Rough Holiday

Yesterday was Mother's Day, which is always bittersweet. But usually it's not too hard. My mom has been gone for 15 years and I am the mom of a sweet little girl. But yesterday was rough. I think it was partly due to that time of the month compounded with perimenopause.

Todd and Emily were very sweet to me. I got presents and ice cream. We had also gone out for Japanese food on Saturday, to avoid the Mother's Day rush. But as the day waned on, the sadder I got.

But I know I wasn't the only one having a rough time yesterday. Lots of friends have lost their moms due to death or toxic relationships. As people age, holidays morph and change. Mother's Day was fun when I was a kid, but I didn't experience a lot of loss until I was grown up.

If you had a rough day yesterday, be gentle with yourself today!

Making the Most of Each Moment

Image: inspirationalstorytellers.com

Over the last few days, the world has been in mourning for Prince. I wasn't a huge fan of his, but I was taken aback by how young he was. Only a few years older than my mom was when she passed so young from cancer.

But then yesterday, the news that Michelle McNamara, who was a writer and the wife of actor Patton Oswalt, had died in her sleep. She was only 46 years old and had a seven year old daughter, which is the same age as Emily.

With all the health issues that I have plus my mom dying at age 51, death is something I think about quite a bit. Only God knows when I'll leave this earthly plane, but honestly it could be any time for anyone.

That's what it's so important to make the most of each moment as you can. Our time is so limited in the grand scheme of things.

Yesterday there was also a local news article about a 178 year old tree that was cut down despite a petition to save it. That tree had lived twice as long as most humans do. I read some of the comments and someone posted that from the pictures the tree was rotting from the inside. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's a powerful image.

Don't rot from the inside. Make the most of each moment as much as you can while on this Earth.

Mourning Celebrities

Image: www.fanpop.com 

It's been a rough week for fans of pop culture. Earlier this week, David Bowie passed away after a battle with cancer. I open Facebook this morning and find that Alan Rickman has also died of cancer.

Fuck cancer.

The morning after Bowie had died, my Facebook feed was filled with remembrances and grief for him. I honestly wasn't as sad as some people, though I was sad. I wasn't a big fan of his music but his performance as the Goblin King really had a big impact on young adult me.

Seeing that Alan Rickman died on Facebook this morning was much more of a gut punch. I'm honestly gutted because I loved his work. So many great roles over the years. I'm sure as I write this, my social media feed is filling up with tributes.

My husband thinks it's odd that I get sad when celebrities die. But music, film, television, books can play a huge role in our lives. At least in mine. So it feels like I know celebrities, even though I really don't. And it's a loss either way.

I will continue to mourn my favorite celebrities as they shuffle off this earthly plane. I just hope that the universe gives us a break for a bit and there are no more celebrity deaths this week.

This Has To Stop!

It's another day, and sadly it's another mass shooting. This time at least 14 people are dead in California. I'm saddened by more loss of life but I'm also finding myself getting more and more desensitized.

There has been more mass shootings this year than we've had days. Too much violence, too much death, and a lot of these shootings aren't caused by people who seem to be terrorists. But instead lots of white men who have a variety of issues.

I want to be outraged when something like this happens, but it is just happening too much that it just feels like a deadened weight is pulling me down. Something must be done.

While many gun advocates are quick to say that guns don't kill people, but people kill people, the guns sure help up the death count. So yeah, I'm in favor of taking guns, at least the semi-automatic ones, away from people.

I've honestly never been a fan of guns, but being from Michigan, I have no issues with rifles for hunting. But mass shootings, for the most part, aren't caused by rifles or pistols. And other people having guns doesn't seem to be stopping this madness.

As a mom and a wife, and a human being on this planet, I wish there was something I can do. Beyond voting for people who won't make things worse and possibly be able to reign in the bloodshed there isn't much I can do.

My hearts are with the victims and their families tonight.

Guns and School Shootings

Image: fox4kc.com

I don't often voice any views on here about hot button topics. Something that may change as we go into an election year. But I wanted to get something off my chest.

