My First Time

Yes, this is my first time. My first time to blog. I set this page up 2 years ago to post funny things my son says, but I'm kind of lazy. I think about blogging, quite often, but after I get all my thoughts lined out in my head, they kind of drift away and I can't remember what I was going to say. That's a really long sentence. See, I've already started to drift away. It's been real slow at work, so I've been reading various blogs. You know how it is, you read someone's blog, and then you see another link and you follow it. Next thing you know, you're 4 blogs removed. Today I read about Matt, Liz & Madeline. That was hard. It made me appreciate my family and my sweet 4.5 month old baby boy. It put things in perspective for me, and that's a good thing. I get depressed, often, and I have lots of pity parties for myself. Sometimes it's hard for me to feel emotion, so reading about someone else's sadness made me really snap out of my depression today.

See how lazy I am? I started this last night, and almost 24 hours later I'm sitting down to finish. So, back to not feeling emotion. I know what that stems from, but it's a long story for another day. I read some more about Matt & Madeline today. She's 14 weeks old and so cute. She looks just like her mother. Reading about how full their life is, even after suffering such a great loss, really inspires me to be more spontaneous. I wonder if anyone is ever going to read this?

The things you could not show her

So I cried all the way to work today, even while I dropped Ryan off at school. A song on the radio made me think of Liz Logelin. It's amazing how someone I never met can have such an effect. I know she's gone, but I look at the pictures of her, and I just want to yell, "She's right there!" And it makes my heart ache to think of Madeline, and how she'll never get to feel her mother's touch, or throw her arms around her neck. And for Matt, who will get to see so many things, but never be able to share them with Liz.

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving
Oh the days go by so fast

And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven
I wish you would
(Na na na, etc. yeah)

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

And it's one more day up in the canyons
And it's one more night in Hollywood
If you think you might come to California
I think you should
(Na na na, etc. yeah)

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after 2 a.m.
And talked a little while about the year
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it's one more day up in the canyon
And it's one more night in Hollywood
It's been so long since I've seen the ocean
I guess I should
(Na na na, etc. yeah)

2 words or 8 words or 20 words

I guess I haven't had anything to say for a month. If you know me, you know that's not true. But I haven't had any life changing experiences to share, I'll just tell you how I came up with the name for my blog.

In the summer of 2008, I was bound and determined that I was going to get Ryan on an airplane. We needed to go somewhere far enough that would justify a plane ride, but not so far that we spent 8 hours on a plane with a three year old. How about Florida? Disney World was out, too expensive. The location needed to be someplace near the beach, but with other things to do as well. I kept gravitating to Cocoa Beach. Subconsciously I must have been hoping to run into Major Nelson. That was wishful thinking on my part.

Ryan is really excited to go on a plane ride. He can't wait to "blast off."

So we fly into Orlando, and don't go to Disney World. Is that just insane? I haven't decided yet. Get the kids, get the bags, get the rental car, and off we go to Cocoa Beach. Zipping down the highway, a thousand things are running through Ryan's mind. He stops to ponder some cartoon he's recently watched and in the process, decides to yell at his sister, "I have two words for you, TOO BAD!" This causes the whole car just to erupt in laughter. And because his little mind never stops working, he proceeds to yell out "I have 8 words for you" or "I have 5 words for you" which is then followed by some giggly nonsense which isn't 8 or 5 words long.

Thank You

Thank you, Matt Logelin. Thank you for sharing your story, even though it was heartbreaking at times. Thank you for baring your soul, in a way that most men never would. Thank you for inspiring me, to be a better person. Your descriptive writing brought Liz into my life. Every diaper change and feeding and shopping trip, I've lived a thousand times in my own life.

