“The Shack” by Paul Young

As a book whore, I often have trouble truly giving a book a good, solid review.  Even on my “Book Whore” page here, any ratings that I’ve given a book that has been solidly crap (as in not worth the rating), they get a star, but otherwise I’ve been giving a 9 or 10.  It is rare that a book gets a 6 or 7, nor do I give them 3 or 4s.  It’s either high, or nothing.

And this is no different!  The Shack is … well, it’s an amazing book.  It really made me laugh, cry and weep uncontrollably at points.  I’m not even sure how to describe the book without giving the really good parts away.

A man, Mack, suffers a tragedy in his family that starts him on a downward spiral of depression, understandably, when a note, seeming from God, comes and smashes him out of his stupor and on a path to a different life.  But he has to take the step forward, with an immense amount of courage that often fails us all, and go out on that limb to see if it is really God calling him.  When he does find out who wrote the note, he embarks on an amazing journey to discover about himself, his ideals about religious life, his belief in God and come face-to-face with the tragedy that pulled him from his comfort zone.

I am a fairly religious person, but as a feminist I tend to question everything to the nuts.  Some call it doubting Thomas, and I say screw that, I’m a woman, I’m sick of having a man’s religious ideals shoved down my throat as the absolute truth of a heavenly being and I’ll decide thankyouverymuch.  I found myself captured by the route the author took and the surprises that came along with it floored me.  How did he actually imagine all this?  Is it theological?  It’s amazing and seems much more true than Dogma or even scripture, but you won’t catch me worshiping his words as true, no worries.

I am Christian, Catholic actually and I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone who is even remotely curious about God.  You don’t have to be religious to enjoy this book, you can just be run-of-the-mill Catholic feminist and still call this book a new favourite.

I went to Amazon to see if I could get a direct link to the picture and got sucked into the ratings.  Of course there are a bazillion great ratings, but what struck me was the few that were of the ‘1 star’ rating.  Then I read them, and it absolutely explained everything.  Why would you pick up an obviously religious book (read the back cover, or inside cover people, when a book mentions a lot of God, it tends to be ‘religious) if you are an atheist?  I had assumed that would be an obvious thing to not do if you don’t believe God exists, to pick up a book about a man’s experience with God.  Most of the replies were from atheist persons who swore that their opinions had nothing to do with their atheism.  Uh, yeah right, I’m going to pick up a book on the joys of worshiping Satan and then be completely able to go give it an unbiased review?  Uh no, even I’m not that understanding.  The other ones that gave it a bad review were based upon scripture as truth and that what Mr. Young wrote was heretical or something.  Uh, people?  FICTION, read it again, FICTION.  Like Angels and Demons, like Davinci Code, like The Golden Compass … FICTION!  I hate all caps, but I think it may get the point across at how dumb people can be to take a fictional book, albeit based on religion, and be able to say that the author is trying to lure people from the truth of scripture because he created a work of fiction that disagrees with that.  What?  Seriously people … let me say it again… fiction.

Anyway, I’ll be buying it soon enough.  I know, I know, *gasp* the horrors.  I vowed that I wouldn’t be buying many books because I would fill a house if I could, because I tend to reread them, but this one is definitely worth it.

I’ve been avoiding you

I’ve been avoiding you like the plague.  I’ve not even had an inkling to post.  And it’s not as if we haven’t had anything happening, or I haven’t found anything interesting to post about, I have just been avoiding it.  I still don’t know why.  Bullet points from here on in.

