…in a butterfly garden…

Thank you…. thank you very much…

Imagine with me for a moment:

Imagine a morning when things are just plain old gray and cold and slowww…. Like, everything is moving slow. The air is moving slow. Time is moving slow. But most of all your kids are moving slow.  And slowing things down even more is the fact that there is not a single drop of Diet Coke in the house. Not. A. Drop. Now imagine that you without morning caffeine is a disaster.

Are you imagining?

And so you offer your late children a ride to school because it is so dang gray and cold… and also because if they took their scooters they would end up approximately something like 2 3/4 hours late for school at the slow rate they are moving. Imagine that you offer them a warm ride because you are a nice-ish mom.  So you open the car to put the cold baby in his car seat only to remember that his car seat is sitting on the garage floor because you had to take it out yesterday to fold the seats down to load a giant piece of plywood to take to the school for Lego Club… And so then begins the 10 minute process of installing his car seat while the cold baby whines and squirms in the other kids’ arms, and the other kids try to cover the cold baby’s ears so that the cold baby will not hear his mother swearing at and beating the dumbest car seat ever created.

You still with me?
Now we’re imagining that when you finally have the car seat installed and the kids piled in and the scooters thrown in the back, the neighbor kids show up. And so there is a little more rearranging of crap in the back and another seat is folded up and another kid enters the vehicle and then finally you exit your driveway… something like 4 hours after you initially offered your kids a ride to school… and you still really want a Diet Coke.

And as you pull up in front of the school, nodding at the neighbors you know, you realize that you are not wearing a bra and it is really, really  cold outside. So you zip up your coat… just as you hear your daughter wail to your son “Why didn’t you get my shoes like I asked you to?”

And then as you are driving your daughter back to the house to get her some shoes, you listen to her ask over and over, “Mom, are you mad?” And you make yourself say, “No, I’m not mad,” over and over. Even though we are imagining that you are pretty mad.

Also, you still aren’t wearing a bra. And you notice in the rear view mirror that overnight your eyeliner and mascara have smeared halfway down your face. Similar to Alice Cooper. And you haven’t brushed your teeth yet.

Actually, you are pretty disgusting. Really. Just imagine.

And when your daughter runs into the house and gets her shoes, and you glance at the clock and realize that there is no possible way short of teleportation to get her to school on time, you devise the plan to get yourself a Diet Coke.

Without subjecting any more people to Utah’s own hairy-toothed Alice Cooper without a bra.

And as you drive past the school, you explain to your daughter that she is already late for school and therefor it is just fine if she is a little bit later. And you drive to the gas station… pretty giddy over your smart plan to get yourself a caffeine fix without leaving the vehicle. Imagine that you think you’re pretty smart.

Now imagine that you pull into a space outside the gas station and start pulling change from the ashtray just as your daughter begins to open her car door. And — pay attention now, because suddenly the slowwww moving time of the morning jumps to light speed and the following events happen in 2.4 nanoseconds — you notice that there is a car parked really close next to you. So just as you say, “Careful, don’t hit the car next to you”, your daughter kicks open her car door with the force of a pissed-off mule and slams the car next to you.

Which has a man inside.

I know, it’s totally painful, but imagine…

And as he looks over at you and mouths a curse word, you instruct your daughter to now close her car door. And as the man exits his car to inspect the damage, you realize that his car is actually a new, shiny car… in fact, you can almost make out the rectangle outline of where the sales sticker was on his window glass.

And as you roll down your window and ask him if it’s dented (D’uh, Alice Cooper, it’s frickin dented), your daughter asks you repeatedly, “Are you mad, mom?” And the guy says, “Uh, yeah, it’s dented.” And you apologize and offer to give him your insurance info as he licks his finger and rubs his new, shiny car. But he takes a look at your daughter on the verge of tears, and then he takes another look at you — looking like something that crawled back from the cusp of hell — and he envisions you beating your poor daughter over an insurance claim. So he says, “It’s fine,” and drives his shinyexceptforthatonedent car away.

…just imagine…

And as your sweet daughter brings you out your Diet Coke from the gas station, you tell her to keep the change. And then you really wonder if it may just be time to give up the morning caffeine thing…

Seriously. It may be time.

Also, imagine that while you finish typing a blog post about your crazy morning, you hear your baby splashing in the potty back the hall.

Just imagine.

The big news around here is that as of Monday morning Omniture (the company that employs my husband) will be owned by Adobe. For the most part, this is a great thing. One thing that I will mourn, though, is the passing of the “Omniture green”. Omniture is kinda notorious for making all kinds of cool marketing stuff (hats, shirts, pens, Magic 8 balls…) in their trademark green color… which just happens to be my favorite color. This has been awesome for me, as I’ve gotten some weird swag in my favorite color. But from now on everything coming home will be Adobe red. Which… red? M’eh.

Thursday night there was an Omniture party. Sort of a last horrah party before being absorbed into Adobe. Omniture is also notorious for their parties…. Christmas, Halloween… which I’m thinking will now be no longer.

As usual, there was a costume contest. This is something that Jon and I took very seriously. There were prizes for the categories of Most Creative, Funniest, Truest to the Omniture Brand, and Most Likely to Anger Competitors. Jon and I decided to go dressed as money. And not just any money… but money in 1 billion dollars. Billion dollars with the Omniture CEO’s face on it. (We were banking on the CEO liking the idea of his face on huge currency.)

You have to really study this bill to take in all of the detail that Jon put into this thing. The binary numbers spell out OMTR, there’s a small Omniture logo, an Adobe logo, and microprint that says JonnyG 2009.

