PDD-WTF!?

Ahhhnd, We're Back.

So this is cool. I temporarily abandoned my blog for a couple of weeks in favor of prepping for my teaching thing and showing up for work as scheduled but didn't ditch it entirely because I felt stupid that I couldn't live up to my self-imposed rule about regularly blogging for 14 days straight!

Growth, people. I don't need to prove nothin' to nobody!

My teaching thingy went awesome, even though I picked 4-5 fights with my husband before the big day because my anxiety was a little OOC*. I was asked to continue on in the hiring process, even though less than half of the 60+ candidates were asked to do so. I am so pumped for this.

What else? Carter dipped his big toe in the "beach" at his party, so that's a win. I was accepted to the PhD program I wanted, which will start in the Fall. And I totally want to do this, but I am pretty sure that I would be spreading myself a leetle thin if I tried to attempt it.

Also: I really really really need to talk about Carter's diagnosis from a year ago, and the fact that I just cancelled his one year follow-up.

I am so glad that I didn't let my blog die. It's cool to be back, even though I haven't exactly been here for that long.

* Out of Control. Old skool phrase from high school.

Push It To The Limit

My husband and I are notorious procrastinators. Applications are always electronically transmitted by 4:59pm on the filing deadlines. I remember once while he was in law school he literally pushed his law prof out of the way in order to beat her to her mailbox before the 5 o'clock deadline. But we always manage to make whatever we need to make happen, and high-five each other with a rousing "Team Us!" afterwards.

My preparation progress for my big interview with a private college for a part-time teaching gig has slowed to a crawl. I still need to:

1. Write a statement thingy
2. Umm, develop and practice my lecture on a topic I really know nothing about
3. Find non-skanky professional business attire for less than $30
4. Get the kids stuff packed and ready to go so that we aren't rushed the day of the interview, which is Friday

Uggh, I really need to get my act together, because we could really use the extra cash. Damn, now I'm feeling a poop coming on.

Carter Unplugged #1

We just got back from a quick jaunt to Beach City, which explains the break in my 14 day posting challenge to myself. Oh well. I'll just tack on a few posts at the end of the 2 weeks and call it a win!

Anyway, for now, I present a funny little exchange on the road:

Carter (reaching for my iPhone): I wanna play a game on your phone!
Emme: What, the matching game?
Carter: No, the one with the ghosts that have to eat healthy fruit!
Emme: Umm, which one, Sweetpea?
Brooks: He wants Pac-Man, babe.
Emme: Rad. At least he we have him thinking about health as he progresses towards an all-American pre-teen sedentary lifestyle.

Stoned Ages

My sis, Maggie, and I are extremely lucky chicks. As daughters of an alcoholic mom, I wonder if she and I were both spared from The Gene. Or, maybe we have The Gene, we are just super resilient and have some serendipitous insurance against become full blown drunks. Either way, we are damn grateful that we've made well into adulthood without falling into the abyss of addiction.

Several women on my mom's side of the family are or were alcoholics. So of course we have always had that to contend with. Then, as my parents' marriage disintegrated during our last few years of high school, we hung out with loadies on a daily basis. Maggie experimented a little more than I did, but we both managed to come out of the 20-something party-er stage relatively unscathed.

10 years later, our former friends are still doing the same old shite. Drinking, smoking, chilling, smoking again, watching movies half-way through, smoking again, eating burritos, passing out. It's so dumb and so, so sad. And to think, we were the ones who had the biological deck stacked against us.

Trip out, man.

Splish, and Then Quite Possibly a Splash

Carter has a lot of what I irritatingly refer to as "sensory issues." God, that's even annoying to type! More specifically, he hates touching/feeling things that are different. Typical stuff for the spectrum-y kids, really.  He has a very limited repertoire of foods he'll eat consistently, he doesn't love getting his hands sticky or dirty, and he is not terribly fond of being touched too much. None of these issues (shut up already) cause too much of a problem for him, save for the fact that he's a little less meaty than he used to be. 

The other problem is that mostly HATES getting wet. He can handle a bath pretty decently, but if you don't get the temp right or get too much water on his face he gets a little sketched. He also has not been swimming since he was 8 months old, which sucks because we essentially live on the sun here during the summer months and he really needs to learn to get wet if we are going to have any sort of outdoor life.

So summer officially starts officially next week, and I was so pleased to hear from my husband this afternoon that Carter plans to frolic about at his pre-school's "beach party" on Friday. They are bringing in a water slide (?) and he wants to participate. So off to Target we go tomorrow to pick out a bathing suit and a towel.

I hope he really goes on Friday like he says he wants to. I hope he sees his friends frolicking about in the water and joins in. Peer pressure is actually super useful to a kid like Carter, because he sure as hell won't listen to us when we tell him that there aren't going to be sharks at the party.

The Quick-Step

Monday is D-Day! I should know on Monday if I'll head home from work with a sigh of relief or with a cardboard box filled with the contents of my desk.