Yesterday, there was yet another school shooting. I got the news late because I was at choir practice - I sing in the women's choir at my church. As we were singing praises to the Lord, more people lost their lives to guns.

As a mom, I'm not terribly rational on this subject. I truly want my kid and everyone else's kid in America to be safe. So yes, even though this may not be a popular opinion, I want to take your guns.

Even before I was a parent, I've never liked guns. They make me feel extremely uncomfortable. I've fired a gun exactly once in my life. When I was in college, friends and I went to my roommate's house for the weekend. We went hunting and I was given the opportunity to shoot the hunting rifle. Firing that gun once solidified my intense dislike of guns.

My husband has guns, he's gone hunting quite a bit in his youth as many males growing up in Michigan too. All of his guns are at his parent's house currently which makes me happy. If they were here, they would be under lock and key that Emily would not have access too.

Even Todd, who is not uncomfortable with guns, thinks that we need stricter gun control laws in this country. He also thinks that nothing will be done because the NRA is such a loud voice in Washington, and it makes my heart sick to think he is right.

Yes, I know people will think 'guns don't kill people, people kill people.' They have a bit of a point, but guns make it so much easier to kill so many more people at once. It's sickening how easily you can kill with a gun.

While I do think that gun control laws would help quite a bit with this epidemic of shootings in our country, we also have to consider the people doing the shooting. Honestly you have to be pretty screwed up to even consider walking into a high school, college or movie theater and decide to shoot the place up.

The stigma of mental health issues has to get better. People with depression and other mental health issues need to be able to get the help they need. I suffer from depression, and without my anti-depressants, I'm a whole different person. I don't think even then I would want to kill anyone, except perhaps myself. But everyone's brains are different.

It's a sad state of affairs when we have mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting. All the while, much of the government is more concerned about governing what a woman does with her own body.

I pray that things will be able to change. I'm trying to do as much as I can by getting me the help I need and being close to my daughter so she doesn't end up following a darker path. But it's time for more to be done.

Grief Lingers

13 years ago today, cancer took my mom from me. That morning I woke up, as near as I can tell about the same time she passed, and I just knew she had gone.

While I am a Christian and I believe she is in Heaven watching over me, I still grieve for her. The grief has faded some over the years, but then something will happen and it will be as sharp and painful as it was that day in 2002.

The sucky part about aging is people you love start dying. This year I've had to major losses. My great aunt Dorothy, who was not truly out of the blue since she was in her 90's and not in great health, and my dear friend Kathy who died suddenly. In a lot of ways, my grief for my mom is mingled in the grief of these losses, especially Kathy's.

Sadly, death is a part of life and we will all lose loved ones along the way. Hug your loved ones tight today for me.

Online Friends are Just Friends

Image: theiddm.wordpress.com

Today I'm grieving a friend who passed away suddenly yesterday. I never met her in person, but she was still a wonderful and dear friend. I met her on a forum that started for a very special kind of perfume, but over the years it became such more. Even though I had never met Kathy in person, we had been friends over a decade.

When I was a kid, I never had a lot of friends. I've always been an introvert and being a geek didn't help matters. Now that I'm older, I don't get out a lot. In part because of my chronic pain but in part because I'm still an introvert.

But the internet gives us the ability to be able to make friends all over the world. Even though I may never met most of my online friends in person, they are still my friends. We share our lives and our issues thanks to social media. Online friends share in our triumphs and help with our issues by giving advice. Even though I didn't get a lot of visitors in the hospital last year, my online friends were there in the internet.

Today my little slice of the internet is mourning our loss. Kathy was our friend and her sudden passing is shocking and sad. But I'm thankful for all my friends, online and off, because they bring joy to my life.

Rest in Peace Aunt Dorothy

Aunt Dorothy and my cousin Boomer at my wedding

When I was very small, my dad's mom passed away from cancer. So while I only had one grandmother, I had two great aunts on my dad's who filled the grandma gap. Yesterday, I got the message that my Great Aunt Dorothy had passed away.

It's hard to talk about Aunt Dorothy without mentioning her sister Jackie. They were a pair throughout my childhood. When I was pretty young, we moved across the state because of a job my dad had gotten. When we would go back to Bay City, we would often stay with my Aunt Jackie. Even if we didn't stay there, we'd see both of them, usually at Jackie's house.

