Maybe I am weird...(I know that I am)

But I was sitting with Tiger on my lap and I put my hand on her belly and I could feel one of the kittens moving. It was absolutely amazing to me. It was a moment that actually took my breath away and I have realized that I am really excited to see these kittens being born.

And since the plan is to have Tiger spayed after the kittens are weaned, for my kids, it will be a once in a lifetime experience for them as well.

Prenatal Classes Feline style

So, Tiger, whom I have declared to be my feline version of Jamie Lynn Spears because she is a young cat, not quite a year old...so kind of a kitty teenager, is getting quite round. I am watching her with great interest to see if she will start to waddle the way pregnant women do when they start drawing closer to delivery day. She is not waddling yet. She still jumps up on things and perches on the window ledges to watch the birds and other things that catch her interest. But otherwise, she seems to sleep a lot more, eat a lot more and use the litter box a lot more. Not so different from a human.

Tonight, Princess found a little stuffed cat that meows when you squeeze it. So, she was showing it to Tiger. Tiger was interested in it for a while and was chomping on it and rolling around with it but then began to pick it up with her mouth. Princess kind of squealed and said, "Tiger, don't carry it in your mouth!"

A teachable moment, "Darling, that is how Mommy cats carry their babies. They pick them up by the back of the neck and carry them in their mouths until they are big enough to follow her."

"I know THAT...but Mom, she is carrying the kitten by the leg!"

Ohhhh. I hope that instincts kick in by the time the kittens are born and Tiger does not really carry her babies around by the foot. I don't think I can model the kitten carry for her. My kids would get a kick out of it though...to see me trying to carry a baby kitten in my mouth while showing Tiger how it is done.

I had a dream where Princess told me that Tiger had given birth to 5 kittens on my bathroom floor. I woke up in a cold sweat.

Funny Quotes

BB: I have $9 saved. I only need 41 more dollars and I will have $50.

I am so glad he is learning math in school! What I loved about this comment was his positive attitude.

Peanut: (about camping in August again) I hope that this year there won't be any storms. And because I don't need training wheels, I won't need to hit any girls.

Taken out of context, he sounds like a bully. But I shared earlier that last year, he attempted to bike sans trainers and took out a little girl as he wiped out...and it took him a year to overcome this fear.

Tulip: (to a co-worker as I tried to explain why I could not put two coherent words together) I am not getting enough oxygen to my brain...I barely get enough oxygen in my lungs. It takes me 10 minutes to recover after moving my chair from one side of my desk to the other.

My Mom: It's a good thing I didn't have any boys. I don't think I could handle the destruction. Girls grow out of that destructive phase fairly early. I don't think boys ever do.

And that is why men need hobbies that require power tools!

Desert Bloom (my sister): (upon the announcement that she has applied for a transfer to Minneapolis....and we are all praying she gets it!!) I'm already packing in my mind.

Beth-my cube neighbor: Our financial advisor told us that we will have to cut out food from our budget. But my husband says I HAVE to eat because I am pregnant. So, he is the one who is cutting out food.

Random Thought

I wonder if I can count my minutes spent coughing as part of my aerobic exercise? I can feel not only my rib cage muscles but also my abdominals. It's almost like doing crunches and since it takes up so much of my day....

So, my "glass is half full thought" is I'm not sick...I'm getting buff!

Or maybe just delirious.

I try not to hate anything but....

For the record, I HATE being sick. The swollen and aching joints has gone away only to be replaced by post-nasal drip and a hacking cough that results in 20 minute coughing fits. Every time, I lie down, more junk runs down the back of my throat and I wind up having to sit up, holding a pillow, coughing up what is left of a lung and part of my liver. I am diaphoretic (in non-medical terms " a cold clammy sweat") and thankfully, the fevers have gone away. I may have cracked a few ribs but I can now identify all of my intercostal muscles (those would be the muscles between the ribs...there is a set used for inspiration and a set used for expiration) because they hurt every time I take a breath larger than a tiny puff.

I won't even begin to describe the colors and the textures of the junk I am coughing up or swallowing. That would be a whole other blog called "Really Gross Stuff I Have Seen and Can Discuss at the Dinner Table but Don't".

I'm just so tired of being sick. I hate getting winded walking the 15 steps to the bathroom. Or having to take a 30 minute break to recover from my walk into work. And if I happen to forget to take the OTC medication I bought for exorbitant prices at the gas station, I can hardly talk before I will be hacking for another 15 minutes. I actually sent myself home on Monday to rest after spending most of the night coughing, tossing and turning. When the medicine finally kicked in, my kids came home and it was time to go and get my youngest at daycare. I just can't win. I HATE being sick.

I'm pretty sure the rest of the people in my world are sick of me being sick too. My co-worker who is 5 months pregnant keeps a respectable distance. I completely understand. I don't want her to get sick. But I don't have the plague. I am not contagious anymore. I don't think. It's better to be safe than sorry. But it does make for some lonely work days. Not to mention all the comments of, "You sound terrible...Are you going to the doctor?" To which I reply, "No...my fever has broken...my mucus has thickened and my cough is actually productive now...I have turned the corner and I'm getting better. Really...I AM... It sounds worse than it is..." Truth be told, I'm putting on a brave face because I really feel awful and would like nothing better than to stay at home and sleep all day. But duty calls. No rest for the weary. Or the sick.

The Man-atorium

I have considered writing about this particular declarationfor a while, which has been imparted onto me by my mother and my two sisters, but I have been reluctant because it might mean that I would actually agree with them that it's a good idea. They love me and don't want to see me get hurt again. And they also believe that I have more healing to do both from my divorce (which will be 5 years in August) and the 2 year relationship I ended in January.

