Miss Tricky Takes Over

Despite the lack of my beloved Target in Canada (and the squeeze’s shockingly casual attitude about that devastating news), I have decided to stick it out and go through with getting married and moving. I am such a trooper. There are only three items left on my “have to buy this crap before next Friday” list that I am hoping to knock out today and yesterday we went and picked out our wedding bands. True to form, it only took me about 10 minutes of looking to find the one I wanted. Originally, it was very important to me to have old-school matchy-matching bands but since I went and picked out a vintage engagement ring plans had to change. We settled on a band for me that compliments my ring and a nice manly band with a slight vintage feel for Mr. President. In other words, we are pretty much ready to do the whole wedding thing. Go team!

After all that it gets easy- just pack, clean and say goodbye. Okay, that last one won’t be so easy. Anytime I talk about how much I love Philadelphia and how I will miss the dear friends I have made here El Presidente gets all crazy headed and starts thinking that I do not want to move out west. I DO want to go. I want to go very much, and I know for sure how much I want to go because of how much I love it here. (I promise that makes sense.) If Philadelphia were a place I did not enjoy I might be tempted to agree to an international move just to try something else. If I hated it here I would question my decision to leave. Am I going just because I don’t like it here? Am I going just to go? Is this just “anywhere but here” syndrome? Philadelphia has felt more like home to me than anywhere else I have ever lived. In such a short time I have found a groove in this town and I will be sad to let it go. I love this crazy town so much that only one thing could make me leave it. And that is that I am one hundred percent sure that this move is what is best for my little family. This is right, this is our journey home and I cannot wait to get going. I am thrilled that Mr. President and I have made this decision together without any tension or argument, and that The Spawn is trying to talk me into leaving for “Vancoooooooober” right now in our pajamas. But that doesn’t mean I won’t be sad to drive away…

Philadelphia has been good to me and mine. So if anyone wants to buy us a summer home out here just go right ahead and do it (South Philly if you please).

So maybe it’s just me, but I have this bizarre tendency to think that I am never really sick even when I am. Whenever I experience pain or other symptoms of illness that would send most normal people running to the nearest care provider, I instead sit around and wait for it to go away. For some reason, now matter how poorly I am feeling I am always convinced that I am making it up. I do not know if this is because of some childhood trauma, general craziness or if it might have something to do with 23 years of intense joint pain that doctors said they could not see a cause of. I will spend hours, days or weeks talking myself out of making a doctor’s appointment because I probably am not all that sick but am dramatizing my symptoms. I suspect that this unique mental disorder is why I ignored some pretty obvious warning signs for over a year. Ever since I had this damned IUD put in it hasn’t felt right. Intermittent pain, a general “ucky” feeling and across the board “hey, this doesn’t seem to feel how it’s supposed to feel” sensations have plagued me for over a year. Lately you have all seen me write about my desire to have it taken out because I thought it was slowly killing me- did I make an appointment to do so? Hell no! I mean, obviously I was just being a baby about it all and imagining all of my discomfort.

 Well, Friday morning a familiar pain crept into my lower abdomen. I have felt it periodically for a year and was prepared to grimace and ignore it as usual. Except, it didn’t fade or change. It hurt! I showered and got ready for work, thinking that if it still bothered me after my lunch shift I would go and get it checked out. (Read: I assumed I was using my special crazy-brain powers to create this phantom pain.) Then when I got to work it didn’t go away. It got worse and walking around wasn’t helping. It hurt enough that I decided to go to the emergency room even though I believed that they would be sending me home in an hour or so rolling their eyes about the crazy cry-baby faker with no problems. So I went to a hospital close to my work. And then I waited. I waited while people got choppered in and ambulance after ambulance arrived with critical patients. I waited while the elderly with breathing issues and pregnant women with asthma came in around me. Four hours later with a busting full waiting room and my name no higher up on the list I decided that I certainly wasn’t ill enough to sit here all day and headed for home to reassess my situation.

