Nothing But Love Blah, blah, blah :: this is my view of my life -- some of it.
Monday, June 30
POST #3
statement added 07/01/03: i decided to try this out this morning because my hits didn't seem to be going up, and i was worried something was wrong with my site meter. i came up #54! so i looked back at my site meter info. it was a netscape search. so i tried that. #54. curious. seems netscape is powered by google. BUT. if you search for "stacey amish groundhog problems," guess what comes up #1? that's right! me!
the hits are bound to increase cuz i just found out that i'm #10 in a google search for "amish, groundhogs, problems." if you have difficulty accessing the site because of the increased traffic, please e-mail me directly; and i'll have my network administrator work on it. and if i'm too busy to reply personally to your e-mail, please understand that the increased traffic and ensuing popularity has necessitated the hiring of a p-r firm, who, i assume, will answer all e-mails and telegrams and reply with a facsimile of my autograph on a photograph of a person who may or may not be me. stalkers, you know.
i’ve sent you to this guy’s site before. it’s definitely one of the best i’ve found. dan’s smart, funny, compassionate, sensitive, and very sexy. i say that openly here cuz he reminds me so much of billy (“will” to me). read him today. his story reminded me of a trip to the old cleveland municipal stadium i took with bill and one of my sisters. i feel like i may have blogged this before. deja vu.
game’s over. bill, sis, and i fighting the crowds and cars trying to escape the downtown area. bill’s carrying a blanket and a thermos. we’re in a long ant-like line of pedestrians making their way to the farthest stadium lot. a line of car traffic intersects our pedestrian line, the pedestrians yielding and crossing between cars as the cars inch forward. two young black kids (maybe 12 year’s old) in front of us make their way across in between cars. a really tall, completely shit-faced low- life, 20-something guy jams his car into park and jumps out of the car that the kids crossed in front of. [there’s that damned preposition again – i’m not changing it.] he starts yelling obscenities and threats to the two boys. a real big guy. he’s gonna be a tough guy with these two kids. low-life piece of trash.
i’m the first to react. i think (and this is a BAD, DUMB thing) that when i’m pissed, i fear nothing. the hulk in a 5’3” woman. this guy’s about 6’4”. i am right up (i would say in his face, but that wouldn’t be accurate) in his CHEST, (but i’m LOOKING at his face) screaming at him about what a biiiig man he is, what a fucking low-life he is. he picks up his arm slightly, balls his fist, and lightly (whatever) lets it fall into my nose. i am SHOCKED. and a little dazed. bill and joy don’t see the “punch” from their angle. the guy really didn’t move much. i stand aside and say to joy, “he punched me in the nose!” i still cannot believe that he would do this to me. see what i mean? i think i’m invulnerable! but she hears me and (as we all four of us crazy sisters are wont to do) goes crazy! tasmanian devil. bill grabs her sleeve, tells her to knock it off. tall guy then goes back after the boys, and bill (still holding onto all this stuff) grabs the guy’s arm and gracefully throws him on his back on the ground and tells him to get in his car and get out of here. the guy scrambles to his feet, starts yelling and challenging bill, but won’t come within 10 feet of him. bill says again to him to get out of here. and he does.
moral of the story: i always thought it was my mouth people feared. but it was just the big guy standing right behind me protectively.
I CAN PO-OST, I CAN PO-OST, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH, NYAH
thanks, charlene, for the link. this is what my birthdate says about me:
Pleasant shape pfffft tasteful clothes sometimes modest demands depends tends to not forgive mistakes if you want to be forgiven, sure, but i have a loooong memory cheerful sometimes likes to lead but not to obey sometimes honest and faithful partner yes tends to a know-all-attitude and making decisions for others yes noble-minded yes generous i think so good sense of humor i think so practical depends
why do i do these? there should be an answer to that. talk amongst yourselves.
ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO LINE THE DOG CRATE WITH
i HATE ending that up there with a preposition, but i did it anyway. what do i look like -- a journalist?
i’m not going to talk about the facts of the case. for several reasons. 1) billy’s talked about what he feels it’s appropriate to share. 2) i don’t know all the facts, nor do i care to. the facts. hmmm. the reporter PRETENDED to care about the facts when she called billy (i was in the car when he took the call) because she had obtained a copy of the court transcript. i DO know what i heard billy tell the reporter, and it wasn’t what THE PLAIN DEALER reported that billy said. i CAN tell you that.
i’ve been saying this for a couple weeks now. i’m gonna say it again. you read the newspapers everyday (a habit i started when i was a 7th grader) because i THOUGHT it would make me an informed person. it’s a habit i’ve tried to “give” to jackson (i get to make him do whatever reading i want because i homeschool). pfffft. i learned a while ago (the last time billy’s name was in the paper) that i wasn’t being informed – the intent was to entertain.
so not only did she (the “reporter”) lie about what bill said, but she must not have bothered to read the court transcript – which said EXACTLY what he said.
so there it is out there, folks. complete bullshit. but it’s in print. and plenty of people believe it. i probably would, too, if i hadn’t learned not to. evidently, the state supreme court thinks it’s important enough to “investigate.” so now, bill has to write a letter explaining that he did NOT lie to the court, ask the judge to write a letter, and attach the transcript to PROVE he did not lie.
i guess only lawyers have to have ethics. snort all you want at that statement. it's MY story, and i'm talking about MY lawyer.
so i found some tylenol with codeine and took two last night at bedtime. slept like a log. so when i get up this morning, the pills are calling to me. take two on an empty stomach. it's a damn good thing billy needed my car today and drove me to work, because by the time we hit north olmsted, i'm a sleepy, buzzing mess. i'm slurring my words, can't keep my eyes open. THIS is not going to work, billy, take me home. i call my boss, tell her i'm in no shape to work, head home to sleep it off.
i'm on one couch with beagle scout, sheba's on the other couch, bill's in the family room. i am barely conscious. everytime i start to drift off to sleep, i make a tiny little sound in my throat. and wake myself up. some people would call that sweet, delicate little sigh of contentment a "snore," but some people would be wrong. duh. at one point, bill coughs in the family room, and i think the cabinet over the sink has fallen out of the ceiling. it is that loud. cretin.
finally i fall asleep (or pass out -- i'm not sure which) for several hours. i wake up not exactly refreshed, but the bubbling that i feel inside the top of my head has subsided a little -- a very tiny little -- bit. and the pain from my broken rib(s) has not eased ONE IOTA.
bill needs to drive to sandusky, i'll go with him. i have no idea how long he was inside city hall meeting with various people because i -- again -- pass out (fall asleep?). i wake up when bill knocks on the car window. my mouth is wide open. i'm drooling. a little less top-of-the-head bubbling. it's now over 8 hours since i took these pills. wtf?
i finally realize i'm feeling mostly normal 10 freaking hours after i took the pills. except for the ache in my ribs. i take three ibuprofen. magic.
i was in the office alone all day today, so bill came up to keep me company for a while. mark came up a little later, and we three had lunch together. before mark got there, bill and i were horsing around (good, clean, immature fun). i pulled his arms over my shoulders (he was behind me), bent over and hoisted his feet off the ground. "my turn!" he says. but i'm a good 10 inches shorter than him, so my arms won't go over his shoulders to the front unless he crouches. he stands up, my feet leave the ground at the same time a rib on my left side makes contact with his shoulder blade. too high. thwonkkkk i feel in my rib.
i think i have a broken rib. we should know better. we stoopid.
cuz this one's not working for me either. i'm looking for magic here, and i don't think i'm gonna find it. at least not in a quiz. thanks to veggiemama for this link.
i absolutely CANNOT believe that this picture of my puppy elicited only TWO comments! you can do better than that! talk to me people. i know i'm not the popular site like other people have, but come onnnnn. a puppy with glasses? how can you resist? the site's called "nothing but love." gimme some.
last night while bill and i were outside on the front steps letting the dogs take care of doggy business, we were talking about "things." it seems to me, i said to bill, that the past 9 years have been pretty tough. it's always so much easier to look at stuff when it's behind you. your emotional responses "in the moment" make it impossible to see clearly what's happened.
the day before my fortieth birthday (july 22, 1994), bill and i were told that i had m.s. the diagnosis came very quickly on the heels of my first symptoms. we (all of us) were eating at friday's on a sunday earlier in the month when i dipped my head to look out over my glasses at one of the boys (i think it was a way to look like i was saying something serious), and i saw two of everything. the double vision was only evident when i dipped my head. i said, "what the heck?" dipping my head up and down. none of us were alarmed (at least i wasn't), but i called our good friend and optometrist, dr. "cyborg" (as the boys always called him) to have him take a look. i knew that there were several temporary and non-serious conditions that could cause this, and knew dr. c. could figure it out.