The Man-atorium is not a Man-hating thing in any way. I do not hate men. I don't even hate the men who hurt me. However, I agree that I have repeated a pattern of choosing men who are bad for me who become controlling and abusive. And I find myself starting to slip back into my old pattern trying to be pleasing to them so I stuff my own beliefs, opinions and sometimes my values down for the sake of "keeping the peace". However, this eventually starts to eat away at me. I do not want to return to where I was when my marriage ended.

After a little over 9 years of marriage, 3 kids and another on the way, I was living 1000 miles from my family. I couldn't talk to my family when my husband was home because he would listen to my conversations and then talk over them, make comments or make signals to me that I should get off the phone. The two close girl friends I had, I spoke to them during the day when he was not home. My whole life was controlled by keeping the peace with my husband. I did not do anything without his permission. I did not go anywhere if he didn't know I was going there. I didn't spend money if he did not give me his blessing. And if I did spend more money than he had given me permission for, then he would verbally berate me until I cried and confessed that I was horribly mistaken and very selfish not to have asked him. After all, he was the one who worked every day and I was merely at home caring for the children.

After I learned that he had been abusing my daughter, I moved back to MN and got time and distance between us, I began to see just how unhealthy my marriage had been. With the help of a therapist, I began to discover that my coping mechanism for dealing with being abused was to change myself. In a sense, I allowed my personality to disappear and my self-esteem and identity was so tied in to him that I felt that I had become a shell of a person or a role. I was "Wife" and I was "Mommy" but nothing else.

I had to fight hard to break out of that. I began to see myself differently. I began to see that I was strong and that God had given me a brain, a sense of humor and a determined spirit that I did not even know I had until I needed to call upon it in order to do some really hard things. I went back to college to become a nurse. I amazed myself when I sat in Chemistry class and realized, "OH...I get it." That was the first time in a very long time I ever thought I might be smart. I spent the next 3 1/2 years working part time, going to school full time and raising 4 kids as a single parent.

I gained a lot of ground in 5 years. I can understand my family's concern that I would let that slip away by repeating a bad pattern and once again choosing a man who devalues me, who disrespects me and treats me harshly or cycles between being sweetly attentive and doting to silently cold for little or no reason. Both of these men professed to be Christians who loved the Lord and desired to follow Christ in their lives. Yet, they both have been blind to how they treated me.

I do need to sort out why I keep finding men like this. Do I have a target on my head? "Controllable and Malleable". If so, I need to find a way to get that off. I also need to be courageous enough to stand my ground even in the face of an opposing opinion and know that it is OK to a) have an opinion and b) be disagreed with. And I think too that I need to figure out how to respect myself enough to garner the kind of respect I want and deserve from another person. I don't think I can do that while in the midst of a relationship. However, developing friendships can be a safer way to practice those skills and sort some of that out.

I think I should be proud of myself for recognizing that this was happening again. And when I was beginning to feel disrespected or that my opinion was being devalued, I started to speak up and stand my ground. I think my ex-boyfriend found that very unsettling and at that point, the magic sort of wore off in our relationship and the good times were fewer and farther between and the distance became greater. In the end, I found myself holding back how I felt on a lot of things and observing him and how he was around me and my family. If I gave in to his tyranny, things would go smoothly and he was doting and sweet. If I held fast to an opinion or argued a point, he was dismissive and rude. It proved my point.

My Mom is telling me that if God wants me to be married again, He will bring the right man along. A pastor who was teaching our Life Enrichment class today was talking about how we can sometimes create hardships in our lives when we try to rush God along. I do think both these people are reading the same script and I need to sit up and take notice.

I'm going to quit fighting the Man-atorium. I have my family to care for. I have friendships that I would like to continue to develop; some new and some old but the blessings in both kinds are numerous. It's a rich life I have right now.

Things I have learned this week

1. Sometimes things that look like they are bad can turn out to be really good...i.e. my van dying and having to get a new one. My kids and I really, really like our new vehicle.

2. And even though I am nervous about having a car payment and higher insurance, I do also believe that if God brings you to it, He's going to bring you through it.

3. The "Not so fun facts about Fifth Disease"
-while mild in in children and like chicken pox, you will develop an immunity and most likely never get it again, in adults it can be more than mild.

-Adult cases can cause the itchy rash that is from head to toe, in the ears, in the nose, the bottom of my feet, the palms of my hands...all at the same time like some sort of whole body Itch Fest of which I wish to no longer be a part of...and the rash sometimes reacts to sunlight causing me, a fair skinned red-head to look like a sun-burned lobster after a mere 2 minute walk outside.

-The doctor mentioned "some joint pain" but she failed to mention that this joint pain would also result in swollen joints. Every morning, I wake up with my fingers looking like stuffed sausages, my ankles looking like elephant feet and my knees stiff and snap, crackle and popping as I walk up the stairs. Then later on in the day when the fluid shifts out of my joints, I find myself running to the bathroom every half an hour like a pregnant woman.
-This joint pain can last for several weeks up to several months. One website said even several years. Hooray.

-I am not having fun.

4. I survived my first night at a Bible study small group leader. It went really well. I'm looking forward to the next meeting.

5. My kids like to pray for people and now that we have a white board up in our kitchen, we are writing down prayer needs and spending time praying at meals for those needs. BB added his friend who had strep throat. It has been so sweet to listen to them. It has also created some enthusiasm that I have not seen in them for quite some time.