Mommin' It Up!

January 26, 2012

Books & Life.

First, a quick update on Grandma – tests yesterday determined that the source of her internal bleeding was an ulcer, and that the bleeding had stopped. She’ll stay in the hospital for another day or two to get rest and recuperate, and then she’ll go home. We are so thankful. Thank you for all your prayers and kind comments!

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I’ve been on a bit of a reading kick lately. I have always loved to read, but I seem to go in spurts where I read a lot of books… or stick to reading Facebook and Twitter before bed. Anyway, a few days ago I finished a book that I loved so much I had to share it with you!

Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations About Food and Money, by Geneen Roth.

Geneen Roth is the author of a number of books about the psychology behind emotional eating and relationships with food, but this is the first of her books that I’ve read. In it, she describes the transformation of her and her husband’s lives after they their entire life savings was stolen by Bernie Madoff.

The Amazon description says it better than I can:

Geneen Roth, who received big kudos from Oprah for her messaging on eating disorders and spirituality, is back this spring with Lost and Found, a new book that explores how emotional issues with money mirror those with food and dieting.When Geneen Roth and her husband lost their life savings, Roth joined the millions of Americans dealing with financial turbulence, uncertainty, and abrupt reversals in their expectations. The resulting shock was the catalyst for her to explore, in workshops and in her own life, how women’s habits and behaviors around money-as with food-can lead to exactly the situations they most want to avoid.Roth identified her own unconscious choices-binge shopping followed by periods of budgetary self-deprivation, “treating” herself in ways that ultimately failed to sustain, and using money as a substitute for love-among others. As she examined the deep sources of these habits, she faced the hard truth about where her “self-protective” financial decisions had led. As in all her books, Roth relates her personal experience with irreverent humor and hard- won wisdom. Here, she offers provocative and radical strategies for transforming how we feel and behave about the resources that should, and ultimately can, sustain and support our lives.

Like I said, I loved this book. I found it really insightful and it made me think a lot about my own issues with food and money and how they might be connected. I’m anxious to read the rest of Roth’s books, particularly “Women Food and God” and “When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair.” (I actually don’t know anything about that second one, but with a title like that it’s got to be a winner.)

What have you been reading lately? Anything you recommend?

January 25, 2012

Still Remarkable

Last night shortly after seven as I was headed off to a carefree coffee date with some of my house church girlfriends, I got a call from Emily. One of those calls that it is not fun to be on either end of. She was calling to tell me that our grandma was sick. And more dramatically, that my cousin Anna had tried to call her and had gotten a busy signal a couple times, found that odd, and had gone over to her house to check on her. She and her husband found Grandma bruised, confused, and very sick, on the floor slumped against a bookshelf. It was clear she had been not well for some time. The family had been over on Sunday for lunch, there’s always someone there every day or two – but not Monday, and not til Tuesday night. This is the part of the story that brings me to tears. Our Grandma, who has so many people nearby who love her, sick and alone for at least a day, probably more. Anguish.

Grandma has a “life alert” button on her wrist that she can easily press, but she had for some reason not even been able to do so, probably due to confusion (which is unusual for her). (There goes THAT great idea.) She had knocked her phone off the hook and hadn’t been able to use it either.

Anna called 911 and Grandma was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where it was determined that she has some sort of internal bleeding that started all this distress. Praise the Lord she did not break any bones, praise the Lord Anna found her when she did!!

Now she is getting all sorts of tests. Last night they were giving her blood as well. My mom stayed the night with her in the hospital. Please pray for our Grandma, and while you do, please read what I wrote about her a couple years ago, and be reminded what a special and wonderful woman she is, and how we love her so. Thank you.

A Remarkable Woman
originally published September 14, 2009

Yesterday was Grandparents Day. Emily and I saw Maria tweeting about how she was writing about her grandparents, and we thought this was the perfect time to introduce you to our grandma.

There is a lot we could say about our grandma. Like, how when Em’s dad was helping her clean out her house recently (where she’s lived since 1969), he found over 50 plastic rings you get off the top of a milk jug, that she was keeping around, you know, just in case. Or that she watches waaaaay too much cable news, or has been convinced for as long as we can remember, that she is going to win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse (seriously? Stop getting her hopes up, you jerks!)