 Except as I was walking towards a bus stop it got much, much worse. New plan! Take a cab to Penn, which is nicer and bigger and closer to my house! Genius! And when I arrived I saw an empty waiting room! Huzzah! 4 pm, two people in the waiting area and considerably more pain. Surely I was only moments from relief! Except I live in Philadelphia and the ER was busy. Very busy. The rooms were packed and as I sat and waited the waiting area filled up around me. I considered leaving several times but each time I got up to leave the pain was still there so I waited a bit longer. Finally at about 10:30pm my little pager went off and told me to head back to a room. I have never been so excited to wait in a different location as I was at that moment. Once in a room I was palpated and questioned and I talked about my IUD for the umpteenth time and they gave me some Motrin and went to consult with a more senior resident. I was situated right next to the center desk so I heard each trauma call as it came in. More waiting. At some point I was informed that a full pelvic exam was in my future and that the appropriate pain medication would happen before anyone tried to put anything inside my seriously hurting parts. Exam, and the decision that despite having no symptoms other than pain that I had PID and did I by chance have syphilis? Ummmmmmmm, no. Decidedly not. As the nurse came back to get blood and my discharge papers were being printed I finally flagged down my doctor and asked if everything looked normal with my IUD. She said…(wait for it)…”what IUD?” Really? Then all of the sudden an attending comes in and says since we couldn’t see it anywhere you need a cat scan to locate it and here’s an IV and some morphine and drink this nasty contrast stuff and someone will be with you shortly. That was at 1 am.

 God bless my lovely nurse Barbara who was friendly and reassuring and chatty and didn’t make me feel like I was being rushed despite how busy they obviously were. 5 am I went for a cat scan and at 6:30 they came back and told me that a large cyst on my left ovary had ruptured and that the IUD seemed to be in the right place but the strings weren’t visible which means they might be stuck in my cervix and I should probably get it taken out. Gee thanks.

 I made it home by 7:15 or so and after being awake for over 24 hours and in pain for most of those I spent the rest of the weekend alternately sleeping and eating. Sheesh!

 Today I am waiting for a nurse to call me back with appointment time to get the IUD removed and the rest of my test results back. So I guess it has all worked out in the end. Let’s hope I have learned some sort of lesson and will not put off the inevitable until it comes looking for me, binds and gags me, slaps me around a little, throws me in a trunk and drives me to the end result.

Have you any idea how nice it is to be home from work at an hour when there is still enough daylight to show how badly the floor needs to be vacuumed? At an hour when exhaustion and sleeping baby boys do not prevent you from cleaning and dusting and putting away? To be home at a time that will allow you to actually make the dinner you planned? It is heaven. For the past several months I have been working from 11 am to approximately 12am 4 days a week, 11am to 5pm one day a week and more often than not from 3pm to 12am thrown in on a weekend for kicks. I did it because I love the restaurant I work in and the people that I work with. I did it because I am a workaholic. I did it because I had a nanny and a partner that allowed me to do so, but now I have something much more important to do. I have a Philadelphia life to wrap up, put in packages and send out into the future. 41 days….

41 days until I drive away from a city I have thoroughly enjoyed since last May. 41 days until I leave friends behind. 41 days until I pick up and move out of town for the eleventy-billionth time. It seems so familiar to be cramming things into boxes and sneaking off in a hurry. Four times before this I have moved far away hoping to find a magic reset button that would dissolve all the trouble I had made. Four fresh starts, four last chances, four good-byes. I am an expert leave-er, but so terrible at staying. This is the first time that I have nothing to run from. I am not off on a quest for yet another fresh start. This time is about continuing. This time is about expanding on 2 years of work rather than scrapping it all saying “maybe next time”. In 41 days I am moving because I want to, because it is the place I have chosen and because I am ready to go. In 41 days our little family heads out for home.

