Nothing to say

I have nothing to post about except this question that has been plaguing me all day. How does one get the motivation to constantly put laundry away? Some household chores MUST be done, like the dishes, or washing the clothes. Those chores I have no problem with. In fact, I can't go to bed unless they are done because I can't stand the thought of having to start my day with yesterday's must be done chores. But putting away laundry? It's just too easy to put off. I mean, a clean shirt off the floor is pretty much the same as a clean shirt out of the drawer (especially if you just shove clothes into drawers without folding like I usually do) so it doesn't really NEED to be done and therefore I hardly ever do it. There is just something supremely annoying about folding, sorting and putting away laundry. You try to condense the piles but there are always too many miscellaneous piles, like the the unmatched socks pile, or the rag pile, the clothes that must be hung up pile etc. And going back and forth to all the various nooks and crannies of the house putting everything away, I just can't stand it. And yet, I also can't stand piles of clean laundry around the house. It just screams A Worthless Homemaker Lives Here. Even though I generally cook nutritious food, keep the dishes clean, keep the floors swept and vacuumed and even get to the bathroom about once a week (to clean it, I get there a lot more often to urinate) I just cannot stay on top of the laundry. The piles are always there mocking me, telling me that my house looks like a pigsty even though I've done a bunch of other cleaning. It's constantly eating away at my self-esteem. There is a fresh pile right now on the couch, it's telling me "You should have put me away instead of writing this ridiculous blog post."

Alma's teeth

You'd hope genetics would give the poor kid a break.

A truly horrendous week

As previously reported last Monday was momentous first day of me taking responsibility for myself and my family again. I didn't feel great, but I felt determined. By Wednesday I'd survived making dinner 3 times, and was able to take a long walk with Grant. I had the feeling that Yes, perhaps I could make it through this pregnancy. That evening Rune got sick, cried for a long time, then threw up. We went to bed. Two hours later we wake up to hear the baby puking all over in his crib. I gingerly gather up the big pile of bedding and throw it on the floor. I change Alma into new clothes but can't bring myself the deal with the vomit in his hair and just pull his pajama's hood over his head. Alma is in bed with us and wakes up every half hour or so to throw up. We use every towel in the house and keep adding to the pile on the floor. During one of these episodes we hear Rune suddenly wake up and vomit all over his bed. Grant gets to deal with that one. My weak stomach is torturing me now and I'm desperately trying to find a happy place in my mind. I'm terrified of catching this bug myself and fatalistically know I will. In the morning Alma begins to have diarrhea, but I can't worry about that because I am vomiting now and I am emotionally unable to deal with this. I desperately get the kids in the car to head back to Carolyn's (my MIL) house. I vomit once more in the driveway which the chicken happily eat. Once there I sit in my usual chair and stare bleakly at my surroundings and cry hopelessly for the rest of the day. The virus nausea is made worse by eating and the pregnancy nausea is made worse by not eating. The psychological impact of contracting the stomach flu at that point are devastating and I am too embarrassed to admit some of the thoughts that went through my head that day. At 4 pm I try to eat a few bites of burrito and sip some water and decide it's no use and give up eating. I finally go to bed and sob myself to sleep while Grant sympathetically strokes my hair. The next two days are a bit better, but the damage to my stomach has been done and I'm afraid it will be a while before I recover. Alma continues to have diarrhea and begins to vomit again on Friday. By Friday evening Grant and Carolyn are now sick. We are all weakly trying to take care of the kids. Saturday is bit better for me, I'm able to eat some sandwich and manage to watch conference and take Rune to his soccer game. Alma finally seems to be perking up. Saturday night (last night) we go to bed hoping for a better day. Alma wakes up in the middle of the night fussing and fussing. He seems tired but just can't go to sleep. We sing songs and I recite the two poems I know by heart (Winken Blinken and Nod and The Night Before Christmas). He finally drops into a fitful sleep and wakes again at 6:30 fussing. He climbs out of our bed and walks to the kitchen when he continues to cry. Suddenly, in a moment of epiphany I realize that no one fed him dinner and I can't recall anyone feeding him lunch either. He was starving! My motherly instincts finally kick in again and I want to cry for my poor little starving guy. I grab him a banana and feed it to him in bed. He devours it and falls asleep while chewing and sleeps angelically until 8:30. Please let this week be better!