I know that I can't control what's going to happen, but I wish that I could just have a break from the constant feeling of wanting to poop.

This is My Private Life, Come and Get Me Out of Here

Emme is a much more cosmopolitan version of my own name. Also the name of one of J-Lo's twins. My husband likes to call me J-Lo if I leave my sunglasses on inside of a store for more than 2 seconds. So I guess that makes him my six-foot four blonde Marc Anthony.

I want to keep most of my private details left out of this space, partly out of respect for my family's privacy, but also because it would not be good for my career. I work in the mental health field, and client/provider relationships can get really fricked up by Internet.

Of course, if I lose my job in September, I would sell-out in a second. That's why I am going to become Internet famous by early August so I have other money-makin' plans in place come this fall.

Options are always good. Plus, then I could legitimately rock the sunglasses indoors and my husband would just have to keep his yap shut and carry my purse for me.

Lipstick

We knew she was going to die from drinking at some point, but we didn't know when. There was one time, several Novembers ago, when we were told in low tones that there was no way she was going to make it. Her kidneys were failing, she was filled with poison, did you want to donate her eyes?

She gave me a blank check, told me to play Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher" at her wake--cremation, no crying, dessert afterward--and claimed she wasn't scared. "At least I won't have to sell copiers anymore," she joked. I was shaking and did not want to stop looking at her for even a second, but left her side to go home and get some rest.

2 weeks later, she was home. Her abdomen was bloated and her legs were unsteady, but she was sober. Again. The doctors weren't exactly sure how she pulled through, but she did, and we had turkey the following Thursday.

2 weeks after that, she was back to drinking. We all went back to our usual routines. I pleaded, my sister enabled, my mom vomited occasionally and slept non-stop.

One afternoon, my sister called me and said that she had just dropped mom off at the ER because she was feeling exceptionally tired. My mom said that she probably just needed a few pints of blood and some IV fluids. My sister offered to walk her in, but my mom refused. Before she stepped out of the car, she pulled the visor down and carefully applied her lipstick, and said she would call when she was ready to be picked up.

I can allow myself to think about a lot of the final moments that preceded my mom's death. I can imagine our last conversation in life, with her desperate attempts to breath as she told me that she had too much fluid in her lungs. I can still feel and almost full-term Carter shifting and stretching inside of me, as I sat next to her bed, silently begging her to squeeze my hand. The comedic episode at the hospital in which I followed the doctors down a million hallways in order to find a private room where we could talk about her sudden turn for the worse. Her hair, delicately french-braided by a nurse, wet from perspiration as she slipped further into a coma. The phone call from the sweet, stoner night nurse, letting me know that she was gone.

It's just the lipstick. Thinking about her putting on lipstick before she went inside to die is just too much for me. It often reduces me into a snotting, choking, sobbing mess against my husband's chest. Even four years later, I don't get it. When she almost died the November before, the scene was so dramatic. She was delivered to the hospital in a screaming ambulance, but she made it.

But when she did finally go to the hospital to die, she just put on lipstick and walked herself inside.

Family Meeting

Living Room Floor, 8:15 am

Emme: So, let's talk about what we're going to clean up today. We each need to choose one chore to help contribute to keeping things clean. I'll go first! I'm going to work on the kitchen.

Brooks: I am going to straighten up the living room....

Carter: (brow furrowed) I'm going to wipe the poop from my butt!

Brooks: (raising his hand) Ooh-ooh! I change mine to that, too.

Ahhhnd....scene.

Hey So

I have been reading blogs voraciously since at least 1999 and I think it's about time I start one. Okay, that's a lie--I've started many. Too many, like at least 10, but they have always fizzled and failed because I was just trying too damn hard to be clever and hip, masquerading as some kind of blog entrepreneur. I mean, just because I used to troll around on old school message boards in 1994 and racked up several hundred dollar bills on CompuServe back in the day did not mean I could just magically come up with a super famous blog overnight.

My husband suggested that I just write for fun (and what the hell, exactly, does he know?) and see where it takes me. He even had the audacity to suggest that I write about something I know, or at least am very interested in. So here we are.

My son, Carter, has PDD-NOS. He is almost 4. I will go into a looooong explanation about how we came into this diagnosis and how it affects my boy, but not now. I am calling this blog PPD-WTF!? because my personal experience with this diagnosis swings wildly between confusion, hilarity, frustration, chaos, and normalcy. Often within a span of just a few minutes.

Not only do I want to process through our adventures with Carter, but I also plan to write about (in no particular order):

--My other dude, Garrett, age 8 months
--My husband, Brooks, who is the funniest person alive (Ooh! Maybe I'll get him to guest post)
--The town we live in, which can be both great and a living hell
--My journey towards starting a PhD program
--The fact that I may lose my job in September
--My jealousy of others (especially women)
--My adult acne
--My experiences growing up with an alcoholic mom
--The children's book I am trying to write

Huh. That's a mixed bag alright.

So, challenge to myself: Post for 14 days straight to see if I can get this thing off the ground.