But while those things are evidence of her quirkiness, they are not really indicative of who our grandma is.

She is quiet, she is very shy. Recently when my mom and I were talking about how my Sophie doesn’t really like big groups or parties, Grandma laughed, and said, “Well she gets that from me!”

My grandmother is certainly old-fashioned and conservative, and yet she is the most independent woman I know. She married at twenty, and had two kids in 11 months (that gives me heart palpitations!). She moved from her home in Kentucky to Ohio with her husband and two toddlers so he could take a job at Frigidaire and give their kids a better life than they had. She kept house for twenty-four years, and then, our grandpa died suddenly. He had a heart attack at age forty-four. Her two kids were grown, and she was alone, about to become a grandmother, supposed to be enjoying an empty nest. Who could have imagined?

Fortunately, Grandma had gotten her driver’s license a couple of months before Grandpa died. Up until that time, he’d done their grocery shopping every Friday after work, because she didn’t drive.

When speaking of Emily’s parents wedding, which took place just three weeks later, my grandma told my mom, “I never wanted to break down so bad in my life.”

But she didn’t. She got a job at Elder-Beerman, a local department store, and worked there for the next twenty years until she retired. I think she retired because she was 65 and that’s what people DO when they are 65. She could have worked longer, it seemed. But she devoted time to being a grandma. She was the best hide-n-seek player EVER, and really, still is. I have never seen her run out of patience with a child. She mowed her lawn, cleaned her own gutters (and has been scolded for doing the latter as recently as this spring!), and every Sunday, cooked an amazing lunch for her entire extended family. Emily, her sister, Anna, and I owe our closeness I think, in large part to Grandma and her Sunday dinners. To say the majority of our childhood bonding happened there over biscuits, meatloaf, hide-n-seek, and rummy games would not be an exaggeration.

Now our grandma, though thinner and a little more white-haired, still opens her house to us every Sunday, though we don’t make it nearly as often. But we do see her as much as we can, because, well, she is the best cook in the entire world, and because our children adore her. They love her never-ending supply of desserts, coddling, and energy for hide-n-seek.

And we love watching them love her.

January 24, 2012

The latest on Kate.

A week or so I wrote about how Kate’s been puking intermittently for more than a month. (Actually it was more about me being a complete idiot, but I did reference Kate’s troubles.) In any case, the last week has been a flurry of tests, scans, and medicine. She’s had blood tests, upper GI scans, stool screenings (earned my mom stripes with this one), colon cleanses, and more, trying to determine why she’s been so sick to her stomach.

So far, we’ve determined that she has acid reflux and rotavirus.

What is rotavirus? I’m so glad you asked. According to cdc.gov…

Rotavirus is a virus that causes gastroenteritis (inflammation of the stomach and intestines). The rotavirus disease causes severe watery diarrhea, often with vomiting, fever, and abdominal pain. In babies and young children, it can lead to dehydration (loss of body fluids). Rotavirus is the leading cause of severe diarrhea in infants and young children worldwide. Globally, it causes more than a half a million deaths each year in children younger than 5 years of age.

Rotavirus was also the leading cause of severe diarrhea in U.S. infants and young children before rotavirus vaccine was introduced for U.S. infants in 2006. Prior to that, almost all children in the United States were infected with rotavirus before their 5th birthday. Each year in the United States in the pre-vaccine period, rotavirus was responsible for more than 400,000 doctor visits; more than 200,000 emergency room visits; 55,000 to 70,000 hospitalizations; and 20 to 60 deaths in children younger than 5 years of age.

So that’s exciting. Honestly, I was somewhat relieved by that finding, because it’s something that, while not pleasant, will eventually go away. My Google MD diagnosis had been a gluten sensitivity, which would have been much more complicated to deal with.

We are still waiting on results from a few tests, and because she had a combo of symptoms that is sometimes a red flag (waking up vomiting and right-side headaches), she is scheduled for an MRI on her brain. (Any Teen Mom 2 watchers out there? Every time I hear/say that phrase, I apply Leah’s accent.) Provided that doesn’t turn up anything exciting, that should be the end of it. And hopefully, with a daily regimen of Prilosec, we’ll be all done with the random puking.

Crossing my fingers.