22 days until I make Mr. President a husband. 22 days until I am a wife. 22 days until we take a bold step away from the past and commit to our future. 22 days until we make official what we already know so well.

There are so many arrangements to make and boxes to pack and honeymoon road trips to map out in just 41 days. 41 days that I have decided to spend home early, with the people I love in the city I love savoring every moment of this tremendous new journey.

Now, how many cheese steaks do you think I can eat in 41 days?

I got the okay to post our big news. Here it comes…..coming….coming….coming……now!

In less than two months, Mr. President and I are packing up The Spawn and moving. Wanna know where to? Of course you do! It’s the most awesome place ever……..it is also the site of the winter Olympics that are starting today. That’s right folks, Vancouver. We’re going. To Canada. It’s like draft dodging except instead of sneaking across the northern border to escape certain death due to war, we are boldly and legally crossing that northern border to live and work and hang out and build a family and to start saying “eh” at the end of all our sentences.

Now, raise your hand if you thought the big news was me being pregnant. It’s okay, despite my constant bitching and over-sharing about my IUD most of the people I know suspect that I am currently growing a person, so you are in good company. Isn’t this news even more exciting though? We are just picking up and taking off. We are so gangster. Do we have jobs up there? Hell no! But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Starting April 1^st we are taking off on a two-week, cross-country tour of friends and family that will end in our new country. Well, it will be new for me and The Spawn…..for Mr. President it will be old and home-like since it is, you know, his home.

We are thrilled and excited and scared and hopeful and ready (oh-so-ready!) and impatient to go. Yay us!

Things, things, and things to do…I have a multitude of things to do. Operation “sleep all day Saturday” was an unprecedented success but has left me feeling a little shorted on weekend time. I keep hoping that one of these days I will be filled with desire to start checking items off my to-do list but so far I am not feeling much of a desire to do anything. I haven’t even sat down and written a to-do list, which is crazy when you consider how much I love to make lists.

 In happier news, The Spawn is finally starting to give a crap about this whole getting married business. At first he was dismayed that my ring isn’t blue (since he knows that blue is my “frayborit” color) and told us that we needed medicine when we shared our wedding plans with him. Since then he has come to decide that “little mirrors” is my new favorite color and he occasionally kisses my ring (it’s like I’m the Godfather!!) and tells me how much he loves the pretty ring that Mr. President gave me. As far as his actual comprehension goes, he tells us that the ring means “mommy and [Mr. President] forever!” which sounds pretty darn good to me.

 As for The Prez, he is thrilled to not have to call me his girlfriend anymore and is greeting me every morning with;” Good morning my fiancée…. my little bride-like thing!”

 And me? Well, I am down to only about an hour of staring at my left hand a day and just once or twice a week bursting into Muppet songs about getting married. I’d say that’s progress.

 Now someone please come move in with me and force me to do all the other stuff I have to do, okay?

So….. It turns out that I am not a “bride”. (I can tell how shocked you all are from here.) For about 3 or 4 days I decided to plan a wedding and pick colors and look at invites and all that stuff. People could come, pictures would be taken and food would be eaten. It all seemed like a lovely idea except for the crazy panic it was causing me. Thank goodness I have since come to my senses! I was having what can only be described as an allergic reaction to bridal-type activities. My stomach was churning; my head swimming and I couldn’t get any sleep worth having.

 And now, a mere 24 hours since Mr. President and I realized that what we really want to do is just be married to each other, I am 100 times less likely to throw up at random. We will be married, quietly and without fuss and are thinking of planning a bit of a tour of friend visits. In theory I understand the appeal of having a roomful of people around to share in our moment but I just can’t imagine anything better than a simple ceremony with my squeeze and my Spawn and a little romantic weekend in NYC to celebrate.

 I guess some of us girls just don’t have it in us.