I do remember being at Aunt Dorothy's house - it was really cute and she actually had a rotary phone in her kitchen. I remember being very young and actually staying at her house one afternoon. I remember being put down for a nap, but not wanting to sleep. Just wanting to look around the room.

Aunt Dorothy was always happy, always smiling despite the hand life had dealt her. Her first husband died very young, leaving her and her small kids. Her second husband was abusive, but she was strong and stood up against him, leaving him. 

For many years, she's had a lot of health issues. I want to be like her when I grow up - happy despite the health issues. She also could do the splits all the way down even into her 80's which is a feat I couldn't do even when I was a teenager.

I feel very happy that I got to talk to her one last time on Easter. She sounds the same has she's done my entire life and she sounded like she was happy. I'll miss her, my dear Aunt Dorothy, but I'll cherish the memories I have - like of her dancing at my wedding.

Rest in Peace Mr. Spock

When I was a teenager, I got very interested in Star Trek. It was when Star Trek: The Next Generation was on the air. I started with TNG but my love of Star Trek got me into exploring the original series. I quickly fell in love with that.

While McCoy is my all time favorite Star Trek character, Leonard Nimoy's Spock was always really fun to watch. I loved seeing him in the movies, especially in the first Star Trek reboot. The scene with him and Zachary Quinto is just awesome.

Today I was just working and surfing on Facebook when my feed exploded with the news that Leonard Nimoy had passed away. I knew had been sick and in the hospital, but it felt like a punch to the gut. I'm sure many other Star Trek fans are feeling the same way.

I'm feeling very sad, but also feeling lucky to have enjoyed his work for all these years. I'm also feeling extremely lucky that I got to meet him a few years ago at Dragon Con. His line was very long so he didn't have a lot of time to give each person but he was very nice and kind to Todd and I. It was a great experience. 

Like I did when Gene Roddenberry  passed away, I will be spending my afternoon watching Star Trek movies. I'll probably start with The Wrath of Khan and then the Search for Spock while I try not to cry too much. 

LLAP

Grief and Elsa

Image: disney.wikia.com

I'm having a lot of grief issues with this whole seizure thing. I grieve for my lost days, I grieve for the fact that I could have easily died, and I grieve for the inability to give Emily the best Christmas ever.

Yes, I know a lot of these, especially the last is silly and stupid. But I grieve all the same. I think part of this is that I'm Elsa.

Not with the cool freezing powers but 'conceal don't feel' is something that is very familiar to me. My parents Elsa-ised me without realizing it. My sister was a problem child, always getting into trouble. So I was encouraged to be the good child. It wasn't too much of  a stretch for me, but I tended to take it too far sometimes. I would push my feeling down and push my feelings down until I would get to a breaking point and just explode. Just like Elsa, but again, less cool.

This caused me a lot of problems with relationships. My first serious relationship was full of fighting in part because I sucked at fighting. Luckily I learned how to fight better which has helped with things with me and Todd. That's why we've been married for 8 years.

But I'm experiencing the 'conceal don't feel' again with all the grief I'm feeling. I know logically that I shouldn't be as upset as I am, but I am. I keep crying and feeling sad. I know that I need to let the grief run it's course but my Elsa-ness doesn't want to let me.

So dear friends, I may be a little up and down for a little while. Todd and I have a plan to work on changing my lifestyle but it's going to take a while. Even he realizes that he's an odd duck the way he make a 360 change to his lifestyle after he got his MS diagnosis.

I just need some gentle handling in the next week or so. I promise not to wallow too long.  Christmas is going to be rough this year and even though I'll want to 'conceal don't feel' through the holidays I'll try to feel in a normal sort of way.

Depression and Suicide

Image: wikipedia.com

I've been reading Emily a chapter of Coraline most nights, which has been making our bedtime routine a little longer than it previously has been. I was offline for about a half hour doing bedtime things with her - potty, teeth, story, song, prayers and finally tuckering her in.