• School is almost over for us. I still don’t have a final date but if I have more days like this week we won’t get done until the end of June.
• This week has been crazy busy. We arrived back home from being away (obviously) and the next day I had our Homeschooling facilitator coming by for our last meeting (and she told me she’d take me back in a heartbeat because I’m super organized for her and had an awesome first year, GO ME!), the furnace guys showed up at 8:08 a.m. to install our brand new, spankin’ shiny, super quiet furnace, my mom came out in the afternoon and I had a ½ hour long interview phone call from our Canadian Bone Marrow transplant registry telling me I am a potential match, and we finally got our adoption papers.  See?! Lots to blog about, but I just couldn’t write it all strangely enough.  I could write about the weekend:
  • I went on a retreat for Deacon wives that went off exactly the way I expected.  Highly boring, extremely uneventful, largely unhelpful, but still good because I got some great socializing in.  The entire weekend was a spiritual one, and they are not my gig, I don’t like to get all ethereal about my spirituality in order to build it.  In fact, I’m more likely to sit in the corner with a quiet book on spirituality, and question everything, and get a whole lot more than I did about this weekend.  To top it off, I’ve been asked to write a piece about it for the newsletter and about how great it is and how other women missed out for not coming… oh yeah, it’s a good thing I’m a fiction writer by nature.
• I could write about the idea of the bone marrow transplant.
  • Oh man, I’m seriously excited, and I can’t help but think people don’t want me to do it.  The response I got was negative: i.e. you know that really hurts, right (dh), that’s a lot of work, don’t you think? (also dh).  Most other people are excited for me, but I have a feeling, the selfish bugger sees very little in sincere, unrequested generosity that does not seek any compensation of any sort.  He would ask they reimburse for our monies and time spent if I didn’t call him callous for it.  He’s very strange that way.  I think he sees it as a potential inconveniance for himself as he would have to watch the kids while the testing and then procedure happens.  It’ll happen regardless of his ideals, as long as I’m the best match that is.  I go for further testing on June 8th.
• I could write about Sweet Pea and how he’s done so well on this iron.
  • I am so hoping this is the end of this seizure business.  He’s been on the iron supplement for 2 weeks solidly (and then some) and has even gotten so he likes the medicine time and sits nicely for it.  It’s quite cute.  We’ve also got him taking it with juice instead of pop, which has eased my mind a lot.  I didn’t want the excess sugar, and although the juice has sugar, it has nutrients too.  He has had one tantrum spell that he passed out slightly from, but has not had one since (last Saturday I think?).
• I could write about the renovations as of late.
  • We had our furnace installed on Wednesday and it is amazing.  Yes, I am absolutely thrilled about a furnace, but it is unreal how much more quiet the new furnace is.  I am a realist and I know damn well that quiet doesn’t last forever.  In fact it is but a few short years that my furnace will be this quiet, but I’ll take it now knowing that even when the noise does increase it’ll still be quieter than our 30 year old beast we had in there.  Today we had our attic insulated with that spray in crap.  That’ll be nice.
• I could write about our adoption.
  • I finally got our paperwork after a screw up with our worker.  Yeah, my nice guy screwed up and forgot to send us our file.  So we’ve been delayed, but we don’t mind because we’re going into this one with a highly different mind.  We’re not as frantic for some reason. I still have this idea that I want 8 kids, but I’ll just chip away at that Mountain one kid at a time .  So I have a medical to schedule, a criminal record check to do, a child protective system check, a wad of paperwork to fill out and then we can do the homestudy scheduling.  The paperwork this time ’round should be about 2 – 3 weeks tops and then we’ll be wait-listed for a homestudy (about 6 weeks to 3 months).   I have decided that I’m not keeping mom in the loop intentionally this time.  She can very well come read this as she has the link but I don’t want her getting as antsy as she did last time.  She was rather offended really by the wait, but then again, she is not the most patient person I know.

Ok shit that’s a long one and my wrist is screaming at me (yes it’s still injured, and no, I’m not going to see a doctor about it).  I’m sure there’s more I could write about, but I’m not gonna.

Bullets baby, bullets

No, I’m not sending out a plea to other wives out there to share their ammo, although occasionally that is tempting.  No, bullets is all I’ve got to say lately.

