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Some of you know the saga of my life. It's not epic, that's for sure, but it's filled with plenty of adversity and loss. In the end, the heroine prevails and comes out a better person from the trials set against her. Look at me know. I may be on meds, but I'm a well-adjusted person; healthy and happy. ;)

One of the earliest trials I had to endure was the loss of my uncle at the age of eight and shortly after and more impacting, the loss of my mother the following year. Sucksville, to say the least. However, there WAS a silver lining in my mother's death. She was a registered organ donor and because of her, two people got to live normal lives and one person was giving the gift of sight. They harvested both her kidneys and her eyes. Her liver, unfortunately, was shot.

Amidst feelings of anger and abandonment, I sometimes thought of my mother as a hero of sorts. I thought it was so amazing that she was still alive inside of someone else. I often wondered if her organs made the people think and feel like she did, but that was just the musings of a little girl who had watched too many episodes of Super Friends.

The day I tested for my driver's license, I signed up to be a donor. Against the teachings of the Catholic Church, I decided that I wanted to be cremated because your body just rots in a box anyway, on hallowed ground or otherwise. "Take it all," is my feeling.

When my son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, I wished more than ever I could just slice open my abdomen, yank out my pancreas and hand it to him. They're not quite at that stage yet. But medicine is amazing and who knows...maybe some day he'll can walk around with his mother's pancreas, looking at the world through skeptical, yet forgiving eyes.

As a freelance writer, I recently had the opportunity to do an article on a seven-year-old boy with leukemia named Dominic Mott. Learning about his relapse and the thousands of other kids who have it almost or as bad as he does made me want to do something. Thankfully, I don't have to die to donate bone marrow. They just swab your mouth and process your info and it in a database. If you're a match, they call you in for a procedure that is nothing, especially when you think of what the person in need of the marrow is going through. You might have a few aches and pains for a couple of days. Big deal.

I'm going to the CHP's Annual Blood Drive on May 7th from 9:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. at the West Sacramento Headquarters location. The address there is:

CHP ANNUAL BLOOD & MARROW DRIVE
860 Stillwater Rd.
West Sacramento, CA  95605
(916) 375-2992 (contact Debra Kapitan)

They are doing marrow screenings as well as taking blood donations. Also, I was told that they will be waiving the registration fee for the bone marrow screening! IT'S FREE! There is a huge need for minorities and multiracial donors, but that doesn't let the whities off the hook. You never know for whom you'll be a match.

If you can't make the CHP drive, you can call BloodSource and set up an appointment to donate anytime. Their number is 1-866-822-5663 or visit bloodsource.org to find a location near you.

Don't be a lazy bones. Donate before it's too late.

I've been to my daughter (as I've been with my blogging on SMC) a fair-weather friend. I've been noticing so many improvements in her behavior within the past month. Not only does she not poo in her pants AT ALL, she also runs to the big toilet, hops up by herself, does her business and even does a decent job wiping herself. She's not whining as much, or hitting or kicking or pinching. However, I've noticed that when she DOES do any of the negative things now, I seem to have even less patience for it than before.

I'm the first to admit that I'm not a patient person AT ALL. I'm not an angry person, rather an easily frustrated one. I once wrote a friend of mine who's into crystal healing and asked her if there was a miracle stone for patience. She told me to wear amber for a week and see if it helped. I did, and at the end of the week, I was still, so at my wit's end with my daughter's behavior that I took off the ring and threw it at her. I'm totally kidding!

Here she is now, having made so many great strides and it's almost as if I'm disappointed in her when she does have minor regressions. How fair is that? I'm still trying to become more patient. It's all about letting go of expectations and taking deep breaths and counting to ten and remembering your happy place and...

I've been away from the Club for a while. I surprisingly don't feel out of the loop. I guess it's because there is always a relatability between mothers and though our stories are different from each others', there is also an element of familiarity and that can make a frantic, stressed out, or overworked mom feel less alone and validated.

Our family had a wonderful Christmas. We even managed a journey to L.A. to see my pregnant sister in an 15-passenger van almost filled to capacity. The trip went off without a hitch. Merriment was had by all. We returned safely to the Sacramento area on the Sunday before Christmas Eve and prepared for another round of holiday festivities. Christmas Eve was spent at my other sister's house. Everyone was in great spirits, regardless of the fatigue we all felt from the trip. The only chaos was during presents and the clean-up afterward. Isn't that always the case?

