Writing the good

I read this today and in my head I thought   those could be my exact words!
If you've got nothing better to do today, I encourage you to read her post.

I would like to write like her.
I want to write about how I find God everywhere. And sometimes God finds me.
I've got lists of things that keep me up at night. I'm tired from chasing kids all day.
She says something about how hard it is to find friends at the age of 30.
Honey?  Try finding friends when you're 54.
Sometimes I am so lonely I ache.

And it's true what she says...the words do get in the way.

I think to myself Wow! this would be a great blog post, then promptly forget everything I wanted to write about in the next 5 minutes.

I tried a new recipe from The Pioneer Woman and it turned out fantastic.
Do ya'll really want to read about that??

I'd love to write a post about how pleasant the day was; how cute and adorable were these two kids!
But I yell a lot out of frustration or impatience and that makes us all a little cranky and sad.
They forgive me within minutes...I'm not so good with forgiving myself.

I wish I had a better way with words. Do I wish I was a writer? An Author?
Honestly, no I don't. I couldn't promote a book and go on tour and talk to strangers.
Talk to strangers?!? Are you kidding me?? No way.
But I can write to you guys and you are strangers although you don't feel that way to me.
I appreciate the comments. I appreciate the fact that you read these words of mine.
I am thankful and grateful that you all follow me here on this blog.
It does ease the ache of feeling so alone.

Maybe I'll start writing about the good that I see in my own life every day.
Let me think about that for a bit. I'll get back to you.
Love, Lolly

End of October update

Here's an update for those of you who are reading my blog.
My daughter is well on the road to recovery after having had her baby and feeling better and stronger everyday. A little sleep deprived but at least her iron stores are starting to build back up.
My new granddaughter is perfect and cute and sweet. A real quiet baby-just like her mama was.

Me and my 6 year old grandson have coughs. Today it is wet and blustery and raw outside.
I'd like to keep him home from school today mostly so I don't have to go out in this weather.

My 3 year old granddaughter was put on Miralax and it STILL took her 6 days to poop.
Now she must remain on Miralax for a month to retrain her colon. We will restart potty training after the month is up. At this point it is just such a huge relief that she is going poop again. It's watery due to the Miralax but it's better than her being stopped up. OK...enough of that story.

It's Fall here in Illinois but not too much color change is happening with our trees. We have a lot of green leaves in our area yet. The humidity is still hanging around too. I truly cannot wait for snow and cold.
Yes. I said it. Snow and cold weather.
I'm tired of feeling so warm and being aggravated with this humid weather.

What else?  Let me think a moment....
Yeah, no, I got nothin'.

If I think of anything else I'll fire up the ol' blog and type out another post.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for reading my blog.
Love, Lolly

October

I find that I post more when there is bad news and/or when I need to vent.
So if I'm not writing here that must mean things are going well for me.
And right now I guess they are!
My daughter is recovering nicely.
My new granddaughter is thriving and gets cuter every day.
I spent all day Sunday and Sunday night with them. My son-in-law had to work his 24 hour shift.
Since it's still painful for my daughter to pick up her 2 year old boy it was my job to do all the lifting and hoisting of children. I loved every minute of my time there. Again I did laundry and made meals and told my daughter to nap. I played with my grandson, I sang, I read books, I said night time prayers with him. In the morning we had breakfast together and it was wonderful to see his sleepy little morning self with bed head. Truly I didn't want to leave.
But it was Monday morning and I knew my other two grandkids would be waiting for me
at 8:00am when I got home.
Also, I knew my house might be a little bit of a disaster when I got home after being gone for 24 hours. When I walked in the first thing I smelled was cat piss. What the??? Why do I smell cat piss??
A sink full of dishes, 3 loads of laundry and pissy floors...how does this happen in 24 hours??

Cooler weather is slowly coming our way. Thank You Jesus!
I've found the older I get the less I am able to tolerate any amount of humidity.
Him and I are making time for ourselves on most weekends by not being so available to babysit.
In the cool fall air it feels great to take a ride on our Harley to see the trees change color.
Our jobs keep us so busy and we've come to realize that we need our down time to recharge.
I used to feel guilty when I would say no to watching them or I wouldn't say no at all and then I'd be resentful. It's probably better to NOT be resentful when watching one's grandchildren.

