Late Start Friday :)

I slept in! It was nice not rushing around like a grumpy zombie in the morning for once! I so glad its Friday too, its been a long long week! Sooooo life is the same. I did something totally wild and crazy this week....Volunteered to be a Girl Scout Troop Leader for a group of K-1 Daisy's! I am worried about the time commitment but I think it is going to be a really fun experience for our girls and for me too.

I have learned I cant drink wine anymore, not even 2 glasses! I was SO sick, I just don't understand why this is happening now? I never had a problem before! Oh well, I guess I will just have to find a healthier way to relax. I am going to miss the taste of Sangria a lot :(

I have lost 4 lbs this week! Although I don't see it at all at least its some progress. It has been really hard staying on track this week. I am using spark people and they say I get between 1200 and 1600 calories per day. Last night I had a McDonald's ice cream for a treat which shows willpower because what I really wanted was a 600 calorie milkshake LOL. The ice cream is low calorie and only has 3.5 grams of fat! So yea, I am trying and I will succeed this time! :)

15 minutes

Thats what I am doing right now, 15 minutes in this day where I dont do anything required of me, instead I do what I want to do, damnit! I should be making copies for tomorows sessions. I should be going over first grade information. I like just sitting here basically typing about nothing in an office which is usually so full of chatter (I have a very chatty co worker! LOL). I like being able to just breathe and think about nothing.


I bought this metro mint water last night at the store, its actually good and very refreshing and has ZERO calories! Thats the perfect drink for me.... I do think I am losing weight, just slowly. All I have eaten today is a granola bar, a sandwhich (turkey) and a teeny bag of cheezits. I have drank one cup of coffee, one vitamin water, and one metro mint still going down. Its the evenings when I want to really eat the junk.

I checked out some books from the school Library to bring home and read with the kids. One book I picked up just because I liked the title is called The Lotus Seed by Sherry Garland. After looking it over I see its about the Vietnamese having to flee thier country and carrying this seed everywhere they go. It is a sad but touching book, I hope the kids like it!

The evenings have been hectic so far this week, but then it is only tuesday! Hopefully tonight will go better. We have been having a hump day partys on our front lawns on wed nights! A lot of wine, a few good friends, and some shameless gossip makes for a fun mid week release.

Well its time for me to go, I choose to spend my 15 minutes here with you, and now my time has ended! Off to help a child READ! :)

Isaiah and the other Isaiah

Isaiah is an old soul, you can look in his eyes and know he has been here before, done this before. As a baby he was so small and then so big! He grew so fast. His first word was UH OH! because he was always dropping stuff so we said it all the time. He is so beautiful, I know he is a boy and we are "supposed" to say handsome, but that word just isn't appropriate to describe my oldest son. In addition to Beautiful here are some other words that come to the top of my head when I think of Isaiah: Vivacious,Opinionated, Courageous, Touching, Sweet, Sensitive, Volatile, Angry, Moody, Loving, Impulsive, Controlling, Fact Mongering (ok I made that up!), Bipolar Child.

Having a Bipolar child is more difficult than I could ever describe, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, not even George Bush! My heart is torn into pieces every day Isaiah has a hard day, every time he tells me he hates me, every time he hurts himself or others. On those days I wonder who my son is, I feel like some angry monster has taken over his body and I mourn for the child that I love so much to come back. Unfortunately that child is showing up less and less and this new not-so-nice version of Isaiah is constantly rearing his ugly head!

I'm so frustrated with him I just don't know what to do for him anymore. We have tried so many different medications on him and the one that actually worked really well, suddenly pooped out on him and starting causing health issues. Lithium, a wonder drug but also a very toxic substance to put in your body everyday. Why does it seem like every thing that has to do with Bipolar disorder is Bipolar in itself? Complete opposites, two different ends of the spectrum on everything!?

When I think about Isaiah my heart hurts, its a physical squeezing I feel in my chest, if I think about him for more than a passing thought my eyes start to fill with tears (they are now) because I am feeling so hopeless and so helpless in regards to helping him deal with this nasty disease. I have a big decision to make and I think I am very close to making that decision. I just don't want to! I want this all to just go away, but I know it will NEVER go away. He will always have this disorder, he will always struggle to lead a normal life and I will always have to feel the pain in my heart when he is not succeeding. I feel trapped, and I hate it.

So about this decision... I could send him away, away to a residential treatment facility for up to a year. This is what his Dr and his counselor recommend, this is what I know in my brain to be the right thing for him at this point, but my heart and my mother intuition scream "NO! hes only 11 years old! He will feel abandoned, he will be in a place where no one loves him and institutionalized!" Then, my brain says, heart if you have a better solution for helping him please let me know. My heart doesn't have any solutions to suggest, except for just keep trying our hardest and continue letting him destroy his life and our family life as well.

This is the awful position I am in, and the decision I haven't been able to decide. I have heard great things about kids who have gone away to similar places and come back changed for the better. I just don't know if I can do this to my baby, my love, my Isaiah. One of the reasons I don't write or share about him often is because I am so torn apart over it, I think I always will be.

I'm starting my diet on Monday

I found the most appropriate coffee cup for me in the teachers lounge today. It states that "I'm starting my diet on Monday" which is ironic, because this is what I am always saying. So lame LOL! I know I need to diet, I want to diet, I want to be healthy and thin, but OMG its so hard with this life I lead! But, I am going to start a program soon, actually maybe next Monday would be good...

So this is my second full week of work, things are going well (I'm sure your all wondering why I am blogging at work!) and I really enjoy the work! We are very excited to be done with testing and moving on to actual interventions with kids!

I can hear them all piling into school now, so alive and exuberant! What I wouldn't give to feel like these kids do in the morning again. The first week was super hard on my knee but even though it hurts every day, it is more bearable. I don't go into see the orthopedic doctor until October.

