Careful & Courageous

Poppies photo by Edgar Laureano on Unsplash

As we enter week 11 of stay-at-home restrictions, our county is in reopening phase 2, so yesterday we were able to go to church in person. Saturday, our pastor posted a video walking through how things would look - single entry door, communion in stacked cups for one touch point, no more paper and pen for filling in connect cards - just digital sign in, etc. But before that, he talked about Deuteronomy 31:9 and how Moses told Joshua to be strong and courageous as the Jews finally were able to enter the promised land. And now, as things are reopening, and there's a full spectrum of response from insistence that it's too early, to uncertainty, to people partying at the Lake of the Ozarks this first weekend of summer, it's important to be careful but also courageous like Joshua. I think that's good advice. We can't keep living the way we have, but we certainly can't go back to how things were. And with there still being a lot of unknowns about this virus, we need to proceed cautiously, but we also shouldn't live in constant fear.

Careful and courageous.

It's the approach soldiers protecting our freedoms have taken, and as we honor those who sacrificed their lives today, Memorial Day, it seems fitting to keep it in mind for us as well.

Milestones

Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

At work I'm on our Social Committee. It's been tough to keep morale up while everyone is working remotely. This week we decided to do a fun series of throwback photos - Wednesday was high school pictures. Yesterday was photos from milestones in life. Suggestions were first job, graduation, marriage, kids, etc. Of course I immediately thought of the births of the kids. Someone posted the first time they went to a Super Bowl game. I got to thinking outside of the suggested areas. What were pivotal moments in my life?

Falling off my bunk bed and breaking my nose in 1978.
Starting kindergarten in 1980.
Taking my first dance class in 1980.
Starting softball in 1981.
Taking my first ballet class in 1982.
Meeting my lifelong BFF in 1984.
Royals winning the World Series in 1985.
Witnessing the Challenger crash in 1986.
Breaking my hand in 1986.
Getting stitches in 1987.
Watching the Berlin Wall come down in 1987.
Winning 1st place at a national dance championship in Disneyland in 1988.
Becoming best friends with the rest of my HS girls in 1988.
KU winning the national championship in 1988.
Accepting Jesus as my Lord in 1989.
Going to my first concert - Bon Jovi - in 1989.
Dad having triple bypass open heart surgery in 1990.
Watching kids in my high school stage peace sit-ins opposing the Gulf War in 1990.
My first kiss in 1992.
Graduating high school in 1993.
Meeting my future husband in 1994.
Moving to Colorado for college where I knew no one in 1995.
Making a new best friend in my dorm roommate in 1995.
Pledging Theta in 1995.
Graduating college (the first in my family) in 1997.
Starting my first "real" job in 1998.
Moving into an apartment with one of my HS BFFs in 1998.
Meeting the SPC kids and moving into a duplex with 2 of them in 1999.
Stocking up on a few things for Y2K in 1999.
Celebrating a new millennium in 2000.
Going back to school and finding a career in 2000.
Witnessing 9/11 in 2001.
Traveling to Hawaii for 3 weeks with my newest BFF from work in 2003.
Being sexually assaulted in 2003.
Getting married in 2005.
Taking a family trip to visit my mom's home in Canada in 2006.
Getting to travel to China for work in 2006.
Having to put down DH's dog, Scorpio, in 2007.
S being born in 2007.
KU winning the national championship in 2008.
Barack Obama being the first African-American to win the presidential election in 2008.
Joining Facebook in 2009.
Getting vaccinated for H1N1 swine flu in 2009.
Buying our first house together in 2009.
R being born in 2009.
Starting this blog in 2009.
Totaling my car in 2010.
Opening an Etsy shop in 2011.
Getting laid off in 2012.
Having a miscarriage in 2012.
V being born in 2013.
Mom being diagnosed with Alzheimers in 2014.
Royals winning the World Series in 2015.
Finally being baptized in 2016.
Taking the kids to Disneyland in 2016.
Dad passing away in 2018.
Having surgery in 2019.
Getting our dog, Judy, 2019.
Chiefs winning the Super Bowl in 2020.
Going into quarantine due to COVID-19 coroanvirus in 2020.

Staying Connected to Loved Ones in Memory Care During COVID-19

Since the company I work for does marketing for senior living, I was able to write a post about how this is affecting me personally that they shared on their blog today. So hop on over and check it out.

SPC

One of the highlights of the shelter-at-home order is that I have nothing on my schedule that prevents me from attending virtual happy hours with my SPC friends.

When I was working at my first job, I became friends with a girl, Red, whose sister worked at Garmin. There were some guys there who played volleyball, and since Red played in high school and was new to the area, her sister suggested she join them to meet people. Not wanting to go alone, she asked me to go with her. We had a blast and started hanging out with them and their friends.

