I’ve been to a funeral and watched an 8-year-old stroke his dead father’s hand and two 8-year-olds fighting back tears. Memorials may be made for the children (ages 3 and to the David C. Fisher Fund: AmSouth Bank, 8921 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37923.

I’m going to double the Tylenol PM tonight and hope I can have some good dreams in spite of it all.

The 2-year-old just cleaned all of her toenails with the 8-year-old’s battery powered toothbrush. “Toes brush. Toes brush.” Well, it sounds a little bit like toothbrush.

Since this is the first year of my blog, I have been noting dates of significance. I promise to try not to tell the same stories year after year. On July 4, 1997 I packed three children (7, 4, & 1) and a dog into a small car and moved from Atlanta to Knoxville. My now ex-husband moved from Atlanta to Boston because he needed some time for himself. He was “tired of everything always being about the children and decisions being so life or death”. He wanted to spend money on himself and not everyone else. He just needed a year or two. He neglected to mention that he was looking forward to finally meeting the woman he had been talking to on the Internet for months. I arrived in Knoxville in the afternoon and we immediately took the children to watch fireworks.

I stumbled around in a daze for a year. Searching for purpose, I went back to college. I already had a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Psychology but I felt like I was skilled to do nothing. I was one of those irritating older moms in school who make good grades and roll their eyes at the 20 somethings who complain about school. In one of my classes I met a woman who understood me. We had very similar personalities but our lives had taken different paths. She was newly married to a man who was very thoughtful and carefully planning their future. I was in the middle of a divorce from a man who only thought about himself and considered the children property. She and her husband saw an opportunity to help me. They had another friend named Doug whose wife had just left him for another man because he was trying to start his own business when she just wanted to travel and party. In what now seems like really twisted logic, they decided that Doug and I really needed to get together to satisfy some umm, primal urges and thus make us happier beings.

We nervously dated. Doug told me all of his jokes the first hour we spent together. I found him charming and quite attractive. As we dated a pattern emerged. Doug was late for lunch because he saw a stranded motorcyclist and towed them to a gas station. Doug went to help friends with this and that and even total strangers. He literally gave people the shirt off his back. I don’t have enough words to describe how compassionate and caring Doug is toward all people. There is just not any hate in his body. He has a truly pure soul. His only shortcomings are in the way he feels toward himself.

Somehow this wonderful and amazing man fell in love with me. He makes me feel loved like I have never felt in my life. He is my very best friend. He continues his love of life and I continue my efforts to hold up a mirror so that he can see how truly wonderful he really is. He loves the three children that came into this marriage as much as the new life we made together. Despite the fact that one of the children has special needs, he tirelessly devotes himself to being a good husband and father. What started out as an act of compassion to get the two of us together for fun turned out to be a lifetime of compassion toward each other.

Read other stories about compassion.

Some pictures from our weekend swim.

Accidently watched part of a stupid show about teenage quints. The show doesn’t even deserve mention and I would have clicked immediately off if I hadn’t been so busy drooling over their house. They had a restaurant sized refrigerator in the kitchen. Can you imagine not needing to go buy milk every other day because you had space to store a week’s worth? That’s not even the best part. In their basement, beside the HUGE laundry chute there were two commercial sized washers and dryers. Can you hear the choir singing? That’s double capacity times two! I feel myself getting excited just thinking about it. Other couples have foreplay that involves touching. Doug just whispers appliance descriptions in my ear and I pounce him.

The two girls passed their checkups with flying colors. Amy didn’t get her nap in because of the appointment so I expect a cranky evening with lots of “NO!” Tommy played on the D&D websites the entire time I was gone. Since the history quit working on my computer I can’t double check his activities, but ever since he got caught surfing porn he is extra careful not to do that on our computers. I’m sure he uses the school computers for that sort of thing. Since I kicked him off so I could blog he has gone to hide in the tent which is set-up in the lower lot. When it gets a few degrees warmer I’m renaming the tent “Tommy’s Sweat Lodge”. Noah is at a friend’s but tomorrow he goes to his first funeral. I can take the adults crying, but when Noah’s fatherless friend cries I’m going to lose it. I don’t have much more time on the computer because Sarah has scheduled a “chat” with several of her friends. If this keeps up we’re going to need more computers over here (and phone lines, bathrooms and space).