• I took a bit of a forced hiatus here.  I have injured my wrist, without knowing how and typing has become a bit painful, although it is slowly healing.  I just have to learn not to toss around the 21 lb babe living in our midst in order to get it to heal.  I wish I knew what was wrong (and no I don’t believe in going to a doctor to have them tell me to ice/heat it off and on with ibuprofen for swelling and pain).
• Homeschooling is slowly winding down.  I haven’t chosen an official final date, but I have in mind how many weeks we have left and we are kind of shooting for that.  I’m finding myself frustrated though at the curriculum we chose.  The bloody books have 160 lessons in them for each grade which would mean we’d have to do at least a lesson a day.  Some of these lessons are large, and not easily understood.  On top of those lessons is quizzes, or assessments every 10 lessons or so.  So, lately I’ve taken to crossing off crap that is just useless repeating: like why does my astute grade 4′er have to add triple digits every other page still?
• I’ve been retreating into myself again lately.  Not wanting to go out at all, delving into books completely, so much so that I cry.  Oh, and crying easily lately too is a bit frustrating.  I cried my eyes out, sobbing in fact, when I read that Tori girl was murdered.  I am still utterly horrified at how it all turned out.  Anyway, that could be adding to my funk.
• I’ve been buried in Mount Laundry since our trips to the hospital with Sweet Pea.  I just can’t seem to get caught up.  Which isn’t great considering we’re leaving tomorrow morning out of town.  I may be up until midnight, but at least I’ll have clean underwe#r.
• Speaking of Sweet Pea, he’s been about the same.  No seizures, but still having the temper tantrums and passing out.  He’s already gone through a bottle of the iron drops, and is thankfully fine to take them and has no side affects right now.  I’m just hoping that this is the miracle cure.  It’ll only be $40/month to keep him fine if this ends up working.
• My novel has still stalled.  Probably didn’t even know I was writing a novel (is? was? who knows) if you’ve not been here before.  I’ve got a few ideas, but I still don’t know where they lead and how it ends.  I’m stuck and I hate it.  I’ll get there again.  Soon enough.
• Our garage sale rocked.  Well, it was unusually fun and satisfying to rake in $320 and get rid of a ton of junk.  There is a few things left over, but we are going to just give those away (books to the library, etc).

My hand/wrist is super achy and tired, I’m off for the weekend.

A spoonful of sugar

Imagine you’ve been given a medicine you must take twice a day.  It’s not a lot.  Then you realize the doctors have lovingly given you a tin can to drink.  No, not a can to drink from, but an actual tin can.

Have you ever tasted iron in it’s medicinal form?  Yeah, go lick a tin can and take that ten times worse, then you have it.  This is what I have to give Sweet Pea twice a day.

Our pharmacist is usually wonderful, but the new guy didn’t tell us any hints about administering it, nor was there any warnings about mixing it.  I guess he assumes that everyone reads the pamphlets given and researches the missing information completely before giving the dosage.  Silly man.

The first dose, I did the assuming.  I assumed that any medicine specifically made for infants/toddlers or even kids would already be sweetened and mostly masked of taste, so I just popped it into his mouth and he swallowed with complete trust.  Then the faces started and he expelled all he had just eaten within 10 minutes.  I didn’t give a second dosage as I don’t want to risk overdosing whatsoever (did you know you can die from too much iron?).  The next dosage in the morning didn’t go much better.  I gave it to him in orange juice and it went just as poorly as the original one.

With that day’s appointments we asked the neurologist about administering the increased dosage as we were already having a heckuva time getting him to take the low one.  His nurse went and asked the on-site pharmacist who said that it should never be mixed with milk as the body will not absorb it.  Nice to know that tidbit of information after the second dosage.  Also, you can use anything to try and sweeten it up.  There is an actual pharmacy bought thing, but we thought we’d try anything else.  Chocolate syrup, vanilla syrup, both caused gagging, and a huge fight to get them down, but he finally succumbed, probably knowing that I’m much more stubborn.

We were at the end of stuff we had in the house to give him with the exception of pop.  I wasn’t going to try it, and I don’t really know why as it’s no less/more sugary than the syrups.  Well crap, it worked.  He fought it a little because I know it tasted differently, but he didn’t gag and he drank it.  I’m just hoping it has the side affect that he learns to hate pop, wouldn’t that be a great bonus.  Root Beer and Pepsi, we pour a smidgen into a bowl, add the 2 ml of iron and suck it up with a syringe (sans needle) and he drinks it from there.

Pop.  Something we don’t let our kids have very often and we have to feed it to a child twice a day.  Oh joy.  He’s going to stop the seizures but he’ll be a diabetic.

Good news and bad news

Good news has always got to come first, as it usually softens the blow for the bad news.  Luckily the bad news isn’t horrible enough to need softening, but I’ll let out the good news first.

