broken strands

I've had so much going on, in real life as well as in my head, that I haven't had the time or words to get it all out... It feels like I have these strands of ideas, so many of them, and I can't slow down enough to weave them together into something smooth like a legible blogpost. Some have snagged and torn, in fact.

I never did post about meeting a wonderful group of blogging mammas local to PDX. That happened over a month ago. Or about how irritating it is that whenever I'm on the phone with a friend lately, all these different topics we start talking about get interrupted because of our respective children and their demands for attention, to the point where I never remember if we've discussed something or not; it's a good thing I don't lie to people or I wouldn't be able to keep track! This also happened at lunch yesterday with a wonderful, sweet mamma I met IRL for the first time. Which goes on to feed my sense of social inadequacy, and *that* was at an all-time high a couple of weeks ago after I attended a baby shower at a very snazzy restaurant... I felt like such a fish out of water that when I got home I literally burst into tears while Mo looked at me, trying to figure out what he could do to comfort me. There's also some stuff that's been gnawing away at me, about breastfeeding and nursing in public and how I just can't believe that people still, in this day and age, have issues with either!!! Plus, both my sons had birthdays, six days apart. I'm now the reluctant mother of a 15-year-old. I took him out to lunch on his "golden birthday" and watched him straddle the line between his childhood and his manhood, while I felt knots forming in my stomach. I'm waiting for the results of a repeat PAP, which are once again taking too damned long. AND, we found out last week that Mo's ex has quite possibly become an alcoholic, which obviously affects my stepsons greatly and has the potential to change the current relationship dynamic we're in (they've had us on IGNORE since we announced our engagement three years ago). Oh, I'd started a post about my ongoing issues with celebrating the 4th of July, which I couldn't bring myself to finish but I definitely need to because that's yet another shitload of feelings I need to unload.

We've volunteered to help out at the Babywearing Conference out at Reed College, which is coming up on Aug 3 - 6. If you're in PDX area and have children under the age of four, care for children, or plan to have children, please come to the conference. The exhibit hall will be open to the public on Saturday free of charge and many vendors will be there, so this will be an excellent opportunity to try out different styles of baby carriers, risk-free. The classes & workshops should be wonderful too. I'm especially excited about the classes being offered with regard to babywearing special-needs, medically fragile and/or premature babies.

So that was my PSA for today. And now it's like I've been skipping rocks with my thoughts... causing just a few ripples here and there with them as I cast them off into the interwebs. ugh, I feel my ADD taking over.

Happy Birthday, my sweet & silly TWO-year-old!

fire and loss

these are a few pictures of the Sweet Oregon Grill, a restaurant housed in two old barn buildings that burned down early this morning. The pictures were taken on our wedding day... see, this is where we had our garden wedding ceremony and reception almost three years ago. The site has now been declared a total loss and the owner says he will probably not rebuild.

We are so bummed, even Hyde was sad today. This wasn't the kind of place we'd go to all the time but we would drive by it often and joke that it looked like such a nice place to have a wedding. We're planning to go this weekend and see if we can take some pictures in the garden, if there's any of it left. My only regret is that we didn't get *more* pictures taken there on our wedding day. We have so many good memories from there, and it just seems wrong that a place so special to us is now gone...

breakthrough

Hi! Sorry it's been a while, I feel like I'm neglecting everyone lately no matter what I do.

Things ARE better with Hyde this past few days, and it happened by accident. It's been record-breaking-hot in the Portland Metro and as a result, I've been staying in the living room (where there's a ceiling fan and it's significantly cooler) until waaaaay past my usual bedtime. El Niño's sleep cycle is totally hosed now but we'll get all that sorted out later. So, Hyde's been hanging out with me, watching TV until the wee hours. Even *talking* to me in a non-snarky way! Out of the blue, on Wednesday night he asked me timidly if I was going to keep on doing that, staying up and watching TV in the living room and I said, "yeah... why?" And he said, "because I like it when we do that, we used to do that before, all the time... watch the 11 o'clock news and then Jay Leno's monologue, remember? It was fun."

Are you sighing a sigh of relief with me? Because, I was floored. Then I was giddy but I couldn't *show it* for fear he might shut down all over again. This is a confirmation of what my Godfather (the retired university-Dean-of-Psychology) had told me that very day during an hour-long conversation that was conforting not only because of his sage advice and wisdom, or his love for us, but because there was a loud coquí singing in the background (his home office has a courtyard where coquís live and thrive).

So, that's it for now, my baby's crying and I think Mo's calling me for dinner.