The group grew to encompass 25-30 people from Garmin, K-State, Sprint, volleyball teams and people who were only connected through other members. Because there wasn't one factor that linked us all, a girl started referring to our group as the Social Planning Committee, or SPC for short.

We were all single and in our 20s. Many of them weren't from KC. We played volleyball a couple of nights a week, went out dancing on Saturday nights, and grilled out together Sundays. We became roommates with each other, took trips together, celebrated Thanksgiving Eve with drinks around the world at a local bar, went to concerts, and did life. We became each other's family.

As time went on, we went through weddings and divorces, miscarriages and death of parents. Some people moved away. A few new people joined the group. As our kids got older and more involved with activities, our schedules filled up. We saw each other less and less - a couple of times a year instead of a couple of times a week.

Despite those obstacles, over the last 20 years we've still managed to keep in touch. We set up a Facebook group page. We still hung out on Thanksgiving Eve and got together for birthdays when we could. But I felt a real sense of loss. I love my husband, kids, mom and sisters, but I still miss my SPC family.

Since the first week of shelter-in-place though, we've had a weekly Zoom happy hour. And it's been awesome. There've been 10-15 of us log in and chat for an hour or so. It's been a bright point in a storm, and I'm grateful for it.

He Is Risen

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

A lot of my focus and posts have been on the anxiety and negativity caused by this quarantine. I've felt lonely and frustrated and stressed and irritated and tired and wanted to scream. It's created strain in my marriage, impatience in my parenting and tension at work. But there are good things. It's forced us to slow down. We used to run from activity to activity. And I do actually feel like those were good for the kids - they didn't have that many things each - but 2 activities per kid is 6 for me to shuttle them to. So not having anywhere to go on the weekends has helped me get a little more done with housekeeping (though admittedly not as much as is needed), and to have time to rest and not feel guilty. And to start to ask the question - what does God want me to learn from this?

This quarantine has been a time of seclusion and reflection for many. I've not spent as much time in  the word as I should, but I do pray about it often. It's a season of waiting. It seems as though there should be a growth of some kind. Easter was today. The resurrection. Death of the old; birth of the new. I'm praying to hear God's will for me in this time, so I can emerge from this season in alignment with Him.

Lord of the Flies

Art class color wheel assignment

School started this week. Which basically meant that the kids got away with murder because I just needed them out of my hair so I could work. It's like Lord of the Flies here. They're going to have fond memories of the quarantine. "Remember when Mom didn't have the capacity to discipline us so we got to do whatever we wanted? Good times."

The house is a mess, V did no school work (the girls were good about it), the lunch menu went out the window and they may have had pizza 3 days in a row (I think?), the dog is stir crazy, my body aches from typing in weird places because I have no office/desk and none of the tables and chairs are the right size for me, we found out that our office is planning for us to work from home through the end of May, and V got stung by a wasp - that was somehow in our house on a 30 degree day?

But my anxiety has lessened amid the chaos, so feeling grateful.

Fun

In the gloom and doom, we're trying to find ways to have fun. Even with the rain, the dog needs to go for a walk, so when it was mostly dry, I took her and V around the block. He rode his scooter, and along the way noticed all the birds chirping. He said, "Mom! I can here that hoo-hee bird all the way at our house!" He was talking about the blue jay. So cute.

A little while later he said, "I need to pet Judy. My hands hurt from riding my scooter. (From the vibrations of the sidewalk bumps) She's soft. This is why I wanted to get a dog!" Pretty sure that wasn't your original need, but glad it's working out for you, buddy.

Side note: I haven't posted yet about getting our dog! She's a black lab mix who we rescued in September. We had planned to change her name, but V called her Judy about 500x in the first hour she was home, so there was no going back. She just turned 1 a couple of weeks ago. She chews on EVERYTHING, so she has to stay in the kitchen. (We've lost 2 dining chairs already.) She usually was in her kennel while we were at work/school, but now that we're home all the time, we leave her out, but then she whines if we're not in the kitchen with her. And she's figured out how to open the gates, so we have a bit of a struggle on work days. We need to install a fence, but are trying to be frugal right now just in case. Overall, she's great and we love having her as an addition to our family.


Speaking of our family, I haven't updated the blog Cast of Characters in a long time, so I did that today. It still said:

S
Our 9-year-old – spunky, contemplative and sassy.

Baby R
Our tenderhearted 7-year-old loves dancing, princesses and dreaming of ruling the free world.

Cinco

Our son. He's a big boy now, and all of the highs and lows of being 3 years old.