I did what I do most nights and I opened up Facebook on my phone to find that Robin Williams had been found dead of an apparent suicide. I had no idea that he had been suffering from depression.

He made up a lot of bits of my childhood. I remember watching him in Mork and Mindy as a very small child. I loved him as the genie in Aladdin and as Peter Pan in Hook. He was just a great, great entertainer.

Depression is a serious disease and it breaks my heart that it has claimed another life. I never really understood depression until I started having issues with it myself. I've talked about my struggles with depression before.

Depression drains you of hope, but like The Bloggess says, depression lies. Depression tells you that you are worthless, that life isn't worth it. But there is hope out there.

There can be such a stigma with taking antidepressants but I don't understand why. When I finally got help when I had postpartum depression, it was like a veil had been lifted. I had been in darkness for eight months and didn't realize something was wrong because depression wants you to think that it's the norm.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I still am on antidepressants. I suffer from depression and anxiety - those little pills that I take help me lead a happier life.

My thoughts and prayers are with Robin Williams and his loved ones tonight. It makes my heart ache that he felt he had to take that final step. But I truly hope that he is at peace now.

2013 in Review

Since this is the last day of 2013, I thought I’d visit some of the highlights and lowlights of the year. This year was very mixed. Some good things happened but it seems like we spent the year moving from crisis to crisis.

The year started out pretty good. Todd found out about a horror convention in Charlotte that was going to have Bruce Campbell as a guest. Bruce Campbell is one of those actors both Todd and I always wanted to meet but he doesn’t do a lot of conventions. We made plans, got a hotel room and someone to watch Emily. We did bring her on Friday and she got to meet Danny Glover, who thought she was very cute.

Todd and I had a great time at Mad Monster Party but we had gotten some bad news right before. Emily needed dental surgery because of teeth issues. It was going to be very expensive and we didn’t know if we were going to have to cancel our Disney trip.

We managed to get the money together for the dental surgery and Emily was fine afterwards. Her surgery was in May and things evened out a little after that. It was also this summer that I got to meet Neil Gaiman which was awesome. He was doing a book tour for his new book and Todd got me a ticket. I waited for hours to meet him but it was worth it in the end.

As we got into the later summer, Todd was having more and more issues at work. He had been unhappy at his job for years but didn’t feel like he could leave because the money was too good. It got to a point in August that he couldn’t stay. Thankfully

he got another job right away and he’s been much happier. But it was pretty stressful for a few weeks.

We still got to go to Dragon Con which was awesome as always. I got to be on two panels this year and it was great fun. Once Dragon Con was done, I went into high anticipation mode for Disney. The Disney trip was great. My pain levels were low the whole week and it never really rained except in the morning of the day we went to Hollywood Studios. Emily had a wonderful time and has been asking to go back. The only bad thing that happened was Todd got food poisoning on our last day so the ride home was pretty miserable for him. Otherwise, it was the highlight of the year.

Once we got home, we got back into the groove of things. Then at the end of November, my car died when Todd took Emily to school one day. He tried to fix it himself with the help of one of the dad’s of Emily’s preschool friends. But they couldn’t get it to start. Finally we just towed it to a shop and they pulled it into a computer, flipped a switch and it was working again. Thankfully it didn’t cost too much to fix though it was stressful again because Todd couldn’t figure out what was going on.

The last thing that really made 2013 an overall sucky year was the death of our cat Star last week. It put a damper on the holidays for me and I still am grieving his loss.

Mostly 2013 was not a good year for me but it did have its bright spots. I’m really hoping that 2014 will be a much better year. We don’t have anything big planning – just Mad Monster Party and Dragon Con. Plus I’ll be planning and attending the Browncoat Ball, which should a lot of fun. Otherwise, working and doing house improvements is our main goal as a family for next year.

Rest in Peace Star Kitty

Yesterday I came out into the living room like I always do. Emily was with me since she had just woken up. We were talking and I noticed our oldest wasn’t moving. I nudged him and it was obvious he had passed away.

We adopted Star back in 2005. He was at this really bad shelter in Hendersonville that had rows and rows of cages. He was very sweet so we brought him home. A few years later that shelter closed down because of issues with being cruel to animals.

