Another update on Sarah Parks

Just read in the paper that the judge set Silas Parks' bail at $200,000 and the trial is supposed to start March 22nd. Since the prosecutor is not going to seek the death penalty in this case, Silas is entitled to bail. What happens if this creep actually manages to post bail? From the Moscow-Pullman Daily News, Friday, 12/25:

Defense attorney Ray Barker asked at a bond hearing last Friday to have bail set at $100,000, noting the limited financial assets of the Parks family and of Silas himself. Thompson asked for bail to be set at $500,000, noting the serious nature of the charges against Parks.

So the prosecutor asked for $500,000 to make it harder for the family to post bail and the judge set bail at $200,000 to, what, make it easier for them? Because we want this guy out on the streets? I really do not understand this logic at all and it distresses me that he could get out of prison and walk around free until the trial. I think he would probably disappear. I'm angry at the judge and I'm angry at the prosecutor for not seeking the death penalty. Yep. There, I said it.

ETA: Silas Parks was released on bail on Thursday, Dec 31. His father and uncle posted property bonds to meet the $200,000 needed.

Ursula

I've been away a while. I have been putting this post off but can no longer stall. I can't go on with this blog without posting about this and I need to continue, so here it is. I have to report another death. On September 12, my very dear friend, Ursula Hitch, was killed in an ATV accident. Three and a half months have gone by and I've thought about her every single day of it. After this much time I think it's finally starting to seem real to me. For the longest time every time I thought about her (and I think about her a lot, she just pops in there at odd times when I'm not expecting it) it was with this total sense of unreality. Like a bad dream. And it seemed so impossible that she wasn't going to just walk in my back door, pour a cup of coffee and sit at my table and start chatting. How can she just be gone? She of all people. But you probably didn't know my friend Ursula. She was amazing. So much energy and so kind and funny. She was probably the most giving person I ever knew. I can sit in any room of my house, look around, and see half a dozen things she gave me. Knick-knacks, fabric, quilted wall hangings she made herself, wind chimes, a bird feeder, two bird feeders in fact. And tons and tons of sewing things, some of them homemade. Things for my kitchen. She was always showing up with something for me. "I saw this and it made me think of you," and it was always something I loved. She knew me so well. And now with it being Christmas, well. Going through the ornaments this year, so many of them came from her--mostly the ones with cardinals on them. She knew I loved cardinals because they remind me of my mother and I collect snowflake ornaments because I just love them. There must be a dozen or more things for my tree that she gave me. As I said, I can sit in any room of my house or in my back yard and look around and be reminded of her and how much she loved me and that's a huge comfort.

