Feeling Indulgent

I never cease to be amazed by the incredible role that Sidney plays in our family. Her surgery went well and she can come home tomorrow at 4:30. They found two lumps in one of her mammaries and a large cyst in her uterus. Oddly, they think that her body was tricked into a false pregnancy which caused her hormones to go wild and caused the lumps.

Even though we have the cats, our house felt empty when I got home tonight.

I've been a bit of a wreck this past week, which is why I haven't been writing. Nothing terrible happened, I just had a lot of small obstacles and a large case of pms. I'm waiting for the simple lull of boring monotony to send waves of soothing routine over my life. Which brings me to this: I have never been very good at processing stress or unpleasantries. How do people get good at this? Is it just something that you're born with? It's always my tendency to run when the going gets tough. As I get older and more rooted in the life Jay and I have made, my choices become fewer and fewer in the running department. When stress hits I seem to melt into a giant weepy mess. Part of this is the hopeless pressure of being trapped in whatever situation I'm stressed out by. I don't like conflict and I don't like feeling as though I have to deal with things that I do not like. I just want life to be simple and easy. I want to be able to pay my bills. I want my family to be healthy. I want to feel safe. I want to buy presents for my children. I want to have a few good friends who I love and who I know love me back. I want to watch tv shows with my husband and occasionally drink a glass or two of red wine. I want a phone and a remote control that both work when they have new batteries. I want friendly neighbors and a nice backyard. I want to leave work feeling like I did a good job and exceeded the expectations of my superiors. I want to be good to my body. I want to have patience with my children. I want to make nice meals for my husband and sit around and laugh together.

The longer we live in the city the more claustrophobic that I feel. Yet, I'm tired of moving around. When we moved to Philadelphia it all felt very temporary. In our third year of city living I'm pretty sure that it's not for me... but I don't really know where to go. Should we move to a suburb? Should we go back to Jersey? Should we just stay put?

Lately, I've been struggling not to feel overwhelmed and I'm not sure why. Is it just a hormonal month? Am I losing my mind? Am I trying to achieve things that aren't possible? Will I regret my choices?

I miss being entirely present for my children. Of course, I'm not entirely present because I have a job now. But this has less to do with my job and more to do with the fact that they are growing up. Though I LOVE the people who they are becoming more than I could ever express... I love them so much that it brings me to tears when I think about how special they both are... I also feel sadness and wish deeply that their lives wouldn't move so quickly. I'm incredibly proud of every milestone and yet sad that they need me less. At the heart of this is pure selfishness. I enjoyed my time as a stay at home mom because I made a career of it. I worked hard. For any difficult day that saw me pulling my hair out and dying for my husband to get home from work... I wouldn't trade one second of it. And I miss it. Even last year, when Bunny was in Kindergarten and I had alone time with Lila for the first time ever. I long for it. Even though I have always been aware of the fact that I wouldn't homeschool and the day would come when my children would inevitably be gone for most of the day, five days a week... it went too fast and I wasn't prepared. And I AM NOT READY. Why aren't I ready?

Earlier in the year we had so many changes and so much happening. The move. The big loss. The new job. The Holidays. And now it's hit me hard.

My Bagel Makes Me Sad

I have noticed something.

I am much, much, much happier when my carbohydrate intake is barely existent. When I cut all sugar (that doesn't come from fruits and veggies) and when I cut out all flour and grain, everything in life improves.

And when I add things back, I get sluggish and sad.

Part of this is because I have a gluten sensitivity... so it makes me more bloated and gives me a bigger belly ache than other people get. A particularly nice, big, fluffy, salty, soft pretzel can make me forget all that, of course.

But what I do notice is that when I am eating carbs, I feel bad emotionally.

I looked online to see if I could find any information about a carb/mood connection that indicates it's anything other than "in my head." Unfortunately, the only information that I could find was to the contrary. Apparently, low carb diets can be responsible for depression in some people. They alter your serotonin (or some such thing).

I was on a super-low carb diet for nearly a year and weathered a few terrible events in that time rather gracefully. Not that I think that my low carb diet gets the credit for that, but I feel like I am emotionally more stable when I do not eat them. I just feel healthier in every respect.

I should ask my doctor about this. She hugely advocates no-carb diets. She says that by eliminating carbs you're only getting rid of junk food... stuff that hurts your body. I think that this surprises a lot of people because they get stuck on "low-fat = good health" and low carb diets tend to be higher in fats. That said, I don't have a totally meat based, low carb diet. The meats that we eat are organic and come from good farms where the animals aren't living in awful conditions (so I don't agonize over it) and I eat PLENTY of fresh fruits and veggies!!! And the difference I feel is drastic. Maybe it's all body chemistry? I don't know. I'm one of the few people that I've ever heard say the same thing. Most people that I know start low carb and quit a few days later because they're so unhappy.