Anyway...I'm feeling good, I'm feeling happy. I come alive in the colder weather.
I'm not so excited about sweater weather and boots. I'm more excited that I won't be sweating anymore. Well...maybe not AS sweaty anyway.

Sometimes I write a post and don't know how to close it up nicely.
Like this one.
My life is ordinary and regular and amazing and God is with me through it all.
HE answers my prayers and shows me HIS glory in everyday things like nature and sunsets and newborn grandkids.
I am always thankful and grateful to HIM for everything I do and have in this life.
I hope you too know the love of God and experience HIS grace and peace in your life.

Thanks for reading,
Love, Lolly

The new normal

I've been at my daughters house off and on for about 2 weeks now.
We started taking turns staying with her overnight even before the baby was born.
Her blood pressure would be so high at night that it scared us all.
We were all so worried about her having a possible stroke.
She was ordered to bed and that's hard to do when you have an active 2 year old in the house.
So between us and her mother in law we divided the babysitting duties.
When it was my (our) turn my husband would play with and entertain our two year old grandson,  whilst I cared for our grown daughter.
I did dishes, made meals, took out the garbage and recycles, washed, dried and folded laundry.
I changed his poopy diapers, picked up his toys strewn from one end of the house to the other and slept on the floor of his bedroom while he cried through the night for his momma.
Her mother in law (the big jerk) didn't lift a finger when it was her turn other than change his diapers, feed him and put him to bed.
I showed up for my shift on Friday night at 6:00pm after a full day with our other two grand kids.
I found a sink full of dirty dishes, full garbage cans and an explosion of toys everywhere.
All she said was "Bye" and the door slammed behind her.
Tsk...

Since our daughter had that emergency C-section she's been on light duty.
She lost a lot of blood.
The hospital wanted to do a blood transfusion but my daughter and her husband opted to try iron pills and a high iron diet to up her red blood cells. Idiots.
She feels the full brunt of her decision today I can tell you.
She has a had a headache almost constant for two weeks. Her skin color is waxy and pale. She's got a stomach ache from the iron, too many pain killers and then on top of that she is constipated too.
She has no appetite, is getting little sleep due to the presence of the new baby and is still attempting to breast feed. She feels guilty that she can't be active with her two year old son.
She cries. From the hormones, from being tired, from feeling ill, from the OB telling them that they can have no more babies.
After what she's been thru, I find it hard to believe that she would want anymore.
I keep telling her to try and see the wonder of it all, the miracle of it all.
She agrees with me that she should be grateful, and says she is trying to find the joy but she is still sad about the situation.

Her daughter is a dream baby. Undemanding..only crying when hungry or occasionally when her diaper is being changed. She was even quiet during her first bath.
She looks around with those beautiful blue newborn eyes all dreamy like. A perfect rosebud mouth.
Teeny tiny perfect little hands and feet. She is perfectly adorable.
I'm hoping that as the weeks progress and my daughter's strength returns to normal she'll be able to see all of the wonders of this perfect little human being.

We're back to taking turns babysitting on the next few weekends. Her husband has to go to work for a few days next week, so I'll be spending the night there this coming Saturday.
I'm looking forward to it.
To tell you the truth, it feels good to be needed. It feels good to do her dishes and laundry, to tell her to go take a nap, to make lunch and dinner for her, to help her out with the kids.
For now, this is our new normal. I'll take the inconvenience of it and be glad of it.
Because it means they both survived a scary delivery. It easily could have had a very different ending.

Thank You Jesus for listening to all of our prayers.
Thank You Jesus for favors granted.
I am feeling very blessed indeed.

Delaney Rey you're loved more than you will ever know!