Here's how I found out she died: Sunday, September 13 was Sanity Seeker Sunday. Ursula was supposed to pick me up because Val and Travis took the Jeep to Lewiston to go fishing. Riley was going to come to the quilt shop with us so we were all packed up and ready to go. I wanted to go a little early because I needed to pick something up at JoAnn's or something. I tried calling her cell phone at about 9 am or so. I called her land line too and left a message on both phones. It was so unusual that she wouldn't call me back that I started worrying a little bit, but mostly just thought, "Oh, she must be doing something and forgot her phone,". But that little part of me-the one that always thinks the worst-was going, Uh-oh, uh-oh, something's not right. SS starts at noon and when she wasn't here by a quarter after I thought she must have somehow forgotten. I called Suzie on her cell and I asked her if Ursula was there yet and said she was supposed to pick me up. The connection was bad, cutting in and out like it does sometimes when I make a call from my kitchen, but I thought she sounded funny. She said, "Wendy is on her way to get you." Okay, so Wendy will pick us up and I can give Ursula a lot of crap for forgetting me when she finally shows up. Five minutes later I saw Wendy coming up my walk and Riley and I headed out the door with our stuff. Wendy said, "Wait, can we go back inside for a minute?" and you know how you feel when you know something bad is coming? That sense of dread that stretches time out and distorts things like a cartoon? I turned around and went back inside and Wendy followed. She told me to sit down. Nope, no way. That's what they tell you to do when they give you bad news. "What's wrong?" I asked, "Is it Ursula?" She said there had been an accident, Ursula and Jim were riding four-wheelers and there was an accident. "Is she okay?" I asked, "Is she hurt?" Wendy was crying and shaking, "No. She died." I started screaming and Wendy was hugging me. The rest is foggy. I know I sat on the couch and cried, Riley was on my lap, poor kid. I know she was scared--who wouldn't be at six years old, seeing her mother hysterical? Finally, I calmed down and Wendy asked me what I wanted to do. Val wasn't here and I knew I couldn't stay home. I said I wanted to go to the quilt shop. Wendy, Suzie and Sarah were the only ones there. Someone who knew Ursula and knew about the accident had called the quilt shop only about five minutes before I called Suzie. Teri took the call and called Suzie to the phone so they had just found out what had happened when I called. We got there and just sat, stunned. I don't know how many times one of us said, "This is so unreal. This is not happening." One by one, the rest of the group trickled in and Suzie or Wendy would give them the news. It was awful to watch. Shock and disbelief. Nancy dissolved into immediate tears. Mary laughed at first in disbelief, like we were joking, and then started crying. I stepped outside to see if I could call Val. I wanted him home as soon as possible. I called and he was actually on his way. I told him what had happened and when he got into town, he and Travis came to the quilt shop and got Riley. When the rest of the group had gotten there and everyone knew, we just sat for the longest time, all eight of us, a giant box of tissues on the table, and cried and stared at each other. Finally, Nancy stood up and said she was going to get some wine. Someone suggested we all go to La Casa Lopez and drink margaritas. That's definitely what Ursula would have done. So we did. We took our ginormous box of Kleenex and drove downtown to our favorite Mexican restaurant and drank heavily for the next two hours. I can't even imagine how that particular day would have gone if I hadn't been with that amazing group of women. We cried and talked and laughed. I was worried about Mary and Wendy and Nancy said later they were worried about me. I was so in denial. I kept waiting for Ursula to walk in and announce the best practical joke ever. Or for someone to call and say there had been a mistake, she was hurt but going to be okay. It was very surreal. The alcohol took the edge off of everything but we were all hurting. There was this indescribable closeness in that group. We've always been a tight clan but there's nothing like a death to bring people together. We finally broke up at around three and Wendy took me home. I knew Ursula's family best so I had volunteered to be the liaison and keep everyone posted. The next week was a nightmare. The Sanity Seekers got together several times to talk and cry. That's how we got through it. I'm so glad we had that. I know I couldn't have coped without them. Val was very supportive, of course. He was grieving too-Ursula had been a huge part of our lives since before Travis was born-and he was there for me but in this particular case, it was all about Girlfriends, you know? The funeral was surreal. So many people. Ursula had worked for years as a birthing coach (which is how I met her) so there were people who knew her from those days. Her daughter had been active in gymnastics for years and Ursula worked part time in the gym so there were gymnastics people. She had also worked for hospice and many, many people knew her from that venue. Her husband Jim is a firefighter so there was the Firefighter community. And then there were the quilters. She touched so many lives in so many ways. The Sanity Seekers stood in a tight little group. Val and my mother in law were beside me and Stephanie and Tyler came so I had my own little support group as well as the SS. I met Ursula's three sisters for the first time. That was weird. I had heard about them for years of course. I felt like I knew them already and it was so weird actually meeting them without her there.

Jim asked me to go through Ursula's quilt room. That was hard, but also kind of therapeutic. The first two times I went there, Jim wasn't home and I was alone. I wasn't freaked out at all. In fact, it felt kind of peaceful. They had just moved into a new house twenty miles away from town two months before the accident and I had never actually been there so the house didn't feel like Ursula. All of her things were there, though. All the little touches that were her. I was able to sit in her sewing chair and cry and talk to her and cry some more. I told her that I loved her and that I would miss her. Since then, I have been back several times. Ursula had a lot of UFOs (for the non-crafty: UnFinished Objects, in this case, quilts). I took those and Mary had the brilliant idea that we (Sanity Seekers) should finish these for her family. There were enough quilt tops for us to finish as wedding quilts and baby quilts for all three kids. Ursula's kids are 23, 21 and 18. She was so looking forward to being a grandmother someday. She talked about it all the time. I am so sad for her family. Her kids are so amazing, all three of them. She was such a good mom and would have been a really wonderful grandmother.

Ugh. I can't write about this anymore. I will write more later, but for now, I am wrung out. This craft blog has turned into a Death Blog and I don't want to report any more of this kind of news.