He does not have epilepsy.  WOOHOO!  I realize people are getting smarter about epilepsy, but there are still an enormous group in the world that will not hire a person with epilepsy, or basically continues to perpetuate the basic fear of epilepsy.  A ridiculous notion for sure, but reality, and I’m thankful that Sweet Pea doesn’t have to grow up with that stigma.  His EEG came back normal.

Strangely enough, that is also the bad news.  You see, with a diagnosis like epilepsy, we know what to do from there, it’s pretty clear cut (unless medication doesn’t help).  But since it isn’t epilepsy but a seizure disorder or another sort that cannot be completely controlled, it’s a guessing game from here on out.

The neurologist agrees with us that giving into the temper tantrums will create a behaviour pattern that will be harder in the long run to pull out of it.  He does believe that this will be a disorder he will grow out of, mainly because it is likely as he grows that he will find some other shitty way to tell us he is ultimately pissed right off.  It is likely that by 5 years of age, he will grow out of this.  We have another 3 years to go … oy.

What’s a little disturbing though is that if he continues to have these episodes, we must time them and instead of waiting until the 10 minute mark, we must call 911 by the 5 minute one.  So shit, you’re telling me that the other dr that said the under 10 minute seizures are ‘okay’ was full of shiester?  Dayum.

He has upped his iron dosage from 1ml w/15mg iron, twice a day to double that.  Has anyone tried to give iron to a toddler?  Well if you have any ideas how I can mask the taste without him gagging?  Because I then I have to get forceful (and sadly mean) in order to get him to consume it.  I’ve tried orange juice, chocolate syrup, and vanilla syrup.  It cannot be mixed with milk whatsoever.  I could try extra strong koolaid next and other juices, but I don’t want to run out of options fast and frankly starting my day, and his day, forcing his medicine down his throat isn’t pleasing at all.

If the seizures continue past a good amount of time with us actually getting the iron dosage in him, we may have to do things a little more drastic.  It seems there is a medicine that is fairly powerful that during the seizure (or just before, I’m not sure) you rub it either on the inside of the mouth, or insert it rectally (who the hell is going to be able to strip a convulsing kid?) and it will stop the seizure itself.  The way this doctor was telling me this gave me the distinct feeling that this isn’t how he wants to go at all, it almost sounded like he’s not a fan of the medication or something (maybe it’s incredibly strong?).

He’s sleeping upstairs, soundly, and is right back to normal, even with the 2 nights of seriously interrupted sleep.  I am relaxing with a cuppa joe, and about to read a book and finally get a moment of relaxation.

The system shocks me, yet pleases me

Ah, remember that naïvely blissful post from yesterday, all fruity, fluffy and sweetness because it was Mother’s Day.  Who knew that a few hours after that post I’d be shuffling Sweet Pea into the back of an ambulance again.

The tantrum started as any other.  He got in trouble for attempting to pull out his wipes from the container and then kicked out of his room.  It started a full on seizure as well.  I called to dh to come upstairs and I turned him on his side while dh started to time it.  The girls were right there watching the entire thing with tears in their eyes.  They kept saying they didn’t want him to die.

At the 10 minute mark I had thought he stopped until I picked him up and his muscles were still jerking (lesser amount) and his eyes and eyebrows were following the same pattern.  He actually stopped breathing at points in there (which was horrible to watch).  At our first ER trip the pediatrician told us that the 10 minute mark was the limit for him and at that point we should come back in.  So we called 911 and I laid Sweet Pea on the couch and moved tables knowing that the paramedics would need some room.

Their arrival time was amazing because we live so close to the garage, they got to our house 2 minutes after the call was placed, so they got to witness the tail end of the seizure.  It is night and day when it finally passes.  He passed completely out, most likely from pure exhaustion (they say it’s as if he had run a full marathon).  They put him on oxygen and asked a ton of questions while getting everything ready for transport.

The ride was uneventful as he stabilized completely and slept most of the way.  But it took at least half the ride for him to become completely lucid again and actually seeing things (focusing as opposed to staring out).  We got to the hospital at about 7:30 and there were no beds so we were sent to the waiting room, a separate one from the main because they wanted to still be able to watch him.  He was awake and wanting to wander a bit (it’s a children’s hospital so it has lots of stuff to do for kids), but still really wobbly, weak I guess.

