serenity now, serenity now.....

ok, so i woke up this morning - several times, no less - with 3 other people in my bed. and funny, that even though i am not nearly the smallest person in the family, i was given the smallest spot on the bed. a section, approx 6 inches wide, and not all the way down, either. you see, the eldest small one (blithe) had completely taken over my pillow, with her head about two-thirds of the way over (on my side) and then one arm under the pillow, which is uncomfortable to lie on, i must say, and the other arm ON the pillow. and that was just her! there was still ed and bram in the bed yet!!!! not that asher was helping any.....


his alarm would beep. now, usually, ed gets up in the night and deals with it, and i sleep through it. not a problem (well, for ed it is, but i'm not complaining). well, last night, for some reason, and without it being discussed with me beforehand, it was my turn to deal with the pump/tube stuff. that's fine, i can do that, i'm not sleeping too well in the bed, anyway, what with all those random limbs flung haphazardly about, and usually in my direction. well... i get up, flush asher's line, spilling water all over him, because it's hard to pinch off the tube when it's buried under blankets. so there is a delightful mixture of water, formula and stomach contents dripping all over me, asher, his sleeper, the blankets and the sheets. nice.


but wait! it gets better! i go back to bed, stumbling over asher's laundry basket and blithe's jeans, which are in my room because hers is full to the ceiling with her and our stuff. nice. well, i go to climb back into bed, but find that now, blithe has angled herself in such a way that it would be impossible for me to fit into the 3 square inches i have left on the bed. well... i want to move her over. no problem, right? WRONG!!!! because, you see, ed is lying on his back, taking up a normal, adult amount of room, and on his other side, is bram. don't know when he joined us, but clearly it was long after i initially fell asleep. so, i graciously and gently and serenely asked ed to make some room (read: i swatted him and ordered him to shove over). he politely replied, "oh, of course, so sorry, dear" (read: i think he grunted something and flipped onto his side). then i moved blithe over, who weighs a ton when she's sleeping! and slid into bed beside her.


this happened one more time, an hour or so later. finally, the third time, the alarm was beeping and asher was sitting up and crying. the alarm was beeping because asher was ticked off and started pulling on his tube, and it came dislodged from the pump. and let me tell you, that beep is the worst beep there is. it's like a beepy equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, only shrill, constant, shrill, like it piercing into your brain and frying every nerve in your brain and IT JUST DOESN'T STOP!!!! IT'S THE WORST SOUND IN THE WORLD!!!!!! and at 5 in the morning, when i'm being woken up too early in too little space on the bed, with someone else's arm under my head and a 5-year-old knee in my spine, i simply am not emotionally equipped to handle this situation. so i pleasantly said to ed (read: something between yelling and snarling) that i'm too tired and he can deal with it for once! (notice the "for once" comment. yeah, i'm really not the nicest person at 5am!)

ok, so, asher is crying, i'm b*%^#$y, ed wakes up, tries to deal with the pump. but asher is still crying. i think ed bundled him back up (yeah, b/c when i'm throwing a fit i want someone to tie my arms down and lay me on my side so i can't move. you can imagine how that went over with ash.) asher did not stop crying. i say, "FINE! I'M TAKING HIM FOR A DRIVE! AT LEAST THEN I CAN GET SOME COFFEE!" of course, i had no cash, but that comes later.

i go downstairs to get dressed because if i stay upstairs someone will go flying out the window involuntarily. so i do what i'm teaching the kids... back away.... breathe..... of course, as i'm ready to go, ed comes downstairs - at 6am - with asher, asher's pole/pump, blithe and bram! he says, "you might as well stay home, since we're all up now."

an hour later, i was in the drive-thru at mcdonalds getting breakfast and the freaking biggest cup of coffee i have ever ordered. (i'm at mcdonald's b/c i don't have cash, so timmie's is out, and i can just use debit for a mcmuffin combo) i think you can fill in that hour gap. just remember these few words, and you can figure it out: hormones, cranky baby, hormones, cranky mommy, hormones, chattering children, beeping pump, no coffee. yeah.

well, i come home and get to work on cleaning off my desk. i find a new mastercard i didn't know i'd gotten, some stuff about blithe's immunizations from the health unit, newsletters from blithe's school, you name it, if it has entered my house in the last 2 months and i have not yet seen it, it was on my desk. (see pictures in my scrappin' blog, if you're curious. they'll explain everything.)

so, to recap: it's 9am, the kids are loud, mommy's cranky, asher's in a foul mood. poor ed. and then the day got frustrating.

i know what you're thinking: "at this point, i'd be ready to run away, change my name, and start over with another family living another life, and we're not at the bad part of the day?!" that's right. from now on, you can call me Louise.

so, asher's crawling around the house, because God forbid one of my children sit still for 2 minutes. especially the one with half a heart and congestive heart failure. why would he sit still? you can hear him huffing and puffing on the other side of the house, but does that slow him down? oh, no! that would make sense! do i sound bitter? anyway...

he scoots into the kitchen. the IV pole gets caught on the floor between the kitchen and the dining room and falls over, missing asher by literally less than an inch. now my heart is failing, but whatever. well, we pick up the pole, and as we do, what do we hear? a beep worse than the one described above. seriously. turns out, there's some sort of system error, call tech support. we turn the pump back on and try to run it. same beep, system error, call tech support. we tried 2 more times. then we called tech support. *shaking head* turns out, there's a problem with the motor so we have to send it in for repair. but, we need this pump, it's the only way asher can eat, since he gets nothing by mouth.

ugh. a thousand phone calls later, we've got a loaner from yurek's in town, they've talked to kangaroo and told them that we NEED this pump right away. so, likely tomorrow we'll get a brand new pump, since they're just going to take back the one we have.

and i had just used my Around the Block tape writer (that i can reach again - see my scrappin' blog for details) to put asher's name on the pump. on a lovely bright green label. sigh.

well, we get respite later today, which means B&B go to the in-laws and ed and i go out for mila nesa (yummy mexican dinner).

serenity now, serenity now, serenity now.....