You can't help but think about family around the holidays. I grew up with a massive amount of cousins sharing all of our Christmas loot at 2:00 in the morning Christmas Eve. The noisy, crowded family Christmas is part of my past and gave me a sense early on that the best part of any celebration is seeing all of those people that you love. As a little girl, that could have been as often as every 2 weeks, with one or another of my cousins having a birthday party. As often as we would get together, it was always special and fun.
As I've gotten older, it doesn't happend that way so much. If I get to see one of my cousins once or twice a year these days, I consider myself lucky and think about them for a long time afterwards. It's not like they live so far away, only a handful have left the LA area. It's just that we get so busy, building families and careers, homes and new lives, that its hard to make the time to get together as often as we did back then.
Yet when we do, it's like we have been together all this time. There is a connection between family members that seems to be suspended in time, just put on hold until we next meet. I look forward to those moments mostly to try to find what is new and different about my relatives, how they have changed and grown. You can't help but go back to those fun memories of the childhood highjinks, the "Remember when we..." Yet I always leave in amazement of how far my cousins have come and what great things life still holds for them.
Most of my cousins don't yet have children, but the balance is starting to shift in favor of those who do. Every year I say, well, this family is just going to get bigger and we will have more kids around to relive our glorious childhood festivities. It hasn't really worked out that way so far, for me, at least, but I am starting to see it on the horizen. I imagine that I will soon be the mom asking where my shoes are when its time to go home, knowing that the kids have hidden them under the couch so that they can go on playing.
Do my cousins feel the same way and look forward to watching the kids play and being the grownups at the kitchen table? We always imagined that our poor parents had to endure this to keep us happy, but maybe they were having even more fun. We'll see.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Attack of the Kidney Stones!
So after finally getting the ball rolling on this new blog I got immediately sidelined with a trip to the emergency room. The best way I have found to describe the pain of a kidney stone is the feeling that someone has plunged a rusty dagger in your lower back, and then occassionally starts twisting it. This is not the first stone for me, but its been several years. It really took me off guard.
Poor Fritz was peacefully sleeping at 7:00 am Sunday morning, relishing the fact that the dogs had also slept in. Then it hit. "Baby, I think we need to go to the ER." And we stumbled down the hill.
I can't say there is such a thing as a pleasant ER experience, but the staff at the Glendale Adventist Hospital sure took good care of me. They have a new ER with little TVs in each patient area so Fritz was able to watch at least 3 football games while I squirmed in between the morpine shots. The doctor was quick to have it administered and then confirmed that it was a couple of stones. He said he had just been through one a month ago, so he knew my pain.
There's a 5 mm stone trying to move along that caused the commotion, and another "sleeper" 6 mm stone. After the pain subsided the doctors decided to let me see if I can pass them on my own before going in to get them. I was admitted to the hospital for a long night of slow drip fluids and pain killers. Of course I didn't feel any pain while I was in the hospital all night, not until about an hour after finally getting home the next day. It has subsided though, and I am starting to ween off of the meds. I feel like a walking drugstore, but know that this will be over as soon as that stone finally finds its way out. How long that will be, is what remains to be seen.
I'm not quite 100% better now, or even close, but I am feeling steadily better. For now I am just happy to have enough energy to get back to work and take care of the house and family. The holidays are not the best time to be feeling down physically, but then again, it has forced me to slow down and really appreciate the few people I have been able to interact with at this time of year.
Poor Fritz was peacefully sleeping at 7:00 am Sunday morning, relishing the fact that the dogs had also slept in. Then it hit. "Baby, I think we need to go to the ER." And we stumbled down the hill.
I can't say there is such a thing as a pleasant ER experience, but the staff at the Glendale Adventist Hospital sure took good care of me. They have a new ER with little TVs in each patient area so Fritz was able to watch at least 3 football games while I squirmed in between the morpine shots. The doctor was quick to have it administered and then confirmed that it was a couple of stones. He said he had just been through one a month ago, so he knew my pain.
There's a 5 mm stone trying to move along that caused the commotion, and another "sleeper" 6 mm stone. After the pain subsided the doctors decided to let me see if I can pass them on my own before going in to get them. I was admitted to the hospital for a long night of slow drip fluids and pain killers. Of course I didn't feel any pain while I was in the hospital all night, not until about an hour after finally getting home the next day. It has subsided though, and I am starting to ween off of the meds. I feel like a walking drugstore, but know that this will be over as soon as that stone finally finds its way out. How long that will be, is what remains to be seen.
I'm not quite 100% better now, or even close, but I am feeling steadily better. For now I am just happy to have enough energy to get back to work and take care of the house and family. The holidays are not the best time to be feeling down physically, but then again, it has forced me to slow down and really appreciate the few people I have been able to interact with at this time of year.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Introducing our Nesting LA Blog
Welcome to Patricia and Fritz's new blog. It's a little behind schedule, as we have been long thinking about setting one up to chronicle our nesting experience in our little treetop home in North East LA.
Here we are, getting ready to celebrate our second Christmas, yet still seem to be in the midst of moving in and feathering our nest, which puts us at a point where our home is livable, but not even close to being where we want it. Also, we are busy raising a small pack of dogs and cats while we plan and hope for a 2 legged creature to one day be the alpha.
This blog will serve as a record of our home and family building related projects and events. We hope that it will be entertaining and full of happy moments, but most of all, that it will remind us of the optimism we share as we start off on some of these adventures.
Patricia and Fritz
Here we are, getting ready to celebrate our second Christmas, yet still seem to be in the midst of moving in and feathering our nest, which puts us at a point where our home is livable, but not even close to being where we want it. Also, we are busy raising a small pack of dogs and cats while we plan and hope for a 2 legged creature to one day be the alpha.
This blog will serve as a record of our home and family building related projects and events. We hope that it will be entertaining and full of happy moments, but most of all, that it will remind us of the optimism we share as we start off on some of these adventures.
Patricia and Fritz
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