The following day, we had our own private family Christmas morning experience and then we went to my mother-in-law's house. We saw other family members that we only see on Christmas morning. Even though her tiny living room was filled beyond capacity (I spent most of the time standing in the kitchen) my mother-in-law seemed happy (though exhausted from not sleeping the night before). After we did breakfast and presents at her house, we returned to our home to give our daughter a nap before going back over to my mother-in-law's house. When we arrived at my mother-in-law's, I could see on her face that she was in pain and didn't get the nap that she told us she'd get in our absence. No, instead she baked a cake and made fruit salad because she told us she would and she didn't want to let anyone down.

Her lethargy carried on throughout the rest of our visit and well into the next day when I called to check on her. I planned on calling her again the following day, to see if she fully recovered from the holiday yet, but before I got the chance, I was awoken early in the morning by my sobbing husband who had just returned from the ER where he found out his mother had passed away. Her heart was tired and just stopped beating. He was assured that her passing was painless, which was of some consolation.

The next week was filled with sickness throughout the house. I was the only one not sick. The sickness actually forced my husband to deal with his grief since there were very few distractions inside the confines our darkened room where he convalesced. When he wasn't sleeping, he was thinking.

Once our house was on the mend, we began to see the silver linings. That's a pretty way of saying, "Finding things that will allow us to go on without breaking down every five seconds and alleviate our guilt for carrying on with life." For one, her health was in rapid decline. She was going to become an invalid, which is something she absolutely refused to be. She wouldn't be a burden, she promised us. Not like we would have minded. I always reminded her that her kids owed her eighteen years in return for her child-rearing. She always laughed at the thought of ME cooking HER dinner every night. After all, SHE was the cook in the family. It was her greatest passion, aside from her children, her boyfriend, and of course, her two yapping Shitsus.

The other silver lining is that she always told us she wanted to die of a heart attack, just like her mother did. I always thought, why not wish to die in your sleep? She told me once that people don't really die like that. 

I wish she was here so I could rub that in her face.

I was really fortunate to have her in my life. I'd always heard evil mother-in-law stories from my friends and was surprised that my story was more of a fairytale than a grim one. I'm not saying we didn't have our moments. She was even more stubborn than me. She made me cry on more than one occassion. The only reason she could make me cry is because I loved her. I love her. 

My blogging has been quite sporadic as of late as I’m dealing with a computer virus, Trojan in origin, Backdoor in specificity. This virus pretty much makes your computer dump out on you when you’re surfing the net. It’s especially bad to have your computer crap out on you when you’re in the middle of ordering Christmas presents online. This Trojan used to create pop-ups of a pornographic nature, too, but somehow the virus software I downloaded at least took the horse’s legs off. It’s still on my system and it’s not going anywhere. There’s a lengthy process to completely eliminate it, but that would require time, which I generally don’t have. I’m stealing a couple of minutes to type this on Word and then to cut and paste it onto the blogger since anytime I actually try to use the SacMomsClub blogger, it freezes up on me and I have to open new windows and start over.

My computer’s not the only thing with virus on the brain. Thanks to an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba, our 3 ½ year-old daughter’s been afraid of “ugly, yucky germs.” This is problematic in many ways. For one, she no longer wants to wipe herself after she pees because she’s afraid of getting her hands contaminated. She also cries and whines out of the blue at things touching other things. And she wants to be carried most everywhere out of fear that her feet will meet the germs lurking on the floor. Apparently, she has little faith in my housecleaning skills.

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At first glance, Yo Gabba Gabba is just weird. I kind of liked it though because of guest stars and musical videos and Super Martian Robot Girl and its general randomness. But now, I think it’s a propaganda-driven hallucinogenic dance party.

One upside is that I told her that poopoo is filled with germs, so she’s been making more of an effort to eliminate and not holding it in. That coupled with fiber tabs has made for a more relaxed week in the bowel department. Baby steps, I keep telling myself. She’ll be four in March and so many of her neuroses will be gone by then, or so they keep telling me. Bonaducci reassured my husband 4 ½ at the latest. If she’s anything like her mother, she’ll still be a little constipated weirdo at 34 ½ .

