Kitty issues

I wish I could start today over.  Yuck.

I woke up this morning on my own.  Wondering what woke me up, I stretched out in my bed and then I realized what must have woke me up......When I was stretching, my foot hit a cold, west spot on my bed.   Some animal, one of the cats, peed on my bed.  This really ticked me off because last night my new kitten had some nasty diarrhea behind my curio cabinet.

After stripping the bed, and loading some of the bedding into my washer I took the kitten and her litter box and dumped her in the half bathroom.  I don't know what to do with her.  She hadn't had any accidents in the week we'd had her.  The only thing I can think of, is that yesterday morning before work, I moved her litter box downstairs to the basement with my other cat's litterbox.  I put them side by side in the laundry room.  I showed both cats where they were and left it at that.

This morning I realized, after the whole pee in the bed incident, that neither of my cats had gone since yesterday.  WTF???   So I don't know if they didn't like the basement laundry room, or if one of the cats was bullying the other out of the litter box.  I figured I will just separate the cats and see if any more accidents occur within the next few days.  THen maybe I'll try again and put the boxes downstairs in another part of the basement.  She keeps this up though, and she's out of here!   It's a bummer.  I just want a nice kitty to play with my other cat.  Why isn't ANYTHING easy?

After that whole debacle, I was happy to get out of the house.  I went with my neighbor to a local church for their cookie walk.  We are talking wall-to-wall cookies.  You walk in, they give you a box and a plastic glove and let you go and fill up your box.  It was 8.00 a pound and i ended up spending $14.00 in cookies.  I thought it was a lot, but they're not going to last long in this house!

Hubs has been blah today.  Last night he was feeling good and invited the neighbors over to play board games.  We ended up just watching our babies play together, but it was still fun!  THis morning, however, he is grumpy.   I mentioned a parade today and that our nighbors invited us to go and he got all cranky.   He wants to do his own thing on the weekends because he is so bored on the weekdays.   I get that, but the weekends are family time....least in my eyes.  We're all home, we can go do stuff together.    He'd rather go ride his motorcycle and do things he likes to do.

It's just frustrating.  I totally get out he is bored during the week.  He has no job, no hobbies, and he is afraid of losing his rating so he won't go volunteer somewhere or do anything.  PTSD is holding him hostage!

The kids

My little baby boy is almost 10 months old.  It seems like only yesterday I was sitting at the kitchen table with my feet up because my ankles were so swollen they were disgusting.  Time sure does fly sometimes.  Just the other day he fit so well into my hands and was so teeny tiny.  Now the little munchkin is crawling all over the place and he's been pulling himself up on everything.   Yesterday he walked around the coffee table and around the couch by holding onto the furniture.  Yikes, not sure I'm ready for walking yet.  In fact, I know I'm not!

Then there's my baby girl.  She's been through so much, including the time in our lives when Hubby wasn't receiving any help from the VA.  She has had to see a lot, go through a lot.  I've tried to shield her, but I'm sure it's affected her....how could it not?   She's such a trooper though.  She's definitely got the sassy attitude....wonder where she got that?  Lol.  She's very artistic and I just can't wait to see what awesome things she continues to accomplish as she gets older.

Sometimes, all the time I worry about how all this PTSD crap is going to affect my kids.  Will they grow up thinking that this environment is normal?  I sure hope not.  I pray that they aren't going to need years of therapy and blame their mom for staying in an environment that isn't always probably the healthiest.  There's no abuse here, let me be clear.  It's just.....well......Our household is not really a happy one.  Hubs is depressed all the time.  I'm stressed out majority of the time.  How did we get here?  This is definitely NOT how I envisioned raising my kids.  I always wanted a very involved husband, and I always pictured us being very outgoing and taking our kids lots of places and having the Donna Reed type home where everything is happy happy.   Well, I'm not Donna Reed and he is definitely no whatever-Donna-Reed's-husband-was-called.

We do try though.  Even though Hubs is depressed all the time, he does try to put on a happy face for the kids.  We don't do as much outside the home as other families, but we do get out on outings like the local zoo, we take our daughter to the movies and I try to have a few playdates for her.  Even through all that though....there are days that I'm just too exhausted by the end of the day to make a great home-cooked meal for her.  My family eats more take-out and hotdogs than I'd care to admit.....but my kids are clean, fed, and they are loved.  Yes they are.

I hope they know how much we love them.  I think they do.  I hope that in the end, they grow up realizing that their dad did his best, and that he was a good dad, despite, or perhaps in spite of his fog of depression and anxiety.  I hope they grow up knowing their mom shielded them as best she could from the brunt of his irrational mood swings and anxiety-driven rages.   I think they'll grow up maybe a little older than their years, maybe with a little more weight on their shoulders than they should have had to have bared.  But.....Above all else, I hope they know that their mom and dad did their best.  That they love them, that they want the best for them, and that we would do anything for them.

I think they will.

Zoo Day

Yesterday was a good day.

Hubs woke up and actually was kind of peppy.  He told me he wanted to do something with the kids and I, which is a BIG DEAL.  He hardly ever offers up enthusiasm and he actually suggested an idea for a family outing.  Turns out that the zoo had a Kids Night after hours and he was up for it.  We loaded up the kids and off we went.  When we got there, I saw that the parking lot was pretty darn full. Uh-oh.  I instantly started to get a little nervous that the crowds would set him off.  I held my breathe and in we went.

