Black Cat Luck

So, I took Swicky to WalMart, because she loves WalMart. Ask her. She’ll tell you - “Love WalMart. Push a cart.” Part of the way through shopping, she told me she was “sooo huuungryyyy….” Since she had been so well behaved, and wasn’t whining or screaming - merely rubbing her tummy and telling me conversationally that she could use a snack - I thought I’d get her a treat.

I went to the deli and bought her a cookie. She loves Dora, and they just happened to have cookies shaped and frosted to look like Dora, and she was so excited to see them; they were pretty cheap, so what the heck - I got the girl a Dora cookie. She whined a bit when I had to take it from her to pay for it, but she was thrilled when I opened it up and she got to eat it.

So she happily started munching away on her cookie.

Then, a pause. “Dora cookie…missing a eye…” And that’s when things went downhill. I had to start coaching her through eating her flippin’ cookie. “It’s okay, Swicky, it’s not really Dora, it’s just a cookie. You can eat it. Really.” “Jus’ a cookie? Okay. Jus’ a cookie…” *crunch crunch* “Dora cookie missing a hand!!” “It’s okay, Swicky, really…”

Once all similarity to Dora disappeared, she was fine with eating the cookie. All the same, I think it will be a while before I get her anything else that is edible and looks like one of her t.v. friends. *sigh*

This year I’ve decided I’m going to make resolutions that sound ridiculously hard to accomplish, but will be equally ridiculously easy for me to keep.

#1)  I will loose 40 pounds.  Considering I lost 20 pounds in the first month - 15 of that in the first DAY - I think I’m doing pretty darn good on this one, huh?  *teehee*  Dropping a nine-pound parasite is the BEST way to loose weight, apparently.  Take THAT, Weight Watchers!!!

#2)  I will get a new stamp on my passport.  Yeah, well, we’re planning to move to Thailand, so I don’t have to go out of my way to get this one done, either…

#3)  I will get a book published.  Okay, so the book’s already written; I’m just waiting for the illustrator to finish…

That’s all I’ve got for now…  I’ll probably add to the list as I come across things to do.  You know, like “go to the doctor” or “pick up pickles at Aldi’s”.

Want to know what black cat luck is? My kind of luck? Well, Isaiah’s birth kind of sums it up…

Up until his birth, we’d been told he’d been measuring “perfectly normal”, but that I was gaining too much weight. Michael kept insisting that I was further along than they said I was, and I kept telling them my belly was way big - but they just said I was fat. They estimated Munchkin at seven pounds. Also, the last three visits I had high blood pressure - my diastolic was over 95; mine is usually under 75, and they like to keep it under 90. Still, all they did was tell me to lie on my left side for a bit, then tell me I was fine and send me home.

We kept hoping that Isaiah would be a “good boy” and come before the year turned, like his sister did - tax break! But, no, he waited until New Year’s Day. 5 a.m. was my first contraction. I wasn’t sure it was a contraction, actually… I didn’t wake Michael up until the contractions were four minutes apart, and I still wasn’t sure I was in labor. Michael yelled at me for not waking him up immediately while he got dressed. (In his defense, I’d been sent to the hospital a week earlier from the doc’s office because I was four centimeter’s dilated and they thought I might be in labor already, so I wasn’t supposed to hesitate if I thought I might be in labor, but I didn’t want to go to the hospital and it be another false alarm…) Anyway! When we got to the hospital, I was five centimeters dilated, and, yes, in labor. They admitted me and gave me my epidural.

That’s when things went wonky, and my wacky luck kicked in. Things were not helped by the fact that my OB’s are, so it seems, suffering from chronic “stupidity”, as one nurse so kindly put it.

My diastolic was at 105, which is apparently not good. As soon as the epi hit, I started shaking uncontrollably and violently, and throwing up, for good measure. My diastolic dropped immediately to 54, which is also not good, but on the opposite end. I had to be turned on my side. Any time I turned on my back, my blood pressure went wonky, I threw up, and I shook like crazy. Fun times, huh? The only up side to this, as one nurse pointed out nicely, is that throwing up uses the same muscles that pushing does, so it helps move the baby out!

