This Year

Christmas this year was so different. It was good. It was sad. It was Happy, it was.

We have known from the birth of our dear Ava that her time here on Earth is limited.

But, knowing is not always good. Knowing this, every time she sneezes, we worry more than we would have before she came. If she gets a cold, it could kill her. It almost did. Just after Thanksgiving, on the 30th of November, she had to go to the hospital again. She had been congested for a long time. Lacey, her Mom, even took her to the Doctor about it. She was given medicine to give her on top of all the other medicines she was already on.

We met them at the Emergency entrance of the local Hospital for the second time. It was about 10 at night. The world looks so different at night than in the daytime. I remember the night Ava arrived we had met them in the same place. You see, we pick up Hunter and bring him home with us. That warm August night was beautiful. The stars were shining and the Moon was full. That does not describe how beautiful it was, you will have to imagine it. I am rarely awake that time of the night, and even more rarely outside. We should all make a point of going outside just to behold the gorgeousness of it. (that probably isn't a word, but it should be) We brought Hunter home the night Ava arrived. I realized on our way to my house that we did not have any milk for him. Would you believe this? We stopped at Casey's convenient store. It was 2:30 a.m.! I did not realize how unusual that this was until much later on. Why that young man was there at that time is beyond me, but he was. We got a gallon of milk and were on our way. I wonder if he had to figure up his tallies and did not have a chance to do it while open? I will never know, but I could not thank him enough times that night. This time we had milk. We keep some on hand now as my husband and I are drinking more of it than ever before in our lives. (trying to live right) We got home and of course Hunter did not want to go right to bed, and we did not expect him to. He had slept a bit in the van on the way to meet us. Just enough to refresh him. We were worked up anyway and did not feel like trying to sleep ourselves. As we waited in the parking lot, I noticed how wonderful the sky looked again. Regardless of the reason for our being there, it could not be denied. I sat and just looked at it. We had seen the Christmas lights of the town on our way there. It was the only time I was in that town at night all Christmas season. I imagine how it looked to those Shepards and Kings and all others the night of the baby Jesus birth. It might not have been as cold as it gets here, but I bet the sky still had that beauty. We take so much for granted in this life. Little things. Things we have forgotten or are too busy to notice anymore. People, slow down a bit. Enjoy where you are. Too soon it will be gone. Ava was life flighted a second time to Blank Children's Hospital in Des Moines. They must all know her by name by now. She was there until the 19th of December. She is such a fighter! Ava will decide when she leaves us. She must have a straight phone line to the big guy. We are all learning so much from having her with us. She shows us how precious life is. She teaches us that just being able to breathe is a gift! They have found a new formula that we are hoping will help keep the "gurgle" away. We joke that she is our little percolator. She sounds like the old fashioned coffepot when it is perking. We have also retained our sense of humor. I have run out of a path for this writing, so will publish it now and think about editing it later. Hugs all. As I have come to be known as "Grandma Kate"

Sometimes one is just glad to be alive! Getting gifts does not seem as important as it used to. We are trying not to teach greed. It will be more difficult when our Grandchildren get to school age. Then it becomes a bit more difficult to understand why Santa brought someone you are friends with so very much more than he left for you. I do not remember right now how I explained that to our girls, but it must have worked. I will have to ask them what they believed. It is amazing what the mind will believe...or what it will choose to believe. The weather has been typical...old days style, stormy with lots of snowstorms and slick roads. On the 16th it snowed 4 inches with another storm right behind it that dumped many more. Besides the bad weather, we had a rough end of November and start of December. Ava went into the Hospital on the 30th of November and did not get home until the 19th of December, a day before Jodee's Birthday. She had to be Life Flighted again for the second time. It was terrible weather. It had snowed and was icy underneath. This will be a short update, then I will extend it at a later date and time. Short story is that we did not need as much for Gifts this year. "Things" don't seem so important anymore. Just spending time together is our goal now. We are so blessed to still have our Ava for a bit longer. She has the most beautiful curls you could imagine. They are reddish blonde and just as many ringlets as you could ever have! They have put her on a different formula again. This one is to try and make the seizures happen less often. It still is not looking too promising, but then we were never promised a single thing to begin with! Having babies is not a simple nor easy thing. We tend to forget this in the modern times we live in. Anyway, more to this story later, when I am not so tired. Hugs all

