A1A South

I was SO looking forward to hiding Easter eggs for the lil’ ones and making the big dinner for after church but my cough has gotten progressively worse, so much so that Mommy was pretty alarmed for the health of the children should they come in contact with me, an alarm that is probably well founded. *sigh* This morning, too, lil’ baby Zoe woke with pinkeye.

So, today there will be no baked ham. No casseroles. No yeast rolls (sniffle). No colored egg hunting. No deviling 60 or so eggs (muffled sobbing). No squeals of delight. Just me hacking and coughing, and SwampMan quietly working in the background. (open weeping and wailing)

On the other hand, Mommy did point out that I could color and hide 60 or more eggs NEXT Sunday! I could cook yeast rolls! I could bake the ham! I can make spinach artichoke casserole! I may even be able to breathe and walk* again!

Hope y’all have a good Easter and remember that He is Risen.

*Had another lil’ incident at school in which teeth were dug into my inner leg just below the calf muscle, right where the inside seam of the jeans (thank the Lord it was jeans Friday) hits. I’m missin’ some skin and flesh, and have a huge bruise. Whenever I take a step, the bite area flexes and weeps anew. Yuck.

That’s Right You’re Not From Texas

Well, sorta. I had my ass kicked by a virus picked up from a child that was sent to school by a mom that didn’t have any other choice, natch, because she might lose her job if she had to stay home with the sick kid. Grin. There are meetings ongoing with parents, staff is out sick, and science FCAT testing was this week, so I went to school sick, too, generously sharing my virus among staff and kids. Ah, well. It’s my last year there, after all. They can’t say I never gave ’em nothin’!

In the meantime, the last lamb has finally been born. Chicks and ducklings are hatching out so quickly that I’m not capable of keeping up with them. I know that there are new chicks in the stationary chicken house that need to be moved out tonight but danged if I know where I’m gonna put ’em.

Peach pie is in the oven baking for SwampMan tonight, and I still have to run and do the outside chores. Have a good rest of the week, y’all.

Daughter answered a knock on the door. Some of the neighbors were standing there. They informed her that 3-year-old Dylan was in the front yard driveway sitting next to the car crying his eyes out. When they inquired as to what was the problem (did he fall down? Did he hurt himself?), he wailed that “Mommy has a new baby now and doesn’t need me anymore”!

What they DIDN’T know, as they were standing there staring at her like she was the most horrible woman in the neighborhood, was that 3-year-old Dylan had jumped on Mommy (and baby) while baby was sleeping, and Mommy had told him that he needed to be less rowdy. He stomped out of the house yelling “FINE! I don’t need a Mommy anyway.”

Getting displaced by a new sibling is a tough adjustment as children find out that the universe actually does NOT revolve around them. Yikes. It must be a lot easier being an only child that never gets kicked outta the nest to make room for the new egg.

I find myself musing about birth order and personality. Poor lil’ Dylan already has the weight of that middle kid chip on his shoulders. His older brother is an overachiever like a lot of first kids. Poor little Dylan is going to have a heck of a time meeting his academic, behavioral, and sports achievements and is frustrated because older brother is better at EVERYTHING. He takes out that frustration by being the loudest and roughest. Little Zoe, being the youngest AND a girl, is gonna be cuddled and coddled by Mommy and Daddy and tortured by her brothers. There need to be some downfalls to being the youngest, after all.

I read an article that seems to indicate that first children tend to marry first children. Youngest children tend to marry youngest children. I never really thought about it much beyond the observations that oldest kids tended to be more responsible, probably because they had no choice in the matter (grin). Daughter is a (very responsible, because she had to be!) youngest child married to a youngest child. Son was an oldest child married to (and now divorced from) an oldest child. My mother and father in law are middle kids married to each other. My mom was a youngest child married to a series of either youngest or one of the younger siblings from a large family.

I don’t remember doing anything mean to my lil’ brothers when they were born, but I tormented them plenty later! My coworkers were regaling with glee the horrid things they did to their younger siblings. One would pretend to be kissing the baby while in reality was digging her teeth into the baby’s scalp. Another would casually walk through and take the baby’s bottle or toy away, then claim to have no idea as to why he was crying. Younger siblings have to be tough. Only children don’t get to go through the boot camp of siblings, so I’m not sure how they face adversity in school and in life.