I am a wedding planning goddess! Well, I am not sure it is going to be a “wedding” really, more of an intimate dinner with family and family-like friends where we happen to get married at the beginning. I’ve got invitations, locations, photographer, food and cake all set and I’ve only been at it for two days. (I think having a tiny little budget is freeing- so many fewer decisions to make!) Now we need an officiant, clothes and decorations and I’m done, right? Oh wait….. rings. Okay, still, I will get this little event planned and paid for with little to no stress and agony.

Now if I can only get over the crippling anxiety I feel whenever I think about people coming to stare at me while I take my vows…..

Soooooo…there are big plans afoot here at Miss tricky HQ but I can’t really talk about them yet so I guess I just became one of those ho-bags that says “oooh ooh! Big news… but I can’t tell you” and then smirks a lot to herself for a while. Sorry. If it helps, it is totally making me crazy too. Sorry again.

 In other news, my list of resolutions is small this year- and they are all of a vain and superficial nature. How fitting….

 Number One: Grooming. I have spent my 28 ½ years on this planet (okay maybe not the first 10 or so) longing to be one of those women who is not a total mess all of the time. Up until now I have been thwarted by my desire for more sleep, more fun times and an obsessive need to be working every moment that I am awake. No more! This is the year that I start shaving my legs more than once a quarter! I also vow to get regular pedicures and manicures. At 28 it is safe to assume that I am not getting any better looking so I might as well start cleaning up what I’ve got. I’d like to pretend that I will also do things like exfoliate and moisturize but let’s not get too crazy. It’s all about the baby steps, people.

 Number Two: Pilates. I have decided to approach this one from a non- weight loss angle this year. Sure there’s about 15 pounds I’d like to say goodbye to, but feeling strong energetic and capable is what I am really aiming for. I suppose the weight will slip off in the process? Also, it has recently occurred to me that I am not 22 anymore and if I have any hope of aging gracefully and beautifully I should start by being 28 gracefully and beautifully. Or something.

 Number Three: Finally get around to making that doctor’s appointment and get this evil mirena yanked from my womb. Over share? My apologies.

Maybe I should quit smoking too.

I am not sure why this has been so difficult for me to write. I keep thinking that this year’s newsletter will be rather anti-climatic after last year-maybe that’s why I have been putting it off. The constant and often painful change of 2008 made it very easy to point to exactly what happened that year; an ordered checklist was easy to compile. 2009 was much sneakier and quiet. But now that I am looking back on it, 2009 seems like proof that 2008 happened.

 This past year was about committing to the changes I had made. This past year was all about settling into the person I had become. 2008 forever changed me- old habits and ideas fell away and I got a chance to re-define how I wanted to live. 2009 proved to me that I have changed. When all the drama and conflict subsided I found myself calmer and more centered than I have ever been before. Here’s to growth and maturity continuing in 2010!

 The Spawn, on the other hand, spent 2009 changing and healing and growing at an incredible rate. If you came to my house today and met the chatty, imaginative little boy who lives here you would find it impossible to imagine that he was the same little boy who’s tantrums and struggles I have detailed in this blog. He has more than blossomed- he has exploded! The changes in his diet and his new therapy have made it very difficult to spot the remaining traces of his disorder. We fully expect him to enter “normal” kindergarten next year, and though that brings with it a new host of challenges we are confident in his ability to continue to thrive.

 And then there’s Mr. President… That crazy man moved The Spawn and I into his home, was patient during the job search, helped to find daycare and a nanny and even attends school meetings on a regular basis. He is more than my squeeze; he is my partner. I am starting to think of The Spawn as ours rather than mine. When you find yourself being a single mom (autism or not) it seems ridiculous to think that you will ever have a relationship again. It seems ludicrous to imagine that anyone will love your child as much as you do or that you would let them if they wanted to. Obviously Mr. President’s love for him is different than mine, but I am amazed to discover that it is perfectly complimentary. We have built a family- and it was easier than I thought it would be.