Remembering Last Year

This is a New Year. In my last post I said remembering this year, meaning last year actually. I continued this in a new post just for length purposes. Rambling as I am, just wanted to have plenty room to continue to explore my thoughts. How does one find oneself when I have buried myself under other roles I play? Yes, I realize this is something we all go through at the age I am now. Most people probably go through this at a much earlier age than I did. I have been doing lots of reading on this sort of topic in the last few years. It is helping in so many ways. The frustrating part is learning all this stuff, where does it get me? What does it really change? That is the answer that could pay millions if it is found. Do we ever really know? How many go through life lost this way? In fact, do any of us go through Life NOT this way? How good we become at covering up. All the World IS a stage. Shakespeare got it right. When do we go from truth to pretending? I would guess at about age 6 or 7. Reality starts to hit about that time. Believing in Fairy Tales begins to end. Oh, I held on to those things for as long as I could, longer than any child I would wager to guess. I knew deep down that the stories were that, only stories. Why do we feed these ? I wish I had asked my parents that one. I think I may have done that when they finally told me. I believed longer because I wanted it to be true. I wanted the Dream longer, heck I wanted it forever. Was it cruel to teach these things? Was it any better the way we presented it to our Kids? I really truly do not know. My kids seem alright with it now. I think as children we are very good at seeing only what we want to see. I know I have always been good at that. Living the Dream of Happily Ever After. "Acting" Happy....when I was not. Heck for the longest time I ever believed ME. I want to go back and remember the good times....or any times in fact. To remember. To believe. To Idolize. We all do what we do to live. There are no real blueprints. There is only truly what we have lived in our past and that is just the way it is. I did not know that there was really something wrong with me all those years. I am getting to the point where I can almost forgive myself for not being perfect. I heard differently from what was said, or at least interpreted it in a negative light for me. I was to blame for everything that did not go right. I was not good enough. This could not be unless I did it. Gee whiz, who did I think I was? God? I see now that my Family was doing what they saw as what family was supposed to do to be happy. That is what I mean by people pretending their way through this life. Reality is not always good. It is not always fair. It is unfair more than fair....

Remembering This Year

This is the first nice day in about 3 weeks. We have really had Winter this year. Snow about every week and some weeks it has snowed more than once. This is not really a story about Christmas, but I wanted to write a few memories of Christmas from the first month of the new year. Sitting here thinking about what has happened over the past year and that we truly had a lot to be thankful for this year. Many might not agree with that, and to be honest, sometimes I do not feel blessed. This changes from day to day. One day I feel pretty good about things and then wham, the thoughts change to sadness at what our Family has faced since August. I look back at how selfish I have been and the regrets I have about how my mother's final years were. I think about how excited we used to get when Christmas would come every year. I was always able to imagine getting wonderful gifts. I tried to be the best me I could be. Those years are a blur now. I remember sitting in a tree and Dreaming of being anywhere I wanted to be. How simple and closed in my Life was in those days, yet I never knew it. I am not saying I was unhappy in those days, just let down when the Holiday did not turn out to be what I had seen in my mind's eye. How many children are feeling this way every year, even when getting whatever they had wanted. I realize now that it is not the size of the gift that is important. It really took me a long long time to get this into my thick skull. I used to blame my parents for these feelings. There was a time when I truly blamed them for everything that was not just perfect in my Life. Pictures of me back in those days show I was smiling. I truly did try. Did my troubles start when we moved back to Iowa from Missouri or were they there even when I was so very young. I try to rationalize my feelings. What was real in those days and what was only true in my mind. What was normal in my Life? What I saw as my parents not loving me was in fact them trying to earn enough money to support us, to pay the bills. Mom went back to school before we moved to Iowa. She had gone to college to get her 2 year degree before she got married after the war. She and my Dad got married almost as soon as he returned from the War. They were very young. I recently went through some old pictures that I did not even know my folks had. Dad met me in a park and we went through the pictures and he told me who the people were, those he remembered. His memory is fading as is Mine. I plan on getting together with him when this weather straightens out. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice with chances of rain in the afternoon. I have a Heart Doctor appt. Will see what the next step is. I am starting to think that there is no next step. I do not want to have the surgery. The odds do not seem worth the risk to me. My spells still happen sometimes, but I can certainly live with it. That is what I mean when I said that this Christmas was one to be Thankful for. I got the Treadmill I wanted and have been using it often. I wanted to progress faster to more time or increased fitness, but as per usual for me, it is taking longer than wanted. But as they say, good things come to those who wait. We are also Thankful that we still have our Ava. I have written about her in other places. She is a true fighter and seems to want to be here with us. I am drifting in my thoughts, but I never have a plan when I write. Just let the mind ramble.