Doug very sweetly asked me to help him by making sales calls to businesses asking if they need a website while he continues his job application and interviews every day. I told him I’d feel like a spammer. It wasn’t the answer he wanted or needed and I feel very guilty now. His mother has asked him more than once why I’m not working. I would rather just take a job than make cold calls all day. My income will be exactly enough to pay for the childcare but our families will be happier knowing I’m working. I need to figure out how to add cartoons to my blog entries. Sometimes my feelings are best described by a toon strip.

For my Monday Walkabout, I’m adding to my list of blogs that I follow:
Hula Doula - another smart and very funny mom blog,
Diaperville - a mommy blog, again,
This Full House - still on my mommy theme,
Gin and Tacos - a good political blog to get out of my mommy rut,
TV is my drug of choice - couldn’t resist the title and I had trouble picking a final blog with my brain mush today but I finally decided on a tie between,
The Presurfer which I can’t describe yet and
Unusual Churches and Cults - whose title is self-explanatory.

At some point I’ll need to take away a few that I don’t read very often but right now I’m just adding stuff. I wish there was an easier way to search blogs, some sort of “blog only” search engine.

Since Ezzo and breastfeeding have been discussed in several blogs lately. I’ll try to give my two cents (it’s not really worth that much) on the subject of breastfeeding. I nursed all four children for their first year. When I was pregnant with the first one I researched heavily and decided that one full year was needed to give children the protection from allergies, asthma and the minimum psychosocial interaction needed. With that goal in mind I never questioned that was what I would be doing. I was shook when my first child had a pneumothorax and spent the first week and a half of his life in the NICU of the hospital. It made breastfeeding feel like a schedule and a chore. I sat on the couch outside the NICU unit day and night waiting for the small time I was allowed to take him from the incubator and nurse him every few hours. The scheduled nursing caused me to become engorged and physically ill. The nurses all begged me to go home and get some sleep and let them give bottles for just one night. I remembered deciding from my research to avoid all bottles for the first month and I remained stubbornly on that hospital couch. When my son was finally released from the hospital I was the happiest person on Earth. I encouraged him to nurse more, especially since it made me feel like I wasn’t going to explode like a volcano. My first child was a very difficult child who rarely slept (never more than an hour of sleep at a time his entire first year) and he thrashed even while nursing, but I was stubborn.

I nursed everywhere. At first I sat down and nursed him in stores, businesses, doctor offices, friends’ homes and even church. Then I got brave and started nursing while doing things. I learned to nurse while walking, reading and yes, while sleeping. I used a sling constantly, even when I wasn’t nursing. Yes, I sometimes felt like I really needed some time alone to just be one person again. I just accepted that this was a very brief period of my life and took 30 minute to an hour breaks. Looking back at how quickly the time has gone by I am thankful that I was able to look past the exhaustion and see how short the time is with an infant. In the blink of an eye they are toddlers. Nothing I needed to do was so important that it couldn’t wait until that first year had passed. I could never have traveled without my child that first amazing year. I guess I thought of myself like a kangaroo for that first year. My babies were still developing and not ready to leave my pouch yet.

I stopped wearing a watch after my first child was born. Time means nothing. With the other three children, nursing was much more relaxed and easy. I never had to buy, prepare or clean bottles. I could never bring myself to feed my baby a mixture of powder and water. Yuck. Breasts were made for feeding. I was always ready to feed and it was a miracle comfort to a baby who had just had immunizations or who was too over-tired to sleep. While running older children to school, sports and other activities, I just nursed wherever, whenever. I am aware that some people were appalled by this public display but I just didn’t care. Nursing made sure that my baby never felt short-changed for time because I was too busy with older children to do anything but put the infant in a swing or bouncy chair. Yes, sex became a carefully orchestrated comedy routine, but once you learn to laugh during sex instead of taking yourself so seriously, you reach an entirely new level of intimacy with your spouse that you’ll need to grow old together. So, that’s my long, rambling pro-breastfeeding speech. That said, no need to flame me. I accept that everyone is different and does what works best for themselves.

Noah’s best friend’s father died today. He leaves behind a wife, an 8-y-o son and a 3-y-o daughter. I hardly knew what to say to Noah to prepare him after his best friend called and cried on the phone, “Please come over. I need you.” Doug is being useful right now, telling neighbors and arranging for everyone to send food over to the family. I’m just sitting here crying.