Currently This

She was there for ten days. I wrote on a pad of paper the way I did when I dropped my basket and rather than type it all out, I just scanned em and posted those. You can read em or not, if you want.

Now that's she's home, the hardest part for me is knowing that she still hurts. Not as bad, but it's still there and she's as afraid of the pain coming as she is when it's there.

It seems like there isn't an end to the number of shoes I have waiting to drop. I keep thinking, no way can any more happen, no way can anything else hit my family, and then it does. Maybe I'm jinxing it when I say that nothing else can happen. Maybe I should be more grateful that the worst hasn't happened. I am, of course, but I'm angry and at the same time I feel like I am losing the ability to be much of anything at all - angry, afraid, happy - it all seems to be going through the motions. The only time I am really ok is when everyone else is. The rest of the time I am walking dead. Just a dead circuit.

Still, it isn't as bad as it could be. Our mantra remains: at least it's treatable. It isn't fatal. Thank whoever is in charge for that blessing.

My oldest will be eighteen in much less than a week. When did that one happen? She's talking about being able to vote in the mayoral race. Again, I'm happy for her as I should be, but it's a blow. Maybe I'm selfish, self involved, self indulgent, but it's a blow. I'm afraid to have her be eighteen and outside the safety of my control. And I am so weary of being afraid of anything, of everything.

Imagine - eighteen. I swear to *god* she was two a few days ago. A bouncing ponytail, chubby hands reaching out of a pink and green jumper to open the mailbox. A giggling, cuddly, secure baby in her mother's arms, all the rest in front of her. I want her there again so bad.

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3:00 pm

Middle kid is asleep on bed behind me, her stomach very confused because an alien force of food is invading it. Getting her to eat has been an issue. She hasn't felt well, so hasn't wanted to eat. Taken the meds on an empty stomach makes stomach hurt, which makes her not want to eat.

Dominoes cheesy bread to the rescue.

I'm responding to the whole series of things by doing some radical spring cleaning. I'm throwing away clothes, books, etc. If it has dust on it, it goes. If it were important, it would have been used and thus not dusty.

This place is closing around us because we have too much stuff. Time to get rid of some of it.