I wish I had something sweet and profound to say to tie all of this up, but I don't. I think of my sweet friend every day and I had a dream the other night where I was hugging her really, really hard and crying and telling her over and over again that I loved her and I was going to miss her. Maybe that's what took this whole thing from denial and disbelief to, finally, acceptance? I'm ready to move on, I guess. I'll never stop missing her. I will never have another friend quite like her. She was the one person that I could tell anything to, that I could be completely myself with. The one friend who could come to my house in whatever state of chaos it happened to be in and I knew I didn't have to apologize or make excuses and that she would never, ever judge me. God help me, I'm too old to break in another best friend and it makes me feel very alone and sad. I know I wasn't half the friend to her that she was to me and it makes me feel ashamed but I also knew that she didn't hold it against me and she loved me anyway. She was like that, my friend Ursula.

Update on Sarah Parks' death

Silas Parks was arrested on June 30th. He was charged with two counts of homicide and one count of arson. The relief was unbelievable. So many people were feeling like it was just an open-and-shut case and there was a lot of frustration concerning the delay in his arrest. I understand why it took so long. I know the authorities were making sure they had enough solid evidence so that they could nail him as solidly as possible. Bastard.

Sarah's memorial was two days later on July 2nd. Travis wouldn't go. He said he knew it would be "too sad". I think he was really afraid of seeing me being that sad. All I did for a solid week was cry and he would put his arms around me or pat my arm. I am a really emotional person anyway--to the point that I can't watch a movie or even a commercial sometimes if it contains anything that will make me tear up a little bit. I get choked up easily (especially if it's anywhere near time for my period!) and it used to be okay but now it kind of freaks Travis out so I have to be careful. So he didn't go. Riley went and was so good. There were about 300 people there and the thing went on forever but she didn't complain and didn't even fidget very much. Not bad for a kid who hasn't been "trained" in this sort of quiet time by going to church! The service, of course was sad. Sarah was very active in her church and so it was a very religious service. Lots of singing, too. The thing that got to me most was the photograph montage they had going before everything got started. It killed me to look at those photos of her, so happy and smiling in all of them. There was even the class photo taken the year Trav was in her class. It was almost unbearably sad.

Things have quieted down for now. There hasn't been much in the paper about the trial or anything yet. One thing I did note, however: The articles in the paper were all listing the baby as "Serenity". I thought that was odd at the time because it just didn't seem something Sarah would name her baby. I read the police report and the officer stated that he confirmed with Silas that his wife was pregnant and Silas said that they had decided to name the baby Serenity if it was a girl and the officer talked with a friend who said that she had been with them (Sarah and Silas) while they were discussing names and that Serenity was the name Silas liked. At the memorial service, however, the program had two names on it: Sarah Jean Sheffield Parks and Lilly Ann. Hah! It makes me even more angry that, even after he killed her and the baby, he still tried to name their unborn child, even when he knew she didn't want that name! The papers are still listing the baby as Serenity and it bothers me a lot. I wish someone would set them straight. I don't know, maybe there's some weird, twisted law that says that the surviving parent of an unborn child gets to name it,even if he's the one responsible for the death. It sounds about right for our legal system. It makes me want to gouge out his eyes! There's hope, though. As Val said, since Silas is so young and fairly good-looking, "he'll probably be very popular in prison".

Look where I'm going with this! I need to do something to get rid of all this anger! I am really in the mood to sew this week but there's no time. It's Rendezvous 4 Kids this week, coming up on Thursday and Friday. Lots to do. I'm glad for that, it takes my mind off of all this other, negative stuff.

Sarah

I just don't know where to start. It has been a sad week for so many people. I know the whole town is in shock but it's hitting our little school especially hard. Sarah Parks, third grade teacher at the Moscow Charter School, died on Wednesday morning. Her body was found burned inside her apartment. Her husband, Silas, was at the gym working out. There was an autopsy and it was determined that Sarah was dead before the fire so the death is being investigated as a homicide. As if this isn't sad enough, Sarah was 20 weeks pregnant with her first baby. Now here's the kicker: she was abused by her husband. We don't know all of the details yet, but there has been at least one citation for domestic abuse in the past and there are records on file at the hospital concerning injuries to Sarah stemming from a domestic incident. According to some of the other teachers, her husband beat her up pretty badly a couple of years ago and the abuse has been ongoing ever since. This all came out after her death but, apparently it was common knowledge amongst her coworkers and a few people weren't surprised to hear that the death was suspicious. As of this moment, Silas has been questioned and released and there are no suspects in the case.