It's funny because my dad is the only one who called V Cinco. I've updated the sidebar to say V now since that's what we use for his initials when labeling things. Crazy to think of all the things that have happened since I last changed it. 

One of those things was that the Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV. It's been FIFTY years since we've been to the Super Bowl. It was crazy and awesome and I'm still somewhat in awe that it was real. We got our new Super Bowl bags yesterday, and it was sunny and gorgeous out, though still muddy, so we played on the driveway. 

Today we participated in online church for the second week which is so awesome. If you are looking for a place/way to worship, you should check it out: 
https://foundrychurchkc.com/

After that R was doing an assignment for her music teacher - tomorrow is when remote learning officially starts for us, but some of the teachers have been keeping in touch with activities to keep the kids busy. She was supposed to make her own music video of her singing along to a song she likes. After she finished, she asked S if she wanted to do one with her. They were so sweet together, I had to record a few seconds. The girls are in a stage where they fight a lot, but have fun together a lot, so trying to capture those moments when I can.

The Light In the Storm

What an emotional roller coaster it's been. Last week felt like a month passed between Monday and Friday. The weather was cold and rainy most of last week. Yesterday, the Kansas City metro was directed to shelter in place to continue helping flatten the curve of the outbreak. As an extrovert, I've struggled with the lack of human contact. I'm loving being with my kids more, but it's been incredibly stressful. I've never been good at balancing working and being a mom, and now that I have to do all of it in the same space, I'm floundering. 

That said, I know I'm incredibly lucky to have a job still, and one that I can do from home. And even luckier that the same is true for DH. So many we know are out of work or struggling with limits on their work options. So I'm really pushing myself to find the silver linings that coincide with the frustrations. One of them is the opportunity to do devotions with the kids at lunch each day. I've had a lot of anxiety lately, and I'm struggling to lean in to God and trust and let go. It's certainly fodder for a season of growth for me. 

This photo I took last week is a great illustration. This church is across the way from our neighborhood. There have been other times when the spire has been highlighted by the sun after a storm, but I'm usually driving or in a rush to get somewhere. A blessing of this time is that I'm out walking more and have very little time constraint. I was able to stop and take this picture. Thankful for the opportunity to capture a peaceful moment in this time of chaos.

The Big Valley

So ironically, the time I needed to be writing I didn't. The largest valley of my life started in the January of 2018 with my dad having congestive heart failure. His kidneys finally gave out from that, and he started dialysis. After three weeks in the hospital, he was released to rehab and after three weeks there they let us know he couldn't go back to living in his apartment alone. We had to scramble to find him a senior living home in a few days. Luckily he could handle an independent living place. Unfortunately, the only dialysis times available at first were 5am Monday-Wednesday-Friday. So I was up at 4am to take him for a few weeks until he was able to get a different time slot. Thankfully by then he was also strong enough to drive himself since in April, DH had hernia surgery.

It should have been a simple outpatient procedure, but due to the opioid crisis, the pain meds he was prescribed were less than he needed, and he ended up having a vasovagel episode at home resulting in my having to call 911 while he was unconscious. After three days in the hospital, he finally came home. The silver lining to his experience was a greater appreciation for the three C-sections I had.

That was followed in May by my own trip to the Minute Clinic due to severe abdominal pains. They were concerned it could be appendicitis so they refused to do a diagnosis and sent me on to Urgent Care. FYI, Urgent Care will also not be able to help in that scenario, you must go to the Emergency Room. I tell you that to save you the other two co-pays if you're in the same situation. The fun part was that we saw our favorite ER doc who usually was there to check Dad in, but this time it was me. Basically, it was a wasted trip. It was just stress.

Oddly enough that wasn't our last appendicitis scare for the year, though the one we had in the fall was legit. This time, it was DH, so he had his second abdominal surgery in a less than six months. He had been training for the Marine Corps Marathon and was devastated by this setback. But he had much better pain meds, and bounced back much more quickly so was able to get back on track.

October 24, 2018 my dad passed away.

It was strange because he'd been so sick in the spring but he was doing so well over the summer - using his walker to come to the kids' activities, enjoying life at the senior community. When he went to the hospital on October 22, it was because he'd been at dialysis and his blood pressure was too low for them to let him leave. He still felt good - in typical fashion, giving the ambulance driver directions on the best way to the hospital. They gave him a blood transfusion, which wasn't anything new. When I went to see him Wednesday night, he was crabby, but I thought he was just tired. I kissed him goodbye and told him I'd see him in the morning. When I got home, DH and I were talking about his upcoming trip to Washington, DC Friday when he was finally going to get to run the Marine Corps Marathon. And then 20 minutes later, the hospital called. The nurse said they had started chest compressions and asked me if we had talked about what his wishes were. I said,"No, stop - he has a DNR!" She frantically told them to stop. I couldn't believe it. He'd been in that hospital for 3 days on this visit, but had been so many times over the years that several of the staff members knew him. Regardless, he was an old man - wouldn't that have been the first thing to check? He would have been so pissed if they had brought him back.

