H1N1 - and me

I had gotten through two pretty rough weeks. T1 and T2 had been going crazy on volunteer projects for their high school career course. T2's was pretty intense; a Halloween Haunted House that would allow her to accumulate her required 30 hours within a week. However, she decided that she was having so much fun that she would just work through until the end. She did good...I'm proud of her.

My father went in hospital for surgery to correct a problem that had been plaguing him for over a year. Dad is usually my backup driver when Dearly Beloved is unavailable. That week, DB was working a run of morning shifts and was..well..unavailable.That left any early morning driving and late night driving up to me...and the driving had to be squeezed in among the nightly hospital visits.

Then there was normal life...Halloween, housework, groceries, work...by Wednesday night I was sitting on a church parking lot waiting for T1...tears running down my face...wishing I could give up my modern independent woman of the world status and just sit in a corner and suck my thumb and let the men take care of me for a while.

By Saturday night...the last treat had been given out...Dad was waiting for his release orders...T2's volunteer work was done...and I was telling DB how I planned to go into work on Sunday to catch up on a couple of things...then life would be back to normal.

Or so we thought.....

On Sunday morning I woke up with my sheets soaking wet, my chest throbbing, head pounding, muscles aching..and most scary...I could barely breathe...

It felt like forever before I could get DB's attention...

"I think I got it." I croaked. He didn't have to ask..."it" had been on our mind for weeks. We had hoped that I would somehow manage to stay healthy until I could get immunized for H1N1...but it didn't work out like that.

Sunday was scary...if I sat up I felt like I would pass out...if I lay down I felt like I wouldn't be able to sit up... DB got me pre-registered with the hospital on the understanding that if things got worse it was paramedics, ambulance, intensive care for yours truly.

Monday, he took a sick day to stay home and take care of me...he was the picture of awesomeness...doing laundry, cleaning up the house, cooking meals, dealing with the Ts, dragging my butt to the doctor...

Welcome to the world of H1N1...I am off work for a week and sucking back a cocktail of drugs intended to keep me out of intensive care...I think it is working...still feeling a little beaten up..but a lot better than Sunday.

It is an ugly bug readers...stay healthy out there.

Gina

MIA

Apologies to anyone who is actually following this thing. It is been that kind of fall so far. Hopefully I will be back within the next week or so...take care

Gina

Life is a Beach

August 6, 2009

Northern Bay Sands

Dearly Beloved felt a tinge of "gout" (or some similar affliction) this morning and decided that eight hours on his feet would be uncomfortable - so he called in sick.

I am on vacation. I don't do "vacation" well unless I physically leave town. So as the mercury and humidex climbed, we did just that. Dearly Beloved, the two Ts and I piled into our car, made quick pit stop for sunscreen, batteries and Tim Horton's "iced caps" (we're Canadian...what can I say?) then we hit the road.

For the next two hours we wound our way through Conception Bay North - Carbonear, Victoria, Salmon Cove, Ochre Pit Cove, Western Bay - before finally arriving at Northern Bay Sands, a glorious sandy beach northwest of St. John's.

We've been here for nearly three hours, but it only feels like three minutes. (Okay, so I'm actually posting this seven hours after I wrote it - just use your imaginations) Dearly Beloved and I have taken a long walk along the shoreline and he the Ts have wandered off individually and collectively to explore every cove, cliff, and cranny, returning to our spot in the sand to grab a drink, or a handful of grapes or a bit of junk food.

We've watched whales, people and tides and enjoyed the baby blue sky, sapphire water and the ever present wind, grateful to be out of the sticky, city weather. T1 has borrowed my clipboard and written a new song lyric, T2 has been snapping pictures all over the beach (including the picture of her brother's footprints which heads up this post). I've chased my floppy hat into the surf a couple of times - but who cares? - it is not like this is a fashion show.

I brought the clipboard with the intention of working on a piece of fiction I started years ago - a somewhat autobiographical piece that is set on this very beach. Problem is - the story is a sad one - born out of an untenable living situation, fueled by sad memories and connections to the past.

Those memories and feelings simply aren't there today. I am sitting here with 175 Bon Jovi tracks playing on my MP3 player, soaking up the sun and watching each wave kiss the shore, becoming higher and more intense as it prepares for the ancient consummation of high tide and I can't seem to focus on those things that may have been broken in my life.