Dh arrived about 20 minutes after I did after dropping off my girls at my mom and dad’s house.  Can I just step aside here and say to the world how thankful I am that I have a mom and dad here, within a short distance that I can go to for help.  It’s amazing and I am utterly grateful for it.  Anyway.  We waited about an hour in the waiting room and then got into a room.

We waited in that little 10X10 room for 7 hours total.  Of course we weren’t always alone as we had RNs come in to check his vitals and such.  At around 1:30′ish we finally saw the dr.  By this time we had been irritable, frustrated, annoyed, yet had instantly swung the other way when we heard in the hallway that some children were in an accident (car) and one even had airbag burns (*sniff*).  At some point before we saw our dr we realized that we were truly blessed, even if we had to wait, because we still have unbelievable access to medical care that 75% of the world doesn’t have.  That and we were not nearly as much an emergency as those poor screaming kids (whose piercing wails broke my heart).

The dr was amazing, as most pediatricians are I’m sure.  He got a very detailed history of what’s been going on, and even made us explain exactly what his arms and legs were doing, what the motion was.  I think he was actually trying to distinguish between a child having a temper tantrum and a child having a seizure (which saddens me that he has to press to find this out because it probably means some jackass went in there to waste his time with a non-seizure event).  He checked his reflexes (quite poor still), his ears, his eyes.  Then he talked to us, amazingly fast actually, about the idea of breath withholding and how with infants like this, it’s not a temper type withholding like a spoiled 3 year old that takes a big breath in and then holds it, it’s a complete exhale and then inability to inhale.  He then went on to say that the seizure itself isn’t wholly surprising from a child withholding breath.  At this point my heart sunk a little.  I was truly hoping that I hadn’t wasted 6 hours of mine, and his, time, as well as traumatized everyone with an ambulance ride just to hear that it’s all perfectly normal.  He told me that had he still been having the short seizures, they wouldn’t be as concerned, but because of the duration of this one, he was quite concerned.  15 minutes is far too long.  He feels that there is an anomaly ‘A’ that is in his brain that without the breath holding wouldn’t be an issue, but with the breath holding becomes seizures.  It seems he is hoping to find out what exactly that anomaly ‘A’ is in his brain.

They took blood from his little itty-bitty arm (amazing if you ask me) and tested his iron levels as anemia can actually trigger the breath-withholding from what he had read.  He then said that even if the levels come back fairly normal, he would still like to put him on a mild dosage of iron as he had read that about trials in India, they were showing positive effects from this (India? The man reads!).  He filled out some referral forms and put a rush on it for a neurologist.  He also called to make sure that he could get us in reasonably soon and was reassured that we could and also put a rush on an EEG.  He warned us that going through the regular channels (like our 2 month away pediatrician appointment) would take 6-8 weeks for an EEG.

We were released at 3:20 in the morning with a very alert child, although still exhausted.  I think he wanted to keep his big eyes open to make sure none of those RNs were going to come back with another needle.  It took another 30 minutes in the car for him to crash again and we were in bed by 4:30am.  We were so exhausted.  Dh had caught a short catnap around midnight, but I can’t sleep in strange places so I stayed awake and read my Harry Potter watching my men sleep on a lounge chair.

This morning the man was awake at 9am, and fine.  Pleasant, hungry, and almost back to his normal 20 month-old self.  He was just tired and needed cuddles occasionally.

Knowing that I would not last the day without a snooze I begged my daughters to quietly watch a movie while I shut all phones off and had a sleep while the kid did.  Man it revived me, but I missed an important phone call.  Probably a good thing though because I would’ve been a blubbering mess.  When I get tired, I get super weepy and hearing a lady on the other end of the phone tell me I have an appointment at 10:45 am tomorrow morning for an EEG followed by a 1:00 pm appointment with the neurologist would’ve put me into a big puddle onto the floor.  I feel like we might be finally close to an answer.  I feel like that amazing doctor went that extra mile for me.