I would turn on my back to push, then turn back to my side. Because I was spending so much time on my side, the epi was uneven. Also, turned out that Little Man was facing the wrong way, so turning on my right side helped him turn right-side up. Still, he ended up getting his shoulder stuck. Poor little guy. Or, not so little guy… They misestimated (is that a word?) his weight by two pounds - he was nine pounds. It’s a good thing I have what three different Gyn’s have called “child-bearing hips” (at very awkward times, I might add, and I’ll not describe them, thank you very much)! Most women my size have to have c-sections with a baby that big!

He also had lots of hair, his fingernails and toenails were long enough to need cutting, and he had eyelashes - all pretty decent hints that he might be overcarried a bit, rather than a few days early…

Well, then the doc had to mash on my belly forever to get the placenta out. Most placentas are about 1.4 pounds; mine - well, Isaiah’s, I guess - was 2 pounds. Michael said it looked like a deep-dish pizza. It was huuuuuge. Keep in mind, I was still shaking and puking while this was going on.

In fact, I couldn’t feed Isaiah immediately because I was shaking so badly and throwing up, so his first feeding was Daddy’s moment, with a bottle. So was his second - I was still shaking and throwing up. In fact, I was still having shaking episodes well into the next morning, although I’d stopped throwing up by then, and even managed to eat something. So, even though I’d planned on breastfeeding, he managed to get hooked on the bottle while I was incapacitated.

That’s where my crazy luck kicks in again. My son wouldn’t breast feed. And that’s a good thing, because it turns out that one of the meds I’m on for my migraines would have killed him eventually - something my OBs neglected to mention, although they knew I was on it.

So, here’s what it amounts to: Me, a five-foot-even, small-framed woman gave birth vaginally to a nine-pound baby, when any sane doc would have noticed he was big and advised a c-section, but everything went well because I’m built for it. I reacted badly to the epidural, which helped me push the kid out and then kept me from breastfeeding him, which kept him healthy and may have even saved his life. Yep, that’s my luck - bad, bad stuff happens, but it all seems to work out for the best and will even provide us with plenty of fodder for funny stories later, when I’m not so tired from all the recovery.

Do you have any idea how fatigued a body gets from healing up after pushing out a nine pound parasite??

Okay, more stuff later!!

Just a little note - I’ll write more later, I promise.  If you want to see Michael Isaiah (we’ve decided to call him Isaiah, to make things easier all around, and because it’s a cool name), go to http://www.hmh.net/cfide/scripts/babyinfoRevised.cfm?ID=9600.

You’re welcome.

Yesterday, I went to my OB appointment. The doctor told me I was 3 to 4 centimeters dilated, and sent me to the hospital to see if I was in labor.

The hospital sent me home. Nope, not in labor. Dilation, yes; contractions, little ones, sure; but not true labor.

The doctor at the hospital - the same doc who delivered Madi-So, btw - did ask where we lived before sending me home. If I’d lived farther away - like outside town - he would have induced labor and all that fun stuff. So, we know that labor and delivery should be quick, at least!

That’s not nearly as comforting as you’d think. I keep having nightmares about getting to the hospital and being told, “Oooh, sorry, it’s too late to give you an epidural”. Epi, I remember very well, is my friend…

And I keep getting bigger… Last month, I got too big for my maternity clothes. No matter what, my belly showed. So I started wearing Michael’s pants. Now I’ve outgrown them! I’m stuck showing my belly, at least until Munchkin makes his entrance into the wider world, anyway!

Mostly of Madeline, go figure.  Her Halloween pics are in there; she’s so cute!!

You can see the pics at http://flickr.com/photos/jude_morrissey/.

Yay!

