be busy doing so many things that i just forget.

and i want my kids to know when/if they read this blog that mommy isn’t just a big pile of lazy good-for-nothing who lets them down and dumps her work on them. who doesn’t take them places and do stuff with them. who stays in bed and sleeps too much and gives them too many jobs in the house and sucks at homeschooling and sucks at mothering and sucks at being a role model of a wife. and just sits and types her blog and then goes back to bed to rest and takes too much medication and reads too many medical books and why can’t you be normal like other mothers?

right now all i want to do is feel better. i want to take my kids all the places they want to go and i want to have energy and be able to push past the pain and not feel like i just got shot in every part of my body. i want to be able to take my daughter to the dentist at 2 and not have to start getting dressed at 1 because it hurts so much to move. i want to be able to go buy milk at the store that’s 1/4 mile away without having to decide if it’s too much for me to handle (it is. but maybe i can drive there and have my kids run in. did i mention that i suck as a parent?).  i want to go on a date with *h and not be so smashed with exhaustion by the time i get home that i am almost crawling into the house (did i mention that i suck as a wife too?).

by the way, i never use the word ‘suck’ in real life. i think it is totally unclassy and uncouth. i tell off my teenagers if they use it. just had to say that here for CYA purposes…

in any case, i should be grateful that the pain is letting up a bit, and i should be looking up to bigger and brighter things. but i don’t want to forget. because i think it’s important to remember.

does any of that make any sense?

the shame game

a few years ago i researched medical marijuana. at that time, a favorite aunt lay dying of pancreatic cancer. she had survived not one, but two separate occurrences of breast cancer several years apart, while continuing not only her daily routine, but doing meals on wheels and spending time coordinating events for her large and loving family as well. but the pancreatic cancer was different. she seemed to fade a bit every day, and as her appetite waned, so did her strength and her gusto. no matter what her husband would buy to tempt her, she just couldn’t choke down more than a few bites. between the pain and the weakness, it wasn’t too long before she ended up in hospice.

her husband, a long-time hard-core libertarian urged her to use medical marijuana. she tried marinol, the synthetic THC that some doctors promised would give the same benefits as actual marijuana without the supposed “risks” of the real thing. but no matter how much he begged her, the stigma of marijuana was just too much for her to wrap her mind around, and even though she most certainly would have died in the end regardless, i honestly believe that her family was robbed of an extra few weeks of quality interaction with her because of her hesitation about trying marijuana.

after she died my sense of urgency about marijuana died too, and i just stayed on my cocktail of the big 3 anti-nausea meds and figured it was the best i could do. sometimes it works ok. sometimes it keeps me functioning. sometimes i hit that sweet spot where i take them at just the right time to stop the nausea in its tracks and i’m golden, at least for a few blissful hours. i have a peek at how regular people live, and i’m always more than a little envious that this is their regular life. and i’m always more than a little resentful that it isn’t mine. i’d like to be more enlightened than that, but i’m human, so there ya go.

sometimes i wait too long to take the meds, and it’s not great. *h is always disappointed when i have to throw up, and the kids’ reactions range from here-we-go-again to will-mommy-ever-be-ok? to huh??? once in a while, and thank goodness it’s fairly rare, the throwing up will set off a chain reaction where i can’t really stop, and i’ll just be bedridden with a trash can for a day or two, trying my best to stay out of the ER. those times are bad. really really bad.

which brings us to today’s post.

because i’ve been looking into medical marijuana again.

the glorious state of washington has legal medical marijuana, and lots of people seem to have a friend of a friend, or a brother of a cousin, or a relative of a neighbor- and they all have scrips for medical marijuana. they all agree to talk to me- most on strict promises of confidentiality. they all agree without exception that it is a wonder-med. it has changed their lives. it has made their world a better place. it gives them the best relief with the least side effects. it allows them to work. it helps them to function at home. by using it, they can cut down on their other more scary/addictive/toxic prescription medications.

but they use it in the garage. or only after the kids go to bed. or in the car. or at a friend’s house. or at the clinic. or in their bedroom with the door locked.

so, here’s what i don’t get. marijuana is a safe legal drug. it’s a heck of a lot safer than most of the other stuff i (and most of the folks i spoke to) have been prescribed. you don’t have to smoke it; in fact, it comes in like a gazillion forms. i’m not saying you have to wave it around in front of your teenagers. but i wouldn’t wave around my percocet or my vicodin either. but i darn sure wouldn’t be sneaking off to the garage to take it. or keeping a stash of it at my friend’s house. because if i am taking something for a legitimate medical condition (all of the people i spoke to are. they really are.), then why should i hide that i am taking medication for it? i don’t discuss the specific medications i take, but my pills are on the counter, and if my kids had questions about any of them, i would certainly answer them. if they are having friends over who i don’t know well, i put my pills away in my bedroom somewhere. i know how many pills i have and how many i take.

so what’s with the unique shame around marijuana?

honestly, i hesitated to even get a scrip for it because of the stigma.

honestly, i haven’t filled the scrip because of the stigma.

honestly, i spoke to my older kids about it before i even spoke to my doctor about it (but after *h and i had spoken privately about it a number of times)- just in case they had issues with it that we needed to resolve.

and i’m still not sure when i’ll fill the scrip.

or why i’m buying into the whole shame game.

so, what do you guys think?

top 10 reasons my chickens love me:

1- i feed them.

2- i feed them.

3- i feed them.

4- i feed them.

5- i feed them.

6- i feed them.

7- i feed them.

8- i feed them.

9- i feed them.

10- i feed them.

these are mostly the same reasons my kids love me, but unlike the chickens, they also sort of appreciate that i do their laundry.

do you know what bother’s me?

it kind of irritate’s me sometime’s when people use apostrophe’s on word’s that don’t necessarily need them. like when you make thing’s plural, for example. oh, and also sentence fragment’s. and whom does this when they don’t know the difference between ‘who’ and ‘whom’ so they use ‘whom’ because they think it makes them sound smarter.

trust me, it really really doe’s.