The day I became a Mommy

14 years ago today, at 5:01 pm, I became a Mommy!  Alexander Wade Williams was the most beautiful baby boy I have ever seen.

The day was a long one that actually started about 2:00 the previous afternoon.  I woke up about 3:45 am on October 17th and noticed that my contractions seemed close together.  I decided to wake up Eric and have him time the contractions while I took a shower.  He thought they were too close together and wanted to leave immediately, I told him to wait - I needed to fix my hair and put on my make-up.  Then my water broke and he was insistent that we leave now - I needed to finish getting ready to go.  On the way to the hospital I made him stop at the convenience store so I could get something to eat.  He reminded me that in Lamaze class they said not to do that.  I told him I didn't care and he better pull the car over.  I quickly ate a blueberry muffin and downed a bottle of apple juice (he drove way too fast).  We arrived at the hospital around 5:30 am.  When I walked into the hospital, no one believed I was in labor, that my water broke, and that my contractions were 2 minutes apart.  Once they checked e, they were amazed that I was in labor.  You see... at this point it didn't hurt.

I had an elaborate labor plan that included soothing music and my wonderful massage therapist.  It all worked great until noon.  That's when I abandoned this foolish "natural childbirth plan" and asked for the epidural.  It's a good thing I did, since Alex waited another 5 hours to make his grand entrance into the world.  Alex had a little trouble and needed some extra care.  I didn't get to hold him for another 30 minutes or so.

Alex had colic with a vengeance.  Other than that, he was a laid-back, happy baby.  He loved everything and everyone.  He was so cute!

I could not ask for a better son.  He's super smart and looks the part.

He's a musician.

I can't believe it's been 14 years.  I love this kid more than the world.

Happy Birthday Alexander Wade Williams!!

What do you want people to know about you?

I was asked today, what it is that I want people to know about me?  Behind my "defensive" nature and after I peel back the "normal" layers.....  Everyone is okay with people knowing the normal/obvious things, such as:

I'm a Christian
I'm a Mom
I love my children more than anything
I'm smart, or at least I like to think so
I can learn just about anything someone is willing to teach me
I'm a survivor and I can survive you
I'm a friend
I'm loyal
I'm a serious person
I'm a planner, rarely spontaneous
I think making your bed daily is overrated
I'm independent
I'm not a hugger
I have horrible insomnia
I get bronchitis yearly

..... but, are we okay with people knowing our more intimate side, the vulnerable side.  I'm not so sure.  Are we okay with people knowing that we no longer trust people?  Are we okay with people knowing our failures?  Our epic failures?  That we doubt our decisions based on those failures?

How can I know what the deeper things are that I want people to know about me when I'm not even sure I know myself.  Somewhere along the way, I got so caught up in being who I have to be that I lost track of who I am.  I know this is not something that is unique about me.  Lots of people feel this way.

So, I'm going to try to figure it out........

Music

Music is a very powerful thing.  It elicits emotions that spoken words could not.  I hear bits and pieces of songs and think, "that's me." There are songs can make me "car dance" (that's me dancing while I'm driving, I'm sure I give others a laugh).  There are songs that make me cry.  There are songs that make me think, which can be a good or bad thing.  There are songs that make me happy.  There are songs I just don't understand.

Here are some lines from one that makes me sad, mad, and makes me think a lot.  These are words from "My Immortal" by Evanescence.  Those who know me well will understand why these phrases speak to me.  Those who know the song and know my story will understand why the music is so powerful with these word.

I'm so tired of being here
Suppressed by all my childish fears

------------------------------------------------------
Now I'm bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me
--------------------------------------------------------
These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase

Cold hearts

I'm a little taken back by some of the comments I've seen or heard today.  Why are some people "annoyed" or "over it" regarding remembering the worst terroristic event in our nation's history 10 years ago?

I wonder if those people would still be "annoyed" or "over it" if they had lost a loved one in the attacks?

I wonder if those people teach their children to be patriotic and love this country?

