I’m Taking A Few Weeks For The Fam

Hello wonderful readers.

If you’ve been following along you know I’ve been kind of stressed by life lately. Sadly, knowing that my blog is sitting here waiting for me to post only adds to my stress. So I’m taking a short hiatus. It’s time right now for me to focus on my family.

I plan to get back to it around mid July. If you’d like to know when I’m back at it you can “like” my writer page on Facebook, I’ll post a little heads up there when the time comes.

A big thanks to all the supportive notes I’ve received. You guys are the best.

TTFN,
April

Keep On Keepin’ On

Instead of writing this morning, I nursed, then made a bottle and spent about forty minutes trying to get the (too) little guy to eat more, then I pumped (yeah!) and then while he napped I called to get test results on his liver functions (not in yet), and find a pediatric cardiologist. Yes. The fun just doesn’t stop around here.

Not only is he too small for his age, but he seems to have developed a heart murmur. The doc said that with most kids it’s no big deal, but given that he’s had all these other troubles, it would be best to have it checked out. She also said that I need to get him to drink 8-10 ounces more a day, but armed as he is with his new teeth, he just clenches his jaw and won’t even let me put the bottle in his mouth. So I squirted the milk, drop by drop, into his cheek, at which point he let most of it roll down his chin (wasted breast milk actually IS worth crying over), but I’m optimistic that he swallowed an ounce or so. He’s just not hungry. I get it, but he needs to eat more.

So I’m feeling stressed. I’m managing to do the work that must be done, but everything that isn’t time sensitive is languishing, due to my complete lack of focus. In my head I keep looking forward in time for the inkling of a reprieve, but there simply is none. I’ll just keep on keeping on, and hope that some day I’ll once again have time to do some real writing.

He’s Little, But Sooooo Cute

I had to take the little guy in for more blood tests on Wednesday. I feel like I’ve said this before, but hopefully that will be the last time. I should get the results today, and if his liver enzymes are doing what they’re supposed to, we should be all done with that business.

You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find someone in San Francisco who’s qualified to stick a five month old baby with needles and hold him down while his blood is collected drop by drop and he screams his beautiful little head off. It’s a fucking awful experience, made all the worse by the fact that I had to work so hard to even find a place that would do it.

The whole thing made me grumpy. And if one more person says “ahhh, how cute – what is he, two months?” They might get slapped.

Time Away

As I mentioned, I went down to the WordCamp conference in Orange County last week, which meant leaving the kids and hubby for two nights.

Aside from the fact that time away from the baby is kind of tough while nursing (for the uninitiated I won’t go into the details of breast pumping, but the moms out there who’ve used one know what I’m talking about when I say UHG), I was really looking forward to a little time away.

Grown up time. Nobody crying, needing my attention, or spilling anything. Every mom should get the occasional day or two off, and I was really enjoying it, but it’s so bitter sweet these days.

I sped through security with my roll-aboard, took my time in the little stall of the bathroom without worrying my daughter was making a break for it, and even had a beer with my refrigerator sushi, because, hey, I wasn’t nursing any time soon. But within the hour I actually began missing my little Cling-ons.

It was a strange, visceral longing. I didn’t actually miss parenting, per se. Parenting is ridiculously hard most of the time. What I missed was the feeling of my family. My daughter’s blond fro tickling my face, curling up next to my guy at night, the way my baby nuzzles his nose into the crook of my neck right after he spits up all down the back of my shirt. These were the things I missed. The physical sensations of being close to the people I love. The longing just kind of hovered in my mind. Not overwhelming, just kind of always there.

Well, for better or worse, it was only a two day trip. I kept thoughts of those three precious souls in my heart, and let the rest of my body just relax for about 30 hours. It’s true what they say – absence does make the heart grow fonder.

Life/Family/Career

Forget everything I said about how easy it is to spend the days with the kids and write at night. That worked for about two weeks. The fact is, business is done during business hours. Sometimes there’s just no getting around that. What’s more, working at night means I get a lot less sleep than I’m used to, which, when I’m trying to keep up with the kids all day, is a serious detriment.

So I’m back to feeling stressed about trying to keep my own career moving forward while supporting my guy in his filmmaking work. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to do it. Daniel worked two jobs for two years while I got my masters degree. I am thrilled that the tables have turned and I can now support him in what he wants to do, but it is challenging.

In looking for things that could be cut, to make my life easier, this blog keeps raising it’s little hand, but the fact is I really like writing this blog. Still, we’re about to launch the Digging Deep Campaign website which will require some blogging, and the time may come that something has to go.

It’s a continual work in progress, this life/family/career. I just have to figure it out as I go along.

ps – I’m hoping to blog a little more about the film soon. I just need to pick Daniel’s brain a bit. They don’t start shooting until June 5. All I’ve heard recently is that the production office got a kick-ass espresso machine. Color me jealous.

Sorry, Kid

Writing is full of delicious highs and gutter-licking lows. It’s a bitter sweet life.

Know what else is bitter sweet? Being a film producer. I mentioned in a post a few days back that my husband will be producing a film in San Francisco in May and June and we (baby, big kid and I) are planning to go up to spend the two months with him. Well, we were supposed to leave on Sunday, and now, on Thursday (yes, just days before it’s set to begin), it looks like the whole movie might fall apart. That’s how the film business works. One day you’re making a movie, the next your not. At least as a writer you’re more or less subject to your own whims and distractions.

It takes a lot of patience and flexibility to live the life of a creative professional. In fact, I think it would be really hard if one of us had a regular job and the other was constantly changing plans, but since we both live and breath this uncertainty called art, we manage it together. I think the hardest part (if, in fact the project does fall through) will be explaining it to our daughter. We spent the last three weeks prepping her for the idea that we’ll be in San Francisco, away from her friends, for two months, and now we 180 and say “yeah, never mind all that, let’s stay home.”

Oh well, this is the life she was born into. When it comes to family hardships, changing plans on a dime is hardly the worst of them.