So, I finally got the house to myself and I decided to recharge my battery with a fauxcha (or, fake mocha = espresso, hot cocoa mix, cinnamon and milk). My husband took our daughter to the mall to let her play at her favorite playground. I call it Mario World since it's reminiscent of more than one level of SuperMario World. Anyway, that's where they are and the house is quiet with the exception of the clicking of the keys. Oh, crap. Now the phone's ringing, but you know what? I'm gonna let it ring.

I admit, it's nice to have a break. It's necessary. Especially considering the how the past few weeks have been If you've read my blog before, you know that my son's been snubbing his school work and more imporantly the management of his diabetes. He doesn't get the big picture yet, that all the high blood sugars he's getting now ARE doing long-term damage to his kidneys. The problem with our children is that they live in a disposable world. In their eyes, if something is broken, they can throw the old one away and get a new one. I think he believes that by the time his kidneys go bad that scientists will have created artificial kidneys or at least a medicine that will rejuvinate the kidneys.

Aside from my son's nonchalant attitude towards school and lackluster diabetic management, I think on a psychoemospiritual level, he's on the right path. His friend's father died a couple of weeks back and he's been showing marked concern for his friend who's been out of school the whole time. He talks about his friend and wonders what his father died from. He shares his concern of his own parents' health. I assure him that we're in great shape. He seems relieved by that news, but I can see in his eyes that this doesn't completely allay his fears. He remembers his Uncle David dying a few weeks after we'd just been to a roaring pirate party with him. He knows how sudden and arbitrary everything is. Just like his diabetes diagnosis. The kid's no fool. "I want to go to Jay's father's funeral." This kind of shocked me. "You do?" "Well, I know it'll be a little uncomfortable since I never even met his dad, but I wanna be there for Jay." I felt like crying after hearing my son speak with so much maturity and compassion. I forgot about the daily woes and felt proud of him. He is a good kid.

Also, if you're a continuing reader, you know that our daughter's been a little backed up. At first, involuntarily and then, after the fear of a giant LOG coming out of her bottom, voluntarily. We had another four days of hell, but today, she finally went. I've been doing everything I know how to make it easier for her to get the suckers out, but she's still holding 'em in, regardless of the fact that the last TWO movements themselves were painless. I've increased her fluid intake, increased her fiber, added a fiber chewable, added poop incentives, took away any fear of punishment if she craps in her undies (which she does in small amounts four to six times a day) and still, the holding in. I know it's a phase and it's getting easier to deal with everyday. But it makes me extra thankful for the times when she has a movement. I think I'm more relieved than her.

Life's been pretty busy. Not to mention, the group I'm in, the Sacramento Craft Mafia are holding GET MADE HOLIDAY:

Pardon the shameless self-promotion. ;) 

Gotta get back to work while the house is quiet. Thanks for letting me vent. 

I've been pretty mentally distraught the past five days, as our daughter is taking her conquest to a new level. She's surpassed the withholding of her feces and now has made her daily nap her next victim. For the past few days, the little free time I count on to get stuff done (or, to take a nap if I didn't get any sleep the night before) has been taken up by a clingy preschooler who is yanking on my sweats, complaining to me that her stomach and her bottom hurt.

This may not seem like much to people in the real world with real problems, but for the last month or so, I've been having  back pain that's been causing me sleep loss. I just can't get comfortable. To take something to aid sleep would mean that I would be groggy the next day. So, when a night of bad sleep is coupled with a day of whining preschooler who doesn't nap, that equals cranky and achy mother who needs a break.

Luckily for me, my husband is an angel. The second he comes home, he assesses the situation. If he sees me avoiding eye contact, then he knows it's been a rough day. If I look at him, smile, kiss him and dance with him in the foyer, he knows that our daughter took a healthy dump, took a nap and has been cooperative.

So, today, when he got home, I couldn't look him in the eye because I knew I'd start crying because he's such a sympathetic person. I explained to him the night and the day I had and he, of course, asked me what he could do. That's when the phone rang.