(That’s a very funny song, btw…funny, in a creepy-stalker sort of way…)

Anyway!  I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while…  I’ve been sick!  Not to mention ready to pop this thing out…  I’ve had a sinus infection for three weeks now; the doctor didn’t want to give me anything for it until 1) Sudafed raised my blood pressure too high and 2) she was afraid I’d still be sick when I went into labor.  So now I’m on antibiotics, which works so well with the constant acid reflux (can’t take Tums with the antibiotics).  I look like a beached whale.  Most of my maternity clothes don’t fit.  Luckily, Michael’s clothes fit just fine, so I’m wearing his clothes pretty often now.  Most of the time, actually, I’m in my jammies - I stay home as much as possible, since gathering the energy to go anywhere is difficult, especially when taking the Swicky-thing is involved!

Madi-So is doing fine, btw.  She’s picking up words right and left now, and speaks in sentences, sort of.  “Where’d Daddy go?” is said every weekday morning.  “No bath!” is usually screamed whenever baths are mentioned.  “What sound (insert animal name or vehicle here)?” is one she answers by herself, usually; although once she said, “What sound giraffe?” and looked at me like I’d have an answer.  Do giraffes make a sound?  I don’t know.  She likes to see my “baby in belly”, but she doesn’t really understand the concept - she thinks she and Daddy both have “baby in belly”, too.

Michael is enthralled with his Christmas present from Charla - a remote control helicopter.  He loves the thing.  Madi-So isn’t as sure - she loves watching it fly around, and laughs and squeals and gets upset when it has to go recharge, but doesn’t want it too near her!  She’ll run from it, or cringe if she’s already in my lap.

Well, I’m going to go now.  I need to make dinner.  I fully intended to start my Christmas baking today (I’m doing baked goods as presents, on the premise that no one has to fake liking getting food, except maybe fruit cake).  I guess I’ll start tomorrow, though, since it’s already dark out.  I don’t care that it’s only 6:00 - it’s dark out, so it’s too late to do anything productive.  Ha!

Merry Christmas, everyone!!!

There are three books that I read every year. This year, I saved all three for December, and read them back-to-back. Yay! I’m going to review them in the order I first picked them up.

I’ve been reading Watership Down by Richard Adams since I was about 12. It’s a great book. The story is wonderful, although there are a lot of people who get bogged down in the scenery descriptions. There are lots of themes (including the supremacy of democratic government over communism and totalitarian dictatorships, the importance of home, leadership, humanity and nature), and it’s apparently been taught in schools for years - except the school I went to - and I’ll discuss those themes with my kids when they read it. Personally, I just love the story.

The second book is Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams. I picked it up my junior year of high school because I’d heard (I don’t remember where) that it was like Watership Down, only with cats. It’s not, really. This is more of a heroic epic - the hero off to rescue his beloved. It’s an excellent good vs. evil story. Two things about this book were important to me, personally; two themes, rather, that I’ve been chasing in literature for years. One is the cat imagery - I love the upsurge in the use of cats in modern fiction, and have a rather extensive collection of mystery/sci-fi/fantasy novels featuring cats. The other is Christ imagery - the hero who saves his/her people at the expense of his/her own life. (That pops up in Watership Down, as well, where it’s portrayed as the primary characteristic of a good leader - but, at 12, I wasn’t particularly looking for that.) In Tailchaser’s Song, there are a couple Christ images (Michael will love this, I’m sure). There’s Whitewind, who literally dies to save his people early on, and there’s Firefoot - who, it is implied, once traded his true life, or self-knowledge, to save his people, and then “resurrects” to once again save the cats from evil incarnate (Hearteater). I don’t want anyone to think that Tad Williams intended this imagery - like I said, I look for it, and I’m well-aware that people can see things in stories that the author never intended. (What Tolkein called “allocation”, which he preferred to “allegory”; which is hilarious when people get to talking about the “meaning” of Lord of the Rings, etc.) In fact, from what I can tell, the story was written simply for entertainment purposes. I have every book Tad Williams has published, by the way; he’s one of my favorite authors.