Today is about the things that work - T1 and T2 walking along the shore together and talking like the best friends they have become. It is about MY best friend sitting next to me with T2's camera in his hand, hoping to sneak a picture of our kids as they come closer. It is about blue sky, white surf and grey sand. It is Jon Bon Jovi singing "Wild is the Wind" in my head as the stiff wind off the ocean sends my hat sailing toward the water - again.

Life is a beach - and I think I am finally on it.


We'll have to leave soon - we have that two hour drive going the other way to get home and Dearly Beloved has promised us dinner in Bay Roberts along the way.

Wishing you all a beach of your own.

Peace out.

Gina

How Dearly Beloved saved my life

1986.

Dearly Beloved had just returned from a peacekeeping stint in the Middle East. During his three week leave in November of 1985 he had asked me to marry him. My crappy lungs didn't matter to him..he asked me anyway.

We were young and in love...and I couldn't wait to start my life with him.

In late December I began having some problems with my hands. The first two knuckles on my right hand were always swollen and hot and both hands would swell, making my new engagement ring hard to remove. I was also losing weight rapidly and seemed to be always tired.

In January, I had a few blood tests. DB was sitting on the sofa in my parents' TV room when I took the phone call from my doctor...Rheumatoid Arthritis. Twenty-four years old...and the rug had just been pulled out from under my life.

My only knowledge of RA came from visiting an aunt in California two years earlier. The disease had been particularly cruel to her. She could barely walk, was rail thin, and her joints were twisted and distorted. This was my future. This was the future the man I loved faced...if he stayed with me.

I hung up the phone, slipped the engagement ring from my hand and passed it to him.

"You knew about the lungs before you asked me to marry you. You couldn't possibly see this one coming. I know this is going to end badly and you will be stuck caring for a weak and crippled wife. You don't have go through with it...there's no hard feelings if you walk away."

He didn't say a word, just took the ring and put it in his pocket. He didn't say anything for the rest of the day as we went around running a few little errands...him driving my little SUV because my hands hurt too much to drive.

He didn't say anything until nearly midnight.

Just before he left my parents' house to return to the army barracks for the night, he fished the ring out of his pocket, took my left hand, put the ring back on it and said,

"For better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness, health...I'm staying."

That was the night I decided to fight for my life...that was the night I was saved.

On July 10, 1987, I strolled down the main aisle of the Basilica of St. John the Baptist...there were flowers, a choir, a trumpet player, 300 witnesses, a ridiculous confection of a wedding dress that had been inspired by Princess Diana and Bridesmaids inspired by Scarlett O'Hara (and incredibly, they all still speak to me).

But most of all...there was Dearly Beloved...smiling as he waited with the priest...waiting for me to finish my victory walk...

He stayed.

Sometimes heroes don't wear capes...and have no idea how to leap tall buildings in a single bound...sometimes they just quietly save a life...

I wrote this for him a few years ago...after a particularly dark chapter in our lives that had both of us questioning whether either one of us wanted to stay any longer...thank God we retreated from that course...

Treasures

Today is the day
We gave our lives
Into each other's keeping
Locked in the treasure trove
That beats deep within each of us.
Precious gifts to be guarded
From cold hearts too willing to steal
And forces
Too willing to destroy.
Two candles once lit
Now burn as one light
Tempered by time
From hot flame
To warm glow
We no longer look the same
But can look at our children
Seeing shadows of where we have been
In the mysteries of where they will go.
While we keep moving forward
From that day in the past
When we whispered "I will"
Your life is still
The treasure I keep
Safe in my heart
'Til my heart stops beating.

Happy Anniversary Darling

Dearly Beloved...and Gene Kelly?

T1 had been camping with friends all weekend and arrived home about an hour ago. He strolled down the driveway wearing a fedora that we had never seen among his clothes before.

He explained that it was belonged to a friend of his and that the friend's mother wasn't really happy about the hat on her son's head. So when she arrived at another friend's house on Friday to pick up her son, he tossed the hat at T1 and said, "You keep it for the weekend!"

Well...some kind of discussion arose among me, Dearly Beloved and T1 on the subject of hats...the details are irrelevant, but at some point I suggested to T1 that he should just go out and buy himself a hat if he liked it so much.

"What kind of hat is it?" Dearly Beloved asked.

