Let It Snow (and throw in some ice)

Haha - and no, this is not a photo from inside our house! Steve sent these two photos to me from an email someone sent him. I think they were taken in Canada. Can you even imagine? I guess it makes me think I should never complain again.

It was nice except for the times when our power was out. We were lucky when compared to many others. Mary Beth and Jon had to go stay with his brother in Fayetteville. They may not get their power for several days yet.

Back to work today after two days home with the schools closed. Somehow I managed to enjoy myself even though the ZING just isn't quite there since I am not on salary any longer and those days off mean that I make no income! Snow/ice days used to be different when I knew I was still being paid to lay around the house for a day!

This is probably the only month in ages that I have been caught up on my paperwork at the end of the month. Maybe I need two snow/ice days every month. I worked some, we watched some movies and made a huge pot of vegetable soup. It was delightful to realize that our gas stove works whether or not we have electricity. How cool!

Rachel continues to get inches and inches of snow in New Hampshire. I heard today that they've had record snowfall for this month, but I've lost count of the inches, no that would be the FEET of snow they have gotten!!! Mary Beth and Greg have been out of school all week because the University of Arkansas has been closed due to no electricity. And they never close.

I don't know about everyone else, but I've about enjoyed all of the winter that I can stand for this year. I'm already thinking of spring and when we shift back to the "other" time so that it isn't dark at 5:00 anymore. Well, until then I will have to be content to have my electricity on and be thankful to be snug and warm in my house tonight.

Birthdays and remembering

Yesterday was a milestone for me. I actually hesitated about whether or not to even write a blog about this personal milestone or not...but since I do this mostly for personal benefit and record and my readers have dropped to under a few hundred a day (ha) then I decided to go ahead.
So yesterday would have been the 30th birthday of a son I had that was born premature and only lived for less than two days. It is an experience that changed the course of my life in so many ways and likely had an impact on how I made choices regarding parenting even today. The story starts out as any typical young married couple expecting a baby might but ends with scenes worthy of a Lifetime movie.
Remember this was 1979 and I was married and living in Wynne. My husband and I had gotten married in 1976 and had already been through a miscarriage, so this pregnancy was something we were very excited about. The nursery was ready in yellow and white gingham with a wicker bassinet, full of stuffed animals and baby clothes. My best friend, Vicki, was pregnant at the same time and due about a month after me so it was an exciting time.
Dickie and I had gone to Memphis to eat out and go to a movie that evening, so we got home late, around midnight. My back was hurting so we slept downstairs so I wouldn't have to go up the staircase. I remember he went to sleep quickly while I stayed awake watching, of all things, Bonanza reruns.
I dozed off and woke up having cramps a few hours later. I went to the bathroom and knew things were not going right. A call to my obstetrician in Memphis and he said to get over there as soon as possible. It would normally be about a 45 minute drive. We gathered a few emergency things and dashed for the car.
When we stepped outdoors we saw that in the time since we had gotten in at midnight, sleet had begun to fall in Wynne, Arkansas. We knew we had to try anyway. We barely made it out to the highway and Dickie said he knew we'd never make it to Memphis. So we turned around and went to the local county hospital.
A quick check there by the ER doctor and he looked me in the eye and said "you ARE going to deliver this baby tonight. We must get you to Memphis, it will be the baby's only chance." The sleet was worse in Memphis and so no helicopters were leaving out of there. The county hospital put chains on the ambulance tires and put an RN in the ambulance with me and off we went.
Strange how you have flashes of memory when you are going through traumatic events, but you do. This RN happened to be a girl I had known in elementary school and that made me feel better.
Dickie called his old pal, Allen Atwood who had a truck that could likely have driven up Pike's Peak. Allen came and picked him up and they followed us to the Baptist Hospital in Memphis.
Things following that are so blurred that night. I was only seven months pregnant and this was 1979. No one heard of babies surviving that early!! I guess I was not expecting him to even make it, so I was shocked when I heard the doctor announce it was a boy. I was in shock.
From the beginning, he had such a strong heart. The lungs were the tough part and were eventually the thing that took him away from us.
This entire picture had not gone as I had dreamed it all of my life, or not even all of those seven months. When we arrived for our first visit in the NICU to see him and touch him, it seemed surreal. I didn't get to hold him until the next day. He weighed only 1 pound 8 ounces. You can only imagine how tiny. A head full of black hair and a firm grip with his hands to hold your finger.
Things were complicated by the ice storm. The second night, Allen came over and offered to take Dickie home so he could take a shower, get clothes, etc. I felt totally comfortable staying alone at this point. Plus, he had been in those clothes for a while and I knew I would be needing clothes as well. No one else could drive back and forth because of the ice. So off they went.
Around 1:00am, the neonatal doctor came up to see me to tell me things were not going well and that I might want to come down for a visit. This would be the last time I got to hold him, even with all of his tubes and wires. What a hard visit that was. How could something that I didn't expect to really have....survive....only to be taken away? It was tough. And I was alone. The phone lines were down in Wynne and it was in a time before cell phones.
He went to heaven just a couple of hours later. I think I actually felt it when it happened.
What difficult news to have to give to Dickie and my parents by phone when they were all finally able to call the next morning. So many decisions then. We had never planned a funeral and certainly had been planning a layette and baby showers, not a funeral. We decided to have a simple graveside service in weather much like we have had here today.
So many things you remember. As I was travelling home from the hospital, our friend Allen actually got into our house (who knows how-he was a mess) and built a big fire for me in the fireplace, cleaned the house, and took care of flowers that were coming in and food that had begun arriving. I remember that warm fire and what comfort that brought me. I didn't want to move away from it.
The name. We had still been working on the names for the baby when all of this began. Dickie's name was Richard Clay and we liked Nicholas, so I know we were going with Nicholas Clay. But somehow, in the twisted thought of fear and being so young and naive, we were almost afraid to name him until we knew for sure he would be ours. They had not come by with the forms for the birth certificate yet, so it had really not come up. I guess we had bigger worries. After he died, it seemed too late to then "give him a name" that we never called him. But he has always been Nicholas to me.
Dickie's poor parents were so sad because they never got to see the baby alive because of the ice storm. My parents had made it over the night he was born. If you know my dad, it will explain the driving on the ice.
After the funeral, we went for a long trip to Florida to try to get our mind off of everything. It was the best thing that we could have done for our fractured souls. And that's exactly what we were. I was 22 and he was 23. Much too young to have gone through that much pain. Sadly, we never recovered. We came back to Wynne. I took down the nursery because it was too painful to remember it. Dickie started staying gone more and more because I think it was too painful to see me in so much pain. We just grew apart because together was too painful and held too many sad memories. We were divorced less than a year later.
On a side note, the friend that helped us heal and get through so much of this was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident just a few years later. I will never forget Allen.
It is nice to be able to finally be able to begin to celebrate a birthday because I can see him at 30...and try to imagine how differently my life might have been if he had lived. Of course having my three babies helped tremendously....with each one I healed a little more. He was a gift. I'm not sure why we went through all of that, but I guess it somehow helped shape the mom I am now....good or bad.

