Chez Perky

Chaos

Hey, someday when I happen to have more sleep and more time on my hands, remind me to tell you how the events of this week all managed to converge in such a way that I happened to end up with my grandfather staying with us for a week (and his little dog, too!), my mother-in-law's damn cat in my house, and 13 people for dinner tonight.

Really. It's quite a funny (and aggravating) story.  Did I mention I have four kids?  And that I'm allergic to dogs?  And cats?  And that we already have 2 cats of our own?

I think my house is beginning to look a bit like a clown car.

Photographic Proof

No, really!  I DO have a life!  I have proof!  Here's a picture of me having a good time with my friend Jo at the Indigo Girls Concert last Thursday.

See?  I really can have a good time, even when I'm away from the kidderoonies.  Truthfully, I spent most of my time there daydreaming about what my kids were doing, and I'm not sure if that's sweet or pathetic, but that's me now, right? 

Suffice it to say, a good time was had by all, and it was nice to have a night out with the girls.  Maybe I won't wait until next year's Indigo Girls Concert to have another night out.   We'll see.  My next goal is to have another "date night" with Seth, but hopefully this one won't be quite the disaster of the last one. 

Lots of people tell me I should just get up and go out, but I just don't work that way.  I honestly don't WANT to leave them with someone else.  I worked hard to get to where I am in my parent status, and I'd much rather be homebound for a few years than leave them in the company of others.  I don't yearn for time away.  While I enjoyed the concert, I spent nearly the entire time thinking of my four children.  Believe me, I'm not desperate to be away from them.  I know that my time will come soon enough.   I know that in a blink of an eye, I will wonder where this time went.   

What? I have a life?

Don't get me wrong, I love my life.  I am happy with my life and all the blessings in it.  I will gladly give up ever going out and I will happily stay in every night and stare at my gorgeous, thriving, healthy babies every night.  I will willingly collapse in bed, exhausted, at the end of each day, without a single thought to going out and doing anything else with my night, or spend my evenings doing laundry, dishes, making lunches, filling out paperwork for J's school, sweeping the floor around the highchairs, washing bottles, or making baby food.  But I'm also not a martyr, so when the opportunity comes around for me to go out and do something fun, well, I'm certainly not going to turn it down.

Every year, my friend Jo and I go to see the Indigo Girls at Wolftrap.  Except, well, last year I was in pre-term labor and less than a month away from delivering the triplets, so I had to give up my ticket, which, yes, I'd purchased in vain hope of being able to go, but ... well, not so much.  ANYWAY, the point is, last night, after I fed the babies dinner, nursed them one last time, put them in PJs and tucked them into their cribs, Jo and I went went to the concert, and it was a bunch of fun, and I have pictures to prove it... except...  I can't get them off my camera!  I got home late last night, and I tried to get them off my camera, and... nothing.  My computer won't recognize the USB device!  And so I tried Seth's computer, but it won't either, so it's clearly a problem with the camera, not the computer, but WHAT could have happened?  Gah! 

Well, no matter, I had such a good time.  We got there early enough to hang out with another couple friends who had lawn seats, have a glass of wine and some yummy strawberries, talk, listen to the opening act, and just... be.  Then we headed down to our seats in the Pavillion and, boy, did we have GOOD seats!  Yay for Jo getting us the best seats so far!  :) 

Lately, you know, I've been feeling really overwhelmed.  And it's not the babies. It's not J. It's not motherhood, you see.  Motherhood is perfect.  The babies are amazing.  J is awesome.  It's the rest of my life.  It's fitting everything ELSE in.  It's getting everything else to revolve around the four most important things in my life that's overwhelming.  It's hard to explain.  And I don't feel this way all the time, it's cyclical (more on this in another post), but it's suffocating when it happens.  Still, in those couple of hours, all was right with the world.  Not a single moment went by that I wasn't thinking of my beautiful blessings tucked in at home, but that is as it should be.  I am so grateful for the ways in which they enrich my life, the way they have filled the empty corners of my soul. 

