Relief

I finally found doctors willing to help me.  Today is the first day in a long time that I feel more like a normal person.  It's wonderful.

I have given up on Columbia St Mary's hospital system here in Milwaukee, and am switching our whole family's medical care to Froedtert.  I have always liked our primary doctor at CSM, and we've gone to her since before we had children, but she's moving her practice to suburbs farther north in the new year anyway.  Keeping a relationship with her might have been our only incentive to stay, but with that ending I had no reservations about starting over somewhere else.

The pain in my breast that began back in July started getting so bad over Thanksgiving weekend that it was destroying my ability to function.  I tried swimming without using my right arm for a couple of days, but finally had to admit swimming was out.  I had to set aside a bushing job at work because I couldn't brace the instrument against my body in order to get at it properly with my tools.  (Thankfully that job is on a long timeline, so it will still get done.)  I couldn't walk at a normal speed.  I couldn't lift many things.  I was constantly elbowing away my children when they'd try to hug me.  Sleeping was hard because I'd have to find one position and not deviate from it all night or suffer excruciating pain.

I spent all of last Monday trying to get any doctor at CSM to listen to me.  The nurse at the breast center that did the biopsies and the ultrasounds and the mammograms were sympathetic, but said that since I did not have cancer there was nothing more they could do for me.  They couldn't even prescribe anything for the pain.

Week of Crazy

I've been really hoping to get to my last road trip post, but this week has been too weird.  Ian had to go do Army stuff out of state, and my parents unexpectedly had to push back the day they could come out and help so I had to scramble to figure out school pick-ups and meals and the like. 

It's all been fine.  I'm much better about asking for help than I used to be.  My kids were so young during the first deployment, and we were so new to the neighborhood, that we really didn't know other parents yet.  I've always had kind neighbors, but it's hard feeling like a burden.  Now I'm not too proud to put out a distress call and say, "Who can grab my kids from school and bring them to me at the violin store?  Who can drive them home from choir while I'm at rehearsal?  Who wants to help?" 

And people want to help.  Which shouldn't surprise me because I like to help.  I don't know why it seems so wrong to give others the chance to do something for me that I wouldn't mind doing for them.  In any case, I'm grateful to everyone who pitched in to keep our lives running along with Ian absent.  Looking forward to having him home soon.

But now I have to get moving again.  More later.  In the meantime, in honor of Ian's Army stuff here is a Mold-A-Rama tank sent to us by a generous reader:


Happy Daylight Savings Nonsense!

Can we please do this again?

The kids and I finally got out for some long overdue volunteer work.

Our lives are busy.  It's a lot of work to run our own store.  We have violin, choir, piano, orchestra, rehearsals, concerts, Army weekends, homework, practicing, projects, exercise...  The daily grind alone of meals and laundry and cleaning for five people plus walking the dog is enough to fill an average day, even without an unexpected monkey wrench thrown into the schedule to make things harder.

But I've always felt we should be making time somewhere to help others because we have so much.  We never want for food or clothes.  We have a home, our health, and most importantly we have each other.  I don't know how people alone in this world get by.  Too many among us aren't so lucky.

Last week Ian took over the last few hours at the store for me one day, and the kids and I joined a family down the street to a Catholic church downtown where they hand out meals to people in need.  I'm so glad we did.

Breathing Room (Babble)

I’m having a really good week.  My brother’s girlfriend came up from Texas just to help me out during my current busy rehearsal schedule, and having her in the house has been such a relief.  Kristie is sweet and funny and generous and my kids adore her.  I have an adult in the house to talk to again, and someone around to help keep track of the children.  I’m able to relax a bit for the first time in a long time.  I can breathe.

I’ve been trying to explain to people why relieving my stress isn’t as simple as “Go hire a babysitter.”   That’s the first thing most people say to me when I express any frustration about dealing with the kids, and it kind of stops there in their minds as if that just never occurred to me before and now all will be well.  There are several reasons why this is not as simple as it sounds on the surface.