Going to Kansas City? Plan to bring your own fire log...

I'm back folks from the waiting place...it seems to be where I go quite often. In case you didn't know it, if you store your photos on Picasa and if you ever send web albums online(especially a wedding album with 500 photos), and then have a blog and post photos you eventually run out of photo space. It was quite a surprise and quite frustrating when I started trying to post my photos after our trip last weekend to Kansas City. So....that was the reason for the delay. But I'm back with room to spare now!!

For Christmas Steve had surprised me with tickets for a Rascal Flatts concert. He made reservations at a great Marriott that even had a fireplace in the room. Steve knows how much I LOVE a fireplace, since we don't have one at home.

Our weekend approached with a lot of excitement and anticipation. This happens folks as you get older and you don't have stuff every weekend to look forward to. It was really special because he had taken so much time to plan things out.

When we checked in and went to our room, we were so pleased to see how nice it was. However, we couldn't see any wood or any way to use the fireplace. I called the front desk and the young man told me that they use the fireplace logs but "unfortunately we are out of those for the weekend." What???? Are you kidding me???? I told him that simply was not going to do. Little did he know at this point what a be-yotch he had gotten hold of. I told him they were selling them all over town and I wanted them to find some for us. He said he'd call me right back. Which he did....and they had FOUND SOME in the back. Imagine that! So, dear Steve headed down to the front desk to pick one up for us to "build" a fire later that night after we had gone out for dinner. He came back a few minutes later with the fire log with a funny look on his face. He said "You're not going to believe this, but they are charging our room $5 for this log and they will for every log we use this weekend."

Well, that wasn't on their website anywhere about being charged for the firelogs and it wasn't on anything on the check-in information. I was furious!

I decided to call the 1-800 number for Marriott customer service and found a lady that was just as shocked as I was that they would even think of doing that! She called the front desk and had the charge reversed and sent an email to the manager to make sure the charge for a firelog on Saturday was taken care of. Done. Or so I thought.

We head off to Grinder's Pizza, which Steve and I found on the website for Guy's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" show on the Food Network. It was downtown and definitely not a place I would have gone looking for a restaurant, but it was terrific!!! Steve had their hot wings and we both ordered pizza. Some of the best we've ever had for sure. The atmosphere was fun and relaxing so we enjoyed our first night out on the town in Kansas City. Grinders Pizza in downtown Kansas City.