So, as of yesterday I'm back at it.

Not at all for weight loss, but for general health.

Saturday- My Life In Hell

Outside of the death of one of my children (and maybe even my husband) we have had the worst thing in the world happen to us. We, with the company of a shocking number of our Philadelphia neighbors, have been infested by bedbugs.

According to all of the six exterminators who I have spoken with in the past 48 hours, bed bugs in Philadelphia are an epidemic. They are in five star hotels. They are in apartment buildings. They are in clothing stores. They are in people's homes. They travel through the electrical wires and can survive for months and sometimes up to two years without feeding.

Two mornings ago Bunny and Lila woke up with welts. Because I've heard so much about bed bugs in the media lately, I immediately stripped their beds. I didn't find any evidence of bedbugs. Like, I didn't find any bugs. I didn't find any of the little black dots of stains that they leave behind. I felt pretty confident that we probably didn't have the bugs. Then, after a bit of research and a close inspection of the sheets, I found the small blood spots that bed bugs are notorious for leaving.

I called the pediatrician and she said that she didn't think that the bites sound like bed bug bites. She said that they sound like flea bites. I actually felt relieved to think that we might not have bedbugs. Jay: I never thought I'd see the day when having fleas would be a good thing. After careful examination of our pets I determined that we probably don't have fleas. I found no evidence of fleas, no fleas and don't see much scratching going on.

That night I slept in with the girls. I went from bed to bed thinking that if anyone was going to get eaten that it would be me because I'm bigger and easier to get. I was right. I woke up in the morning with my shoulders and back and even my ears bitten. I doubt that I would have even been able to fall asleep, but I was so exhausted from crying and feeling hopeless and had used to much strength trying not to panic...trying not to run away... and trying to hold it together a little bit for the girls.

Jay has been working 12+ hour days. Even today he's at work. And his work is hard these days. So, he comes home and deals with Hell and goes to work and is stressed out beyond stressed out. It's terrible timing because I am absolutely, without a doubt, not strong enough to deal with this on my own.

For anyone who knows me... parasites are one of my worst fears. Bed bugs, lice, fleas... they make me feel so overwhelmed that I'm going to pass out. I can't deal with, accept, live with, understand, grasp or handle that there are INSECTS FEEDING ON US in the night.

When the exterminator came I didn't have a lot of faith in him. 1.) he left when he couldn't find a parking space and then he returned only when I found him one that was free and stood in it until he got here. 2.) He was 2 hours late. 3.) He didn't take the sheets off of our beds or look for any evidence of bedbugs before charging me $810. He was like, "yeh. you've got them. But it doesn't look bad. Don't worry about it. We'll just take care of it." And then he told me not to worry about keeping my mattresses... that I should keep them. And when I told him that I wasn't going to keep them because I read that sometimes the bugs live inside the mattresses, he told me not to drag it through the building. I had no faith in this man.

I found another exterminator in South Philly. I'm going to call back at 9. Over the phone one of the guys told me that it's $600 per room to exterminate. We'll do our new house... and treat our old apartment ourselves. Then, we're just going to IKEA and buying new mattresses and box springs, pillows and so on. I'm going to salvage most of our clothing... but we're throwing most other things out. I think that our dining room table and hutch are both okay. We'll exterminate the bed frames. We're going to save our kitchen things, like plates and pots and pans. We're saving the girls armoirs and night stands, but exterminating them. We're getting rid of our couch (just in case) and the dresser/desk in our bedroom. We're getting rid of all our toys, books, bookshelves, toy boxes, suitcases... and any place that bed bugs could be sleeping/breeding during the day.

I believe that this infestation is small here. An apartment above ours was exterminated last week. They say that it wasn't for bedbugs, but they also haven't said what it was for. They don't have a pet and we don't have mice here. I'll bet that it was bedbugs and they don't want to say so.

Did you know that many people don't even know that they're being bitten. You have to be allergic to the bites to really know. The girls both swelled up. Bunny has welts on her legs that are the size in circumference of golf balls. Jay hasn't felt anything, which means that they haven't made it to our bed or that he isn't feeling it happen.

Just so you know, I don't know how I'm going to get through this. Our condo association designates days when we can and can't move. So, we can't move until next Saturday. That said, we've already got the keys for our new place and we're going to take new mattresses there today with a few things and sleep there, on the floor, with no other furniture for a week. I can't put my children to bed for another night not knowing what's going to happen... and using myself as bait is so emotionally and physically terrible that I don't think I can do it for another night. Also, they'll eventually stop feeding on me and move onto the girls again. Just because it wasn't last night or the night before doesn't mean that it won't be tonight. I. Just. Can't.

Also, we don't even have the money to pay for the extermination and replacement of all of our possessions.

I just want to run away. It all feels totally overwhelming.