Balloon, meet ceiling fan.

Monkey has a great love of balloons as most kids do, right? We always seem to have one of those party store, disposable helium tanks in our basement and we’ll occasionally run down and blow up a couple balloons for him. Sometimes, we’re too lazy. Sometimes, we’ll just blow up a balloon and call it good enough.

Usually this is fine with Monkey, he will use the balloon as a ball. He throws it around and still finds it amusing enough. This week, though, it has proven to be a bit of a disappointment for him. He just wasn’t satisfied with tossing this balloon around, so he found a way to make it fly.

Balloon, meet ceiling fan. I wish you the best of luck.

I wonder how many times it will withstand the beating before it pops. Our youngest dog is going to fuh-reak when it does. Poor Barley.

An, “Oh, shit!” moment to share…

When you have a 2, then 3 and now nearly 4 year old who does not talk you can get some crazy ideas. I’ve said more than once over the last few years that if he dropped the “F” bomb as his first word, I’d throw a damn party.

Now, that didn’t happen. He’s picked up some other more socially acceptable words along the way fortunately. This move from “non-verbal” to “verbal” is so slow and painstaking though that I sort of haven’t been giving much thought to my tendency to use, shall we say, “colorful*,” language.

Friday, we were in the truck headed toward school (and the marvelous triumph I posted about below) and I saw one of my neighbors. My neighborhood is filled with odd ducks but this man stands out. He is bat shiznit crazy. He thinks people are picking on him when they let their dogs poop in the (city owned) strip of grass in front of his house…even though they PICK IT UP. (There’s lots more but he rants about this one frequently.)

Anyway, I see crazy neighbor numero uno walking down the street, headed for work looking like…well…like hell. Unshaven, jeans, old flannel shirt, dirty vest. Now, this guy works in commercial real estate, so this is not exactly his typical “uniform.” So, I said to my darling husband.

“Oh, man, he looks like hell!” and the conversation immediately turns to another subject until…30 seconds later…we hear our darling Monkey pipe up in the back seat.

“Hell!”

My response? Naturally, I say “Oh, shit!” Fortunately, he’s not making the “S” sound yet so that one is a ways off.

*OK, fine, I swear like a sailor, happy? I’m screwed.

WOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!

For the first time in SEVEN long months….

MONKEY WALKED IN TO HIS CLASSROOM!!!!

I’m so dang excited that I’m blogging from the T. I just couldn’t wait!

****Edited to add****

Duhdee, after wiping away the tears of joy, went home and e-mailed the lovely, life saving Dr. G to inform her of our triumph and we received this response (names have been changed, duh):

HOORAY!!!! That is wonderful! Just one example of the many things Monkey will accomplish. Duhdee, you Umma and Monkey have done a fantastic job working together to help Monkey accomplish a goal. Keep up the good work!! Relish the victory this weekend!

She also cc’d the entire team at Children’s Hospital so we also received this from the program coordinator:

Congratulations! That is wonderful news! And a nice early Mother’s Day present too!

We are so lucky to have such awesome and supportive people cheering us all on.

If you want to read the background story try here:

https://www.basicallyfx.com/?p=6

and here:

https://www.basicallyfx.com/?p=4

A migraine saved my life.

(This is an FX Memory, from before I knew I was a carrier.)

I’ve struggled with depression since my teens, possibly longer but it was in my teens that I first recognized it for what it was. For ten years I muddled along and then I simply could not take one more step. I had hit a wall. I could not see any way around or over it. I stopped eating and sleeping and I started drinking heavily. I sat there, at the base of that wall, and waited. I had quit my job and distanced myself from my friends and family so there was nothing to do but wait.

One day, I felt the tell tale prickles of a migraine as it wormed it’s way into my head. I took Excedrine and washed it down with Jack Daniels and continued to wait. The migraine hit, full strength. After 2 days with no relief from the pain and no sleep, sleep began to seem like the cure-all. As if one can simply sleep off a migraine and full blown depression. I finally decided to give sleep a helping hand and took a full bottle of OTC sleep aids. It didn’t work so the next morning I called my doctor sobbing.

I was an emotional wreck when I arrived at her office. She gave me an injection to treat the migraine since I did not want to go to the hospital for pain management if I could avoid it. After about 30 minutes in a darkened exam room the pain was gone so completely that it was difficult to imagine I had ever felt it. What hadn’t disappeared, however, were the tears and the feeling of hopelessness.

My doctor very gently began probing for answers. She told me that she was concerned that I didn’t seem to be feeling better even though the source of my complaint was gone. She wanted to know if I had ever considered suicide and I told her that I had and added “Everyone does at some point, don’t they?” She told me no and I was shocked. I had spent so many years just casually considering ending my life that I thought it was normal. I thought it was normal to think “I could just drive under that semi” when I passed a truck on the highway or “I could just drive into that bridge abutment.”

She asked me if I had a plan and I said “No!” in a rather self-righteous way, I might add. She asked me if I had thought about how I would do it and I immediately told her I would take pills. She asked if I had access to them and I said that I did. She let me know that this was a plan.

She asked me if I had ever taken lots of pills and I had to tell her that I had, in fact, done so the night before. Holy crap. I tried to KILL myself?? It seems so hard to believe, from where I am today, but I really had no idea how badly I was doing at that point. I did not realize how close I had come to ending my life.

She then told me she didn’t feel safe letting me go home and asked me to go to the local hospital to be evaluated. As scared as I was of what I had done, I couldn’t agree to it. She insisted that I call my parents and tell them what was happening. She made me promise them that I would not hurt myself if I left her office. I did this but it wasn’t enough for my parents. They immediately drove to my apartment and brought me to the emergency room of the local hospital. They were so scared, I didn’t want to say no.

The evaluation at the local ER was pure misery. After an hour under their microscope I had no defenses left, I was shaking and crying uncontrollably. I felt as though every part of me had been laid out for the whole world to see and judge. I felt as though I could not trust myself to discern the truth of my own emotions. I can’t even identify today what emotions I was feeling. I think I was feeling every emotion, all at the same time. After three months of self-medicating and trying not to feel any emotions, it was pure hell.

This is getting really long. I’ll save the rest for next week. I don’t really have to say that my personal struggle is directly related to FX, right?   Right.

The cuteness is almost unbearable.

Monkey developed a unique way of “tickling” me some time ago.  He would simply place his hand on me and grin, I was expected to shriek and laugh.  It was a great game for the two of us to play but I realized no one else was going to understand what he was doing or what he wanted in return.

A couple weeks ago I decided we were going to teach him how to really tickle.  I demonstrated prime tickling techniques on Duhdee and expected that Monkey would pick it up in time.  WRONG!  He immediately switched to the new method and now he can’t get enough.

He will run up to me try to say “Tickle, tickle” and wiggle his little fingers on me.  Today he instituted he OWN approach.  The sneak tickle attack!  He came up to me and asked for a hug…as soon as his little arms wrapped around my neck though he started saying “tickle, tickle” and tickling my back.

This is just one of the many ways we’re noticing lately that he is taking the initiative, seeking us out and adapting old games in new unexpected ways.  I’m loving (almost) four so far!