Seven Quick Takes for...um...Saturday

Alright, alright, it isn't Friday.  But on Friday my food had a date with my sink, so you get a blog post today.  And since it isn't really Seven Quick Takes, I shall call it, um, Amy's Random List of Saturday Things That Go On Until I've Stopped Talking.  Otherwise known as Arlosttgouist.  And everyone loves a good Arlosttgouist.  The 'G' is silent.

1.  It hasn't been a good week.  And I'm really struggling to think of nice, happy, chipper things to say that will somehow make this week better.  I really am.  Part of me wishes I could write a long blog post about the beautiful fall weather and how happy my life makes me and post a bunch of pictures of pumpkins my family has carved along with cute things my baby said.  And the other part of me wants to stab someone.  So, um, the best middle ground I can find between those two extremes is to vent to a select few lucky people who I know will keep what they hear to themselves and not let it taint their overall impression of my mental stability.  Although I will toss in that Samuel calls his bottle a 'bobble', and that is pretty darn adorable.


Although there is a bottle CALLED the bobble.  Which isn't as cute at all.

 2.  Someone close to me made a decision that really negatively affects me.  Not in a serious way, just in an emotional way, as in it makes me sad and upset and feeling really left out.  And the worst part of it is that in making that decision they used a completely different set of parameters than I would have.  In fact, their logic was so completely different than mine that it really brought into focus an aspect of my faith that I don't usually have to contend with; sometimes, the things that I think are stupid, actually make sense to other people.  They make sense.  People aren't making these choices blindly, or stabbing wildly in the dark.  They aren't under hypnosis or mentally deficient.  Sometimes, people look at all of the options before them and, after careful consideration and lots of research, they chose the WRONG ONE.  And they can back their decisions up.  And that bothers me deeply.

3.  My morning sickness reached new depths (heights?) this past week.  It was extreme.  I'm not particularly concerned about weight loss, because I'm no twig and nothing living in me is going to starve for QUITE a long time, let me tell you, but I was worried about dehydration when I pretty much stopped going to the bathroom for a while.  Nothing was picking that up, and my mouth had started to get very dry as well, so I was considering heading up to the doctor to get an IV of fluids when I discovered apple juice.  Oh my word apple juice, love of my life, only slightly behind gravity in your importance to me right now.  I can drink apple juice.  Do you know how amazing this is?  For the past two months I have watched my fluids dwindle down to ice water.  Without ice.  But it had to be very very cold.  But not slushy.  And my water in the fridge was starting to smell like fridge, which is a terrible smell and reminds me of the two giant zucchini oozing malevolently on my second shelf.  Then about a week ago I discovered that in the morning, I could drink powdered hot chocolate.  This was a discovery on par with insulin (which I am going to need alot of if I keep drinking this much powdered hot chocolate) not only because it gave me another beverege option, but it allowed me to hide up to a quarter cup of dairy in the hot chocolate and give me some calcium.  And then, the apple juice discovery.  So today I went to the health food store and bought two litres of pure, unpasteurized, locally pressed apple cider.  It is defrosting on my counter as we speak.  I may hide it.

4.  Samuel and David and I went on our monthly emergency room visit at midnight last night.  Well, it isn't monthly, but it is too frequent for my liking.  I tried everything to stop his hacking, wheezing cough at home.  We elevated his crib mattress, let him sleep with us propped up by pillows, put ice water in his sippy cup, used acetominophen for pain, vapour rub on his back, ventalin puffers for his lungs, a warm mist vapourizer in his room, hot showers, cold air, everything.  We tried everything.  We even went out and bought expensive herbal cough suppressents for infants, because apparently you can't give regular medicine anymore.  Nothing worked.  Then last night he was coughing so hard he started to throw up.  And so the usual gears kicked into play at our house; we've done this many, many times, and up we went.  Verdict?  A throat infection caused by a sinus issue, a round of not too expensive antibiotics, and a baby who got to bed about 1:30 in the morning.

5.  It has been nothing but disheartening news on the church front for us the past few months.  David got the position of communion co-ordinator at the church, but since then there hasn't been a glimmer of hope on the horizon.  We had been told to start looking out for jobs in December; today I was told a more likely possibility is January/February.  There hasn't been a job posting in Canada in months on the Wesleyan employment website, and we're starting to worry.  What if we don't find David a church position this year?  What if there just aren't enough positions to go around.  What if it was all for naught?

6.  In continuation of those concerns we have begun to think about the upcoming move.  Nobody panic, we're not moving anytime soon, but we do have to move.  It isn't rational to stay here, in a teeny little New Brunswick town.  We have nothing here to support us.  There are no job opportunities for David in ministry, or even out of ministry for that matter.  We don't have enough of a one-person income to manage much, and so I have to work, which isn't going to get easier in the months to come.  We're stuck in an apartment and will never, ever, be able to leave it because we can't afford anything better and a mining boom is coming, which will push our rent up even higher.  And with two small children, and no opportunites for them here, we both feel the need to move.  My son has never seen a museum, never gone swimming in a lake, never visited my family cottage or eaten out at an exotic restaurant or, or anything.  And while that may not be of any great importance right now, one day it will be, and I've seen the youth in this town and what happens when your world is nothing but a mile long stretch of road.  It isn't pretty.

7.  so not a good week.

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