by Sarah | Jul 30, 2009 | All About Me
It’s starts so simple, a few words exchanged on a message board, a comment on a blog. Something simple with friendly intentions.
In the midst of an innocent hello, a moment of similarity erupts – a connection is made.
The comment turns into an email exchange. A similar taste in art,
Movies,
Music…
You start to talk more, the emails become IM’s and you find yourself chatting well into the night.
That one simple connection, the moment you hit enter, it changed your life without any such intent.
She became so much more, so much a part of your life. You have yet to shake hands, to exchange that long-awaited hug, to embrace the person that has become your dearest friend.
You know all of her children, their birthdays, their quirks. You know that every time you call each other someone’s child will be in the background screaming because they are just evil that way.
She is the first person your husband calls after your surgery (or is SUPPOSED to call), the first person you think of when something good or bad happens. She’s become a part of you, a part of your heart, a part of your soul.
You cry together, you laugh together, you have private jokes.
Connected by cables and wires, phone lines, cell lines, modems…but most importantly you are connected by the heart.
You know she’s your sister by your shared traits, by your differences – and by your honesty.
There is nothing like a digital sisterhood, it starts more honest and innocent, without the nerves of meeting a stranger in the park. This person you’ve reached out with a kind hello to someone you’ve seen around – you’ve read their words and glimpsed into their world.
The connection may never become deep and true, abiding like a close friend – but you will always be connected.
And once in a while you will get lucky and get a friendship like the one I described above – the one that is a part of my life. A connection I never could have made without the cables and wires…it is how we met, it is how we will remain close, best friends….
Sisters.
Dedicated to my best friend, my sister of my heart…Jess. Love you, chica.
I was inspired to write this for The Sister Project – as a chance to win a sponsorship to the Type A Mom Conference. Whether I win or not, this post is from the heart…and if I could I would win the sponsorship for her instead…
by Sarah | Jul 24, 2009 | All About Family, All About Home, All About Me
For those of you living in a cave…this weekend is the big BlogHer party just a few hours away from me in Chicago. I made the choice not to go back when tickets were available and I had the cash…and now that neither are available I’m sort of regretting that decision. But, I’ve found plenty of ways to beat those blues…
1) This post itself. It’s entered me for a chance to win a $1oo sponsorship from Cozi! They’re sponsoring 15 moms (with the highest comments…so please make sure to say something!) who are missing the big weekend with $100! This would help me afford the technology to improve my webmag, so I so need it!!
2) It turns out I’m so not alone. There are tons of parties going on across the blogosphere. I’ve found 4 of them and added their links to my side bar! Check them all out! Some started last night, some tonight…join in the fun!!
3) I may have a chance to see some of my Indy girls that are home as well…if we can coordinate it!
4) It looks like the weather is finally looking up. Maybe I can finally get the kids out of the house!!
5) My house cleaning is close to compete (only my kitchen and bathroom need major overhauls now)…so I can sit back and just do maintenance cleaning this weekend.
6) I can spend some time seeing just how easy it is to adapt my Cozi account to my Home Management Notebook.
7) I get to do some back-to-school shopping for my oldest. It’s hard to believe that his school starts in 2.5 weeks!
8) I may get some time to myself, too. I have a gift card to JoAnn’s that I got for my birthday to spend…and it’s burning a hole in my pocket!
9) I’m hoping that our potty training journey is just about done. I’ve been trying some advice I got – so I hope it works better than any other I’ve gotten.
10) It’s time to Dave Ramsey it…Total Money Makeover. So I shouldn’t be out in a hotel spending too much money on food and drinks anyway…so it’s all for the better that this homebody is home!!!
I hope you’re weekend is great, and I hope to be back with picutres from our cookout last weekend (croquet! So long since I’ve played!!), and other assorted posts in between all the things I hope to do this weekend!!
*********
For those coming here for the parties – let me introduce myself!
I’m Sarah, of Casa de Perfect. I’ve been blogging for almost two years now!
My hubby, Archie and I are the parents of 3 great kids.
Brandon (10) is neurotypical and in 5th grade.
Riley (3.5) is mildly autistic and has RSS. She’s in special needs preschool.
Angel (2.5) has CF, severe truncal hypotonia, dysphagia, tibial torsion, sensory disoroder, and anger issues.
Every day we redefine ourselves, our lives, and our definition of perfect. We hope we can redefine yours, too.
