Life in Italy

On Saturday, my mom was kind enough to watch Rain for me while I finished painting Rain's bedroom window. Several hours later, I returned to pick my kiddo up. I stepped into my mom's hallway and Rain stood there with her back towards me. She was babbling to my mom, and then she turned around and saw me. She smiled and ran towards me with her arms open.

In the past year, there were times when I thought I was the worst mom ever. I wasn't cut out for parenting, and why, oh why, did Rain have to scream about everything? But, there she was, running with her arms open, and I thought, "Wow, we're not perfect, but we still love each other!" I mean, how many times in my life is someone going to be so happy to see me that (s)he comes running at me with arms open? The only person who has ever run at me with so much enthusiasm before is my ma's shih tzu. Go figure.

We love each other, and with all the insanity that plagues our house daily, we keep afloat. But there are new parents out there, just like me, who are dealing with a lot more than just tantrums and diapers. As the writer in my previous blog entry so eloquently described, these parents are learning to love Holland when they had planned on a trip to Italy.

Before Rain was born, I pondered the terrible what if. What if she was sick or had a disability? What if I couldn't help her with it? Will I have what it takes to be her mom? I tried not to think on these things too long, because the answers were very, very frightening. God knows I don't have the spiritual and emotional maturity to hang on like many special parents do.

And then Rain was born. She was strong and beautiful. I, for the time being, had nothing to worry about. But, I did often wonder about those parents out there. The ones who were all dressed for Italy ...

Not too long ago, a fellow writer friend of mine (children's author Diane Roberts), showed me a photo of her granddaughter. Raeleigh ("Ray-lee") is about 5 months older than Rain, and in the photo, she had the same fair skin & wispy hair I had become familiar with.

Raeleigh, though, has what are called hemangiomas. Many of you have probably seen hemangiomas (they're common birthmarks) or had them yourselves. They often disappear after a kid turns two and are only a vague childhood memory. But Raeleigh's are a different, more aggressive kind. Hers have overtaken her chin and sides of her face so much so that she requires chemo and steroids to treat them.

Weeks afterwards, I thought about Raeleigh. Here her parents were constantly monitoring their baby's trachea tube, and all I had to deal with was Rain's passing hysterics. They were financing expensive medical treatments, and I was handing over a $15 co-pay for Rain's "wellness" visits. They celebrated every delayed developmental milestone, because hey, the milestone was met. We got to check of Rain's milestones as if the baby books were written especially with her in mind.

The point is, whether I acknowledge it every day or not, I have been enjoying a fabulous time in Italy. In the meantime, Raeleigh has been learning the ropes of Holland. Babies, whether because of sicknesses, disabilities, or impairments of any kind, are making it work in Holland. Italy and Holland are both beautiful, but the people of Holland deserve a hat-tippin', a kudos, a salute--something.

So.

Here we are.

Can you sense a favor comin', because I'm about ready to ask it?

Please, please, when you have a moment later today, or tonight after the kids are in bed, or tomorrow morning when you're sipping your coffee, check out something my sister & I built for Raeleigh:

http://www.racetoraeleigh.com/

It's nothin' flashy & we're still workin' out the kinks, but I truly have this flicker, this bit of hope, that everyone is going to help this one baby out. I know, I know: there are so many people that need help, so why this girl?

Because she's one you can help. She's not a nameless face. She just an innocent kid who got dealt a harsh hand. This is the first time I've ever used my God-given fingers to draw/write without benefiting myself financially in any sense because I believe people want to do right by this kid, if I can show them how. And, come on--who doesn't love turtles?

Holland, and Other Great Places

A few months back, I mentioned that I'm working on a very special project. Before I explain what it is, I'd like to share this piece written years ago:

Welcome to Holland
By Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this...

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning for a fabulous vacation trip to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans. The Colosseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go.

Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland!!!" you say. "What do you mean Holland!!! I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they've haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would have never met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you can catch your breath, you look around...and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills...and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things... about Holland.

The End of an Error--er--Era

Tim has been sick for two days. He hasn't been sick in a while, and this time he went down bad. He has chills, fever, soreness and the like. He's been asleep most of the time, but today, unfortunately, he had to watch Rain so we could get our apartment keys turned in on time (today at 5:00). He was bad off and mumbled several times, "I'm sorry I'm sick. I wish I could be more help to you."

St. Tim continued to do his best, though several times he ended up face down on the floor. No, really: he found a blanket, placed it in the middle of our old bedroom, and slept on it as necessary. I told him several times not to do so much, but to tell you the truth, it was hard as all get out to clean & watch Rain at the same time. Because all of the child safety devices in our apartment had been removed, she kept trying to plug in the vacuum cleaner, stick a screwdriver in another socket, and pull any remaining cords. She hunted down scraps of paper and metal to eat and screamed to the heavens whenever we took them from her. The entire time, Tim was half-dead, and I was wondering how all three of us ever lived together in such a small apartment.