First off, I do use babysitters.  I have rehearsals I need to attend and concerts to perform, and there are moments in my schedule where of course I need to get out and have someone else be responsible for my children for awhile.  But part of single parenting means my pool of available babysitters is usually reduced to whoever can get themselves home afterward.  Once my kids are asleep, I can’t leave the house.  I either need sitters with their own transportation or who live within walking distance.  This drastically limits whom I can call, especially since all my rehearsals fall on school nights and go quite late.  Could I hire someone from a service so this isn’t an issue?  Probably, but I’m going to chalk that up to my own trouble with leaving my kids with someone I don’t know.  It would make me nervous, and my nerves can’t handle much more.

My biggest help in the neighborhood is my friend Julie (who is across the street or next door depending on which of the two houses during the moving process I happen to be in).  She volunteers to come put my kids to bed every Thursday evening so I can go to a rehearsal with the Milwaukee Mandolin Orchestra.  When I’m in a bind she rearranges her work schedule to help me out.  She is wonderful and somehow always makes me feel like I’m helping her by letting her hang out with my kids.  I already depend on her so much I don’t want to push it, but for keeping up with my obligations, rest assured I do have people around to watch my children.

But I get the impression that what some people think I need to be doing with my valuable babysitting time is to go get a massage or something that sounds relaxing.  Trying to relax is not relaxing for me.  To achieve the sense of calm I desire I need to feel like I’m making progress on some of the many projects I’m interested in, or that I’m caught up on something.  If I try to sit and read while I know the kitchen is a mess or there is violin repair work hanging in my shop, I can’t enjoy it.  I read when I’m caught in situations where I’m stuck anyway, like waiting in my car prior to the after school pickup.  As nice as having a couple of hours to read a book for fun sounds, the idea of hiring a sitter so I can do that just to be up that much later at night to catch up on the laundry makes my head hurt.

And here is my biggest problem with the whole “Just go hire a sitter” idea for helping me relax– I can’t predict when I need one.   For instance, most days at work I’m able to handle having Quinn there with customers pretty well.  I have people schedule appointment times so I can pace what I do with my son.  It’s nice.  I can rehair a bow in the time it takes to watch a typical DVD, so if I know when to set Quinn up with a snack and a movie, I’m fine.  But there are days like one last week where the customer was supposed to arrive at 8 in the morning, and then couldn’t get there until 11:30.  That throws off everything.  Juggling Quinn and work into lunchtime after we’d exhausted all the ‘sit quietly in one place’ options was impossible.  I would have loved a babysitter at that moment, but how could I have known I would need one?

Also, most of the projects I want to tackle for my own enjoyment are creative endeavors, and I can’t schedule them.  I write best when I wait for the moment to strike me and run with it.  There are days playing viola for fun would be marvelous and others where it would be torture.  I can’t just give myself a couple of hours to work on building a violin because there are days my hands are up to it and others when my focus just isn’t there.  I need time to settle into a creative mood in order to really enjoy some things.  The elements of my life that I indulge purely for my own pleasure are not things I can coordinate with a sitter.  They have to be allowed to just happen when the moment is right, not forced and scheduled into a block of time when the meter is running.

This is why having Kristie here for more than a week is making me feel like myself again.  Not only do I not have to make complicated arrangements for leaving one child with a sitter while taking the girls to choir and having someone else drive them home while I go to rehearsal (etc. etc.), but I have the freedom to be distracted at unscheduled moments.  I have to be so vigilant caring for three kids alone that it’s hard to turn that off in the space of just a couple of hours.  I need real time to be able to let some of that go.

It’s not just knowing I can pop out to the store alone for a minute because someone else is in the house, but to be able to take that a little for granted that makes a difference.  If someone is here for a matter of hours and says, “Quick!  Relax!” it’s just not going to happen.  But to have the luxury of picking my moment, and to have my thoughts to myself when I choose is lovely.  I can’t find those random moments of peace when I hire someone to watch the kids.  I need my money’s worth when I use a sitter, and I need to cram important errands and deeds into that time.  But the fifteen spontaneous minutes of extra practice I got in on my viola the other day while Kristie played with the kids in the next room?  That was golden.