Grandchild #4

We have a new grandaughter.
Her birth story is long and difficult and scary.
Along with the Preeclampsia our daughter had Placenta Accreta.
Look it up. Scary, scary shit.
An emergency c-section was done.
He blood pressure went sky high and for a while her kidneys were not working correctly.
She may still need a blood transfusion.
Her hemoglobin needs to do some serious recovery work in order to avoid it.
She did not get a hysterectomy but was told she can no longer have anymore children.
She's been in the hospital since Wednesday and won't be coming home til Sunday.
We are headed over to their house to spend a long weekend and to help care for their 2 year old grandson.
We are thankful and grateful and so very very blessed.
I'll post more when we get home.
Thanks for reading and if it's not too much to ask-
Could you all prayer for my daughter Madelyn and her daughter Delaney.
Love, Lolly

Swearing at GOD

Here's the latest installment on what's becoming my Blog of lamentations.

Tuesday at the OB's office, my pregnant daughter had high blood pressure.
They had her get some blood drawn. The results showed possible Preeclampsia.
They put her in the hospital to observe her for 24 hours then sent her home with an induction date two weeks from now. That will put her at 37 weeks pregnant. I'm ok with that.
I wasn't ok with Tuesday night and worrying about her and her unborn daughter.

In this family every generation has lost a child.
My grandmother lost a daughter who was 19 years old.
My Aunt lost a 3 day old newborn daughter.
My mother lost my sister when my sister was 47 years old.
I lost my own daughter at birth...stillborn.

When my daughter called and said that she had possible Preeclampsia and was going to the hospital I sort of panicked. I felt sick, nervous, worried.
I tried to pray but felt nothing but dread. Would one or both of them possibly die?
I wrung my hands. I paced the kitchen. I stared out the window.
I made Tacos with all of my excess energy and just kept dicing up veggies.
Please God..don't do this, I thought. Don't do this again. Not again.
I threw my knife into the sink and turned my eyes toward the kitchen ceiling,
Staring through it as if I could see right into Heaven and see God himself.
And I yelled out loud "You're NOT gonna do this to me again! You better fucking fix this!"


My three year old granddaughter has been constipated for 5 days.
C.O.N.S.T.I.P.A.T.E.D. !
The poor little deary....Granny has given her prune juice mixed with apple juice for 3 days.
Today when we had no movement yet I switched to straight up prune juice.
Then I went to the drug store and bought children's glycerin suppositories.
What happened when we got home was not a pretty sight.
I'm not sure who yelled louder... her or me.  No! Stop! NO!! Don't!! Stop it! NOOO!!
15 minutes later the only thing she had pooped out was the suppository. Great. Now what?
I decided to leave her be, I don't ordinarily worry so much about her BM's but she was straining and folded in half and severely uncomfortable with a tummy ache, she was clearly miserable, so I gave her a warm bath then offered her more juice and cartoons.
Four hours later the poor poor thing went potty and screamed and whimpered while she did it.

You'd think we would both be happy right now but, eh, not so much.

This morning our girl Chihuahua threw up on our bed. On our comforter.  Twice.
The third time she started retching I put her on the floor where she promptly threw up pink foam.
What the hell is this?
I Googled pink foam vomit dogs and found an explanation that I can live with.
Apparently when dogs throw up they can irritate the lining of their esophagus and that can cause blood tinged foamy vomit. As long as she had no other symptoms I figured she was ok.
She wanted breakfast and ate it all too. Other than being sleepy she does seem to be fine.
I prayed (without swearing) "Please don't let her be sick God."

Also this morning our other Chihuahua woke up and came into the living room with swelling near his eye socket.
His tooth is infected again! Yes...Again! He needs dental work to the tune of $600.
I thought I could maybe avoid having to pay for oral surgery for my 14 year old dog by giving him the Vet prescribed antibiotic.
So now I will be scheduling that procedure...I'm worried that he will die during surgery because of his advanced age.
Please God, don't let him die.


I wonder if God listens to me all day long.
Does He listen while I beg him to not take another child from this family?
Does He listen as I swear at Him through the ceiling?
Doe He listen as I yell at an unwell toddler to PLEASE POOP!
Does He listen as I pray to Him to not let my dogs die?
Is He irritated that I swear at Him one minute then pray for favors the next??