The apartment is what's really on my mind, though. I mean, Tim & I moved into this apartment complex when we got married. Rain's entire first year of life played out in our tiny 1-bedroom apartment. The neighborhood was nice (in fact, if we could've afforded to buy a home there, we probably would've), and the maintenance guy was awesome. But the same little woods/creek that gave the complex some charm was also the reason it was cursed with spiders and the like. Don't even get me started on the mosquitoes ... Looking back, we should've totally moved out a long time ago, but hey, it was home. Anyway, I was a little nostalgic when we left today. I told Tim I would lock up. I said goodbye to the kitchen, shot some video of the place, locked the front door, and headed to the car--where Tim, with bags under his eyes and haggard expression, was sitting in the front seat with a crying Rain on his lap.

Nostalgia over.

HGTV, Call Me!

This past week we (Tim & I, I mean) have squeezed every last bit of life out of our carcasses to move out of our apartment. Between painting the new place and scrubbing down the old one, we have torn ourselves up to make this move happen. At one point, I was on all fours on the carpet telling my sister, "My lower back gave out!" My 4-year-old niece, thinking I was playing around, hopped on top of me. I slammed face first into the ground as my fingers bent awkwardly beneath me. Through a mouthful of carpet I said, "And now my fingers are sprained."

I resurrected many times after incidents like that because, hey, the closets won't paint themselves, right? Every day as we went to sleep at 2 or 3 A.M. and got up at 6:30, we comforted ourselves with, "It's almost over, it's almost over ..." 6:30 would come, and Rain would wake up all, "Hey, guys! So later I was thinking we could go to the park or that fun bookstore where they leave all those books on low shelves for me, but first, breakfast!"

Her schedule never changed, so she couldn't understand why Mommy's favorite new game was, "I'll Lie Here and You Can Crawl on My Head for All I Care" TM. At times I felt like a terrible mom because I would fall asleep randomly during the day, and I had to drop Rain off at my sister's a lot so I could work on the house. My email is backed up and bills are slipping through the cracks 'cause I'm just too tired to deal. Today we're going to clean up our old place, and hopefully we'll be ready to turn in our keys tomorrow night.

What I need to do is get on one of those HGTV design shows & let the professionals deal with this. You know, those shows where they redo someone's house because the person is like a single mom who is a purple heart war vet and now runs an orphanage. The only problem is I need a warm/fuzzy story, so that I get my name put at the top of the list. But without a terrible disease, bankruptcy, or orphan to my name, my chances of a home makeover are slim.

Unless ...

Do they have a show about new home owners who keep getting messed over by service technicians? If they do, tah-dah! I'm your gal. After the whole AT&T debacle, I was done in by enough bad service reps to surely qualify for a show. Not only did our appliance delivery guys have to return both our refrigerator & washer due to shipping damage (thanks, by the way, for scraping rubber on the laundry room walls I just painted, gentlemen), our carpet installers sliced through the wires connecting our newly installed home security system. Of course they didn't tell me they did this (had to have a Brinks guy check it out) because they probably figured I was mad at them already for not ordering enough carpet to finish the house (see you next week, guys!). And the plumber--did I tell y'all about the plumber that ripped us off? And who cleans a chimney in 20 minutes and charges $150??

Blood pressure rising

Forget Deserving Design; I'm gonna end up on an episode of ER.

The Scene

We are officially moving from our apartment on the last Saturday of this month. Every day until then, I'm going to lose 5% of my hair. The stress, stress, stress is making me a mess, mess, mess. The hardest thing is I can't do a lot of the stuff I need to do to get our new place ready (pack, paint, child-proof ...) when Rain is with me. I want her to hang out with me, but I can't sand wood in one hand and cuddle her with the other, right? So, I've been having my sister watch Rain a lot. I try to bring Rain with me whenever I can, but when I do ... well, here's what happened today:

I took Rain with me to buy paint. She was asleep when I took her out of the car, so I thought, "Sweet! I can shop in peace!" Well, ten minutes into the trip, Rain wakes up. She LOVES going to home improvement stores, because everything dangerous and pricey is out on the floor with no locks. Stacks and rows of toxic sprays, glues, & pesticides? Weeeee!

Well, I tried and tried to keep her in the cart, but she started crying and screaming. I tried carrying her--no go. She wanted to walk, and I was annoying her. After a few minutes, she was crawling all over me as I tried to restrain her. At one point, I sat her down to put on her shoe (yeah, by this time she had lost a shoe and was foaming at the mouth). She screamed, and it echoed along the aisles of metal cans and bounced off all the ears of the retired and childless men shopping at that hour.

"See??"I hissed at Rain. "I'm that lady at the store with a screaming kid who everyone hates! See who you've made Mommy into?"