Kindness Counts (Babble)

Telling people Ian is deployed in Iraq is odd because it isn’t simple.  It means different things to different people, even within our family.

Ian can’t stand it when people react to the news of his getting shipped out in a negative way, usually with what he calls ‘the cancer voice’–where people grimace a little and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  It’s his job and he likes it.  It’s challenging and important.  He’s a Major, so it’s not what most people first picture when they imagine him ‘fighting.’  The work he’s doing over there right now involves tackling corruption and using his engineering skills to solve basic problems.  He’s perfectly suited to what he’s doing and he’s making a difference.  Whatever you think of the situation in Iraq right now (and personally I hate that we’re there at all), Ian is exactly the kind of person we are lucky to have there trying to fix things.  I’m sure if there were a magic way he could do his job and not be so far away from us he would be happier, but it is what it is.

I remind Ian, however, that the cancer voice sentiments apply to my part of the situation just fine.  There is no feeling of accomplishment at our end.  I’m trying to hold things together as best I can, but most of the time I’m stretched very thin, can’t get everything done that I need to, and I’m scared.  I try not to play what I think of as ‘the deployment card’ when dealing with people, but sometimes at work I need to let people know why my store doesn’t have normal hours.  I have to operate by appointment only in order to spread out the interactions with customers to a manageable level.  There is always at least one child with me which keeps things unpredictable, and rather than let people think I don’t have any sense of professionalism or that I don’t want their business, I explain that my husband is deployed but things should go back to normal in the fall.  Most people are pretty accommodating as long as there is a reason, and deployment is a pretty good reason.


In any case, as much as Ian would prefer not to look at his chance to do the work he’s trained for as bad news, from here it’s hard not to see it that way.  Most of the people I talk to understand it in that light, and when you tell people about your own misfortunes of any kind, they usually say, “If there is anything I can do….”  I know that’s what I say, and I know most of us mean it as we’re saying it.  But some people are profoundly better at following through with that idea than others.  I aspire to be one of those people when I’m in a better position to do so.

I do the best I can, snatching at small opportunities when they present themselves to help make someone’s day a little better or easier, but it’s hard when I’m always scrambling around just to keep my own family running.  I’m in awe of people who are truly prepared and willing to help when it’s needed even when they are obviously busy too, and there are more of them than I can believe sometimes.  I make mental notes of clever ways people can be helpful when I see them so I’ll have more to offer others sometime than the words, “If there is anything I can do….”  Here are some examples I’ve witnessed of kindness in action.

An experience that stays with me from back before I had children and was still commuting 40 miles away to violin making school every day, was witnessing an accident on the freeway.  I was driving behind an elderly man who passed out behind the wheel and crashed into a barricade and flipped his car over.  It was really frightening and my car wasn’t affected, but since I’d witnessed the accident I pulled over to tell any officials arriving at the scene what little I knew.  I didn’t think there was anything I could actually do to help and I didn’t want to be in the way, so I kept my distance for awhile. 

But I was stunned at how many other people did think of ways to help.  Several people pulled over just to offer some small service before continuing on their respective commutes.  One woman asked the old man, still hanging upside down in his car, if there was anyone she could call for him on her cell phone or anyone he wanted to talk to.  He had her call his wife.  Another man stopped simply to leave a blanket to keep the man warm if he went into shock.  I got to watch the paramedics do their jobs brilliantly.  The man who helped the elderly driver out of his car and onto a stretcher, checked him over carefully before smiling at his patient and saying in an amused voice, “What did you do?” which made the old guy relax and respond with a laugh saying, “I don’t know!”  Transportation department people efficiently blocked off the scene, the police gathered information….  It was a tremendous display of everyone doing everything they should have with care and I was deeply moved by the whole thing.  I don’t think enough of us appreciate just how often people do things right in the course of a typical day.  Since then I try to keep a blanket in my car that I can afford to spare should I happen upon someone who may really need it.