It was a lovely day.  Hubs never once lost his cool at the zoo.   We didn't argue, we didn't have to hurry up and leave because he was feeling claustrophobic.  We shared some fries, rode on the train around the zoo, and looked at animals.  Funny huh, how such a simple trip to the zoo is such a big deal to my family and most people probably take it for granted.  Do they realize how lucky they are?  To decide spur of the moment to go to the zoo and not worry about arguing, or if something is going to set them off?  Days like yesterday are few and far between for my family.  My goal, my plan, is to hold onto those days and talk about them.  Hopefully my kids will remember the good days more than the bad.

Here's an interesting fact:

"Like people, elephants can also become victims of past traumas and exhibit symptoms of PTSD years after the experience Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a condition that describes anxiety-based responses to life-threatening events."

G.A Bradshaw, PhD.

Yes, elephants can get PTSD.  I found that out watching some kind of documentary on ABC News or some other news program.  We stopped to look at the elephants briefly the other day.  I have a sense of kinship with them.  These huge animals, who look so gentle, can be brutal to humans because they remember the traumas.  Elephants never forget, after all.    Elephants have become my symbol that represents PTSD.  Watching them, I wondered if they have good days and bad.  Do they get depressed?  Do elephants worry?

soccer mom

I am now a soccer mom.

Growing up, in my tiny little town, soccer was not one of the choices of rec sports.  Pretty much, when I was her age, the choice was T-ball or nothing.  I did try T-ball.  My dad loves baseball and played it all the way through school so it was in my genes.

Not.

I stunk at it.  I did manage to make it through T-ball to Coach pitch softball.  Yes, the coach is the one that throws the softball to the players. Anyway, I remember standing behind the coach so I couldn't see the ball.  Yes, stupid on my part.  Well, the girl at bat nailed that ball, the coach jumped out of the way and I got bashed in the chin by the softball.  I remember my dad coming and carrying me off the field.  That was the end of sports for me.

Our daughter tried T-ball too.  I felt it was kind of a right of passage in youth.  After all, baseball is America's pastime.  Well, she liked it about as well as I did.  After last season I told her she didn't have to play it anymore, she had tried.  Which brought the question of what now?  Even though I was not sporty at all, I value what sports can do for a kid.  Boost the confidence, great exercise, team socializing, etc.  So, i was happy that she kept going back to wanting to try soccer.

This was her first week.  Practice on Wednesday was brutal.  Some of these kids have been playing since the womb, I think.  You could tell there were some very serious players out there.  Out daughter has no experience with soccer except for what she has done in PE class.  She was so excited though!  She chased that ball and did all the warmups and stuff.  The last half of practice they had a little mini scrimmage.  She did pretty good.  Afterwards she fell down, exhausted, onto the grass.  "I am so exhausted and hot, but that was so. much. fun!"

Last night was her first game.  Her dad was in a snit about something and I told him if he was going to be a turd, don't even bother coming home for the weekend.  I didn't want to sour her first experience.  But, he came and was decent.  It was frickin freezing out.  The in-laws drove up to watch and my mother-in-law ended up staying in the car with the baby because she was cold.  Our kid got nailed in the face with a soccer ball before the game even started.  I blame the coach.  He had them doing drills to kick the ball into the net, and she was getting her ball after kicking it and some kid kicked it and she got it right in the face.  I was afraid her nose had broke.  It didn't help that with the cold, things hurt more.  But, no blood, no broken teeth and her nose wasn't broke so back in she went!  She was a little skittish the game and didnt want to get too close to the ball after getting hit like that.  But, I think she is a natural!

So there ya go, I'm a soccer mom.  I just need the minivan to go with it.  Oh wait, no minivan.  Not quite ready for that!

Discovery World

  There are good days and bad.....for both of us.  My last post was a bit of a meltdown.  However, meltdowns are good.  You can't keep it bottled in or you explode.  And so, I blog.

Today we decided that we needed to do something as a family.  The stress of the past week and the emotional toll it had taken on the whole family was showing.  We needed to reconnect with each other and our children.  So, this afternoon, we went to Discovery World.

Discovery World is this little....well, discovery center.  It's on the banks of Lake Michigan and it has several exhibits.  We had never been before, but I had heard of it, and looking at it's website, it sounded kind of neat.  I will say that it's not a place I'll go to often, but it had a few neat things.  One of my favorite features was a little aquarium at one end.  You take an elevator down to the ground floor and there's little tanks set up around you.  Then, you turn the corner and this is what you see:

It was so cool to walk through the tunnel with fish all around, below and above you.  Our daughter LOVED it.  She kept staring at her feet and watching the fish swim by and then she'd call me over to look at some other fish she'd spy above her.  I really want to take her to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago because I think she'd really enjoy that place.  We have taken her before, but she was younger and doesn't remember much of it.

There were some other exhibits she liked:  a large ship she crawled around in, a bed of nails she got to lay on, and a large section of gears she got to mess with to make things move.  There was also an exhibit for the Hubs.  That's how I got him motivated to go....an entire exhibit of Les Paul guitar stuff.  Over all, fun times.  There were some exhibits closed which bummed me out, but not a bad place to spend a few hours on a Sunday.

One thing I've learned is to embrace the happy.  The moments we can just be as a family and enjoy our time together, I suck all that in and hold onto it as much as possible.  Tomorrow might suck, but for today, happiness.