I was so mad, I got up and walked off. "Fine!" I said. "I'm done with this!" I walked about five feet and peeked behind me. Rain turned her back to me (with a sassy flourish, no less!) and stomped off in the opposite direction. So, I walked another three feet and looked again. Rain had stopped as well. This is the part that troubles me most: after checking to see that I wasn't looking (I was), she hid behind a barrel in the aisle.

"Is she trying to make me believe she really ran off?" I thought. I ran towards the side of the barrel, and looked down on her. She was spying on the spot where I had just been. She was trying to punk me out! My mouth dropped open as she leaned out a bit like, "Now where did that silly woman go?"

"Rain!" I said, annoyed. She turned back and smiled like, "Yeah, I knew you'd be back."

Ugh! I was so mad. Rain knew it, too. For the next hour, she kept reading my eyes in this freaky sort of way. I think she was trying to decipher if I was mad, or if I was amused. She sort of smiled but all fake like. Her eyes said, "What is Mommy thinking? How can I bend these thoughts to my will?" I kept a straight face, but shook my head a few times to hint, "I'm not happy, and this isn't the end of it."

In conclusion: who is available to babysit this week? What--was it something I said?

AT&T'd Off

AT&T.

Where shall I begin, mine enemy? Ye vile, wanton lord of the Internet! How dare ye call yourself an "Internet SERVICE Provider?" Do ye deal in service, or is it not proper to say ye pass your duties to India? Knoweth ye not that the road to Hell is paved with poor connections??

Anger makes me speak King James-ish. Aghh! I am so through with AT&T. Yesterday, I spent 1 hour on the phone with them. All the while, Rain was running around the new house looking for bugs to eat, ladders to climb, and bottled cleaners to drink. Not only was I transferred FIVE times, but each one of them asked me my name, address, phone number, etc. Why doesn't an Internet service provider have, I don't know, a network for its own?? Then I got transferred to India! Now, I love my Indian folk, and the reps are as polite as can be, but I don't understand them and they clearly don't understand me. Do I fault them? Nope. AT&T should stop trying to save a buck & hire some more American reps. At least then I'll understand how terrible the service is. Honestly, why can't they get it together? Do they not have Outlook or Networking for Dummies? I had to talk to them again today, and seriously, this is a sample of yesterday's & today's conversations:

Yesterday (Me & the American rep)
Me: The problem is, someone was supposed to connect our fax line on Monday as well as a main line. But, only our main line was connected.
Rep: I see. Well, or records show someone is coming on Thursday to connect the second line.
Me: Thursday? This is the first I've heard of this. What time on Thursday?
Rep: 8 A.M. to 8 P.M.
Me: I don't live in this home yet, so I'm not here a lot. Could you give me a smaller window of time?
Rep: Let me transfer you to our repair department--
Me: --no! I've already been transferred there before, and they transferred me to you--
*click*
New Rep: Thank you for contacting AT&T. What is the phone number your are calling about?

Today (Me & the Indian rep)
Me: I'm having problems with our email. We can receive email but not send it.
Rep: Ok. To assist you, I need your mother's maiden name for security purposes.
Me: (I give the name, but then realize that the main account holder is Tim, so they probably need his mother's maiden name) Actually, the name is--
Rep: I'm sorry, your initial answer was incorrect.
Me: I know, it's actually--
Rep: I'm sorry, because of security purposes, I need you mother's maiden name.
Me: I KNOW. The name is Sor--
Rep: I'm sorry. Because you answered incorrectly, you will have to fax me an ID, proof of your address, and--
Me: What? Seriously? Look, we're not even done moving into this house. We don't have a fax machine set up--
Rep: I'm sorry, because of security purposes ...

Pardon Me

I felt kind of bad for Rain today because most of her toys were packed up. So, when I had to pack or clean, she had to entertain herself with--yikes--her imagination. That lasted about 20 minutes, then she looked at me like, "So ... when are we going to get a Wii like Aunt Gina has?" o I tried out a time-tested parental phrase like, "What am I? Made of money?" and a fresh one, too: "Hey, it was either a Wii for you or a new stainless steel refrigerator with built-in ice maker for us. Would you like a cool glass of water?"


So, it was time to break out the books. Before Rain was mobile, she liked books. When she began to crawl and walk, all of a sudden books were for rocks. I'm holding on to the time where she will love them again. Anyway, so I grabbed 2 books, one for each of us. Rain opened her book on her lap.

I picked up the other book and read a sentence to Rain. She smiled, moved closer to me, and took the book from my hand. Still smiling, she closed the book, and put it next to her.

"You don't like that one, huh?" I said. "OK, let's try this one."

I took the book sitting on her lap and read a page aloud. Rain smiled, took the book from me, and closed it. After a meaningful look, she handed the same book back to me.

I opened it again and started to read. She reached for the book.

"What?" I said, "What's wrong?" Then I got it. "Oh ... you don't want me to read aloud." Rain smiled, and we each looked at our own books quietly. Pardon me, madame.