It's been a long week so far and it's only Thursday.
I apologize for always complaining on this blog.
Apparently it is where I do my best processing.
I'll keep updating as life progresses around here.
As always, Thanks for reading.
Love, Lolly

What I lost and then found

My hard drive has been replaced.
$260.00 later and my lap top works again.
I use the term my lap top loosely.
MY  lap top is essentially gone. Not essentially. It IS gone.
I had pictures of our kids and grandkids on my lap top.
Vacations and holidays, birthdays and Harley rides.
The computer guy promised me that he would back up my pics before they switched out the hard drive. He only saved 4 years worth.  4 years of pictures are completely gone. Vanished.
My videos of the grandkids are gone.
Most of my music is also gone. ITunes makes it easy to recover the songs I downloaded thru their app. But all of the other CD's that I've burned over the years are gone.

When I turned on this lap top after we got it home, the first thing I did was cry.
It was, IS, so empty.  No apps, no icons, no favorites, nothing...basically it's.......empty.
I guess I thought it was going to be just like it was but I was sorely mistaken.
I was shocked at it's emptiness. I sat staring at it dumbfounded.
When I checked for the file that the computer guy said was holding all of my saved pictures I was initially happy. Phew! He saved them!
Until I looked at the date of the last file and noticed it said 2012.
2012!?!?  It's 2016! Where are 4 years of pictures??
And right then, for real, I wanted to throw up.
I felt betrayed. Didn't he say he had saved them all? Yes, he did say that.
I closed the lid of this foreign dumb stupid lap top, drank 2 glasses of wine and went to bed.

In the morning, I had no joy about opening this lap top up. Why bother? I thought. It felt like a chore. The fun was gone. My stuff was gone.
I felt bad for being attached to a stupid computer.
Or I felt stupid for being attached to a bad computer.
Whatever...I don't know.

"We need to reinstall the firewall" my husband said. So we did that.
My son helped by reinstalling some of my apps... Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram.
When I tried to print out a copy of the firewall protection I realized that I had no printer connected.
Where in the world did we put that CD that would restore my printer??
I found it by accident in a pile of music CD's. What are the odds that I would find that exact CD for the printer in a pile of old music CD'S??

It was then that I started to notice that I was pouting. Wanting to cry and rail at what I had lost.
What had I actually lost? Pictures? Videos? Music?  A computer?
Could I not find a way to put this in perspective?
Compared to some people I had it made.
I had simply taken the credit card and made an appointment to have my lap top fixed.
No hardship, no deciding if we should buy groceries or pay rent or fix my lap top.
4 years of pictures were actually saved. All of my music on ITunes was saved. That's 173 songs!
I found that restore disc for the printer by mistake. The firewall went in with out a hitch.
I knew all of my app passwords but one. So I only had to come up with one new one.
(Is it just me or is it hard for you guys to think up new passwords too??)

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I friend I've known since kindergarten was involved in a severe car accident 5 days ago. She's been in a coma since the accident.
On day three of her coma, her 16 year old disabled daughter died unexpectedly.
There are 3 more disabled siblings at home.  Do I really want to cry about pictures missing from my computer?

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My son went on a solitary vacation. Rock climbing, hiking and camping.
By himself.
I hugged him when he left and asked him to please be careful.
He slipped on some loose gravel while hiking and strained his Achilles tendon and had to come home a day early. If he had stayed he would have been caught in the flooding rains that engulfed the campground where he had been staying.
Slipping on loose gravel while hiking bluffs could have been....I shudder to think about it.
Flooding rains could have washed away his car, him, his supplies...

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I realized that while I was sitting here lamenting my newly fixed computer, 3 people that I knew had been affected by life altering scenarios.
In 4 weeks I'll have a new granddaughter. My other 3 grandkids are thriving.
Him and I are enjoying doing things by ourselves-riding our Harley, taking pictures, watching movies, walking our dogs.
My son did not slip off that bluff nor get caught in that flooding rain.
No one in my family has been involved in a car accident. There have been no deaths.
Can I , should I, still complain about lost pictures and music?
Suddenly I found myself ashamed to be complaining or pouting or even sad.

There are so many things to be thankful for on a daily basis.
I need to be careful lest I forget this and worry over the loss of stuff.

I'm happy to be back. I've missed you girls.

As always, Thanks for reading,
Love, Lolly