The idea of this article was to celebrate Christmas. Celebrate we did. I got a bit carried away with the gift buying this year. So much looking and decided, I kinda went a bit crazy buying too many gifts for the boys. Had to save a few for next time. Not sure what we spent, but it was more than enough. Hubby has been extremely generous for the past several years...my leaving for a while seems to have awakened his generosity. I have detailed this in other posts. When I was growing up, we had very little money for Christmas. I cannot remember one year when I was totally happy with what I got. I do not say that to be selfish, just is the truth. I think my belief in Santa no matter what led to my huge let downs when the gifts were not what I wanted.

It's Christmas Time All Over the World

Thoughts of Songs of the Season still ramble around in my head even though
the day has come and gone once again.

No Snow, but that too is alright with me. The girls were traveling so it
did not bother me that the weather behaved.

It did not in other parts of the world.

I am Happy this Year. Truly feeling it for a change. Knowing that
whatever comes this next year will be what I make of it. Having
that control makes me feel better and better. I have always had
it, but had lost the knowledge that I had it.

Maybe that makes no sense, but it is true.

Having 2 grandsons to celebrate the season with makes every
day better.

They are fast growing up and before I blink Tyler will be in
School! He already goes to daycare.

More about this later,

Goodnight

Hugs to you and yours from me and mine.

Katie

Where did this year go?

They say time flies when you are having fun.
Also, every year after you get out of High School
goes by faster.

Wow, are these statements ever true!

This year has been a blur. Days and months fly
by before I feel I accomplish much of anything!

I am spending lots of time loving my children and
grandsons, so the time has been perfectly well spent.

Also this year, I have been doing my best work on myself
ever. I am getting fit, thinner and happier.

Sure, I have not lost as much weight as I thought I would
have by this time, but that will still be alright. The
important thing for me to remember,(this is mainly written to me),
is that I am moving forward, no longer looking back and wondering,
wanting, hurting or fleeing.

For the first time in many years I feel perfectly good about myself.
I love me again. This may not sound like much to some, but it means
the world to me. It has been a long time coming and has not been the
easiest or smoothest journey. There have been many bumps in the road,
some major ones. I wish I had known years ago that the feelings I was
having and the way I was getting through Life could and have been helped.
We too often do not know how to ask for help, or don't even realize WE
need it!

The depth of my problems came about as I thought I had cruised through
"the change". What I did not realize at the time was that I had never
taken care of me. I never thought I was deserving. Now what put that
thought into my head, I will possibly never know. The good thing is that
the realization finally came and I did something about it.

Part of the cause of it was my giving up my accomplice in sabotage,
food. Do you know how hard that was to do? I still am not totally
there yet, but I am getting close.

So many things have changed. Most of them are in my attitude. It does
not matter now what caused me to veer off the deep end. The important
thing is that I have asked for help. Possibly I will need to ask for more
before getting to the end of my journey. If so, I will step up and ask
my family before I let it become a major problem. I so thought I was
all alone in it, and I am NOT.

So much good happened this year. So much happened last year too, but
I was too sick then to see it. I knew something was wrong when I could
not "feel" the joy I should upon learning I was going to become a
grandmother for the second time.

This all came to a head when I moved out just before the Holidays.
Lock, stock and barrel. Every thing I could move on my own went.
Husband came home to me gone. I think now about how that must have
hurt him and am so ashamed. Never was it my intent to hurt the ones
I love more than Life itself.

I had lost myself. I know that I did not feel much from about the time
Lacey turned 15 or 16. Guess I knew, or at least thought, they did not
need or want me anymore. I had become a part of the furniture.

Little did I know that I had more things wrong with me than showed on
the surface. I know now why I quit the last 2 jobs or more I have had.
I knew I was going to die there if I didn't get out. Come to find out,
I was closer to right than I ever want to be. First we found out that
both Larry and I developed High Blood Pressure. We went to the doctor
and got on pills for this. I am still eating right and the weight has
decided it likes where it is, it has had more trouble breaking up than
I did!

Long story short, I have a heart condition. I am not sure how long I
have had it, but now I believe it has been most or all of my Life.
It makes sense when I look back. No energy. No ambition. No wanting
to move or exercise. Maybe if I had been more physical, we would have
noticed the problem much earlier in my Life. This or the Depression
that has helped to pull or hold me back.

Now that I know all of this, I have the strength to "get better".
Nor did I realize that none of this was my fault. I was not a bad
person. So many with Depression go undiagnosed. I think Larry is
very depressed, yet will do nothing about it.

More later, need to get my walk in for today.

Hugs whomever reads this, and hugs to me too!

Katie