The third book has a longer history with me that either of the first two, although it was the last one I started reading. I used to watch The Last Unicorn as a cartoon movie when I was little-little - I don’t know when I started watching it. I didn’t find out it was a book until I was in my twenties! I much prefer the book!! Again, there are several themes (including the overriding theme of loving the transitory - the mortal - and finding beauty in the mortality of the beloved), but I can’t get past the awesome Christ imagery, intended or not. (I’m not sure Peter Beagle didn’t intend it, because it’s so insanely clear, but I won’t say so unless I know so.) The unicorn sets out to find her people and save them, if she can. In the process, she becomes mortal and learns the love of mortality; her mortal self “dies”, but her immortal self risks everything, as well - because of her love for a mortal being. I cry over the last dozen pages or so every time. Other themes that I find fascinating are man’s inability to appreciate truth through lack of faith (a biblical thing, again, for me - Christ being unable to perform miracles where no faith is found), the difference between desire and greed, even when the outer semblance - chasing the object - is the same, the purpose and role of the hero - oh, there’s lots packed in here, which is typical Peter Beagle.

Well, that’s three books I would definitely recommend! You’re welcome.

Well, I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been working on my book! And now it’s finished! Well, sort of… I finished writing it, anyway; I’ve asked my mom to proofread it, and my sister’s kids to give me their insight (target age range). Then I’ll do some editing, I guess, and I’ll need a title…

The coolest thing is that I didn’t know what to do about illustrations, until I thought I’d check with my friend Stephen Wiggins. We went to Berea together; he’s a great artist! We used to meet up occasionally to drink coffee and talk about God and His will. You can see some of his stuff at http://www.flickr.com/photos/25351853@N00/. He’s currently at Asbury Seminary. It seemed a long shot, but he said he’d do it! Yay!!!

I don’t know when the book will be ready for publication; no more than a month or two. It’ll probably miss Christmas - which is kind of sad, since it’s a Christmas story - but it’ll be out for next Christmas, definitely. I don’t expect to sell a whole lot of copies, but it’ll be nice to have a book out!

Michael’s going to buy a distribution package for me for Christmas! That means my book will be available for Barnes & Noble, Amazon, libraries, etc. Yay!!

Self-publication is becoming more popular, even though the books end up being more expensive. The big publishers are only going for name recognition now, which means you have to be previously published with a big enough following, a celebrity or have a self-published book that sells well, which they will then re-publish for a lower selling price, bigger market, and lots of advertising. Eragon - which is now a big seller - started out as a self-published book. I’ll be self-publishing through Lulu, which has a great set-up for those of us who have no clue how to publish a book. That’d be most people, I think. And it has a free option! I’m “upgrading” for Christmas, so that I’ll have a bigger market potential for next Christmas. I’m hoping to get noticed by Christian bookstores that are looking for Christian Christmas children’s stories that aren’t associated with VeggieTales or the other big movie guys. There are a few out there, but not many.

Anyway, I’m excited that I finally finished a book! I keep starting them, and then dropping them… Hopefully, this will be a change for the better, and I’ll write more! Yay!!!

Back to wrapping presents and baking and cleaning for the nonce, though.

I just finished re-reading (for the umpteenth time) Hannah Hurnard’s allegorical novel, Hind’s Feet On High Places.  It’s one of those books that you get something new out of every time you read it.

The plot is fairly simple - Much-Afraid decides to leave the Valley of Humiliation to follow the Shepherd up the mountians into the Kingdom of Love.  As she goes, he promises, the poor little crippled girl will develop hind’s feet, so she can skip along the High Places as easily as he does.  Woven throughout the book is poetry based on the Song of Solomon.
The allegory traces the process of becoming a Christian - and that’s what I like best about it.  Most of the time, people think becoming a Christian is a momentary thing - you say a prayer at the altar and - ta-da!! - you’re saved!  Hurnard properly presents this as the introductory step - the decision to begin the journey - that continues through difficulty and death of self until the moment when we truly become what Christ calls us to be - servants and ministers to others.

I would recommend this book to every Christian, especially to those new to the faith who are becoming discouraged in the face of hard times or inner conflicts.