I wonder if those people realize how many lives were affected that day?

I wonder if those people have any warm spots left in their hearts?

You didn't necessarily have to know someone who was taken that day for that awful day to have affected you.

We had a very beautiful service at church this morning to remember this very significant day in history.  We honored law enforcement, firefighters, and military service people.  We prayed for these people who put themselves in harms way daily.  We prayed that we would be people who "run up the stairs," when everyone else is "running down the stairs."

I am NOT perfect

I am not perfect.  I have many imperfections.  I am well aware of this.  I do not want to be perfect.

I do give my best, most of the time.  I help where I needed, most of the time.

There is never any need to make up lies about what I'm doing or not doing.

Obviously I had a very bad day today.  The only reason I'm putting this out here is that I only have 1 co-worker that will ever see this.

We have 2 people at work, normally I would call them ladies but today their behavior was not lady-like at all, who I will call the "tattletales".  Now I thought the only tattletale I had to deal with these days was my daughter, who is the appropriate age for such behavior.  I had no idea I would be dealing with women in their 50s.

I guess is what makes me above the tattle-telling......  I have a life outside of the office that is far more interesting than what goes on in the office.  I'm too busy with my own stuff to keep track of everyone else.  It's that simple!

If you want to say that I'm slow at a task, that might be true by your standards, but I'm doing it to the best of my ability.  The problem I see is when you think everyone else is slow at the same task.  Is the problem everyone in the office or is the problem your expectations?

If you want to say that I'm occasionally on the internet at work, this is true, but do you know specifically why I'm on the internet.  I have been told to try to see if a party to the lawsuit we just got in has a Facebook page and if they were silly enough to make it public.  I've actually gleaned a lot of good information for the firm this way.  So maybe you should just mind your own business.

If you want to say that I'm sarcastic, that true and I don't have much more to say about that, except to remember that I say sarcastic things and not to take those statements at face value.  When I'm swamped and I say, "Let's see how much I can not get done today," that is code for I bet I can get any one task completely finished and maybe just parts of many.

Do not say that I refuse to do my work.  If I refuse to do my work, then who does it?  That's just hurtful when you get me called into a meeting about this nonsense.

Do not say that I refuse to help others.  When was the last time you asked me to do something?  It was probably today and I did what you asked.  That's just hurtful when you get me called into a meeting about this nonsense that last over an hour.  I had better things to with my time, like do my work.

So.... if I was slower than normal this afternoon, it was because I had a horrific headache from having to defend myself against all your lies.

Sorry - had to vent since I was told that self disclosure is an anger buster.  Maybe I won't be so angry about this now.  Thanks for listening.

Look BEFORE you leap

Look before you leap.  Not that seeing what's over the edge would change your mind about leaping.  It's just better to have all the information about what you are leaping into.  It might be a small leap where you can easily land on your feet.  It might be a long way down into deep water so you might want to dive.  Looking will let you know how to land and what preparations or equipment might be useful in the leap.



This fall I signed up for a class at TCC that is required for my transferring to Texas Woman's University.  The class is called Math of Business Analysis.  I'm not sure what made me think this would be like an Algebra application class (I guess since I did so many problems in the Spring and Summer semesters in Algebra that were business application problems).  If I had bothered to read the course description, I would have immediately known that "Math of Business Application" was a clever name for "Introduction to Differential and Integral Calculus."


It's not that I doubt my ability to take Calculus and make a good grade.  It's that Calculus scares me more than the other math classes.  You see, I "kind-of" took Calculus in high school, but I did take Algebra, Geometry, and Trig and remember some of that stuff.


My favorite teacher of all times taught my Geometry and Trig class.  She was supposed to teach Calculus, but took an administrator job.  I told her how unfair that was and how she should have just waited another year before she embarked on the journey to Vice Principal.  Anyway, this other math teacher, a very nice and kind man, was given the task to teach Calculus.  It was apparent that it had been a while since he taught or even worked a calculus problem.  He would read to us from the book, "try" to work example problems and it just never worked out for him.  Somehow I think the whole class managed to get As.


