Incoherent Scribblings

Sea World
Originally uploaded by blondelibrarian

Last Tuesday I picked Sissy and Neecy up from the San Antonio International airport and the long-awaited Spring Break Birthday visit began.

Neecy was practically bouncing when I found them at baggage claim. It was her first flight and she had been treated like a princess complete with extra cookies and a personal note from the pilot welcoming her aboard. Needless to say, she loved it.

Sissy and Neecy’s flight arrived in the middle of the afternoon on Tuesday so after we found our hotel and got settled in we had time to head down to the Riverwalk and San Antonio’s most famous landmark… The Alamo. We ate Mexican food outside while drinking margaritas (Neecy had a virgin one) and after the sun went down we took a “cruise” on the river and learned about San Antonio.

On Wednesday we drove to Corpus Christi for the sole purpose of showing Neecy her first “big water.” (Big water is how I refer to any type of water that continues to the horizon when you look at it. This includes, but is not limited to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as well as the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Michigan) Neecy was pretty impressed with the big water and even though it was windy and only in the low 70s insisted that she be allowed to swim in the “ocean.” After she changed into her swimming suit and splashed around in the water for a while we collected sea shells on the beach.

Ever since she had arrived on Tuesday Neecy kept reminding me that I had promised her a surprise when she got to Texas. I don’t ever remember promising her such a thing, but she sure got her surprise on Thursday when Sissy and I announced we would be visiting a boring war memorial but then pulled into the parking lot of Sea World San Antonio instead!

I can barely even begin to describe how much fun we had at Sea World. It was definitely the highlight of our trip. We saw all the animals you associate with Sea World (dolphins and killer whales) and some that you might not (sharks, sea lions, otters, and penguins). We caught a couple of fantastic shows and rode some rides.

Since it was Spring Break the lines were long but the expression on Neecy’s face when Sissy and I took her on her first roller coaster ride was worth every penny we spent and every minute we had to wait.

We drove back to West Texas Town on Thursday night and I got pulled over for speeding by the Texas Highway Patrol about 20 miles outside of town. It was late (as in 1:00 am) and when I told the patrolman we had been on the road for almost 5 hours he took pity on me and my exhausted passengers and let me off with a warning.

Friday was a day of semi-rest as all three of us slept in until about 11:00 am. After we got up we took a tour of West Texas Town and did a little shopping. We then made spaghetti before getting ready to go to a Star Party at the McDonald Observatory later that night. The Star Party was fun and educational and Neecy got to look through a telescope and see the Moon, Saturn, and the Orion Nebula.

On Saturday we visited Big Bend National Park and stopped at ghost town on our way home. There is a lot to do at the park, but Sissy, Neecy, and I were content with a sightseeing tour of the park from the car and stopping every once in a while to take photos of the beautiful desert mountains.

It rained on Sunday, but that was OK as we slept in and then spent the afternoon in the car on the way back to San Antonio so Sissy and Neecy could catch their flight back to Iowa early Monday morning.

We had such a good time and crammed so much into a week that I seriously think I need a vacation to recover from my vacation!

(P.S. I will be uploading more pictures from the trip on Flickr soon.)

Here is this week’s progress on “Harvest Witch.” As you can see, Harvey now has a kitty to keep her company.

This will probably be my only post for the week since tomorrow I am going to the airport to pick up Sissy and my niece for their Spring Break/Birthday visit to Texas!

When I moved down here in September, I promised my niece that she was welcome to visit anytime. Although my niece thought that meant over the summer, somewhere along Christmastime Sissy and I decided that a March visit to Texas might be more enjoyable than an August one. After all, Iowa is still cold and lots of times snowy in March and in August Texas is hot, hot, hot!!! In addition to that, my niece’s birthday just so happens to be in March so Sissy and I agreed that a Spring Break/Birthday trip would be a nice present.

Sissy was sick and in the hospital when we first began planning this trip but we decided that one way or another, my niece was coming to Texas in March. I started looking into all the details about air travel for unaccompanied children, but when it was actually time to make the reservations Sissy was healthy enough to travel, so they are both coming.

We are planning visits to San Antonio and Corpus Christi before driving back here to West Texas Town and seeing the sights around here. It should be a fun-filled week with little time for blogging OR stitching, but that is just fine with me!

Usually this blog is (as I like to say) all about me and my pretty hair, but today I want to talk about my sister.

My sister just turned 28 in October and is the mother of my niece and nephew. Growing up we had intense moments of sibling rivalry, but as the years have progressed we have mellowed and now I would consider her one of my closest friends.

I am not sure how old she was the first time she had bronchitis, but she was probably 5 or 6 years old. Overall, she was a healthy kid but following that first time she would suffer from bronchitis nearly every winter thereafter. As her big sister, I tended to believe that it was mostly in her head as it seemed to come at the most “opportune” times and I wasn’t very sympathetic when I heard that hacking cough that was so deep and hoarse that I was convinced she was doing it on purpose to get attention.