"I think it is what you'd call a fedora?" T1 answered hesitantly. He retrieved the friend's hat and parked it on his head. Now, if you are a Canadian female of a certain generation if I said that T1 looked like Joey Jeremiah from the Degrassi Junior High series, you'd know what I was talking about right? But Dearly Beloved being neither female, nor a fan of the old series I figured the reference would be lost on him. So what I said was,

"Looks good on him, doesn't it? Kind of makes him look like a young Gene Kelly?"

DB sucked back the last of his beer and smiled that evil little smirk that still turns the knee caps to jello and said.

"You know I'm related to him right?"

"Who? Gene Kelly?"

"Yup"

"You mean 'Singin' in the Rain', dancing around the light pole Gene Kelly?"

"Yup...Elvis too."

"You're related to Elvis Presley?" T1 chimed in in disbelief.

"Yup...Mom showed it to me on the family tree once...there are Presleys and then there is the connection to Gene Kelly...it's like 10th cousin three times removed or something like that."

Well clearly, whatever irrigation ditch was attached to the gene (no pun intended) pool it siphoned the singing and dancing genes away from Dearly Beloved.( That is not being disrespectful either...I'm sure Gene couldn't strip anything electronic down to its components and then re-assemble it in perfect working order).

But T1 CAN sing..and he's got a great sense of rhythm (but chooses not to use it) and T2 is quite a good dancer and choreographer....hmmm...do ya think....? Nah...he's gotta be pulling my leg right? Maybe? Maybe not?

The Phone Call (or what my co-workers heard)

It was the last day of corporate tax season. The office was bursting with activity, desks were piled up with files and papers, everyone was pushing out the last returns and cheques in anticipation of having the next day off. It was pure focus and drive with not a thought to the world outside

Then the phone on my desk rang.

Caller ID showed it was one of the Ts. Here is my side of the conversation...the part my co-workers heard.

"Hi baby....

You did WHAT?

What colour?

Who?

When?

Why?

Where did you get it done?

Who bought it?

Sorry for asking again...but WHY?

Okay...I'll deal with your father."

When I hung up, my three co-workers were laughing hysterically.

"Okay, you're side of the conversation was so funny, you HAVE to tell us what is going on!"

It seems T1 had let one of his lady friends dye his hair...jet-black. He then let his sister straighten it so he had kind of an emo/Pete Wentz look going on.

It looks good on him. It suits his artistic nature, his inner rock star. His friend and T2 did a good job.

Dearly Beloved eventually came onside...especially after I pointed out that the phone call could been worse...he could have been calling me to tell me about his new tattoo or his new body piercing. It could have been the police calling to say that he had been arrested for being drunk or high out behind the school. It could have been the emergency room telling us he was bleeding and broken on a stretcher. It could have been an unhappy father calling to tell us that his daughter was "in trouble".

But it was only hair...and hair grows.

The truth in poppies

22 years ago Dearly Beloved and I renovated a house, a little house with an address that causes people to pay obscene amounts of money for old fixer-uppers, just so they can claim an address within that postal code.

The forty year old bungalow came complete with a flower bed at the side. The bed was filled with bright orange poppies, their huge blooms resting atop spindly stems that seemed an improbable match for the wind that periodically blows through the valley in which the house sits. I wasn't fond of them and had other plans for the bed.

When I mentioned digging up the flower bed, my aunt, the resident gardener in the family, asked if she could rescue the poppies and transplant them in her own flower bed. Once they were gone the flower bed was subjected to insulation, paint, wood shavings, mortar and size twelve construction boots. We moved into the house in October and all through the winter I made plans for a pristine bed of pretty geraniums, pansies, marigolds; low growing and multi-coloured.

Early summer came. I ran into my aunt and asked her how she was enjoying the poppies. She told me that they died...it seems they didn't take kindly to being uprooted. Not long after that I noticed that one spindly stem was starting to break through the dirt in my flower bed. One lone poppy, sole survivor of our renovation project, seemed to be growing out of the foundation of the house, just to the left of the downspout. It bloomed, faded and retreated in the soil.

It came back the following the summer. The summer after that two poppies sprouted. It became a game...how many poppies would bloom each year?

Circumstances turned against for a while and Dearly Beloved, T1 and T2 and I were forced to relocate for a while and turn our house over to a series of tenants. In December of last year, after a twelve year absence, we moved home.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking down my driveway, thinking that I should soon start to weed the flower bed and get something planted, I took my first good look at the thing since moving back home.