Tomorrow is a big day for us though.  I can’t say it’s going to be pleasant as we have to have him sleep deprived for the testing.  The poor little bugger has to have a second night of horrid sleep.  We must keep him up tonight until 10 and then wake him up at 4 am and keep him awake until the appointment.  Have you ever had a child so sleep deprived not fall asleep in the car ride to somewhere?  I have to have my poor daughters try and keep this boy awake, even if it means irritating him enough to cry.  I only hope it doesn’t send him into more convulsions.

I will post again tomorrow because I’m sure my brain will be entirely overwhelmed with information or such.  I am still keeping my appointment with the pediatrician here until I’m informed not to (which I’ll ask tomorrow).  If any positive thoughts, or prayers could be spared, would ya please?

My mother’s day

I have no idea how mother’s day came to be, and truly I don’t care.  I don’t.  I just get to reap the rewards.  When I first became a mother, it was a bit surreal actually.  I held this screaming bundle of squid-like goo shortly after pushing her through canals I didn’t think would stretch like that and I then became part of an elite grouping.

Less than two years ago I journeyed a different path to become a mother again.  Yes, Sweet Pea is a handful, but a sweet boy who is extremely lucky to have 2 mothers thinking about him on this day.  I hope she’s holding up okay.  It’s a bit sad to me that one woman’s excruciating pain of separation is my mother’s day joy.

My dh has the pleasure of presenting a homily today.  Today of all days.  I’m a lucky one because I get to read it first.  Oh boy it’s a doozy.  Not only is he speaking on the gospel, but he is talking to and asking a blessing for the mothers today.  But what got me tearing up as I was reading it was when he put a multitude of definitions of ‘mother’ in there.  He didn’t just say ‘mothers’ he said a mother is: and then went on to say each ‘category’ if you will.  Given birth, adopted, step-mother, mother-in-law, mother’s to those in heaven, mothers to be, foster mothers.  It was beautiful.

Happy Mother’s Day out there.  Hope your day is as great as mine is going to be since I get to spend mine with my mom, my mother-in-law, my grandmothers and all those people that come with it.

Garage sale geared

Read: Oh my cod we have a lot of junk other people may pay money for.  Antlers anyone?  How about partially working cd player that doesn’t play cds?  Text books from my university days?  No?

Oh boy, it’s almost garbage sale season.  I truly mean garbage sale because often what comes from a garage sale is the garbage someone else doesn’t want to keep.

In ten days, I am going to embark on a journey to convince people driving by to stop by my house to eyeball the junk I have and buy it all up.  We’ve been hauling shit up from our basement for days now.  I tease that it’s all junk, but it’s not, it’s just a lot of stuff that we haven’t used for years.

I can’t say I love the idea of spending an entire Saturday sitting outside cursing people for trying to haggle over a 5¢ price tag, but I do relish the thought of all that stuff being permanently out of the house.

My dh worked the rigs 6 years ago.  He had done it for a long time before that so the accumulation of work clothes (i.e. coveralls) was pretty large.  He is selling 6 pairs … yes six pairs and he still have 4 left (2 insulated, 1 clean pair, 1 auto repair ones).  I am certainly amazed that he went that far, but wait, there’s more.  Hunting clothes.  Oh yeah, he was on a roll baby.  The man is a hunting maniac and has different clothing sets (camo) with various patterns but he went through it and is selling a ton of stuff!  But hey, before you think I’m the miser not willing to part with anything, I have 5 boxes of books I’m selling.  Yes, the boxes aren’t huge but still, there’s probably a couple of dozen books.

I think we’re reaching a point where we just don’t want the crap in our house.  Dh is a serious pack rat, but I am not, so while I easily give things away or toss them, he tends to hold onto them.  Which means our basement becomes a haven for the items we never use just for the sake of ‘just in case’.  When I finally convinced him to really think about every item he has and whether or not he’s holding onto the item for its purpose or its relished memories, he realized that 6 pairs of coveralls might be a bit much.  He let go of a lot that he was holding onto, especially with an industry he used to love, make a lot of money at, and, because we’re in Alberta, is a major industry always in need of good workers.  I think he always felt he could use that as back-up in case his current job ever fell through.

Anyways, he seems to have let go of a lot of things, and hopefully we can extract some cash from people just to haul it all away.  For now though, we still have to take the walk down memory lane to price all the shit.  Anyone want to volunteer?  Hell if I know how much the stuff should be.