I don't have the time I need to tend the garden and make it winter-ready. The decorative grasses said it best today: "I'm a bed of curly tangles, don't mess with me!"
As much as we are in a groove with Daniel's diabetes now, pumping smoothly, getting used to changes, it's still a 24/7 business. It figures into everything. I wonder how many hours are spent taking care of either Daniel's diabetes or celiac. Then I look sadly at my messy garden. I know where the time goes, and I know it is well spent. There is just not enough of it on any given day. I'm just glad to have a moment to post on D-Blog day!
When life throws curves -- when the washing machine breaks or a kid gets strep or work takes one parent or the other away -- time becomes even more precious. I multitask. Bake the gluten free muffins for church early in the morning and slip in some pleasure reading for 15 minutes while they bake. Work on my grade book while waiting at the urgent care clinic to check out Nora's throat.
We all multitask, juggle, prioritize, and let things slide. Lists are written and rewritten, and eventually thrown away. My heart started to stutter at the thought of the approaching holidays, the additional tasks, the traditions my loved ones expect to occur. And yet, and yet... there may be changes. I have to gracefully accept being happy with just doing what I can.
As for the garden, I'll let mother nature deal with it. It was hers to begin with.
Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autumn. Show all posts
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Sunday, October 19, 2008
New Routines
The first site change at home went well. But then Daniel decided at dinner time to wait until after he ate to bolus, because he wasn't sure how much food he was going to have. Have you guessed what happened yet? Right. Forgot to bolus. 3 a.m. blood sugar check was not happy. Daniel felt like crap. We're all pretty tired now, but we'll get through it.
I ordered Daniel an "invisipump," so he could wear the pump inside his pants. He doesn't like it there, but I'm holding on to it in case he changes his mind later on in his life (job interviews, etc.). Mostly he puts the pump in his pocket and stuffs the tubing in his pants. We have long tubing now, but will probably order the shorter tubing as well to have around. When he was pumping with saline we had the short tubing. Daniel tried putting a site in the back of his arm, and about 10 minutes later yanked the whole thing out when he was outside playing around because the tubing was too short. Live and learn. At night he drops the pump into a sock and pins it to his pjs. I have to sew some pockets into them.
Last weekend we we went to Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland. The weather, the trees, the
colors -- it was all so beautiful. The only bad part of the weekend was that Dominic got pretty sick, but we went to an urgent care clinic and they set us up with antibiotics & prednisone, and soon all was well.At one point Dominic was watching the birds flying to the bird feeder. Our friends suggested that he try to get the bird to eat out of his hand -- but only if he could sit very still. Dominic was determined. And finally, the birds trusted him enough (or were hungry enough) to take the food from his palm.
We did a couple of fun things before Dominic's fever spiked. There was an enormous corn maze with fun
activities, yummy treats, hay ride, etc. Then we went to a store called Schoolhouse Earth that had a petting zoo. Spent all my quarters on goat food (although the goats were perfectly happy to eat the few remaining dandelions that I found on the lawn, and they were free). At night at there was a "haunted coaster ride" at the Wisp Ski area, and Matt took Daniel & Nora and waited in an incredibly long line for a quick ride down the mountain. I stayed in with Dominic, putting cold cloths on his head and dosing him with advil.Time for sleep. That 3 a.m. blood sugar test comes way too quickly!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Routine
Sometimes it is hard to come to the computer to write because I don't have anything to say that is IMPORTANT. After all, I'm committing words to paper (screen) for all time and for many eyes, so shouldn't it be IMPORTANT?
But the last few days have been routine. And ROUTINE is not so bad. We had a birthday in the house, yes, and that was and was not out of the ordinary. A full house, a large family -- birthdays are comfortable & familiar, if not routine. I think there's something good to be said for the morning alarm, the balletic timing of school-morning breakfasts, the snippets of NPR on the way to work. Something wonderful and rejuvenating about autumn with its class schedules and coffee breaks.
Maybe ROUTINE has been good because Daniel's sugars have been mostly in range this week (except for the "save-all-my-carbs-for-birthday-ice cream" mistake). ROUTINE has Dominic learning new teachers, new subjects, new routines in grade 1 that exhaust him in ways that a day at the pool can't. ROUTINE even makes middle school bearable for Nora (but there are always jerks in middle school so I'm keeping my fingers crossed).
The routine turning of the year seems to have clicked over one notch away from summer and towards fall, and even the sky was celebrating the sudden change in the air with a riotous, colorful party for sunset. I went outside to pick a few late-summer peppers and tomatoes, and stopped to breathe it all in; the quiet moment in the neighborhood, the changing angles of light. Then the geese were overhead, announcing their southward flight path, calling for attention.
Mary Oliver is probably my favorite poet, she has a way of turning the ordinary into the magical. I have been thinking tonight about her poem, Wild Geese. It goes:
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."
That's from her book Dream Work. And tonight, in a routine moment, I fell into a brief state of grace & beauty. Thanks in great part to Mary Oliver, to the raw poetry in the sound of geese, and to a much needed change of season.
But the last few days have been routine. And ROUTINE is not so bad. We had a birthday in the house, yes, and that was and was not out of the ordinary. A full house, a large family -- birthdays are comfortable & familiar, if not routine. I think there's something good to be said for the morning alarm, the balletic timing of school-morning breakfasts, the snippets of NPR on the way to work. Something wonderful and rejuvenating about autumn with its class schedules and coffee breaks.
Maybe ROUTINE has been good because Daniel's sugars have been mostly in range this week (except for the "save-all-my-carbs-for-birthday-ice cream" mistake). ROUTINE has Dominic learning new teachers, new subjects, new routines in grade 1 that exhaust him in ways that a day at the pool can't. ROUTINE even makes middle school bearable for Nora (but there are always jerks in middle school so I'm keeping my fingers crossed).
The routine turning of the year seems to have clicked over one notch away from summer and towards fall, and even the sky was celebrating the sudden change in the air with a riotous, colorful party for sunset. I went outside to pick a few late-summer peppers and tomatoes, and stopped to breathe it all in; the quiet moment in the neighborhood, the changing angles of light. Then the geese were overhead, announcing their southward flight path, calling for attention.
Mary Oliver is probably my favorite poet, she has a way of turning the ordinary into the magical. I have been thinking tonight about her poem, Wild Geese. It goes:
"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."
That's from her book Dream Work. And tonight, in a routine moment, I fell into a brief state of grace & beauty. Thanks in great part to Mary Oliver, to the raw poetry in the sound of geese, and to a much needed change of season.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)