Over half of the bed and a chunk of the strip of land between us and our neighbour was filled with long spindly stems, each topped with a fuzzy unopened pod. In my absence, the poppies had re-established themselves despite being neglected and untended....

*****

Thirty years ago, my lungs crashed after a bout of pneumonia and were left permanently scarred and damaged. I would later learn that the nurse who tended me were discussing among themselves the bleak prognosis that I might make it to twenty-five.

At twenty-five, newly engaged and looking forward to my life with Dearly Beloved when the second medical crisis, rheumatoid arthritis, hit. The lung issues made treatment difficult, so difficult in fact that by the time my medical team got to my last option...I weighed less than 100 lbs. and the steam from the shower could suck the breath from my lungs.

It was Dearly Beloved who ultimately saved my life...but that is an entire blog post in itself.

The last treatment finally worked, but the prognosis was still grim...maybe I'd make it to 35..but there would be no children in my future...too dangerous all the way around...

Last month, I turned 47...my children, who aren't supposed to exist, turned 16 this month, Dearly Beloved (who mother never believed would stick around) and I will celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary next month...

The medical team stopped placing their bets a long time ago and now believe that I may just make it to a reasonably old age if I take care of myself...

I have been uprooted, stomped down, subjected to conditions not entirely compatible with a happy life...but here I am...it may not be a perfect life by most normal standards...but it is my life...and I like it.

*****

Maybe I'll just weed the flower bed, work around the poppies and just leave them be...

Maybe I have finally lived long enough to appreciate them.

Gina

Mondays Suck

Maybe it was the hangover, maybe it was the lousy weather outside, maybe it was the sleep deprivation that came with staying up way too late to play with my new toy (the blog), maybe it was the knowledge that Dearly Beloved and T1 and T2 were all at home while I was not.

Maybe it was just the fact that it was Monday.

But I didn't want to be where I was supposed to be and could barely summon up the motivation to do what I had to do.

I present for your consideration two videos that sum up my state of mind today.






Hey...did I just imbed two videos on my blog? Yay me! Maybe Monday wasn't so bad after all.

So...how do you feel about Mondays? How do you deal with them?

Gina

Technical Stuff

Well, if e-mail traffic is anything to go by, it seems like a few folks are liking the concept of my blog so far. Thank you for your support, hope I can live up to your expectations.

Some of you have asked about following the blog so you'll know when it is updated. I've added a gadget and if it works like I think I should, then you should be able to subscribe to "posts" without necessarily having to read all the comments. Not that the commentary won't be interesting, but I know that one e-mail is all you need.

Until everyone gets used to this, I will also set up a contact list in my e-mail program, just for those who were initially notified about the blog's existence, so for the first few posts, I'll let you all know when I have updated things here.

If any experienced bloggers have some advice about keeping readers updated...I'm all ears.

Gina

The Cast of Characters

So, here I am, after way too much alcohol and a bit of prodding from a couple of friends, I am blogging. I've tried this before, with yahoo 360 pages and various and sundry other online versions of self expression...but I have never been consistent...it gets old...I find better things to do..the blog dies. Maybe this time will be different, I suspect there will be a couple of folks who will kick my butt if I start slacking off this time.

Will this be truth or fiction? Or will it be some hybrid of the two? We'll have to see how the stories demand to be written.

At any rate, here are the main players in my online drama.

Dearly Beloved-soulmate, partner, voice of reason, supports what I do, even when he doesn't understand just what it is that I am doing. Been around for over 22 years and claims to not be going anywhere anytime soon.

T1 and T2 - the twins, originally destined to be called Thing 1 and Thing 2. But I didn't want to run afoul of whoever holds the Dr. Seuss copyrights, so I settled for Twin 1 and Twin 2 (T1 and T2 for short)

T1 is our son, a guy I look up to (literally). He is a poet, a singer, a martial artist, the bon vivant of the family.

T2 is our daughter, tiny, pretty, fashionable, filled with the kind of perkiness that would make me want to smack any other human being who possessed it. But with her it just fills a room with light and joy.

The creatures in the picture above? They're part of the family...not plush, but fanciful beings imbued with life and personality courtesy of the imaginations of T1 and T2 (did I mention that my twins are teenagers?) They may make an appearance within the blog...with their owners' permission of course.

As for me...you can just call me "Gina". That's all you need to know for now.

Let the stories begin.