Snow and a little ice - the famous shoe photos.
Steve enjoying his hot wings on our game table that kept lighting up randomly all night long.

Who is that cute couple? I think they coordinated their clothes too.

The next morning we went out for some shopping and sight seeing.

Of course lunch was planned at the Cheesecake Factory.

Yummy! I can gain weight just looking at this dessert case!

Banana cheesecake and Blueberry cheesecake....could not be eaten all at once.

Had to take leftovers home.

Visited the museum for a Steamboat called the Arabia that went down in the Missouri River in 1863 with 200 TONS of stuff on it and then over the years was covered up with 45 feet of farmland when the river changed it's course years later. It was fascinating and really worth the visit. They even still had the pickles in the jars and perfume in bottles from it. Most of the goods were headed to the general stores that were planning to sell these things to the people moving out west at the time.

The jars of pickles.

Many of the tools look just like ones they use now.

perfume bottles.

After a busy afternoon, we came back to the hotel to get ready for the concert. I decided to go by the front desk to pick up my "fireplace log" so we would have it when we got back from the concert. I went to the front desk and told her who I was and what I needed. The young girl smiled sweetly and said "We have a new policy now....you get your first log free and each one after that will be a $5 charge to your room." I asked for the manager. After convincing her that she could give it to me for free or I could start making phone calls again, she removed the charge. Unfortunately, though, it did not leave me with a feeling of having WON the battle. It was such an unfair one to begin with!!! Why have a fireplace in a hotel room that people cannot use? Why should a customer pay the rates that you pay extra for a room with a fireplace that you cannot use? And to think that a few days ago, they were foolish enough to send me a customer satisfaction survey from their home office. Oh boy.

Those of you that know Steve and how he spends a lot of time thinking about how to get the best deal, will appreciate the fact that he thought taking a taxi would be cheaper than parking our car at the Sprint Center. Well, no it wasn't. Especially when I think they took us on a tour of the sights of Kansas City both there and back. But, oh well!

Jessica Simpson was the opening act for Rascal Flatts. We actually thought something was wrong with the sound system because we couldn't understand a lot of her words of her songs. But that cleared up with the boys came out to sing. She is one gorgeous gal though. No doubt about it.

The entire Rascal Flatts concert was amazing - from the moment they appeared and all through until there final encore - their stage extended out and lit up like the video on the stage behind them. I was so happy that I was able to ignore the four little obnoxious pre-teen girls sitting - no that would be standing - through the entire concert from Jessica Simpson on. They even called people that weren't there and sang to them along with their songs. No one believes me that I said nothing to them all night long, but I didn't!

This is an overview of the inside of the Sprint Center - our seats were down below. We were lucky to have great seats.

This was a cool thing they did while everyone waited - you sent a text message in to count as a vote to get to meet Rascal Flatts. My message showed up but I could never catch a photo of it. It said, of course, "The best husband ever gave me these tickets for Christmas - we drove from Arkansas and love Rascal Flatts!"

After our $15 taxi ride home, we set that fireplace log to blazing and enjoyed the end of a wonderful day.

Sunday we had brunch at the hotel (hoping they had not hired a sniper just yet to take me out or that they might have poisoned some of my food on the buffet line). After checking out, we headed to Arthur Bryant's for Barbecue. It is world famous, but we were still too full, so we got it to go.

There were photos all over the place of famous people that had eaten there. Never mind that Sarah Palin ate there last fall....I bought it anyway.

"That's what I'm doing these days" Thank you Rascal and thank you Steve!!!

Where have I been?

overworked....exhausted...... overwhelmed ........that is where I have been.
Going out of town for the weekend for some much needed R & R.
no treatment plans.....no intakes......no control freaks ...no supervision......no parents of kids telling me how to do my job.......no paperwork to print on MY printer with MY paper and MY ink (inside joke).

I promise to be back soon and I hope my sanity comes back with me. If it doesn't, most of you won't notice anyway.

Late at night...