Sarah was a very quiet, sweet person. She was Travis's teacher the year before last and, though she wasn't his favorite teacher, she was kind and always had a smile. She was always smiling. She was from Texas, collected pigs and was so excited to be having a baby. The last time I saw her was at one of the baseball games about a month ago. Several of the kids on both teams were Charter School kids and a few of the teachers made it out to cheer them on. I had just heard that Sarah was pregnant and I stopped and said hi to her and asked when she was due. She told me October and she was just glowing. I felt that particular kind of happiness you feel for someone about to embark on the Motherhood journey and wished her well. It tears me up to think about it now, how happy she looked.

Telling my kids was so difficult. I haven't had to do this sort of thing before and I wasn't prepared. I had just gotten off the phone after hearing the news and was in shock myself. and very upset. Travis came in at that moment and saw me crying. He asked what was wrong and I put my arms around him and said, "I have some sad, sad news to tell you. Mrs. Parks died." I wasn't sure what his reaction would be. He hugged me hard but didn't say anything. I told him there was a fire and we didn't know the details yet. I asked if he was okay and he nodded and asked if I was okay. That was all. I could sense the wheels turning and so I just let him go. Later that evening Val was at a softball game and the kids and I were watching a movie. There was nothing on so I went to On Demand and found an old movie with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball called "Yours, Mine and Ours". I figured it was safe-comedy, 1968, PG. No problem. Well, there was a scene where Henry and Lucille are in their room on their wedding night. They toast each other with champagne and then embrace. Travis, out of the blue, says, "Oh man, now they're gonna have sex!" Of course he knows what this means (in ten-year-old terms, anyway) so I just let the comment pass. Riley looked up at me and said, "Mom? What's sex?" Are you kidding me? Now? We have to do this now? I have been prepared for the junior version of the sex talk for some time now. I have books and everything. But at 9:00 at night, after a long, emotional day, I was nowhere in the mood to have this particular conversation. So I crapped out. I said, "Ri, we will talk about this tomorrow. I have a book we can look at. Let's talk about it tomorrow, okay?" She agreed but ten minutes later she got up and went to the book shelf and pulled out the book and brought it over to me, saying, "Mom? Is this the book you were talking about?" So we had The Talk. I let the book do most of the work and it actually went really well. She didn't seem uncomfortable or anything and asked some really good questions. We got to the part about babies being born and Travis. all of a sudden, said,"Riley? Did you know that Mrs. Parks died?" Riley looked at me, eyes huge. "Mrs. Parks? Did she mom?" I said yes, she did. She wanted to know how and I told her that there was a fire in her house and she died. I hadn't even been sure that she knew who Sarah was. But she immediately started crying and I realized, of ourse she knew her. It's a tiny school and there are only 8 teachers and all of them share playground and lunchroom duty. Then Travis dropped the bomb. "Mrs. Parks was going to have a baby." Riley cried even harder. She grieved as hard as a little six year old girl could be expected to. I held her and answered her questions. "Were there any animals in the house? Did they die too?" I said I didn't know. Travis, helpfully this time, said, "I bet she had a doggie door so they could have gotten out!" That seemed to help. After a bit, she stopped crying and was distracted by a funny picture in the book. The next morning, she asked for paper and markers to draw a picture for Mrs. Parks. "BIG paper, because I have a lot to put in there!" Her picture is of a tall house being attacked by a giant, spiky fireball. There are stars in the night sky and, in one window, there is a figure lying prone. She explained that this is Mrs. Parks in bed and her husband is in another window. After the picture, she seemed okay. It really helped her to get it all down on paper. She keeps asking me what to do with it and wants to give it to Mrs. Parks husband so he can give it to her at the hospital. "I know she can't see it, Mom, 'cause she can't open her eyes." God.