A Good Day

So far. I got up this morning and fixed breakfast for Grant, myself and the kids. Eggs, of course, since we are swimming in them. I changed a dirty diaper. I made sandwiches for lunch and even did the dishes. All of this with no help. A major turning point and I feel really proud of myself. I've enjoyed the day with my kids and feel like I am seeing them again after a long absence. I looked at my blog and saw that I got one comment on my last post. Thank you, Julie, for not completely giving up on me and checking my blog again! Maybe soon I will graduate to posting pictures again. The best part of today was looking out the window and what did I see? Blossoms popping on the apricot tree. It seems poetic and poignant to me that the awakening of spring is coinciding with my emergence from the dark place I have been. Oh, and if I seem to be waxing literary lately, (poorly, I'm sure!) it is because I have been reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and the Russian authors always have that effect of me. Hopefully I will finish the book in a week or so and it will pass!

There's nothing like six weeks of relentless suffering

to make one think differently and a little more deeply about the atonement and resurrection. After enduring my own private little hell which has left me skinny and shaken in body, mind and spirit I find it difficult to contemplate other suffering in the world. One of the things that have occupied my mind lately is Africa. The reports from Darfur and Sudan make me physically ill. The stories of rape and murder, starvation and deprivation. The mothers and fathers that were forced to watch as the janjaweed threw their little children into boiling water. Over 200,000 dead in that area from that conflict. There is the Middle East. How is such hatred and rage possible? What evil and secret combinations are underfoot when the world decides it needs to interfere in the oil rich nation of Iraq but leaves the blood and genocide of Darfur alone? What of my own country, America, where teenagers are so desperate to feel something real that they create death and violence to make their lives feel important? If only every person on the planet knew how important their lives are to God. If only they knew each and every one of them is so important that Jesus Christ took upon himself all this suffering so that they need not suffer if they turn to him. All of the ghastly suffering humans have inflicted on each other through the years atoned for. Jesus said, "It is finished." and on the third day he took up his own body and arose from the dead. The darkness and hell on this earth, created by sin and death, overcome. I want to say with Enos, "Lord, how is it done?"

Hello everyone

I'm not completely better yet, but I may be ready to join the world again. Here is a glimpse into my life.

Things That Make Me Feel Sick
1. The smell of ANYTHING.
2. Taking a shower
3. Holding my kids
4. Changing diapers
5. Eating
6. Moving
7. Thinking or talking about complicated subjects
8. Kissing
9. Driving
10. My own saliva in my mouth
11. Getting dressed
12. Being too hot
13. Being too cold
14. Watching TV
15. Basically, everything

Things That Make Me Feel Better
1. Nothing

Consequently, for the past 6 weeks I've been sitting in an armchair at my in-laws house while my MIL (aka the lifesaver) takes care of my kids and feeds us food. I spent the first 3 weeks crying. The past 3 weeks I gave up crying and I've actually gotten dressed for the past two days so I'm hoping better days are coming. Although it fades slowly. The other day at the Pinewood Derby I watched a couple unwrap their DQ hamburgers and dig in. After a while I realized I was staring wistfully and actually starting to tear up at the thought of eating food with such enjoyment. I'm pathetic.

Grant

If there are any single moms out there who think that men don't know what it's like to have to "do it all" I'd like to tell them, my husband, Grant, does. For about one month out of each of my pregnancies he is Super Man. Yesterday he came home to a house that was about 40 degrees (because his wife couldn't deal with keeping up the fire), a starving 14 month old (because his mother couldn't deal with feeding him all day) and a wife who was curled up in a ball on the sofa, where she'd been for at least the past 3 hours, sobbing. The backdrop to this scenario was a house where practically nothing was residing in cupboards or closets. He had the fire going in no time, the kids organized into picking up the house, ran to the store and whipped up dinner, rented a movie for the kids, changed the baby and put him to bed, then finally did his own chores. All this after having been up since 3:30am that morning to get a report done for work. This is a scene that will be repeated multiple times in the next four weeks and has been repeated ad nauseum in the past. He does it efficiently and cheerfully and I cannot express how grateful I am to him. He has been known to complain and shirk household responsibility in times when I am well, but I can and always will forgive him for those times because of how he is during these times. In a previous journal entry written in a previous pregnancy I wrote, "If I ever feel I have occasion in the future to speak ill of my husband I hope I can remember this time when it is almost entirely him who is keeping this family from falling apart completely." Other people help out also, and I appreciate them, but it is Grant who gets me through emotionally, keeps me from constantly daydreaming about death. I don't want to sound morbid or scare anyone, but it's that bad and if you haven't seen my husband as a Hero before, please see him that way now.