A fellow musician in town recently struggled with an ugly bout of breast cancer.  Her medical bills were going to be an increasing problem, so a few people organized a fundraising dinner.  It was a lovely event where we all contributed money and I know the musician was grateful, but it was the creative contributions I learned about while at that dinner that truly impressed me.  One person had volunteered to come out to her house and teach her violin students for her while she was sick.  That was a stroke of genius in my opinion, because I wouldn’t have thought of a way to apply the skill of teaching violin in a manner that was useful to someone fighting cancer, but it allowed her to keep her normal income and not disrupt her students’ schedules.  I love it when people find ways to use what they already do in a charitable capacity.

In my own life I am continually amazed by which people are the ones who step up to help.  Of course my mom will always help when she can because she’s my mom.  But my cousin out in Minnesota?  I’ve always loved and admired Ann, but when you ask for volunteers to help you move you don’t expect any of the out of state people to respond.  Ann immediately offered up her husband’s muscles and her own child entertaining abilities, and told me to pick a weekend and they would drive six hours with two small kids to come help.  That’s amazing and I will be forever grateful.  (Ann can have her pick of any organs I can spare should she ever need them.)

People who help you move are in a special category anyway, but some of my newest friends were among the first to volunteer.  Moving is repetitive and rough and not easy, and all who have made themselves available to carry furniture across the street for me have been cheerful about it.  Again, several of them are not the people I would have expected to appear at my doorstep, but how wonderful to learn the circle of people you can count on is so wide?  Robyn got her exercise for the week moving all my books, her husband helped hoist furniture, Bonnie Jean and her hsuband found time to pitch in with lots of heavy lifting in the middle of their busy schedule, Kate moved the pachinko machine and children’s books among other things, Howard moved my bed and a ton of things from the garage, and my cousin’s husband Dave tirelessly made a million and a half trips with every heavy thing I own the whole weekend.  That’s above and beyond.

There is Laurie whom I know both through orchestra and mandolin rehearsals, who has started offering herself up at unexpected times to play with my kids so I can run away for a little while.  I’ve always liked Laurie, but I never would have guessed she might be someone to spontaneously offer help when I needed it.  I got to paint part of my new kitchen in peace thanks to Laurie when she called out of the blue and agreed to help Aden use her Easy Bake Oven for a couple of hours.  It’s hard to ask for help, so never underestimate the value of simply handing a busy parent a block of time.  That’s a lesson I’m keeping in my back pocket in order to help others.  I do take other people’s kids for a few hours when I’m able even now while I’m so busy, just because I know how much it helps sometimes.

Another cousin (of my mom’s gerneration), Carol, has made us dinner a couple of times.  Food always tastes better when you don’t have to make it yourself!  She’s cooked the food in our house and kept an eye on the kids while I taught, and she’s also sent along a casserole to make things easier.  (I would love to go cook for someone who could use it, but that will have to wait for a time when I’m not a traveling circus everywhere we go.)

My brother’s girlfriend down in Texas is flying up for a couple of weeks in March just to help.  I liked Kristie the first time I met her, but to find out the depth of her sincerity is amazing.  When we first got the news of Ian’s deployment her immediate reaction was, “I will go up and stay with them for a week to help,” and she’s actually doing it.  Having a second adult in the house is like suddenly being able to fly.  While Kristie is here I won’t have to take everyone with me on errands, I can go out for a walk alone when they are all asleep, and get some real work done in the new house.  That’s a huge gift, and from an unexpected place.  (Barrett, if you let this woman get away you’ll have some serious explaining to do.)