Here’s to living life beyond our labels…and to redefining perfect for everyone.
by Sarah | Jul 19, 2009 | All About Me, Weekly Winners
Weekly Winners is the brainchild of the wonderfully Sarcastic Mom, Lotus
Pictures from the week of 7/12/09-7/18/09
This week was busy with cleaning (I’m sparing you those pictures for now), a rebirth of my jewelry making, and ended on a very high note with my brithday!
First, a sampling of pictures from jewelry night and just a day in our yard.
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Then a series of pictures I’ve taken of the sky during the week. One of my favorite activities.
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And last, but not least, my birthday! Archie took me to The Melting Pot. It was wonderful and amazing and he didn’t balk at me taking in my camera. I’d say about 90% of these are straight out of the camera…it was delicious and we had a ton of fun!!! Oh, and the picture of the back of my head was to show off the hair it took me an hour and a half to style 😀 And no, it’s not time to cut it yet.
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by Sarah | Jul 18, 2009 | All About Me
The year was 1990. On the jukebox were some fav’s: “What it Takes”, “All I Wanna Do”, and “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” My dad and brother were off looking at colleges for the weekend, so my mom dragged me kicking and screaming (really) to go to her good friends campground (yes, that is a pic from the actual place). I hated her friends son, and really…a campground? Like, totally GAH-ROSS!!
Little did I know…that little campground in Franklinville, NY would come to mean everything. I would meet my best friend that would be one of the two people that helped me survive middle school…and that that best friend would be related to that boy I hated so much. It would become so important that I would BEG my parents to buy a camper and they did – on my birthday that year (appropriate as today is my birthday…)!!
I remember everything – and if I don’t, we kept records that remind me of little things I forgot. I have tons of posts I could fill with the memories, but the one that stuck with me tonight and brought it all up again (it has been close to my memory a lot lately as that friend just found me again on FaceBook:D)….was the campfires.
Every night, I mean we were camping, the adults would make a campfire. We would be off playing, not really allowed in the circle where the adults spoke of adult things. We ran and played until “the light went out” and then it was back to whomever’s camper we were sleeping in that night (because really, I think EVERY night was a sleepover there).
Inside the camper (or tent) we’d play rummy, gorge on Doritos and Hot Cocoa, laughing our butts off. Outside of our laughter I remember the adults, still circled around the fire, laughing themselves. We were allowed into the circle for brief spurts, but it always reverted to adult time, adult conversation…and we’d meander back to our game of Rummy.
Tonight it hit me hard that I am now in the adult circle. There is no campfire, but the adults are circled around. Conversations flow. Kids wander in, only to take off again into the night until curfew. Our neighborhood is enclosed, and they’re alwys close…but they are relegated to the night…and I am now among those keeping warm in sweaters and shooing off the children so we can get back to grown up discussion.
It happened too soon. I was never ready to let go of Rain, Rain and more Rain (what we ‘affectionately’ called the campground)…but we moved out of state and parents cancelled our seasonal site…and life moved on. I grew up…and life took a 360 many times over…
I wasn’t ready to let go of childhood when the years didn’t seem to pass so quick, but the summers sure did. When it seemed like I would never be like those crazy adults, or the women on the commercials that suddenly cater to ME and MY (not so) fine lines.
I’m not sad to be over 30 (again). I love my life and my kids.
But the little girl in me still longs for the summers at the cottage, the camper, the blizzards in winter, the life she once knew. She remembers them clearly and fondly. I didn’t have a bad childhood. I haven’t had a bad life, period. I miss the old days, but look forward to creating more old days for my kids…I just have to learn to live with sitting around the campfire – not in the camper with Doritos and Hot Cocoa.
by Sarah | Jun 6, 2009 | All About Me, Crap
On and off like clockwork, every six months, I look for you. I google you, your old screen name, your real name, your maiden name. I wonder how you are. I wonder where your life is now.
For a long time I never found you. Old journal entries, old youtube videos, but never anything recent.
Today I found you. Now and here and present. You’re on facebook. I stare at the picture of you and your husband and my heart breaks.
There are days that I miss you so terribly I cry. There are days that I’m so angry at myself for letting things fall apart the way they did. There are days that I’m furious with you for pushing us away.
We still talk about you…at times melancholy, and at times angry.
My heart aches and my mouse hovers over the ‘send message’ button. Even if I could push past my own pride, what would I say? It has been two years this month since things came to an end between us. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t easy. I still have a hole in my heart where you used to reside. It’s still an open wound, jagged and raw.