he couldn't and made an appointment for me for the next thursday with an opthamologist friend of his. still, i wasn't worried. bill was going to be in trial that week in toledo, and i told him not to worry. i was so not worried i brought both the boys (8 and 12) with me to the appointment. i felt sure he'd diagnose some sort of temporary cranial nerve paralysis. end of story. but after a thorough examination, he told me i needed to have an mri and see a neurologist right away and made an appointment for me while i waited and talked to the boys as normal as possible in the waiting room. the mri was scheduled for the next day, and the neurologist instructed me to wait for the mri films and bring them to his office as soon as i got them. as soon as we got out to the car, i burst into tears. i was now scared. and because i was scared, i scared the boys, too. i think i paged bill, seemed like he called me back immediately. he talked to the judge on the case he was trying, and the judge called a recess in the trial until the following monday, and bill was on his way home.
friday, july 22, 1994. bill and i picked up a xanex prescription for me on the way to the mri as i hate enclosed spaces. i took one, waited to feel something. nothing (i thought). took another one. nothing (ithought). i wound up taking 4 (!) before we reached the hospital (good thing it wasn't a longer drive!). closed-bay mri's are not fun in general, but an mri of your head is something altogether different. your head is actually immobilized in a CAGE. i'm so glad i took 4 of the pills, i felt no anxiety before i fell into a sudden, deep sleep.
we finished up and waited for the films and then proceeded to the neurologist. the mri films showed a clear lesion in the brain stem. dr. d. examined me and detected weaknesses and weirdnesses i hadn't noticed. m.s. most likely. BUT -- and this was worse to us -- he couldn't be sure it wasn't a tumor because there was only one lesion. with m.s., there are usually more lesions visible. have another mri in two months, and see me afterwards. if it's a tumor, there's nothing we can do -- can't operate in the brain stem. shit. i'm voting m.s.
over the next year, i had three more mri's, a spinal tap, had very few full nights of sleep (i became very adept at nocturnal solitaire), became severely depressed, deteriorated physically in very subtle ways (things that STILL only bill and i can see), and continued (as best as i could) to run this little household. i had LOTS of support: bill and the boys, sisters, friends, doctors. people RARELY asked bill and the boys how THEY were doing. they probably would have felt guilty for having been asked, knowing them. a double whammy. prozak helped me tremendously. in the end, there was still only the ONE lesion which had not changed (thus, not a tumor), and because there were no more lesions, the doctors called it an ms-LIKE illness. however, because the lesion had not "resolved" or healed during that time, the damage i sustained was permanent.
so i'm different. i walk with a cane for balance, my left hand is stupid, and sticks out funny when i walk (i think for balance), the double vision must be corrected with a prism in the lens of my glasses, and i need to get PLENTY of rest. there are other little (or invisible) things. i "hit the wall," as i call it, just once in a while and head to bed pretty much right away when i get home from work. but this happens maybe a couple times a month. so really, this is no big deal. except that i AM different. and that might have been tougher for bill and the boys than it was for me. i still feel like ME, and that's 99% of me that i experience. i'm not experiencing me from outside myself. they SEE me. and i think it's been tough for them.
as i said, the slam of depression i experienced was taken care of pretty well by prozak and time. time it took getting used to who i am now. once in a while i'm caught off-guard trying to do something, handle something, step somewhere in the "old" way (the way i did for 40 years). and that's frustrating. but i'm great now.
then: matthew fought his own demons for a couple years with this. i won't speak for him on this. i don't think he'd appreciate it. he's great now.
then: jackson imploded. he (and bill and i) talks a lot about his own struggles. i have no doubt that THIS is where his fight began. he's great now.
the last 5 years or so have been EXTREMELY difficult for bill: me, his dad, his mom, fighting for the boys. the last couple of months have been interesting, to say the least. but he's great now.
through it ALL, we've all loved each other like crazy, fought like hell with and for each other and PERSEVERED.
so here's my message to my family: we're done, right? no more implosions? at least not BIG ones? kay? but know that i'm always going to be here for you guys as long as i'm alive, i'm fighting. i KNOW that life brings struggles, but it's getting past them and through them that matters. that's what family means to me. and that's what i'm gonna do. kay?
for crying out loud, i'm sappy. sorry. just felt i needed to say it.
paint decks
repair pool bricks
paint fence
plan menu
mulch beds
paint bathroom
new bathroom mirror
futon in guy’s room for don and lee
finish “bob”??
new deck umbrella
wow! yay! comments! or at least a place to LEAVE comments. gimme some love here, people. there are puppy pics, dirty jokes, and other stuff that require comments. in this respect, i AM high maintenance, i guess. just kind of missed you all. we MAY have to do as the matthew recommends and move the blogs to mt.
