She Lives!

Hey Folks! And Merry Christmas!

It's been so long that I had to pause and remember what my information was to sign on!

Thanks to all of you encouraging me to get off my butt and write something again. I have had several things to say, but life has been more hectic than usual.

Here's why I haven't written. It's boring, but it's true. That would be the title if ever a movie were made about my life, "Boring, but True!"

As you know, I got knocked up. I felt great for a while, and then the extreme exhaustion hit. Any down time I could find, I slept. That really interferes with writing for you guys. As a matter of fact, it was an extremely pleasant way to detox from the computer. I slept through any longing I might have had to get on the computer. Now that the cord has been cut, I have almost no desire to be on this thing for any reason. Sucks to be a reader of Flawed & Disorderly.

Then Thanksgiving came. I had a lot to prepare for, and now I can't even remember what it was. My Christmas cards were already complete before Thanksgiving. I did those little family photo kind and decided to personalize it by including a humorous letter. Hold that thought.

Then I went through a very long process of de-cluttering the house. Actually, that started right after I found out I was knocked up. I knew if I didn't get rid of some of the current crap, there would never be enough room for new Christmas crap as well as a place for baby numero 4. I started an enormous transition of making the playroom empty which meant all of those toys had to find a home in the closets belonging to the children which were filled with about 30 boxes of outgrown clothes. We lived with all those boxes lining our tiny hallway for months before I finally dealt with them.

In the midst of de-cluttering, I decided I MUST have a garage sale on December 1st because there were too many big ticket items to just give away like I normally would. Not only did I have to go through every item in the house, I also had to clean up all the stored baby items that were in various outdoor buildings.

I had the sale on December 1st (which really deserves a separate post), and by the time it was over my house was a complete disaster. I had gone through all 30 boxes of outgrown children's clothing and pulled out pieces to sell...like doubles I had of girl clothing because we had twin daughters, and the boxes were still looming all over the place.

As I reorganized closets I realized our tiny version of a garage HAD to be cleaned out because life was out of control and ridiculous. I also couldn't decorate for Christmas until my house was back in order, clean, and ready to be invaded by 30 more boxes of Christmas decorations.

I began decorating, it was immediately trashed by my children (another post as well), I felt completely defeated, and I never finished decorating. I had trouble getting motivated to move all of those boxes outside. I can barely keep up with the regular cleaning when I'm NOT pregnant. Add the insanity of of basically moving yourself back into your own house and then the insanity of Christmas, and it's not pretty.

Plus I had Christmas projects to complete or in-laws wouldn't be getting gifts this year. AND I had all of the normal Christmas shopping and wrapping/re-wrapping of presents that my children tore into the very first day I bought them and wrapped them.

Time was ticking away, and late in my first trimester I started having morning sickness--the kind that is at night, so I'd wake up a jillion times a night to go to the bathroom as most pregnant women do, and then I'd have trouble going back to sleep because all I could think about was puking. Eating would wake me up so much that I'd be up for hours. Did I mention I had a cold before Thanksgiving and the cough has lingered for two months? So I'm up hacking at night as well and drinking as much cough syrup as is safe. Oh yeah, and I've had sick children pretty much non-stop as well. Then Ironman got sick two weeks ago and has barely been to work at all. He's been to the doctor and still is on the verge of passing out when he coughs hard which is kind of what you do when you have bronchitis. He's probably getting his lungs x-rayed this week.

What else has been going on? Oh yeah! We went to Oklahoma last Friday and came home late last night. It was a 6 hour trip there and about 4 1/2 hours back. Luckily the kids were great, and we never even went to the effort of putting on a movie for them. Anyway, I hate leaving town when my house isn't clean, so I kicked it into overdrive and made sure the house was as clean as humanly possible before leaving. I did a ton of laundry, and the house was satisfactory when we left.

I will try to do a separate post later for Lindley, but during this time I also took her for her latest check up with the cardiologist in Fort Worth, and she's doing great! Yay!

So I've been obsessing and busy. I've made all my deadlines, and I'm ready to collapse, but not until I rearrange my living room. I don't know if it's possible to fit my furniture in here in a different way, but I need a change.

OH! And I'll definitely be posting what I got Ironman for Christmas. It almost made him cry. His eyes were watery. That means it's gooooood.

Alrighty then. My house is trashed again because I never got to clean up after the orgy of greed this morning--the unwrapping of presents. We had Christmas morning here, made a made dash to get ready, and then headed over to celebrate with my family. We all came home and crashed. It's after 6 p.m., and everyone is still sleeping which is why I can concentrate well enough to write such a long and boring post.

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! And thank you so much for those of you who didn't forget me while I was away! Please forgive me for not proofing this piece. Hope it makes sense! I've gotta wake up da babies!

Update: I forgot to come back to the Christmas card story. They were ready before Thanksgiving. All I needed was the funny Christmas insert. I never could come up with anything amusing to say, so it basically turned into a thank you letter to all our family and friends who supported us through Lin's ordeal. I didn't get them mailed until a week before Christmas day. I just found out today that it took the U.S. postal service 6 days to get the card six blocks to my sister's house. Who knows how long it will take for people 3 whole hours away to receive it! Sucky.