It's funny, I think, sometimes what makes us stop and think. Or maybe just those little moments that make us stop. I mean really stop. It doesn't seem to happen to me very often these days, but I just had one of those "stop in your tracks, have I been here before, deja vu" kind of moments so I wanted to write a bit about it.
I used to be such a night person that it would amaze you. I've never been a morning person. But as the years go by, it seems that I'm growing less of either one. I like going to bed before 11 and sleeping as long as the alarm will allow me too, or the neighbor's barking dog...see previous blog on dog.
Tonight we were tuckered out from a late night going to Fayetteville last night to watch those crazy Razorbacks win against rival Texas. It really doesn't matter what sport we are playing. If we are playing against Texas, we just want to win! It was close down to the final seconds, which made for a thrilling ballgame. Traffic wasn't too crazy getting out of there and since we had eaten a huge meal at a mexican restaurant in Springdale that I dare not try to spell that starts with an "O" and my children KNOW I would, God forbid, not try to pronounce in their presence, were not hungry and got home around midnight. (now there's a run-on sentence for you)
Steve has gone to bed early and I was working on some photos from the rehearsal dinner. Yes, the wedding is still alive and well folks. Just you wait until it's your turn. You will understand. I began putting paperwork that was left undone back in my bag and turning off lights....went into the kitchen and put a few things away. Turned off the lights as I made a glass of ice water from my new nifty refrigerator with ice and water on the outside (yes, people, not all of us have lived with that luxury all of our lives).
That's when it happened. I was standing there with nothing but the street light coming in through the windows and I got the best sense of peace. I love this old house of ours. What good memories have been made here. How many times has that old back door opened and closed for children and friends and pets and furniture and gifts and moving kids to college and moving in and out of appliances old and new. The creaky old hardwood floors are so familiar that I hardly notice their creaks any more. If I had carried their weight I would have to creak a bit myself. And those of you that know me, would agree I'd be fussing! We've made it through boyfriends and girlfriends and graduations and birthdays right there in that kitchen. And right at that moment it was so still and quiet with nothing but the moon and street light shining in. No noise. No sons or daughters to wait up on tonight.
It's such a peaceful feeling and yet it almost feels like that little breath of air you suck in right before you swim underwater. You have to take it in to help prepare you for whatever might come your way next.

Here comes the Bride...I think

I've been working on Mary Beth's wedding photos, sifting, editing and trying to get them to a group that will not bore everyone to tears....but it still contains a group of about 500!! It starts with the bride and her maids getting ready and goes all the way through the reception. You can click on the link below...I hope....and choose to view it as a slideshow or look at the prints at your own pace or selection. If you want to skip through to the wedding you can do that and start the slideshow there.

I hope this works! There were almost 1500 photos and I tried to edit through them to get some of everyone without too many duplicates. Quite more of a job than I had planned.

I'm not even sure anyone reads this blog anymore....but anyway, here it is!

You can also increase the seconds between the slides too - you will see the + at the bottom of the screen. Enjoy!!

http://picasaweb.google.com/mombaer/WeddingPhotos?authkey=JQ9uDK_iZZc&feat=directlink

Does a Mom ever stop being a Mom?

Greg and Scott as they get ready to leave this morning.
Greg packed up like he is ready to climb Mount Everest.
And I still worry he may not have enough!Aw...but the kid looks happy, doesn't he?


So, the age old question that I already know the answer to is when does a Mom quit worrying and let her kids go? I know the answer is never, but I think that in the back of my mind I was thinking there would be a different answer somehow. Oh sure, there have been times when there was MORE worry and even times when there was LESS worry....but if you love your kids, then the worry just comes with it.
I've had friends with much more faith than my thimble-ful that say they turn it over to God and then they simply don't worry. I just think that God expects us to rely on him but to also be there to help him do his job too! I think of the many times when my worrying actually paid off. When that hunch or that prickly feeling a Mom gets on the back of her neck that something is just not right...like when your daughter makes plans to spend the night with a friend she has never hung out with but thinks you just won't call that mom to check on the plans....or when a daughter might be in junior high and want to go with friends to the fair and (God knows where else) and they aren't getting picked up in your driveway but rather down the block a ways....or when a son tells his mom something serious that you know he has told no one else on the planet but you.
When Rachel moved to Boston, I thought that I would never sleep a full night again for the rest of my life. But I did....eventually. Through the snow storms and getting locked out of her apartment, dealing with her life as a single girl in a place on her own. The drama of junior and high school nearly killed me with Mary Beth. Some of the girls she had for "friends" were some of the worst enemies one could ever imagine having! And she is such a good friend that I always hurt when she did and worry when they were gone on trips together, wondering if I was going to have to whip some teenagers when they got back. just kidding.
And now Greg has left for a long weekend hiking trip into the mountains with his friend, Scott. Scott has a plan, a map and these boys have been in that area before. But, somehow my little worry brain is working tonight. As I sit in the house with the heat on and my fuzzy socks from Christmas on, I worry if he is keeping warm. I worry if he got enough to eat tonight and did they take enough water to drink. You would think he is 10 instead of 20, wouldn't you?
I guess there will always be something for moms to worry about. That's what makes us moms. We hug, we love, we text, we email, we call, we fuss, we drive you crazy....but we have to. It's a genetic thing that we must do. And I wouldn't have it any other way.