pinball wizard

i made a chocolate cake tonight at 9:pm and iced it and we ate it before it even cooled. it was a mess.

i cleaned out my house with a spring cleaning in july and am selling half of my furniture. (ok, not half, but 2 big pieces so far and putting together more-times are hard)

i ate chocolate chip/strawberry waffles last night at 10:45pm with my husband as we watched a movie like giddy little kids up past their bedtime and didn't even think about what it was doing to my hips.

i put things back in the wrong place, i say one thing when i try to mean another, i overreact and underreact and forget to call people and run errands and check things off my "to do" list...i look at chores or piles of laundry and walk away with overwhelming stress. i think of all the calls to set up appointments here and there, calls about bills and debt and banking and medical issues/bills and insurance and i get worried that i won't get it all done, so i don't even start it. i look at the pretty list, all aligned nicely with responsibility after the other and i walk away and bake a cake instead...or check my facebook or email or look at dumb websites for things i don't need instead. i sit watching liam play with his cars instead of doing my chores..i start organizing or cleaning projects and quit halfway into them or get distracted with other rooms that need my attention and start another one while a pile sits down the hall...like i can't commit to one or the other, so i just have little fires that i can't put out...as if my putting things off will actually stop time one second or put off time at all...i think it is my way of trying to survive the day some days...mornings are fine. evenings are ok. but somewhere in the middle i get lost and try to "figure" life out too much or try to do it all and then realize that it can't all be done, so i throw the towel in. my head feels like a pinball machine most days. even if my heart seems ok most of the time lately, my brain is swimming around disconnected from that same organ that beats blood through my veins...

i think i might be losing my mind...

i went through the first forgetting of the "30th" of the month and totally feel like a loser mom...i am sure i was sad for some reason or many reasons that day or even about her i am sure but it totally slipped my mind that it was the "30th", her day...a day that would have marked 8 months with our little girl had she survived that awful day last fall..maybe it being two of my best friends birthdays, i was thinking of them more than myself..maybe since i was sick with a stomach bug since sunday, i have an excuse to forget, but i don't let myself all the hook like that....i feel as if i have shamed her memory by forgetting like that..my mind is so fragmented...that it doesn't actually surprise me. i forget a lot of things since we lost her. i have always had a fuzzy memory and been scattered brained but grief takes your brain and mind and shakes it like a tilt-a-whirl at disneyland and spits it back out and you are left with mush. how do you deal with the mush. how do you pick up the pieces of that mush and continue on, reenter the world and mesh with others, communicate and be effective when all you have to work with is mush. i am serious...most days i can't even explain it, but i am sure most people who have faced grief like this with death would understand. i can't put words or sentences together like i used to. i can't keep a thought going in a straight line like before. i forget simple words or phrases. i can be present in a conversation but completely check out mentally and go somewhere else without knowing it. one weird random change is my handwriting. i can't get my mind and hand to work together. i used to have pretty handwriting, clean and neat, very feminine but not too swirly and cutesy..now, my penmenship looks like that of my doctor's scribbling....not kidding, ask my sweet friend anne who got an awful letter from a small child who scribbled back on a letter to her, someone signed alyssa but i have no idea who wrote it, ha.

i have the hardest time being alone yet most times i just want to be alone. it is hard for me to talk about her sometimes, yet i want to talk about her all the time. i want to move "forward" but not move on....it's this crazy back and forth, make up your mind dance that i do...and i am sure my family is ready for me to sit the next dance out because i am driving them crazy. i don't want to leave the house but i get cabin fever. i want to encourage liam to play but admit to too many mornings of him in front of the tv so i can just have some quiet...the guilt i feel that i am wasting away his young years is heavy, heavy..i promise. but the motivation is not there. i wish i could be more sunshine and roses about it but i can't. i feel stuck in a time warp. i am working on it. i am praying and moving towards a better place with it all. just talking about it and admitting it and getting it out there is accountability for me...today liam and i did an errand and a craft together and i got myself dressed, (with makeup and jewelry even) and left the house...a huge feat for me lately...had an ok day..but then got hit with a "moment" and it shook me back to "start" this evening...like when you play a board game and you draw a card that sends you back to the beginning and you have to start over again...

i am restless. i am anxious. i am slow to patience and quick to anger or madness or maybe just irritation. i feel like i am idling. and ian and i keep bringing up "another baby talk" and timing talks all the time lately. even a random peppermint he found in a candy dish at church last night was a possible sign. it was an individually wrapped mint, but it had two mints in one wrapper. i, for one, have never seen this before and neither had ian..so he laughed as he showed me..."maybe this is a sign, babe..." yet we have four more months that we are to wait since my surgery to complete a full year and it seems like 1976 waiting for Y2K as we look forward to fall...

all i can think about is getting pregnant. and that, which i would desire to replace my pain with hope has become this maddening obsession...one that i guess could have caused me to forge through the latest "30th" without any thought to what the date was and what it meant. if this next step with a pregnancy is already occupying my mind like this, i am scared to see what happens when it might actually happen. i will just need to put out for 9 months or hybernate...ha. i guess talking with cara/kara the other night made me start thinking more concretely about our future and wanting the time to be here where we can start trying...i hate feeling like i am on hold, like our dreams are on hold and we are in "waiting" until all the ducks are in a row....i just want to trust God and go for it...yet, i want to be cautious and discerning and listen to the wisdom of doctors as well. ian and i just feel like we are ready, even if my mind's rambling might tell you otherwise...we long for Hope, a full house and a little one in our arms and a sibling for our son...we long for our love to multiply...we ache for a different kind of madness within these walls of our home....one full of fighting sibilings or a crying baby...anything other than death and sadness, we want life and joy.

the funny thing about this post is that i don't think i am even staying on topic, i am jumping around from thing to thing like my mind does right now and i feel so vulnerable. i almost didn't even want to sit down and try and filter my thoughts because they are so jumbled up but i felt like it might help soothe me and be a good thing, yet i don't even know what i am trying to say...i just know that writing helps make sense of my mind...and God meets me here when i do...like i am talking with Him as well..

gosh, can i get a witness? can some sweet mom that has reached out to me in months past, a sweet mom that is also hurting and painfully and awkwardly trying to fumble through this life now like me, hear me and nod in some kind of mutual messed-up-ness? does your mind leave you sometimes like mine? do you have a hard time "keeping up" at times without getting consumed by your hurting heart? i need to go sit with my bible and "think on these things"...just been trying to keep my world so busy and loud, to be distracted and disconnected somedays, a defense mechanism at best...so that the stillness doesn't remind me of my broken heart....my longing and empty arms...it's worthless, i know being anything but still will get me anything but His peace.