And there isn’t enough room on any blog to adequately thank my friends Carol and Chris.  There is no way I’d be actually moving into the new house anytime soon without their help.  It’s painful to sit in this house with the kids when I can practically see from my window all the work that needs to happen across the street.  I feel trapped some days, wishing I could go paint or organize something in the new house, but I can’t leave the kids alone.  (Occasionally I march them all over there with me, but the noise and running around drives me crazy, and one time Mona ended up in urgent care with a twisted ankle, so that backfired big time.)  I’ve done as many trips as I feel comfortable with, carrying boxes over while bringing along my cell phone in case during the minute and a half I’m gone something happens even though they are just playing with legos.  So Carol and Chris paint and clean when I can’t.  And the nice thing is that even though I can’t be doing all of this house preparation with my husband, it’s nice watching some husband and wife team working on it.  I watch the two of them tackling projects together and checking in on their own kids and wish so much I could have that again soon.

Between all my friends and relatives who have offered their time and effort, there is love going into the work on that house, and that will help make it a real home.  That means a lot to me.  They understand how hard it must be to do any of this alone and they’re doing something about it.  (If I ever run into someone insane enough to move with small children while his or her spouse is out of the country, I will know what kind of help to offer!)

This is the positive result of being willing to tell people about Ian’s deployment.  It’s the kind of situation that inspires certain people to action, and it’s incredible to see.  I met Carol initially because I was struggling during the last deployment with getting my daughter into the school building each morning.  She’s the kind of person who probably would have helped anyway, but she saw a mom in trouble and jumped in, and now I have one of the best friends anyone could ask for.  I don’t know how I’d be doing without the kindness of so many people both near and far.

I’m looking forward to a day, though, where I’m not the one who needs so much help.  I want to be the one who jumps in and rescues someone else for awhile.

Garden Fairies and Other Magical Beings (Babble)

The first few days of Ian’s deployment were surreal.  The first steps of a long journey don’t feel any different from the first steps of a walk around the block.  Everything felt normal with an underlying sense that it shouldn’t.

After a couple of weeks we were in a new and fairly predictable routine.  That felt good, like I was in control of things, and Ian being gone wasn’t going to be too disruptive.  We could miss Ian, but still lead our lives just fine.  It was inconvenient but doable.

Somewhere about a month in is when the true effects of having a deployed spouse start to hit.  Certain things began to get away from me at about the three week mark and I started to get frazzled.  I may have a handle on most things inside the house, but the outside is another story.  There is nowhere in my schedule to do anything with the yard.  I would make a mental note on the walk from the house to the car that the hedges looked awful and the peonies needed to be cut down and the mulberry tree that seemed to be growing right out of the foundation of the garage needed to be chopped back into submission.  But when?  Quinn is next to me practically every minute, and between shuttling girls around (to school and violin and choir and birthday parties) and running my business, there is just enough time left to go grocery shopping and do other basic errands.  Something had to give and that something was the yard.

Luckily, I know incredible people.  I think we all do, but most of us are never in a circumstance to call on them for anything.


My neighbor from across the street offered to mow my lawn, which he did on a Sunday morning and I was grateful.  When I came home with the kids later in the day, the hedges were also trimmed and the garden cleaned up and the pots overturned.  The house didn’t look abandoned anymore and I was really happy.  That bit of help came at a time when I really needed it, and I sent a note across the street with Aden to thank him for doing so much.  My neighbor called a minute later saying he couldn’t take credit for the additional yard work because he hadn’t been sure what he should touch in the garden.  It was Garden Fairies.

The kids and I speculated at dinner about who could have done it.  “Sophia’s dad did it once, so maybe it was him!  Or Anna’s dad, or maybe Julie since she has to look at the garden from her window anyway…. ”  Between the girls and myself (with Quinn echoing everyone for good measure) we came up with several likely candidates for the Garden Fairy Brigade.  I pointed out to my kids how lucky we were to know so many nice people that an act of kindness toward us could even be a mystery.  We all smiled as we finished our dinner and as I went to bed I still couldn’t narrow down in my head who the Garden Fairies might be.

