November 19

Sarah brought down the house. At her piano lesson on Monday the song they were practicing involved saying different names after saying who you were talking about, such as “say my mother’s name… Jenny.” Amy had her turn first and when she had the line about her father’s name she, of course, said, “Carl.” When it was Sarah’s turn for the same line about her father she instead said, “Daddy Panda!” The teacher, Mom-Mom, Amy, and I just collapsed into laughter. It was so perfect and so unexpected.

Instead of making it to swimming on Friday afternoon, the girls and I spent over 2 hours in the car trying in vain to get to their lesson and then trying to get home. Evidently there was a large (10 cars and a truck) accident at our usual exit. We got off at the next exit but after waiting in long line of traffic and thinking we could get through to where we wanted to be, we were given no choice but to get back on the highway and crawl 2 miles, taking 45 minutes. We had already missed the first and second swim time options by the time we exited the second time so were just trying to get home. I was tired of being trapped on a highway and thought we could go through the business district to get to some alternative routes, but that attempt was blocked as well. We drove back the length of the business district to get on the highway again and got home easily in 15 minutes. We were sad to miss swimming but I am grateful that our timing was such that we were not in the accident.

Yesterday morning Sarah transgressed against house rules by going outside in pajamas. Amy wrote her a ticket for her bad behavior. The ticket shows a picture of a sad panda holding a ticket and it says, “going owtside in pjs with no cote on a rane morning.” (going outside in pjs with no coat on a rainy morning)

There are many times that I am caught in feeling grumbly or tight about the kids and their behavior when Carl is able to somehow sidestep and creatively meet them in a way that honors where they are and encourages them to get wherever or however we want them to be. In these moments I have known I was about a minute away from screaming. Yesterday I was feeling overloaded by the mess in some rooms of the house, by the number of things we still wanted to do in the day, by being hungry and needing to get dinner, and by having a hungry cat walk directly under my feel when I was trying to get to the kitchen to feed her. Carl took charge of getting the girls to help clean the front room while I worked on dinner. I could hear him asking Amy to help and she was getting distracted with wanting to do other things. He explained to her how that was feeling for him. She got upset because cleaning didn’t feel like fun. He suggested they could make it fun by pretending to be cats putting things away. The day was won! After the cleaning I heard riotous laughter as Carl pretended that Sarah was a guitar, strumming her belly, and that Amy was a trombone, using her legs as the trombone parts. And that was after giving them each lessons in tying shoes! I am so repeatedly impressed with Carl’s parenting, my heart feeling so full it is overflowing with marvel and appreciation. 

I have been having some tremendously bad headaches. Wednesday night/Thursday morning was the worst yet for this cluster. It was so bad that as I put Sarah on the bus and walked Amy to school, people asked if I was ok. I was barely functioning (Carl was out of town, otherwise he would have gotten the kids where they needed to go). After I got Amy to school I went for a brisk walk, and as I walked I went through my Alexander directions nonstop for 20 minutes. By the time I got to my destination I was feeling better. I still had the residue of a headache all day, but it was so much better. When Sarah came home the first thing she asked was if I was feeling better! She may have thought to ask because her driver had also asked me, but still, I thought it showed amazing awareness and thoughtfulness.

I have had more awful headaches since then. While I was wanting to hold out for the Gammacore, last night I realized that didn’t make sense. I started my verapamil. When the gammacore comes, if I get a whisper of a headache, I can try it and maybe determine in that way if it works for me. Or maybe it will come soon enough that I’ll still be getting headaches. Hopefully not full-blown ones. I feel simultaneously like I failed in my goal of holding out for the gammacore, and also completely stupid for having waited to start the verapamil, putting myself through such agony. I have been dreading going to sleep at night. It’s no good. I feel like waving a little flag of surrender and saying, “fine, I’ll be on verapamil for the rest of my life.” Last night was a good night. No headaches. I had a whisper this morning but that was all. Sometimes I get a reprieve like that even when I’m not on any meds, so I don’t know what my coming nights will be like. It takes time for the verapamil to build up in my system enough to be fully effective. It takes time to titrate up to the full dose. Despite being disappointed to need to be on anything, I am so glad that there is an option for me that works. Now on a different note...

What does a cat use to mow the lawn? ................................a lawn meower! 

Amy told us that joke yesterday and we cracked up. I believe the original credit goes to G.