Link to above video:

Son had a friend that he went through school with, kindergarten through 12th grade, whose name was Daniel. Daniel’s momma was a widow. Her husband, older than she, had been in Vietnam. He eventually died from complications of cancer suspected to have been caused by Agent Orange. His first son, born before his exposure, was normal. His second son, born 20 years later in another marriage, was not.

Daniel was born with multiple birth defects. He was left with short stature from his multiple illnesses and surgeries when young. His doctors didn’t believe that he would live to reach adulthood. He was always, through it all, a wonderful young man who never complained about his problems. He and his mom, though, were left in deepest poverty. They made the best of what life had dished out for them.

His mom died this past February, two weeks after gallbladder surgery. They still haven’t heard the cause of death of mom from the medical examiners. It may be another 30 days. Daniel was found dead in his bed by his brother, who could not reach him by phone, and went to his house. His brother, 20 years older, is the survivor of a massive heart attack and is now totally disabled due to his cardiac condition. This is devastating for him. The medical examiners told him that it would be 90 days or more to find the cause of death for Daniel, too.

Our telephone number was the only one in his phone for his friends. His brother told our son that he always knew that we would get word to his friends if he needed them.

Daniel, when he reached adulthood, had problems. Intractable pain from his birth defects led to narcotic pills, and his friends from school disapproved. They fell away. What Daniel hadn’t told any of his friends, even when they chided him for his pill use and told him that they would not speak with him again until he was clean, was that he had had cancer of the jaw and had to have his jawbone removed and reconstructed. Daniel never complained about the pain from his conditions, so I don’t suppose he’d bring up something like cancer, either. Whether the death was from cancer that came back, the narcotics to combat the pain, or whether his birth defects had finally killed him, nobody can say yet.

Needless to say, son is pretty broken up about it. And try as I might, I can’t remember the young man as an adult. Whenever I think of Daniel, I remember a little boy with a big grin that worked so hard to keep up with his bigger friends. I hope that there is such a thing as heaven and Daniel is there now, pain free, with his mother that loved him so much.

We got married when SwampMan was an ol’ man of 22 years. He had a good sense of humor, was incredibly good-lookin’, loyal, and worshipped the ground his momma walked on. It’s 33 years later, and he still has a good sense of humor, is incredibly good-lookin, loyal, and worships the ground his momma walks on. (It goes without sayin’, of course, that whatever piece of ground my toes happen to trod on is hallowed ground, now, too. Just ask our son if you don’t believe me.)

Marriage has been a very happy adventure for both of us! All the good ingredients that I was looking for in a man were already present, but time has rendered them even stronger. I definitely got the better deal!

My foot pain lessoned significantly when I bought my first pair of “toning” shoes, the kind with a thick arch and smaller heel so that the heel with the bone spur isn’t really striking the ground. I don’t always have time to do the exercises and stretches that I need to do to keep my foot pain to a minimum during an acute flare of plantar fasciitis, so I need all the help I can get. The Osteo-BiFlex helps, too, but danged if I can afford it anymore. If I kept doing the exercises and stretches maybe I wouldn’t GET acute flares, but you know how it is. The pain leaves and life is wonderful and there is SO MUCH that needs to be done that was neglected before. It doesn’t help that all the things that I need to do during a flare of foot pain takes me lots longer and cuts even more time out of my day!

When my foot pain returned with a vengeance after long, long hours on my feet, I felt as close to despair as I am constitutionally able. I threw my shoes in the washer to remove the smell of sheep urine and lanolin. They came out of the drier looking, well, pretty ratty. Hmmmmmm. Maybe I just needed new shoes because the old ones were too worn!

So, I took my broke self off to the shoe store and spent my last few dollars on another pair of toning shoes. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. I’m still feeling sore at the end of a long day, but I’m no longer contemplating how much easier life would be if I could just have my feet amputated.