The shelter had named him Starburst because of a white patch on his head and because they thought he was a girl. But when we took him in to be fixed, the vet told us that she was a he and he was already neutered.

We changed his name to Star since that was a little more manly. He adjusted to being our pet quite well even after we added another cat, Willow, and a baby to the mix. He was always so sweet with Emily even as a baby.

A while ago he started losing weight and having breathing issues. We took him to the vet but the vet couldn’t find anything wrong. He didn’t seem to get worse but he didn’t get better either.

So it wasn’t that surprising that he passed but it was shocking to find him that way. We aren’t sure how old he was but we had him for 8 years. He was a great kitty and he’ll be sorely missed. 

9/11 Memories

Image: Wikipedia.org

Since today is 9/11, I thought I post some memories I have of that day in 2001.

I was still in college at that point and living with some friends. I didn't have any early classes that day so I had been in my room playing a video game all morning. My door had been open and one of my roommates popped his head in to tell me that there was an attack in New York.

Classes ended up being canceled so I spent most of the day watching the news in shocked horror. A bunch of people ended up coming over to our apartment but we didn't talk much.

I did end up on the phone with my mom, who told me to go get gas in my car. I went out by myself for some reason and it was eerie out there. There were hardly any cars out except for the long lines at the gas stations. I had to wait a while to get gas and it was so quiet despite all the people also waiting to get gas.

I also ended up going out with some friends to get gas in their car. That was a little better because we were talking some and it wasn't so lonely.

The next few days were strange as well as more news came out about the attacks. It was a sad and strange week for me because my grandmother passed away a few days after 9/11 happened.

Eventually things resumed normalcy, but on this day I’m always taken back to the horror of that day. I didn't know anyone who died in either New York, the plane that went down or the Pentagon, but it was still something that I think changed everyone in America that day.

How a Fair Ride Nearly Killed Me

Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/

I was reading the Illustrated with Crappy Pictures blog today and it was about an outing they went on to a county fair. It was a sweet post about seeing animals and accidentally eating prized tomatoes. I used to go to the Ottawa County Fair every year when I was a kid, but the last time I went I had a horrifying experience.

When I would go to the fair, I would go to ride on the rides. There was usually a set price you could pay to ride unlimited rides, so I usually got that. I was home for the summer from college one year when my mom and I went to the fair.

My mom and I rode everything that day. I’m not much of a thrill junkie but the rides at the fair are usually pretty tame. I had ridden the pirate ship before so I didn't think anything of it when my mom and I got in line. I was in for the most terrifying ride of my life.

The ride started out normally enough, but the guy running the ride let it swing further and further. I really thought we were going to actually turn upside down. My mom was great and held it together for me and another girl who was on the ride alone.

Finally the terror stopped and the ride was over. I couldn't get off of their fast enough. Once we were on solid ground, my mom admitted that she had been scared too. My mom was a bit of a thrill junkie and wasn't afraid of anything. So that made me feel cold all over to think my mom thought we were going to get hurt too.

To this day, I refuse to ride on the pirate ship no matter where it’s at. Just seeing a pirate ship ride like that makes me feel anxious and scared. I’ll ride roller coasters and other scary ride, but no pirate ships. Never again!

I Miss You, Mom

Me and my mom

Eleven years ago, my mom passed away. Even though I was technically an adult, I was still a kid in so many ways. I had just graduated from college a few days before she passed. She actually made it to see me graduate but had to be in a wheelchair because of being so weak.

She had been one of those super healthy, really skinny people. She never really got sick until she got colon cancer. She fought the cancer for nearly 2 years but in the end, it had spread and there weren't any options left. She was barely 51 when she passed away.

I miss her everyday because she was a great mom. She was looking so forward to being a grandmother, even though it was still a while off before Miss Emily would be born. I wasn't even dating Todd at that point. She would have adored Emily.

Today is especially hard for me as well as my dad. But as Christians, we both know that we'll see her again. I have a feeling that she is also keeping an eye on us. Every once in a while, I feel overwhelmed by her presence. Still I wish she was still here.

I miss you, mom.