(You Can't Even) Take Me Out to the Ballgame...and We Wobble

You'd think that, as much death-defying stupid crap I do in a day, injuries are fairly commonplace around here.  I always forget to lift with my legs, I check the milk by drinking instead of sniffing it, I have been known to lean precariously on a ladder to reach just a leeeeetle bit farther with the paintbrush...you get the idea.

Yet miraculously, I don't usually sustain any real damage.  The occasional strained back muscle and a constant collection of bruises notwithstanding, I am invincible.

Oh, but let me go to the minor league baseball game and it's all over.

Tank was walking behind the bench I was on (I had moved up a row to sit and talk with a friend, while Shawn stayed in back, talking to more friends).  I reached out to playfully smack Tank on the rear and SLAMMED the back of my hand into the metal frame of the bench.  I hit it right on the back side of my palm, at the base of the pointy finger.  HOLY SH*T, that hurt.  And now, it hurts to grasp anything or make a fist.  I can't live through a day if I can't make a fist, people!!  Oh, the humanity.

Well, despite my little pointy-finger drama, we had a great time.  Our team won and Tank got to hug the team mascot twice.  For years, Tank had a love/hate relationship with the mascot, but this year it's been pure love.  He stalks the mascot, pantomiming that we should "sneak up" on him and attack unexpectedly with many hugs.  Thank goodness the person inside the costume is a kind soul and patient with fixated toddlers!

So, all in all it was a great day.  We didn't stay for the whole game, so we missed the "Sweet Caroline" audience sing-a-long and also missed the mascot dancing the Wobble.  That alone is worth a trip to the ballpark!

There's not a video from the game online, but here's the dance.  Just imagine a 6-foot bug doing it and you've pretty much got it:

Happy Monday...now go get your Wobble on!

Big Lots Bargains and I Dismember Mama

Yesterday, Tank and I got a touch of cabin fever and we decided to go stake out the local Big Lots to see what was new.  I haven't been in a Big Lots in a year or so, but I do love to poke around for treasures once in a while.  On this trip, I scored a few fun things:

Jessica McClintock Home

Cute ceramic apple and pear with metal stems and leaves.  Just $3 each!

This starfish photo frame has soft sea glass colors and will work with what I'm trying to do in the master bedroom:

But it's not all fun and games, you know.  I do still have to get up and drag myself (and Tank) to work.  Yesterday morning, we went to my part-time job at the church (stop laughing, they DO let me in!).

The pastor is out of town, so it was just the two of us in a big old church.  Tank wanted some juice, so we went to the kitchen where I promptly lost about ten years of my life:

Yes, it is a severed mannequin leg.  Not what I was expecting to see when I went to throw away the lid to my yogurt container.  What the #*$&T%^ is that thing doing in the church trash can?!  And, more importantly--is it so wrong that I immediately started trying to figure out how to turn it into a lamp? 

Don't worry...I left it right where it was and abandoned the lamp idea. 

The questions, however...those remain.

Hope you get a leg up on a great weekend!

(oh, like YOU could have resisted!)

Whew!

Well, despite a number of hiccups, we made it through the 10-day revocation period on the adoption I mentioned in the last post.  The birthmother hasn't been in touch since Saturday, and while I hope that she is staying sober, I doubt it.  I can only do so much and, like anyone who interacts with an addict, I have to maintain a safe distance between her messes and my life.  The baby was released from the hospital without needing a prescription for methadone, which is wonderful!  The happy new family have returned home to the Midwest, where this child will enjoy all the love and support her parents have to give.  I am confident that she'll have all the tools necessary to meet her full potential.  I've bene working to get birthmom into a rehab program, but she is resistant.  I can only hope that the judge in her DUI case will mandate treatment.  Even then, it's a long shot that she'll get sober and stay sober; addiction has been her life for too long for this to be an easy recovery.

After all the madness of the last two weeks, I really needed to unplug for a while.  Tank and I headed to the Taj MaHell to decompress and hang out with family.  Shawn stayed behind at Gilligan's Island to catch up on some work he needed to do.  Unfortunately, the craziness I was dealing with bled over into his work life, too, since he had to leave work early several times to keep Tank while I ran back and forth to the hospital.

Tank and I laid low for the most part, although we did tie on the feedbag at the Farm Maven's a couple of times...wonderful, fresh-from-the-garden veggies and even some home-made ice cream made with milk from the Maven's new cow!  Yup, she has a cow.  Me, I'm sticking with Publix, but I'm all for her freedom to shovel cow sh*t if that makes her happy.  And it apparently does!