I had a baby on August 6. He was beautiful and perfect and loud. It was the easiest delivery ever. The epidural was awesome, and I only pushed for 15 minutes. Yeah, I could do this again, wait what? So I lay in my hospital bed, and millions of people (really just 2 loud kids and 2 loud grandparents) paraded through my room to see my new precious boy, Sam. We all got settled in our room, and I began to have this nagging chest pressure and difficulty breathing, but all I wanted was to go home. With my other 2 pregnancies, I stayed in the hospital as long as I could. With Sam, I was ready to go home the first day. There were many other things going on in my life and I really needed to get home and tend to my family. There was a 10 year old girl and a 5 year old boy and a husband, who wanted their mom and wife to come home. So we waited the 24 hours, all the while, the chest pressure getting worse. But I thought, it's nothing, so I didn't say anything, because I just wanted to go home. Amazingly, Sam wouldn't eat. This is shocking now because he likes so spend all night eating, but the first 24 hours, nothing. He just wanted to nap. I'd try to nurse, and his lips would be pursed together and his eyes just two little slits as he glared at me. How dare I interrupt all this napping, especially after I had kicked him out of his nice warm living quarters. I'm kind of mean that way. My kids don't call me the fun killer for nothing. The next day, he decided he was hungry, and everyone on the floor knew it. He's continued this ritual at home. So after 48 hours, we loaded up and headed out. And did we look like a sight. Me in the wheelchair with Sam in the car seat. The kids each dragging a bag, while my husband waited downstairs in the car. My chest hurting all the way. The first 24 hours at home were a whirlwind. Everyone wanted to hold the baby, then not hold the baby, then feed the baby, then show me their progress on the video game, and on and on. Luckily my mom had been there and cleaned the house while I was still in the hospital, so it was still vaguely clean. I tried to rest, but every time I would drift off, somebody needed me. Plus it was hard to breathe when I lay down. By the fourth day, I knew something was wrong. And before I ever looked up my symptoms on the internet, I knew that it was most likely pulmonary embolism. WebMD confirmed my suspicion, and after conferring with my husband, I left my 3 babies at home and went to the ER. I didn't want to go. I thought if I ignored it, the pain would go away, yet at the same time, I could drop dead any second. So I went to the urgent care clinic, told them I was having chest pain, and proceeded to wait, and wait, and wait some more. Obviously they weren't very concerned about my chest pain either. When I finally saw the doctor, she acted like she was really concerned. She told me all the bad things that my pain could be, and left me sitting on the exam table, in a gown, to wait, and wait and wait, and to cry. Now, I was going to have a panic attack. The nurses finally rolled in and took some xrays and then an EKG. They determined that I wasn't in an any immediate danger, but I would need to go to the ER. Did I want them to call an ambulance for me? I'm ok, but I need to go to the ER in ambulance? Do these people even know what the hell they are doing? In my state of denial, I refused the ambulance and drove my self, with some admit papers, to the hospital ER.

My Second Time

Wow, another post so soon, you ask. I work as an accountant, and it's realllllly sloooooooooow right now, so I read some more Matt, Liz & Madeline yesterday. It's Christmas 2008 and he's getting ready to decorate the tree. Reading his blog has made me more emotional in the past 2 days than I have felt in years. More about that later. I'm fascinated by his taste in Indie music. How does one develop that? How do you know if the music is good? Looking through my CDs, I go first to my favorite standby, the Old 97s. Is that really Indie? Not sure, so I keep looking. Willie Nelson, no. Def Leppard, no. Voxtrot, yes. I haven't listened to them in quite some time so I open up the Windows media player, and after 2 hours I've heard all the songs 3 times. My favorite song of theirs is Your Biggest Fan, which isn't even on the one CD I have. It used to be my background song on MySpace. Gosh, is that still around? Back to music. If I don't know about Indie music, then why do I have Voxtrot? Jared Van Fleet's parents used to be my Sunday School teachers, like 2 years ago. It was so strange to me that these 2 middle age adults would go to Austin to sit in clubs and watch their son play music all hours of the night. Here's Jared singing a beautiful song, When I'm Gone. Can you tell I learned how to insert links today? I've decided I'm going to buy Why? Alopecia and also pre-order "Two Kisses for Maddy." It will be ready at the end of tax season. Perfect timing.