Late last summer her respiratory ailments took a turn for the worse when she ended up in the emergency room as a result of coughing up blood and passing out. She was in the hospital under quarantine for nearly a week as the doctors attempted to diagnose her problem. There were questions about whether she had contracted a communicable disease, if what had become chronic bronchitis had taken a turn for the worse, or if it was something altogether different. A biopsy was done and eventually medicine was prescribed for histoplasmosis.

Sis took her medicine faithfully and went in for MRIs, CT scans, and blood work throughout the year. Unfortunately a couple of weeks ago she started coughing up blood again was readmitted to the hospital. There was fluid on her lungs and the doctors began doubting their diagnosis of histoplasmosis. Another biopsy was done and it was determined that the middle lobe of her right lung was constricted to the point that surgery to remove it was necessary.

And so, tomorrow at noon, my baby sister is going under the knife to have part of her lung removed. I hope you, my dear readers, will keep her in your thoughts.

I had this little introduction written up and meant to post it yesterday to launch this year’s Holidailies, but decided to put it on hold for a day after being inspired by kitten fun yesterday. So, here it is.

* * *

Because of many things that were beyond my control last year, I did not participate in Holidailies. However, when I first participated in 2005 I had a good enough experience that I decided to return this year.

Two years ago. December 2005. When I think about my life then I am flooded with bittersweet memories.

I was on a different continent and possessed a different marital status. I was semi-depressed and directionless because even though I didn’t want to admit it, I was slowly beginning to realize that era of my life was coming to an end.

There were precious few hours of daylight but the days were agonizingly long for me. I spent too much time watching badly dubbed TV while waiting for him to come home. When he was at home, we spoke less and less and the tension grew to be nearly unbearable. When he wasn’t home I was almost content, except I couldn’t help but wonder what was really behind the flimsy excuses he gave me for not being there. I refused to cry, but my anger towards him grew until it threatened to consume me.

But then again, I was excited. After almost four years I was getting ready to go home to visit my friends and family. I was anxiously awaiting the birth of my nephew. While I had been overseas, my niece had transformed from a baby into a little girl and I couldn’t wait to get to know her. I was looking forward to eating silly American “delicacies” and hearing my native language spoken all around me.

Days after I wrote my last post of the 2005 Holidailies season I flew across the Atlantic and into the arms of my family. My nephew arrived eight days later and there were whirlwind visits to my old stomping grounds.

I gained perspective and when I returned to Germany I gave myself an ultimatum: If my marriage hadn’t improved in six months I would walk out the door and never look back. Well, despite the effort (on both our parts), my marriage didn’t improve and I did indeed walk out the door.

And though I have looked back a couple of times, it was only briefly.

The story is fairly cliché for the working moms out there: Mom works full-time, the youngest child goes to daycare, and the oldest child is in school. Mom has a flexible schedule that allows her to finish work in time to pick the oldest child up from school, thus avoiding placing the older child in daycare and saving hundreds of dollars during the school year.

However, once school lets out for the summer, Mom has a problem: Does she put the oldest child in daycare, does she find cheap(er) labor in the form of a teenage babysitter that is willing to work for a few dollars an hour, or does she entertain alternate solutions?

This was exactly the situation my sister found herself facing around mid-April. Because of financial issues, she preferred that my niece only go to daycare for the summer as a last resort, so she began with the desperate-for-money teenage babysitter. Unfortunately a trial run during spring break with said babysitter posed a new set of problems. The babysitter was too young to drive and her mom demanded that she make 50 more dollars a month than my sister had offered.

And as I am sure you have guessed by now, all of this just so happened to (more or less) coincide with my switch over to the graveyard shift.

After the unsuccessful run through with the babysitter, my sister approached me about whether or not I would be willing to watch my niece over the summer. I had suspected that my sister would come to me with such a request when she told me about the babysitter dilemma, so when it happened I was not surprised. In fact, I had been thinking about the situation and had decided that while I would not offer to do it, if Sis asked me, I would seriously consider it.

Obviously the main consideration was my sleeping schedule. Would I be able to work midnight to eight, watch my 7 year old niece until 3:00 in the afternoon, and still be able to get enough rest that I wouldn’t become a zombie? Was my niece old enough to understand that I was going to have to sleep at least part of the time? Was she old enough to let me sleep for a couple of hours in the morning without her killing herself?

Sis and I talked about it and I told her that I thought my niece was old (and well-behaved) enough that it could be done. Sis talked to my niece and laid the ground rules. I talked with my niece and she told me she was a big girl and promised not to get into any trouble.

Though I didn’t get as much sleep as I would have liked, I didn’t really become a zombie until August and the summer went smoothly. My niece was a big girl and let me nap for around two hours every morning. On the days that she wasn’t enrolled in some summer activity, we did fun stuff like swimming, reading, coloring, and cross stitching and I towed her along with me as I went about my daily business of paying bills, doing laundry, and applying for jobs.

A lot of people around town assumed she was my daughter and the ones that knew better teased me about spoiling her. I admit that I may have spoiled her a teensy bit, but now that I am getting ready to move away, I wouldn’t change a moment of the entire summer if I could.