Anyway, DH was going to cancel his trip, but I told him that was ridiculous - he'd been through so much this year he had to go. Besides, my sister was in NYC and still had to fly home to STL before coming back here so it wasn't like the funeral was going to happen for a few days. He didn't want to leave me, but the upside to having a parent who's been on the verge of death most of your life is that while it's still terrible when it  happens, you aren't as unprepared as someone who hasn't been through that. DH completing the marathon was the bright light we needed in deep valley we were in. And he was my rock when he got home and we had the funeral.

Things went back to a new normal, though for Thanksgiving we just went out for Mexican since it was the first holiday without Dad. Then December 22, my father-in-law had a stroke. Luckily, DH and my mother-in-law were with him. They were all helping DH's Aunt P move. My FIL and Aunt P's boyfriend were following each other, and her boyfriend noticed that my FIL pulled the car over. He came back to check on him, and when my FIL said he couldn't move his right side, he called 911. Luckily he was able to quickly be treated at the nearest hospital to prevent the stroke effects from getting worse. Then they decided to move him to a hospital downtown to have his carotid artery cleaned out.

DH waited til they got settled in, then ran out to get some lunch. On his way back, he was sitting at a  stoplight, and a truck coming the opposite direction came across the median and hit him head on. The driver had some kind of episode and passed out behind the wheel. Thankfully, DH had minor injuries, but the brand new Explorer we'd only had for 6 months was totaled.

And because we needed an exclamation point to finish off the year, I threw out my back for the first time in my life December 30.

I kept thinking things would turn around after the first of the year. Surely 2019 can't be as bad as 2018? Unfortunately, it took some time for that to happen. The accident happened on the Missouri side of the city, and they took over a month to get the police report completed. It ended up requiring a lawsuit to get enough money to cover most of the bills we incurred which dragged out for a couple of months.

In the meantime, I'd started having really heavy periods the previous summer, and they'd just gotten worse and worse. To the point that I had to leave work one day in January. So finally went to the doctor about it. She thought I might have a polyp so had me come back for a possible in-office procedure. Unfortunately, it wasn't just one small one, she saw 2 very large ones that almost were the size of my uterus. So in April it was my turn for surgery. She found another polyp while she was in there and did an ablation to help keep them from coming back. So far so good!

Things (kind of?) started getting better after that. It's a weird time right now, of course. Counting our blessings.

St. Patrick's Day

We started the day with a bit of normal. Our tradition is to have Lucky Charms for breakfast on St. Patrick's Day. Mixed it up a little by trying the chocolate kind.

We added something new since I'm working from home. We had devotional time at lunch. The verse we discussed was Psalm 119:105

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

And we finished the day with another tradition for dinner, corned beef and cabbage. I'm not a big fan, but DH loves it. Luckily, R liked it enough to eat a full serving, too.

Unfortunately, things took a big twist after dinner. Governor Laura Kelly announced that all K-12 schools in the state of Kansas would be closed for the remainder of the school year.

I'm trying really hard to understand how this will work. The kids who have special education needs won't have the help they need. The health care workers and hourly wage workers won't be able to have care for their kids. The seniors won't have prom or graduation.

Holding on to the verse from today. Definitely need to seek Him in this crazy time.

Pre-Apocalypse?

I imagine there are many out there who've fallen away from blogging who will be back at it in the days to come. Life is surreal right now for most of the world. COVID-19 is the word of the day. It's a coronavirus like SARS, but a different strain. Only this one made its way to the US. At the moment, the death rate is roughly the same as the regular flu (2.5%). And, like the regular flu, is more dangerous for the elderly or those with compromised immune systems. Unlike the regular flu, so far it doesn't have as dangerous implications for children. Which is good. The tricky thing is that this strain is contagious before you have symptoms. Which has led to worldwide panic.

In preparation for shutting everything down, people have bought all the toilet paper. No one really knows why, but it's made for great memes.

Photo credit

I don't want to make light of this virus. But I'm much more afraid of how this will impact our economy. My husband and I have both been told to work from home - him for 3 weeks, me indefinitely. Our kids' school district is on spring break this coming week, but will probably shut down the week after. We have the luxury of working from home, and using some PTO if necessary. Not everyone is in the same situation.

Anyway, we'll see how it all goes. On the up side, hopefully I'll be better about making time to blog, Lots has happened since my last post. Wash your hands, don't touch your face, and stop hoarding TP.