Help I'm Hurting

Fibromyalgia…ugh! I know there is nothing anyone can do to help with the pain. I only ask that you be patient with me and understanding when I bite your head off! Yea, that is a lot to ask. Pain sucks. I’ve been up for the past 2 hours (it is now 6:30am) and 1600mg of ibuprophen has not taken an edge off the pain. We might need to move up to vicodin! I started feeling the flare, if you will, coming on day before yesterday when clouds started making their appearance and I started losing my grip. Last night was not doing well at all. When I’m in pain, I lose all train of thought, start going in circles, and really just become a total bitch. This is called fibro fog.

I feel the majority of the pain in my shoulders and it feels so good to sit in the spa and let the jets massage that area. However, cold hurts me and now that it is cool outside when I step out of the spa, I’m back to ugly pain again. This, in my fibro mind, defeats the purpose of sitting in the spa.

For the most part, I’m usually a person thinking that my glass is half full, but during this pain I’m pretty sure that my glass is half empty. This fibro experience reminds me of the cycle of domestic violence. Right now I’m in the abusive phase knowing that the honeymoon phase should start soon, but I don’t know when!

Giving Thanks

I was reminded for the umpteenth time that I am really blessed with my wonderful husband and beautiful children. We had our annual Family Thanksgiving Gathering at my sister in-law’s house and found the atmosphere to be very tense and uncomfortable. My mother (she has shared her day with us for the past 3 years) and her friend (he attended for the first time this year) felt totally out-of-place almost to the point of being unwelcome. This is so unusual for our family to emit this type of atmosphere because all of us have always been so accepting of anyone no matter what their station in life is.

My husband and daughters stepped in to make my mother’s friend feel a part of the family and celebration. Each of my girls stepped in without any prodding to bring happiness and fun to their younger cousins’ day. I have to thank my daughters for accepting that there are family issues present that their much younger cousins are reacting too and that nothing said or done is meant to be personal. Most of all thank you for not asking why and trying to attach blame.

My family jumped in on an invisible cue and made this day of thanks one to feel good about not one to regret.

By the way……

We started our day out by attending Mass with three of us participating with the combined church choir. Oh my! Thank you Mike for being the leader of the Sunday 6:00 choir. I have not witnessed such disorganization, starlet pouting, and more with a community choir than I did for this Mass. Of course, I’ve only been involved with the combined choir experience when Mike has been in charge! I’m hoping that the person who was in charge for this Mass allowed this chaos only because he is still very new to our parish and hasn’t learned the dynamics of each of the choirs and how to meld them together during holiday celebrations. Good luck for Christmas masses.

Volleyball

Eight weeks of practice on Tuesday nights and Thursday evenings and of course the match on Saturdays has come to an end until the first week of December when we start all over again. These kids did wonderful. The team consisted of four 7^th graders and 6 6^th graders. This was the first time any of these kids played competitive volleyball through the YMCA. They had a season losing record of 1 and 7 and they did lose the first game of the single elimination tournament this morning, but their attitudes were positive and they had fun. The coaches have done wonders with these kids teaching them the fundamentals of the sport in a way that kept the kids interest.

The winter season begins December 9 and The Bear hounded me until I showed her the receipt confirming her registration! This child had not played volleyball until last summer with the YMCA’s recreational league. She enjoyed it enough to try out for the team at school. She didn’t make the team, but did make it through two weeks of tryouts and three cuts before she was let go. Go Bears!

Thank you big sisters for practicing with the baby!

Pat on the Back

Finally sitting down crocheting, watching the Suns after some 7^th grade science homework and a lesson in the probable thought process of a runaway pregnant teenager in hopes to dissuade my oldest twin from being manipulated into covering for this teenager. Fortunately my girls feel comfortable talking to me and David about many problems or issues they may encounter. David and I have earned this trust by listening to them, not judging them, and guiding them to work out a solution they understand and are for the most part comfortable with. (My last two statements can be a whole blog by themselves!)

Rochelle was sitting with me typing away on her laptop, the other 3 girls burrowing in their respective bedrooms, and David at work. Rochelle and I were somewhat mulling over this evenings happenings. We somehow ended up talking about how some parents speak to their children as though they are friends and discuss adult topics with them sometimes asking for advice. I learned that this type of parent/child contact was a reality and not only on TV after I started working with CPS cases. How we ended up talking about this I don’t really know, but I made a comment about how the twins were very close to flunking both years of middle school. Rochelle interrupted me and said that she didn’t realize that the twins could have flunked middle school. She showed genuine surprise with this knowledge!

Thank you Rochelle for one of the most wonderful complements and acknowledgments of good parenting skills a parent can receive. We are a very close family and generally know when one of us is hurting, and I guess David and I did a wonderful job working through this problem with the twins and keeping this issue from affecting Rochelle and Audrey. Go Mom and Dad!!!!!

Halloween

Halloween was full of excitement. All six of us were home for the evening! This is a rare event. The twins set up outside with pizza, sodas, movies, and of course a hugh tub of candy to wait for trick-or-treaters. They had two of their friends helping (?!?) them. They rented Ring Two and Sleepy Hollow, but I don’t think they actually watched the movies because they found it more exciting to entertain the poor unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. It was about 9:00 when the girls came inside because the candy was gone. I should say that the candy not horded by the girls for later! Actually they did very well at not eating more candy than they gave out.

Our oldest took our youngest trick-or-treating as part of a group with our neighbors. She brought home about half a pillowcase worth of candy! Now our tub is once again full, ugh. Of course, there is a message on the bag of candy stating who the candy belongs to and that permission is required prior to eating any. I have no doubt that the tone is a very threatening one. I see my future now from about 3:30 on, because the older girls will take and hide a good portion of the candy. When the 12 year old sees that candy has disappeared she is going to throw a royal fit (her title is “Queen Audrey” around the house), and the older girls will look at her with extremely innocent expressions and tell her that they didn’t eat it, so they didn’t have to ask her permission to remove the candy. Life can be so rough for the youngest child!

We did have the cutest trick-or-treater last night. She is just shy of being 2 years old and was dressed like a cowgirl. She was wonderful! It brought back memories of my oldest when she was that age because she too was a cowgirl. My oldest would say cowboy-girl and would wear her boot with everything. It was a fight to take them off! I’m not saying that the child is stubborn beyond belief, however…….I’m sure that the 2 year old visiting us last night cooperates with her parents and causes no parental distress!

Overall, it was fun to sit back and watch the interaction of the all the girls with the multi-culture of trick-or-treaters from the range of ages to known friends to strangers. Hmmm, even though we had to bring them back to task a few times, maybe the girls were listening as their father and I were attempting to teach manners and so on!