6w3d

Still can't believe it's true. Also can't believe that the doctor's office first sat me down with a list (before insurance mind you) of the total cost. On top of that, I called said insurance to see what coverage I actually got for what I'm paying and apparently it's some big secret because the woman wouldn't tell me. Just to have the doctors office call and they'd explain it to them. So I yelled at her. Didn't accomplish much in doing so, but I felt better.
The last couple days I've felt fine, but today seems to be making up for it. Still haven't spoken to my mother.

So very not the flu

I believed it was the flu, people everywhere are sick with it. Dropping like flies. Of course, people at work are dropping as well with something different. The girls are anyway. And it's not swine flu or regular flu. It's babies. And apparently I've caught it too.

He want's a girl. I want a boy. Think it'll be a girl. But we have a long wait before finding out.

Until then we'll settle for healthy.

Not Sleeping

I keep hearing that sound. The sound of fist meeting face and I keep seeing him fall to the ground, blood gushing like a gyser almost instantly.

I haven't slept well the past few nights, it keeps replaying in my mind.

Silently.

I know there was plenty of shouting, I may have even been shouting too, but I don't remember. I remember the crash. It seemed such a foreign sound and we all froze. Then movement.

It was both slow motion and fast forward at once. I don't remember running to the door, just being outside. Then everything seemed to hesitate, like the earth was deciding whether to move again.

And then that sound.

I remember looking over my shoulder as I ran down the path, seeing her face in...anguish. Like she was screaming and crying and disbelieving all at once. That face keeps coming back to me in sleep. That look of... something without a word.

I've never been prone to nightmares, scary movies or a scary life have never brought them on, but this has.

Labels.

Sissy, Blondy, Shorty, Mighty Mouse, Trouble, Munchkin, Panda, Bulldog, Crazy, Tante Panda, Witch, Bitch, Chihuahua.......

We are a culture of labels. We like everything to have a name so we can know what to expect from it. I could keep going for days on the list above, the list of labels I've been given at one time or another. Some of them were from friends or loved ones, others from sworn enemies, but they all describe one of two things; my appearance or my personality, with one exception.

Sissy was my first label, given to me by my little brother despite out mother's objections. It's the only label that makes me feel connected to another person. Above all else, I am his Big Sissy.

Some of the labels came from my childhood; pet names that were fun (and true) and were meant to be affectionate.

Other labels came about as I entered adulthood. Those labels run the gauntlet from loving and not particularly original to hateful...and still not particularly original.

On occasion a name will stick out of function, young children sometimes have a hard time with my name, so something simpler needed to be chosen; or humor, as a poking-fun warning to others that I am not often intimidated. But in six weeks and a couple days' time I will be getting a new label, one that will stand out among the others. Wife.

Laying it all out

I miss Septembers. And Octobers as well. I know it sounds a little crazy because it IS September, but it's not the Florida Septembers and Octobers I miss, it's the Midwestern ones.

Pretty soon leaves will start turning and the corn and wheat will be getting tall. Soon driving down a country road will mean being in a sea of golden fields and blue skies that go on for miles with little interruption except the occasional farm house.

I'm a country girl really, never have been one for crowded roads and busy places. There's something almost reverent in the sounds of trees, animals, and silence. I miss the space and freedom of fields and streams and small town streets that were safe to prowl from morning till the streetlamps came on.

I watch roads around here being repaved. Blacktop, concrete. There was a kind of excitement as a kid when the roads were oiled. Running across the surface as soon as the workers moved on, shoe soles melting just a bit as we did. The flecks of gravel and oil that stuck to bicycles as we rode over it. I don't think they do that much anymore.

I remember being barefoot. Everywhere. I remember being barefoot at church, shoes safely tucked away in the corner. I remember playing up and down the neighborhood, shoes were for babies. Up in trees, in Kmart, along railroad tracks, no shoes anywhere.

There weren't cell phones either, so everyone knew their own mother's voice calling from the front door. And we knew just how far we could venture and still hear her. We were allowed outside then too. In fact, we weren't allowed INside much. Only during heavy rain or when it was really, really, really cold. We had raincoats and snowcoats for all the other times.

Helmets, seatbelts and sunscreen. If you were wearing one, your parents became known as the weird crazy people.

We walked to the park, walked to the Dairy Queen (that wasn't even a brazier, if anyone knows the difference), walked everywhere we needed to go. It wasn't that we didn't have a car, we just didn't use it.

Not my wedding

So my little (if you can call 6'4" little) brother is getting married. He's getting married in September. He has known for nearly a year that our wedding was scheduled for October. So when he and his sweety that I'd never heard of before got engaged a month or so ago, they chose September.

Granted, he is my step-brother so we only share certain relatives, but they wouldn't want to travel twice in as many months for weddings. Nevermind mine has now been, shall we say, rearranged. He didn't know that then. Dude. I'm happy and all, he's a great guy and whoever gets him is lucky, butyou just don't do that to people.

On the flip side, all of those deposits my parents put down and are wigging out about us paying back, most of them are willing to transfer the money to this wedding. Which is nice.

What wedding?

As of this morning we have officially cancelled all wedding plans. We didn't have a fight or a difference of opinion. My mother happened.

I originally had three bridemaids and three groomsmen until I felt the urge to eject one of the girls from my wedding party (very long other story). Despite months of my insistance that I did not need to replace her, my mother called last week to say she had found me another bridesmaid, a person I didn't even know. So I said thanks, but no.

So she said, well, then we're not going to pay for anything else to do with your wedding and if you cancel, you will have to pay us back the deposits we've lost.

No.

You see, for as often as I stand my ground with pretty much everyone else on earth, I've never stood up to her. So now she's bad-mouthing my fiancee, because this 'sudden personality change' is 'entirely due to him'.

Again, no.