The very next day I found myself in a minor mini-crisis at the violin store.  I’ve been doing pretty well at spreading out the work I need to do so I don’t get overwhelmed, but a surprise rehair showed up.  (A rehair is when you put new horsehair on a bow.  Violinists need their bows reahaired every six weeks to two years depending on how much they play.)  It was an expensive cello bow that I’ve done before that takes a lot of concentration to do well, and I agreed to work on it because I’d just gotten back from the library with Quinn and he had a new movie to watch and a snack to eat.  I figured he would be distracted long enough for me to do the job even though I hadn’t planned for it.  Of course, the minute I cut the old hair and there was no turning back, Quinn had a meltdown.  He wanted to climb in my lap, and when I told him ‘no’ he turned into a wailing puddle.

After about ten minutes of Quinn thwarting any chance of my doing the rehair I was starting to feel panicky. I really wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, and just then a friend walked into the store to buy new strings for her instrument.  It was my girls’ violin teacher, and I found myself telling her I was getting frustrated with Quinn keeping me from my work, and she offered to take him with her on some errands for a little while.  It was like a miracle.  Quinn was perfectly happy to take her hand and we put his booster seat in her car, and they went to the post office and the bank together.  He can be lovely company (if you’re not trying to rehair a bow), and he was happy to get a lollypop from the bank teller.  I was able to do the rehair in peace and get it done on time, and I felt so…light.  That half an hour of quiet exactly when I needed it gave me a whole new lease on life.  I was glad to have my son back again when they returned and he was glad to have a happier mommy.

The week before Halloween I was lucky enough to have my brother, Arno, and a friend of his, come visit for a few days after they attended a brain conference in Chicago.  Arno’s friend was one of the sweetest guests imaginable, and he fixed little things around the house for me and the kids.  His family was back in Boston, and that he was willing to take a little time away from his own daughter to play with my kids was incredibly nice.  (They miss you, Satra, if you happen to read this!)

But the reigning champion of selfless helpers these days has to be my brother, Arno.  The day his friend flew home we had a disaster involving something called the P-trap in our basement.  Sewage everywhere.  It even blew up out of the basement toilet.  Roto Rooter came and fixed it, but left us the mess to mop up, and there is something so impossibly disgusting about knowing it’s not just human waste you’re wading through, but other people’s waste, that it makes me gaggy just thinking about it again. 

I went out and bought a giant container of bleach and a couple of sets of disposable gloves, and I fully intended to spend some disgusting mopping time down in my basement, but Arno did it all.  I figured we’d feed the kids and put them to bed, and then the two of us could go at it, but Arno decided it couldn’t wait.  I made dinner while he went down with plastic bags wrapped around his shoes and cleaning tools we knew would have to be sacrificed to the cause.  He scoured everything and used up the entire container of bleach and made extra sure that the whole bathroom and the path to the washing machine in particular were CLEAN.  When he was done he threw away his pants and he headed straight for the shower.

The amazing thing about having my brother here is he actually made me laugh about the whole mess.   I love him so much.  And as much as I felt like the world’s worst hostess to have Arno clean up sewage on his visit, the truth is he was there to help.  I could not have needed it more!  If that had happened while I was alone with the kids I would have cried.  I’d have had to wait until the kids were asleep and stayed up all night alone mopping my basement, trying not to throw up and alternately weeping and cursing.  But instead I baked my brother pumpkin pies.  We laughed at the incredible grossness of the whole thing.  I made a joke about how he didn’t owe me presents ever again because he was good for all my birthdays, and he misunderstood and thought I meant I wouldn’t give him gifts anymore (since how do you top a sewage cleaning experience as a present?) and we laughed so hard I almost peed myself.  To top it off, after giving the kids a lecture about not using so much toilet paper (the likely cause of the disaster to begin with), Mona used the toilet and waved to the bowl after she flushed saying, “Bye bye!  See you again soon!”  Who knew sewage backup could be so funny?  (Says the woman who didn’t have to clean any of it.)

Oh, and the Garden Fairy?  Turned out to be my friend Carol who seems to be making a career out of saving my sanity on a regular basis.  She is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known and I’m so proud to be able to call her my firend.   Her husband recently fixed a door in my house.  I paid him in apple pie.

I went out and bought a supply of disposable pie pans this week.  I have a feeling if these first couple of months are any indication, before this deployment is over I’ll have a lot more baking to do.