Date Night Interrupted

Wednesday night, Seth and I tried to go on a "date".  We haven't been to a movie together since 2006,  before I got pregnant the first time, even, and it was high time.  So we kept trying to find a date to go, and we almost went two weeks ago, but ran out of time to make it happen (Seth was leaving for Texas the next morning and time was just too tight), so finally we said, "We don't have the time to go, but we're going."  Unfortunately, it turned out that the night that we'd set our foot (feet?) down and said "we're going no matter what!" was also a night that Seth was on call with the hospital.  Dumb, dumb, dumb. 

Seth brought me flowers and everything.  It was going to be a real date night.  The babies were asleep when we left the house, and my mother stayed with Julian, so we were home free.  Except as we stepped out of the car in the parking garage, Seth's pager went off.  Someone was calling out for the next morning's shift.  Normally, he would have taken the next 20 minutes to find someone to cover the shift, but since he didn't want to miss the beginning of the movie, he decided he would just cover the shift himself... an 0630 shift.  Ugh.  No big deal.  We were still out for our date night.  Life was good.

We got settled in to the movie, just in time for the previews (missed part of at least one, but that's okay).  And we were enjoying the movie when Seth's pager went off again about 35-45 minutes in.  Just as it was getting good.  A few minutes later, Seth popped back in  and said, "I'm sorry, there's an actual emergency, I'm going to be a while," grabbed his back pack and walked back out.  An hour later, he returned in time for the last, oh, ten minutes of the movie.

A woman was being transferred to his hospital who was 32 weeks pregnant with active malaria and the pharmacy dept. didn't have in stock the drug that the ID department wanted her to use that would be safest for the baby.  So he spent that hour trying to track down some of the drug to borrow from another hospital.  At least it was for a good cause.  Poor Seth... HE was the one who had picked out the movie! 

Ah well.  He apologized for ruining the evening.  Didn't ruin MY evening.  After all, I got to see the whole movie! 

Time Passes

This evening, my husband went to shul to say Kaddish (the mourner's prayer) for his father at Mincha (the afternoon prayer service, which must be said before Sundown).  At Ma'ariv (the evening service, which follows Mincha), Seth was no longer obligated to say Kaddish (though he'll still say it on the yarzheit, of course).  Eleven months have passed since his father died last summer.  Eleven months ago I was about to go on full bed rest trying to keep contractions at bay, trying to keep my shortening cervix from giving out.  Eleven months ago I wasn't sure whether all three of my babies would make it into the world, let alone healthy and thriving.  Eleven months ago, we didn't know that my father in law would never meet his grandchildren.  Eleven months ago I didn't realize how quickly time would pass. 

A month later, I was in the hospital afraid I was in labor all too soon.  Later that day, I was getting my terbutaline pump set up, and I was helping my husband register the news that his father had died.  It was one of the worst days of our lives, but thankfully, those babies stayed inside that day, and many days after. 

Eleven months my husband has been saying Kaddish. It's hard to believe. 

Meanwhile, Trilcat inspired me today, though I'm not sure whether she intended to.  But she made me realize today that my I've been feeling overwhelmed by the simple act of making Shabbos dinner, and it's been intimidating me more than it should.  So tomorrow, in honor of the fact that my husband is no longer saying Kaddish, we are having guests for Shabbos dinner.  And tonight I made baked gefilte fish,  chicken, broccoli kugel, and sauteed summer squash.  Tomorrow I'll make rice and salad and it will be a lovely Shabbos meal.  Maybe not *quite* up to my former standard, but you know?  I didn't used to be the mother of triplets plus one, so sometimes our standards have to evolve, right? 

Time passes and life moves on.  Eleven months ago I had no idea how happy I could be today.  I had no idea how full my life would be and how capable I would feel.