Just wanna be misunderstood
Wanna be feared in my neighborhood
Just wanna be a moody man
Say things that nobody can understand
I wanna be obscure and oblique
Inscrutable and vague
So hard to pin down
I wanna leave open mouths when I speak
Want people to cry when I put them down
POST-IT NOTE #2:
dvnc
pc anywhere
lap link
Sui generis - adj. [literally, of its own kind] constituting a class alone: unique, peculiar.
In medias res - adv. [literally, into the midst of things] in or into the middle of a narrative or plot.
one day last week, my boss's boss was in the office for business. i mean, he's the big boss. there are some higher, i know, but he's up there. so, my boss, her boss (the big one) and i are in the kitchen doing coffee "stuff." big boss is talking to my boss about upcoming meeting this next week, and he says, "there's gonna be a lot of legal stuff rammed down our throats." i say, in all innocence I SWEAR TO GOD, "welcome to my world."
i realize what i just said, turn bright red (i could feel it), hope nobody else heard it THAT way, and walk immediately out of the room. shit.
i just wrote this loooong, funny, brilliant post on the new blogger that i "posted" (i guess posting means something different than it used to), and it disappeared.
just pretend you read it: laugh, cry, and pretend link to it. it was about sex, kids, emotional "torture" of children, and (DUH!) starbucks. AND comment, please: i LOVE your feedback!
billy and i had the nicest weekend (sometimes the jackal was around).
on saturday we drove down to don and lee’s place where bill helped don tear off his old front porch and frame out a new one. the guys (bill, don, and don and lee's son, rusty) worked their asses off to get the job done; and i, having one of my “hit-the-wall” days sat inside and read, dozed, and was pampered by lee.
at about 4 p.m., rusty came into the room where i was dozing (pretending to be reading), went to the closet, pulled out a rifle, turned to me and said, “we’re taking a break – we’re gonna go kill something.” that might have been alarming to a more citified gal, but i’d spent enough time with these guys to know that rusty meant they were gonna go try to get a groundhog (or HOGGG as bill says in a loud, gravelly, i’m-a-bad-ass voice to me when he recounts his country adventures). farmers HATE groundhogs, you see. seems one groundhog can cost a farmer somewhere around $3,000 a year in destroyed crops. i think i have that right. so the bureau of wildlife (?) asks local farmers to kill these pests and pays them to do it. donny and rusty (and bill), however, don’t do it for profit. for them, it’s philanthropy. snort. couldn’t say that with a straight face.
the upshot of all this shootin’ and huntin’ is that you can’t drive for any distance with bill anymore without him spotting a "HOGGGG!!" annoying as hell.
on the way back up “to home” (as lee says), we spied an amish woman selling her baskets, and we picked up a really pretty “sewing” basket. the lady, seeing that i walk with a cane, asked if she could help me by carrying the basket to the car (bill had stayed in the car). i told her “no, thanks anyway, but i have a system,” and she said, “well, you walk better than my mother.” dear god, i hope she didn’t think i was old enough to be her mother. she was a very sweet looking, roundish, apple-cheeked “mom” type, accompanied by her son, whom i estimated to be around 12 or so. but when she opened her mouth to smile at me, she had no front teeth.
sunday was our 29th wedding anniversary (which i thought was a pretty good thing until i heard morley safer interviewing martha stewart on “60 minutes” and reporting that she was divorced from her husband after 29 years). i’m no martha stewart (and i don’t mean that in the usual sense), but that freaked me out. cripe.
before the “60 minutes” report, i’d been having a really nice day. out to lunch with the jackal and bill, local strawberry shopping (i will not even argue this with you: there are no better strawbs on earth than ohio grown), a trip to bath and body works for treats, golf-galaxy for new shoes and golf balls, and starbucks (duh!).
i recovered (mostly) from my bout of paranoia, and bill and i set to (don’t i sound like a country girl?) cleaning and cutting up strawbs, setting aside the ones with decent stems still attached. we dipped those in chocolate, went out for another mocha, during which time sheba dog had an attack of something yucky. this is not a dog who soils her home. ever. if she can help it. she wound up being uncomfortable most of the night, whimpering by the side of the bed anytime she needed to get out quick. which was a lot.
so that my children’s eyeballs don’t spontaneously erupt into flames, i’ll stop with the day there.