Travis, in the meantime, hasn't said much at all. He did ask me once why he wasn't crying. I think he felt that he should be and was disturbed by the fact that he wansn't. I told him that people grieve in different ways and that kids, in particular, don't really know how to process news like this. The day after we got the news, the police announced that it was now a homicide investigation. We took Travis aside and told him that it looked as though someone hurt Mrs. Parks before she died. He seemed a little more upset by this news. Of course, every time I talk about it I start crying and he wants to hug me or pat me or comfort me in some way. I know this is a lot for him, but we feel that he is old enough to hear it. In any case, it is a small town and an even smaller school. He will hear the news eventually and we would rather he heard it from us than on the street.

There was a meeting last night for parents at the Charter School to meet with counselors and to discuss how to talk to our kids about this. I felt really validated afterwards. I had already done all the things they said to do. Maybe I'm a better parent than I think? There will be a memorial service on Thursday. One of the parents, who is the school board chair, spoke and said that he has been in constant contact with both sides of the family and that both plan on being at the memorial service, including Silas. He reminded everyone that, as of now, Silas has not been charged with anything and is not considered to be a suspect in the case. It will be strange to see him there. I know everyone is thinking he did it, including me. I have a feeling, though, that there will be more developments between now and then. I hope so. I think we need to get a little closure. I can't imagine what Sarah's family are going through and how hard it will be to see him and his family. God, no one should ever have to go through this.

Let's Hear it for the Girls!

Yay for Girl Time! This is one of the things I love about having a daughter: getting to revisit my own childhood and do the things I loved doing or never got to do. Don't get me wrong, I love my boy. He is my first born and will always have a special piece of my heart that no one else can have. And I have a feeling that, at thirteen or fourteen, he won't be standing at the top of the stairs screaming "I HATE YOU!" until his throat bleeds. Nope. That's a teenage girl thing. Maybe that's why I'm trying to squeeze in these "special moments" while I can.

Let me e'splain: On Sunday, Val and Trav drove to the Confluence to go fishing. Since we were spending the day together, Riley declared "Girl Time" and produced a formidable list of things to accomplish. First on the list was a tea party. We have these once in a while, though mostly of the ersatz "pretend" sort. Riley has a lot of tea sets (I have a problem, okay?) and most of them are small and cute. We drink invisible tea and sample invisible treats. This tea party, however, called for something really special. I brought down the good tea set--a demitasse set I bought in an antique store when Riley was a baby for just this sort of occasion*--washed it and set the table. I had bought cookies to eat but Riley insisted on making cupcakes and so we spent the better part of the morning baking and frosting. I made pink lemonade "tea" and we had our tea party. Looking back, I wish I had let her invite a friend, but I wasn't up for cleaning the house or dealing with another kid on the weekend so it was just us. It was a great way to spend a part of the afternoon.

Here are the cupcakes that Riley frosted and decorated. I was impressed by how careful she was. Notice how precisely each individual sprinkle was arranged. OCD or just a byproduct of the fact that, by the time she got the cupcake frosted the icing was too dry to catch any of the sprinkles? Hmmmm. . .

And notice, please, the cute frog plate that the cupcakes are on. I got two of these at a local antique store for two bucks each. One is a little cracked but they were so darn cute. And, hello! Frogs! If there had been owl plates I would have probably peed my pants.

*I only had a tiny china tea set when I was little, doll sized, not even big enough for my tiny fingers. I always wanted a "real" tea set that I could have actual tea in. Maybe that's why I collect tea pots and teacups and why my daughter has seven tea sets herself. I can't resist them.