Tank also had a blast in Papa's pool...now that he will use the water wings we got him, he loves swimming from one end to the other and would stay in all day, if he could. 

One happy dude

Since I can't resist tackling a project, I primed the back porch/mudroom.  On our last trip to the Taj, we removed the old upper and lower cabinets that used to be there.  While the extra storage was nice, they just weren't doing it for me.  The cabinets were hung off-center which made the doorway to the kitchen tight and created a useless corner next to the window.  I took off the old chair rail, since it had been cut around the cabinets.  The chair rail was nailed on with 3 1/2 inch nails, so that was tons-o-fun right there.

Here's the mudroom when we bought the Taj:

Here it is, minus the cabiets and chair rail:

And here it is, primed.  The plan is to paint the bench either red or black, add a coat hook above, refinish the floor and just generally spiff it up.  But for the time being, this is an improvement!

A couple of trips ago, we bought twin beds from the Amazing Sister In Law.  She'd painted them black, but I needed white in Tank's room, so a few coats of primer and paint later, we had white twin beds.  The bedding is from Target...it was a great deal and should be versatile enough for whatever we decide to do with his room.  I still haven't finished the toy box.bench, since I'm not sure what I'm going to decorate his room with.  Leaning towards baseball, but we'll see.

And I couldn't resist painting this dresser while I was there.  We scored this at a yard sale on Gilligan's Island for $10.  The drawer slides are broken and will need attention, but for now it provides storage for t-shirts and shorts and we can deal with floppy drawers until I get around to fixing it.  At least it's painted and has new knobs!

And after all that, who wouldn't need a mini-treat, courtesy of a local Mexican eatery?  I said I wanted a margarita the size of my head.  I had to make do:

Until next time.....

Is it just me? Wait...don't answer that!

Sometimes I don't post for a week or two because I really don't feel that the thoughts in my head ever need to be set down for other eyes to see.  This has been one of those weeks.

I started a post about it and realized that some things are just too messed up to communicate.

As I've mentioned in other posts, I have worked for several years in the adoption world.  It's a crazy, beautiful, heart-wrenching thing and I have felt lucky to be a part of it.

But sometimes it just sucks.

For the past six months, I have been working with an addicted birthmother.  Working with addicted people is never a walk in the park, even if they're currently exercising some sort of control over the addiction.  Combine addiction that is not under control with pregnancy and you get a hot mess.

In the last nine days, I have been on a non-stop rollercoaster of emotions, stretched between a birthmom whose demons are in the drivers seat in her life and a terrified family who are already in love with the baby that joins them all together.  Watching a once-pretty woman sink to the lowest point possible to a human brings out all the compassion within you; but then you walk a few steps to the nursery and watch an innocent baby in the throes of withdrawal.  Compassion goes out the window for me and I just want to pick up the mom and shake the snot out of her.  How could you DO that?!  Why don't you CARE?!  I honestly cannot fathom an addiction so strong that it takes away your humanity, that it can make you look without pity on a newborn who is struggling to survive because of your own actions. 

 The nurses in the NICU told me that a baby who's detoxing feels like she's falling all the time.  Pats and jiggling motions, comforting to most babies, only make the withdrawing baby more anxious and frantic.  Imagine feeling as if you are falling backward down a tunnel that has no end.  No touch is comforting, no voice can soothe.  That's what this mom's pharmaceutical adventures did to her child.

And the hospital released the birthmom with 30 Percocet two days later.  Less than 48 hours after she left the hospital, she returned as a patient in the ER.  Handcuffed to her bed because she'd gotten high on her pain medication and had slammed her truck into a daycare bus loaded with kids.  Everybody lived, which is a miracle.

What's not a miracle is that the SAME hospital released her home 20 hours after the accident with a prescription for 60 Percocet.

There's nothing cute or funny to say about all this.  Not right now.  Maybe not ever.

The only thing that I can hold on to is the fact that the baby who is now just a few days old is set on a course for an amazing, beautiful life.  After a gazillion stupid-ass choices, this birthmother made one good one.  She gave life to her child and then she gave a GOOD life to her.

That's enough for me.

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

Well, howdy.

We had a massive wind storm last night here at Gilligan's Island.  As a couple of neighbors and I chatted in the den, the trees outside did their best to bend double...quite the show.  In the end, we got a bit of rain and a brief respite from the triple-digit temps of the day, so that was good.  Even better, we didn't lose power!

But if we lose power in the future, I now have a plan, thanks to Dante Shepherd over at Surviving the World.