10 -- nap
11:30 -- starbuck's
12 -- lunch
1:30 -- nap
3 -- meeting with client that I will cancel -- starbuck's instead
4 – another meeting
5 -- pick u up
5:30 – guess what? another mtg
8-- starbucks
9 -- mtg. w/ new client that will take 15 min. and then I will
tell her to fuck off
10 -- nice & rough
bill
**********
From: Lang, Stacey
To: 'bill'
my god -- you are hilarious. this is a blog entry.
Stace
**********
From: Bill
To: Stace
Go ahead
From: Lang, Stacey
To: 'bill'
Subject: REMIND ME – AGAIN
really?
Stace
***********
From: Bill
To: Stace
Yes, why not -- except that "nice and rough" thing -- that's what
you're laughing at you slut
bill
**********
From: Lang, Stacey
To: 'bill'
Subject: REMIND ME - AGAIN
i'm keeping that in!
Stace
**********
From: Bill
To: Stace
Subject: FW: REMIND ME – AGAIN
Suit yourself Bill
**********
From: Lang, Stacey
To: 'bill'
Subject: REMIND ME - AGAIN
a version of this was posted previously. i took it down, spent a lot more time thinking, and did some editing. thanks, charlene, for the hugs. a few people know that bill's been going through a pretty bad time since his dad died in october -- actually, for at least the year before, as we knew dad was "going." that "event" really forced bill to have to deal with the depression. he knew he had to. he started with a new counselor a couple weeks ago, and decided he was REALLY going to open himself up wide. right away things started happening for him. it was very tough. so his doctor suggested adding another medication to the mix to help him through the tough time ahead. bill had tried this particular med for a very short time a couple of years ago; but he started feeling pretty "weird" immediately from it, so doctor said "STOP!" why we weren't more on guard for a reaction this time, i can't figure out. blinders, i guess. anyway, here's the e-mail i sent to my guys the other day to explain (just to save me some typing):
last week was very scary. ask jax. it was toughest on him. dr. h had added in a different med (along with the other) cuz he was really cranking along with g (therapist) and doing a lot of hard work on tough stuff. the combination of meds worried me when dad told me about it. within a week, your dad was starting to act different. by early last week, he was crazy. really. suicidal. scared. paranoid. thank god for your stabilizing presences -- i saw him pull himself together time after time and touch down to earth with you guys. wednesday through saturday morning were the worst days of our lives -- but that (wednesday) was also when dad had an idea of what was happening and stopped the meds. within 24 hours, he started to feel better. within a couple days, he was dad again. he feels soooo much better than he's felt in a looong time. matt, your presence last weekend was life-saving. really. i know you guys were sensing something. jax for sure saw it. before we figured it all out, i had no idea what would happen.
the meds: he had taken this other drug once before and had a less severe bad reaction -- nothing like this. when he had taken it before, dr. h said to stop it right away when he saw it was fucking him up. so dad knew he could just stop that drug (you can do that with the other med also) cold turkey. some of you in blogdom knew bill was depressed -- even knew that it was bad -- but no-one knew just how bad it was. no-one. i knew he was not bill. i was scared shitless. every conversation went someplace crazy.
he's bill again. is freaked out when he thinks about what was going on in his head. i am so thankful. to god. to a fellow blogger (who talked to him quite a bit -- he was able to share a small piece of what was going on. believe me, it was only a small piece. it was that bad for him.) to the kids and other friends -- and work (!) -- for whom he grounded himself -- even if it was only for a little while. there are even a couple days there that bill cannot remember at all! holy shit, i cannot BELIEVE where we were and where we are now.
we celebrate our 29th anniversary sunday. i've been given an early anniversary gift. the best one ever. not just bill. but i've learned so much about myself. and our marriage. and not taking things for granted. and trust. trust in the deepest sense -- trusting your partner with your heart by sharing all of yourself. happy anniversary, will. i adore you. and cherish you.
Nothing But Love