Craft Projects

The primary reason I started a blog (other than to get my creative writing ya-yas out) was to document my crafting. So far I haven't said much about it. I haven't been very good about taking photos until recently. I don't even have pics of all the quilts that I've made. Anyway, here is the acorn I finally (finally!) finished for my friend Ursula. The inspiration for it was a pair of squirrel scissors I found in a craft catalog back in November. At least the photo in the catalog made them look like a squirrel. I had to get them because of my recent squirrel encounters, but I couldn't justify buying them for myself just to satisfy my insane scissor fetish (which I really do have). Nor could I get them just because they were a "squirrel thing", which I've decided I now need to collect. I was just starting to do amigurumi and was frustrated because, until I got the hang of it, everything I made that was supposed to be spherical ended up looking pointed like the tip of an acorn. I kept thinking about making an acorn and then one day I ran across something on a craft site somewhere where someone made a crocheted acorn bag for keeping sock knitting projects. Aha! How perfect was that? My friend Ursula knits socks and also collects scissors. The plan was perfect: give her the scissors (which I could still admire from afar) and I would make her this nifty acorn. Perfect, no? Except that when the scissors came they didn't look anything like a squirrel. In fact, they weren't recognizable as any sort of image at all. When I showed them to anyone, the most popular guess was "Um, beaver?", which at least is a mammal. Other guesses included "tree stump", "kangaroo" and "something made out of wood". I can't even show you a picture of them because the catalog in question has discontinued that particular item. Probably because of so many disappointed customers. Anyway, I made the acorn bottom according to the instructions, except that I made it out of wool and felted it. I thought it would be too difficult to get the size right for the top if I felted it too and I liked the idea of using yarn with some texture. I used an acrylic boucle, which was wonderfully stretchy and imitated a shaggy acorn top. I surprised myself and got it right on the first try. I had originally intended to make sort of a hinge so that the top would be a "flip top" with just a button in front to keep it closed. After some thought, though, it seemed to make more sense to put four buttons all around like the instructions said to do. I had some trouble with the closures fitting over the buttons and am still not happy with that aspect of it. I may get it back from her and do something else. When I do, I will make sure to take a better photo of it. This one sucks. I was on my way to give it to her and was in a hurry and didn't want to take the time to set up the camera or anything so it's way too dark. The buttons, by the way, aren't what I wanted. I really wanted to find something cute like squirrels or acorns or oak leaves. Of course, I couldn't find anything like that. I have thousands of buttons but couldn't find anything that worked. I finally went to JoAnn's and found the leaf buttons. Not the right kind of leaf for an acorn, but the color looked good and, hey, they're leaves. You get the idea, right?

Here are some of the felt ornaments I made for Christmas this year. I had a lot of fun doing them and have been on a felt kick ever since. I made the balls by wrapping wool roving around small yarn balls and then felting them in the washing machine. I was worried that my front-loader wouldn't do the trick but I put them in with a load of jeans on hot and it worked just fine. I got a little carried away with a few of them (see the black and gray one with all the bling on the right? Val named that one "The Harley Davidson").



Here's some more detail. Again, sorry about the bad photography. I'm obviously not a photographer.

I would like to make some of these in egg shapes for Easter and decorate them. I have been doing a little bit of needle felting but so far haven't fallen in love with it the way I am with this or felted crochet. Maybe it's too slow. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm holding a very long, extremely sharp, barbed needle and rapidly punching it up and down a fraction of an inch from my fingers. Yeah, I think that's it.

Soon to come: quilt photos. I don't have many and I need to take pictures of the one I've made recently. I want to photograph them outside because the light's so bad in the house, but the weather's been so dreary. It's sunny today but still really cold and I'm just not going to make it outside today.

Twenty nine degrees!!!

Well, I haven't been writing on here every day like I had planned (big surprise), but I am going to blame my internet carrier. They suck. There's something wrong with the signal in our area of the city (so they say) and it will "take some time" to get it fixed. Meanwhile, I am paying for high-speed internet while not actually getting high speed internet. It's not that huge of a deal, unless I am trying to do something like upload pictures onto my blog (!) or watch a video online. I have threatened to go back to dial-up because I swear that was faster. I am gritting my teeth and waiting it out because the last time a repairman was here (one of many trips in the past two months) he promised they would get it resolved soon.

Having said all that, today it seems like things are going well as far as these issues go. The extremely cold weather has made it worse and it's warmer today--29 degrees, which seems downright balmy compared to the teens and single digits we've been experiencing the past few days. When I got up Monday morning it was -12. Minus. Twelve. Degrees. That's damn cold. So 29 feels like summer right now.

Brand New Day (Era. Country, World, whatever. . .)

Wow, what a day. And in the words of Tim Russert, what a country! I am finally proud to be an American again! Whew!

It's been a emotional day. I cried all through the inauguration ceremony. I would have loved to have been in a crowd watching it--there was a live thing going on at the Kenworthy, or even with a few friends, but I'm babysitting today and it just wouldn't have worked with a two-year-old in tow. So I sat here and cried alone. So different from the tears I shed four years ago. Those were tears of anger and despair and fear and bitterness. This is a different feeling--hope?