Do you think of us? Do you search for us? Do you miss us? Or did you just stop caring all together? Are we just a distant memory that annoys you?
I still wonder what happened. How such a friendship could crumble. Why you feared that WE would be mad at the path your life took? Of all people. Why you felt that you couldn’t trust us with the truth. Why we didn’t search for it sooner. Could things have ended differently if we’d spoken up months before we did? Or if we’d just remained blindly ignorant and let things totally slide by.
I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Was our friendship real? If it was, how could it end like that?
by Sarah | May 15, 2009 | All About Me, Crap
I used to hear stories of women that claimed they didn’t know they were pregnant and gave birth thinking they had heartburn or gastritis. I thought they were insane. How could you NOT know? When I was pregnant with my first I had symptoms before I knew. With my second it took a couple weeks to sink in, but I knew. I got HUGE with my first, but only had a bump for my second.Â
So I thought all these women were nuts.
Then it happened to me.
When Riley was born we agreed that was it. Two was our limit. We were done, finito, kaput. I was breastfeeding, had the pill and we took…other precautions. At no time was there less than 3 forms of birth control happening.
When Riley was 4 months old her reflux came to the forefront, as did her FTT. I stopped breastfeeding and switched to formula in a desperate attempt to have her gain weight (what a joke…but that’s a diferent story).Â
All of the health care visits for Riley kept me busy. Not to mention working nights waitressing. I was busy, tired, and not paying much attention.
In December I wrote the following on my LiveJournal entry:
I feel pregnant still/again. Nearly 100% sure I’m not…because it would be almost physically impossible to be…and if I was, I’d be about 6 months along right now and a bit bigger than I am…so I think I have another cyst. Probably pretty nasty too, because when I was taking a bath the other night I realized one side of my abdomen is relatively solid. There’s definitely something in there. I’m still 10 lbs. above pre-preggers weight and I don’t eat a ton…I eat like I always have. My boobs are still a cup size over pre-preggers and leaking…and I’m moody as Hell…I’ve started getting the sharp pains around my ovary area that I got when I had my last one…but they aren’t as frequent.
So what did I do? Nothing.Â
January came around and about mid-month my eyes flew open at 5:30AM. Mind you, I am nowhere near a morning person – if I DO Wake up at that time I’m usually half-dead. But no, that day I woke up WIDE awake. I placed my hand on my stomach and said, “What the hell?” It felt like a baby kicking.Â
So what did I do? Blew it off as gas.
It was another TWO WEEKS before I randomly picked up a pregnancy test at the grocery store for kicks. Because really…there was NO WAY I was pregnant! Right?
Test came up positive. I freaked. Bawling my eyes out crying. All the reasons we could NOT have another kid racing through my head I called Archie and asked him to come home. Despite my protests that I couldnt tell him over the phone, he forced it out of me and was home 20 minutes later.Â
I still didn’t believe it. I called the doctor’s office and my wonderful nurse (LOVE her!) told me to come in first thing in the morning and she’d draw the blood. I had to wait another 24 hours but my wonderful nurse (again, LOVE her) called me before they even opened to let me know she’d snuck a peak into the computers pre-paperwork and gotten my results. I was in fact pregnant. She then said…
“Let me see if we can get schedule you in about 4 weeks out. By these numbers I’d say you’re very early, about 4 weeks.”
My response was immediate:
“No. You don’t understand. My FIRST symptom was the baby kicking! I think I’m WAY beyond 4 weeks.”
In shock she agreed that we had to get in for an ultrasound ASAP.Â
4 days later I found out the sex of the baby…on her first ultrasound.Â
I was 23 weeks.Â
She was born at 36 weeks.
The doctor said I set a speed record for him in pregnancies.
In my defense, after this visit my pregnancy did far more than set a speed record. It was like the minute my pregnancy was confirmed my body took it as a big thumbs up to REALLY let loose.
I had SEVERE pain (Pubic Symphysis Diastasis) – so bad I couldn’t roll over in bed at night. I blew up and looked pregnant within a week (I hadn’t up until then). I was put on modified bed rest within a month of my ultrasound – true bedrest when I went into pre-term labor at 35 weeks (lifted @36 weeks). It became almost a nightmare once I knew I was pregnant…
But for 23 weeks I didn’t know I was pregnant!
It’s starts so simple, a few words exchanged on a message board, a comment on a blog. Something simple with friendly intentions. 
Connected by cables and wires, phone lines, cell lines, modems…but most importantly you are connected by the heart.