While he was talking on the phone, our daughter decided it was time to go poop...in her underwear. I tried to get her to the toilet in time, but she had already dropped the bomb, which fell out of her underwear, onto the floor and rolled onto the shag rug in front of the toilet. I was so tired, in pain, sickened and frustrated that I started to cry and said, "You see this? This is not ok.!" I was one step away from shoving her nose in it, but somehow I managed to keep it together, cleaned up the mess and dressed my daughter in an outfit to go to my mother-in-law's house for dinner. Needless to say, I didn't feel like going.

My husband sensed this and let me off the hook (because there is ALWAYS a hook with the in-laws). He said that he'd take our daughter over there for dinner so I could have some peace and quiet.

I'm going to call October 30th of every calendar year, St. Richie's Day.

Thank you my loving and fabulous husband!

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As I mentioned in my previous post, last year around this time, my brother passed away. His death was very shocking for two reasons: First of all, he didn’t look like a dying man. But also, because I had lost my mother at a young age, and then my stand-in mother (my maternal grandmother) when I was a young adult, I thought death would leave the rest of my small family (which consisted of my five siblings and I) alone until we were old enough to actually expect it.

I guess this was an unrealistic expectation. I was kind of a dreamer that way, but when my brother died, I finally woke up. I don’t take it personally or anything. I realize that everything that happens is a culmination of hundreds of tiny details, some known and some unknown. But regardless of the details, the result is still the same. Irrevocable and binding.

The weekend after my brother died, we had planned to make our annual visit to Bishop’s Pumpkin Farm. However, that quickly was forgotten in the midst of planning for his cremation, memorial and writing an obituary. The five remaining siblings gathered in my sister’s living room and collaborated on the words we felt best described our brother and we wrote them down on a piece of paper. It was so surreal, like I was watching us in a movie doing these things. We managed to make it through the week. However, my husband reminded me that we had promised our daughter that we were going to the pumpkin patch, which even though she talked about it every day, my mind couldn’t wrap itself around anything commonplace. My mind was enveloped in a world of tiny details that didn’t involve my own healthy, happy immediate family life.

My husband also reminded me that some normalcy would be good. I absentmindedly agreed with him and we found ourselves at the pumpkin patch, going through the motions for our daughter’s happiness. I tried to find the beauty, but everything was washed over and drab. I smiled when my daughter smiled, but it was reactionary, not fully felt. At the end of the morning, I was glad to be home again and away from the squealing and screaming of hundreds of other peoples’ children that fill the pumpkin patch on the weekend before Halloween.

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A year ago tomorrow, my brother David will have been dead for one year. I still can't believe this as I'm typing it, yet I'm typing it, so it must be real. Sometimes it feels as if he's still alive due to his previous sporadic nature of showing up every once in a while and making a guest appearance. That was his trademark for so many years, but for a year or so prior to his death, he was making more of an effort to come around and spend quality time with his siblings.

He was forty years old, which made him one year older than his mother and four years older than his father when they died. Bad genes, one might say, who didn't have all the facts. I say bad genes coupled with bad habits...the same bad habits that took our mother away at the age of 39.

I'm past the blame game. I don't care what took my brother away from us. The issue is, he's gone and nothing can bring him back. All we can do now is remember him the way he would have wanted us to. Irreverently.

He was the kind of guy who would say, "Fu**  'em if they can't take a joke," and the more I live, the more I understand, really, what he was saying. It's the whole "life's too short" thing. Life's too short to get caught up on little bullshit things. It's all about learning to let go. Let go of the little things.

This is the gift my brother gave me when he died. He taught me how to let go. But it seems as if he gave me another gift. Since my brother's death, one of my other brothers (I have three of them) has been coming around more and even comes over every Saturday night and plays poker at our house. This is what I've been wanting for a long time, to have an active relationship with my two older brothers (my youngest brother, I've always been close with), and I feel that my brother David wanted the same thing, too, before he died and knowing that is almost as comforting as if we actually did.

His death reminds me of life. Of what remains here. My husband, our children, my brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, friends and acquaintances. How can I not be happy, today and tomorrow? He wouldn't want his death to overshadow a potential smile.

Laughter always follows tears.