I guess if I had learned Calculus the first time, I might not be so apprehensive.  If I had read the course description, I could have been preparing myself for Calculus.  I should have looked before I leaped.

SPIDERS

Merriam-Webster’s on-line dictionary defines PHOBIA as an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation.  What do you call a fear that is logical?  Whatever the word is, that is how my fear of spiders would be classified.

My first spider bite was when I was in my early teens and I was helping clean my younger brothers’ bedroom.  It wasn’t any worse that an ant bite, but I knew it was the spider because I felt it and saw the spider on my leg.  I was bit again in my late teens while working at a daycare.  I was sitting outside under a tree, watching the kids.  I thought a fire ant was bitting me, but is was a spider on my ankle.  Once again, the bite was bad, just red and itched a lot.  I was bit at the zoo when I was in my early 30s.  It was a field trip with Alex’s class and this time I didn’t see it, but I felt it on my shoulder.  This bite was worse and I ended up at the doctor because it looked nasty quick.  A few days of antibiotics and a cortisone cream and it was better in a week.  I know you must be thinking, “that’s not so bad,” but then came the big one.

In June of 2006, I had just moved into an older house that I was remodeling.  A lot of bugs had been stirred up in that house by the remodel.  We found black widows and I was not happy about that, but that’s not what got me.  I was sick with my bi-annual case of bronchitis.  I went to the linen closet to get another pillow in the hopes that sleeping more up-right would make it easier to breath.  The next morning I woke up to a bump on my neck.  It looked like a pimple and I thought that was an odd place, but didn’t think to much about it.  The next day, this bump was big and it hurt a lot.  Then on the third morning, I woke up to a large black dot in the middle of the bump which was even bigger.  Of course this was on a Sunday, so I had to wait another day to go to the doctor.  Fourth morning it looks awful and I’m in a lot of pain, so I head to the doctor.  He looks at it, leaves the room, come back with a book and another doctor.  They flip pages, point, poke my awful bump and it hurts.  They then deliver the bad news - BROWN RECLUSE.  Now I’ve heard about these spiders.  Not good!  I remember my dad was bit once and it was not good.  The bite hurt and made me sick.  It opened up to a little larger than a quarter.  Since it was on my neck, in the bend of it, it made it hard to cover.  I didn’t go many places.  It took weeks of strong antibiotics, which made me sick, and pain killers, which made me sick.  The doctor called a surgeon to debris it, but the surgeon’s office never called back despite my numerous calls to the begging for some help.  I was desperate and did “surgery” on myself and after about 8 weeks it was healed.

Terminix was called out to the house and at first they didn’t believe we had brown recluse spiders since we had just moved in and our house was not cluttered.  They set rat glue traps all over the house and said they’d be back in a week to “evaluate” the problem.  SHOCK was the only thing the technician could muster when he began to count all the brown recluse spiders caught in the trap.  He counted over 50 brown recluse spiders in the traps and said that was probably about 10% of the spiders we had in the house.  He showed me how to tell which ones were brown recluse.  I was given a large box of glue traps and now I was in charge of changing them out every other day, saving the other and documenting the number and day those were collected.  I hated this.  The most we collected in a week was 75, the most in a 2 day period was 20.  They even had the Terminix entomologist flown in from wherever she lives.  She was shocked and then talked about how hard spiders are to kill with chemicals.  GREAT!!  We had weekly “dusting” of the house, inside and out the entire time I lived there.  The day I left the house, 2 1/2 years later, I still had a brown recluse problem.

I have noticed an increase of spiders in my house the past few weeks.  I’m not a little creeped-out.... I’m a lot creeped-out.  I’m hoping that the increase in spiders is due to heat and lack of water outside and will resolve soon.

My legitimate fear kicked into over drive this morning when I was in Tori’s room cleaning up her toys and found a brown recluse, very much alive and crawling away.  I can honestly tell you that the panic attack was real and I’m not sure when I can go in her room and finish the job.