Then I went to Kinkos and had 300 of them printed out on green paper… the closest to Omniture green I could find. Then I went to Savers and purchased a $4.49 jacket and a $4.99 dress… and after many hours, many staples, and a big can of 3M 77 adhesive, this was the outcome:

We were dubbed “The Billion Dollar Couple”, won Most Creative (Josh James DID like seeing his face on huge currency!), and won a Wii.  I was half expecting a green Wii, but it was white.

We sorta smelled like glue the whole night, and I couldn’t sit down, but overall it was worth it.

(It should be noted here that although Omniture will officially be Adobe on Halloween, they will still hold the big Halloween party… I will have all kinds of pics from that, to be sure.)

So bring on the Adobe red… though I will very much miss the green. Much love, Omniture. Peace.

During our hospital stay, I went into survival mode. It was like flicking a switch; almost a completely voluntary thing. I did it to save my sanity. I thought, “These days will be impossibly long, impossibly boring, and at times impossibly lonely. It is what it is. Embrace it. Embrace this time with your son. He needs you. It’s okay if you don’t shower. It’s okay if you walk around with puke on your clothes. It will only be for a while. Just a while.” And then — click! — I kinda hazed over and became okay with the not showering and wore the pukey clothes and embraced the time with my sick son. I embraced the worry. Embraced the sadness. I curled up with the loneliness at night and listened to the monitors beep. I discovered the rarely-used bathroom on the 4th floor and escaped there to cry when things felt unbearable and crushing. It was what it was, and it was just for a while.

And now that I’m home I should be out of it. I’ve been trying to flick the switch back to normalcy. I’ve been trying to tell myself, “We are home! Your son is better! Life is good!” But I just can’t find that switch to flick. The time in the hospital seems to have sunken deep inside me, deeper than I realized. And it’s hunkered down and moistened and darkened a little spot there. A spot that is still okay if I don’t shower. A spot that is still embracing sadness and loneliness, even when there doesn’t look like there’s any sadness and loneliness to be found.  It’s a spot like quicksand. And each day I wake up and put it in my mind to get a running start, to sprint and break out and leave the spot far behind. But the sprint doesn’t last very long, and the pull of the quicksand is too strong, and finally my will gives and I am pulled back in on myself. Like a collapsing star.

Stupid spot.

NaNoWriMo is next month. I am hoping that some angst-ridden YA fiction writing will purge some of this darkness. If only I can figure out how to focus the dark spot and use it against my enemies — exploit it to my every advantage — then I would be unstoppable. A force to be reckoned with… instead of this sad, pathetic, unshowered individual you see before you.

Ask me in a few weeks. Until then, I am attempting to get jazzed about making kids’ Halloween costumes and decorating my house for the “fall season”. We’ll see how it goes…

We are home. The ordeal is over. (Well, pretty much over. Deac has to go back in for another CT scan in a few weeks just to make sure the old noggin is draining properly.)

There is so much to write about and tell you. So much went on during those hospital days and nights. Part of me wants to blab all about it (and complain about a lot of what went on… like the part where I was questioned about whether or not I beat my kid), but another part of me wants to forget the whole thing and never speak of it again.

For now, though, I will just let you know that we are resting comfortably back at home. Deac is readjusting and slowly getting over the fear that anyone approaching him is there to stick him with a needle or insert something into his brain.  It will take him a while to get back to his happy, giggly, precious little self. Right now he is quiet and a little timid. (He also probably still has a whopping headache.)

And now I leave you with a picture of the cutest kid ever with a brain drain:

Jeez.

I mean, jeez…

and by jeez I mean, holy frickin hell!

Hi, friends of the internets… SuzyG here, reporting live from my new home here at Primary Children’s Medical Center, where Deacon and I have been holed up for the last week.

Deacon fell off of our bed last Monday night and whacked his head a good one. Good enough to apparently cause some blood in the brain. And that blood decided to clot… clot like a nice little cork right in the channel where his brain fluid is supposed to drain. So there is all kinds of pressure in his sweet little noggin… his noggin which now sports a nice drainage tube. Yes, that’s right, there is tubing coming out of my baby’s head. And this tubing drains off pinkish-tinted stuff that Jachin likes to call “brain juice”, and it drips and collects in a baggie. A baggie that they just throw our when it gets full.

It is just about the saddest thing you’ve ever seen.

Other than when he had to wear a tiny neck brace for the first three days here…

(pics of all of this later… the hospital computer isn’t really set up for awesome blogging.)

Also, little Deacon has a spy name. It was the name given to him in the trauma ward when he came in (by ambulance, by the way). They give weird names to each of the incoming patients before real names are collected and put into the computer. His name is “CSquareMiami”, which I think is actually cooler than his real name. So I am calling him CSquareMiami from now on. The funny thing is that it took them 5 days to get his real name into the computer. So I’d get calls on the room phone from doctors and nurses saying “Is this CSquareMiami’s mom?”

But yeah, we’ve been here a week so far. If I had to give you one-word description of how Deac and I feel, it would have to be “weary”. I am weary. Deac is weary. We are sad and worn down and feeling a little beaten… a little of the fight has been sucked out of us. The last 7 days are a blur of crying and whimpering and CT scans and MRIs and doctors who all start looking the same (except for Dr. Kestle… he’s the man). One day bleeds slowly into the next, and all the days’ edges seemed faded and worn. The only way I know for sure how long we’ve been here is to hold my ever-growing hairy leg stubble up in the sunlight and see how long the shadows cast. (However, this method is less than totally accurate since I didn’t shave my legs the day of the falling incident.)

I have so much to tell you, internets. Stuff is oozing out of me like a leaky IV. But for tonight I am too tired. Too worn.

Too weary.

More to come… but pray for us, internets. Deac and I are ready to go home.