Welcome back, hope. It's been a while!

Yes, that's a robin in the tree outside my window and, yes, that is frozen fog on the trees. Because it's frickin' January!

I always feel so sorry for these guys when they show up waaaaay too early (which they do, every year. Stupid birds). There were six of them outside my window today and they all looked really confused, like, "Dude! You think maybe we took a wrong toyn at Albakoikey?"

Travis's Worst Day Ever

Remember me talking about all those events that were blogworthy? Here's one of them.

A week before Christmas, Travis started complaining about nausea and stomach pains. Actually, that started a couple of months ago, but when we took him to the doctor he couldn't find anything specific wrong with him. I, of course, began suspecting the worst: ulcer, blocked intestinal tract, kidney failure. You know, all that "glass-half-empty" stuff I'm famous for. Anyway, at this point, the stomach stuff had gotten a little worse and when I picked him up from school on that Wednesday, he complained of a stomachache. He obviously didn't feel well and went from the door to the sofa and didn't move until bedtime. He got into bed and then had to go throw up. "Great," I thought, "More puking. Bring it on, I'm ready!" But he didn't throw up again. The next morning he was running a low-grade fever and said he felt worse. I took Riley to school and when I got back Trav told me he hurt down on the lower right side of his belly. Could it be. . . appendicitis? I went upstairs and told Val to get dressed because we were going to Quick Care. They poked and prodded him, took some blood and then sent us to Gritman for a CT scan. The doctor told him not to worry, the CT scan was just like a big donut that would take a picture of his insides. Oh, they forgot to mention the enema!!! And the IV. Which they said wouldn't hurt but of course did. Trav was a trooper, though, and when it was over the doctor came and told us that they were admitting him and he was going in for immediate surgery because, apparently, his appendix had ruptured. Crap. Upstairs. More doctors. More poking and prodding. More things going into the IV which weren't supposed to hurt but did. I finally said something and the nurse put some Lidocaine in the IV before whatever else went in to numb the stinging. Oh, and then a Tylenol suppository. More things poked up his butt. At one point, Travis looked up at me and said miserably, "This is my worst day ever!" Poor little guy.

The surgery was quick, about 45 minutes, during which Val went and picked up Riley from school. Note: Yes, we went to Quick Care at around 8:30 am but by the time a dozen doctors poked and prodded and then sent us elsewhere to get yet another test and more poking ad prodding and not to mention waiting in the godforsaken wating room of the radiology department of the hospital, by the time they actually got around to doing the actual surgery, it was almost 3 in the afternoon. On the way back to the hospital, Val told Riley what was going on and that her brother was getting his appendix taken out. They got back and after a little while a nurse came and got us to bring us into recovery. Travis was still pretty much under the anesthetic and looked horrible. Riley crept up to him and said to me, "Mom? Did Travis get his index out?" Yes baby, but they left in the Table of Contents.

The surgery went well and the recovery was good. They brought in an X-box (yay!) and told him he could probably go home the next day. More lies. The next day the surgeon came in and said "Maybe tomorrow". Travis was disappointed. The next day he came in again and said, "One more day." Travis cried. Three and a half days after the surgery, they finally let him go home. He's been doing great, though he still winces when he sneezes.

Okay, this isn't going as well as I'd hoped. I want to blog. I really do. I can't tell you how many times something happens and I start writing in my head, going, "God, this would be a GREAT blog." But it wouldn't be a great blog if it wasn't preceded by other blogs. In other words, I'm having a hard time getting out of the starting gate. I guess I'm hung up on that whole perfection thing again. See, even though right now, I'm the only one who sees this, eventually I want to open it up to my friends and, yikes! What if they looked back and saw how incredibly lame things were in the beginning? And it doesn't help that I've been looking at dozens of other amazing blogs by totally brilliant women, so that raises the bar a little bit.

So, here's the deal. I'm just going to have to get over this intimidation thing and just do this. I need this. I will just start blogging without any delusions of profundity and try to trust myself. I will be learning as I go ('cause I know absolutely nothing about how to do this) so it will be a little rough. And, if you are someone who is reading this in the future and looking back at archives, hopefully you'll be amazed at how far I've come!!!