The kids are doing really well and loving school! Elijah has a great male teacher this year who is actually keeping him in line so far. Journee and Chloe both love their full day kindergarten classes and always come home full of news of their day. Madison is her same old sassy self at home but is doing great in school. Isaiah, not so much. He is still unstable and we had a nightmare of a summer. I keep hoping things may be on the upswing for him, I feel like he has such a torturous life. :(

So life is hectic and very FULL. Ive never had to work all day with kids and them come home and deal with kids as well. Its entertaining to say the least!

I am loving our little group of friends we have now! For years I have dreamed of having a bunch of close comfortable "girlfriends". I have never been able to achieve this in previous times because we always moved around so much. Now after being in Rochester for 4 years, I feel like we finally have that core group of friends. We do really fun things together, even if its just hanging out in one of our front yards with glasses of wine, talking about our lives, our kids, sex (or lack of) or anything at all. Sometimes we go out on the weekends and I am learning that some people are fun to go out with and some people not so much! I am also learning that to go to certain bars, you need to be really buzzed before you get there! Otherwise I am so disgusted by everyone who is already drunk and acting like maniacs...

I have been writing this blog on and off for the past two hours. Maybe I will blog more often now, and maybe not? I seem to go in spurts with everything in life, because I do get bored so easily with the mundane.

TTFN!

I am (not) beautiful

anymore. I used to be, but not anymore.

Now I am fat, just just chubby or fluffy but full on Roly Poly Olie! I hate myself like this, I don't feel like me anymore. I feel like I should just except it that my youth is over and this fat is going to kill me eventually. Its winning the war, I may win a battle or two but ultimately I am LOSING. Even if I do lose all this weight (100 lbs!!) my skin is going to be all saggy and droopy even worse than it was before. I have terrible acne now, I always had beautiful skin before. I feel like its hopeless. This is me now, the gigantic Quinn next to her small girlfriend and tiny friend!



Look at me in this picture here, people say I was TOO thin here but I almost glow happiness.


So thats that. I am 27 years old and I feel like my life is over. I am not depressed, I am just facing reality here. I don't have the time in my life to concentrate on me,I'm not sure I ever will at least not for the next 15-20 years or so. I don't have the money either. What I do have is six kids, a beautiful partner, and a Budda Belly that is so round my pants wont stay up on it. My beautiful waistline that I always had even after BIRTH is long gone. Such is life. My goal for tomorrow is walking up the stairs without panting.... yet another battle lost before its even started. Damn Pneumonia!

Drug Induced Insanity

Quote:

A week into my Chantix usage, I started to feel as if the city landscape had imperceptibly shifted around me. Mundane details began to strike me as having deep, hidden significance. The neon arch above McDonald’s: The lights blinked on and off in some sort of pattern, and I needed to crack the code. One of my co-workers was messing with some papers: What is he trying to imply with all that damned crinkling? Sitting in the subway: A man hurries to get inside. His hand, holding a cup of coffee, gets stuck in the closing door. I watch the hand wriggle. The lid bursts open and steaming brown liquid hits the floor. Fingers twitch and splay. Coffee splashes in crisscrossing slats through the subway car. It was a sign—something bad was going to happen. It felt as if the essential barrier between reality and my imagination had eroded. Was it because I wasn’t getting enough R.E.M. sleep, so my dream life was rebelling, pouring into daylight, insisting to be attended to, one way or another? Meanwhile, smoking cigarettes had become an exercise in futility. At work, I’d put on my coat, head out, and light up—but there was no pleasure to be found, just a truly nasty taste. One afternoon, I was typing away at advertising copy, and as I did so, I began to wonder how I had succeeded in fooling myself that my life had any sort of value at all. Writing? Sure, it was what I’d wanted to do since I was 6—but at the end of the day, who cared? Maybe I should just go downstairs and leap in front of a tour bus. Or launch my head through the computer screen. All this seemed logical, but also weirdly funny, even at the time: I could see how crazy these impulses were, I could recognize them as suicidal clichés. But I couldn’t make them go away

.


This is exactly what was happening to me.



I woke up from a nap Friday afternoon looked in my closet, and my robes one pink one white were trying to strangle each other. I went straight to the ER. Dr verified the chantix suicidal psychotic reaction. My heart rate was 125 I was sweating all over nothing looked right, people too big and rooms too small. I wanted to scream and bash my head in, instead I just cried and cried. They took me back right away, I explained all the symptoms I have been having lately and all the stress I have been going through, after talking to me for at least an hour (so comforting) he gave me sleeping pills and told me never to take chantix or any drug like it again. The sleeping pills were to help me actually sleep without the suicidal nightmares while the drug got totally out of my system. He told me to rest and relax for the weekend, take the klonopin, and do fun things.

Enter Saturday. Jolene and her sister decide its girls day out and drag me to the mall. I am in a daze, tired groggy still having suicidal thoughts, don't care about buying anything even though her sister is paying for everything. So its decided that i NEED coffee to "perk" me up. They go to order and I sit down at a table alone, feeling like a zombie in a circus. I can't stop the morbid suicidal thoughts, so I write them down in the form of a text message I sent to my friend in Florida, I guess this was my way or reaching out.
This is what it said: "Life is all around me, swirling with its ebbs and flows. Life flows through me, but finds no home. It has nothing to cling to. Although my heart still beats and my eyes still see, inside I'm already dead rotting flesh. I can feel like maggots eating me dead."

Finally while sipping my coffee and watching the people bustle around talking, laughing, arguing kids crying bags fluttering, I just kinda snapped. Everything was in slow motion and I felt like this was all some fake show for me like that movie the Truman show. "Look at us Quinn, don't you see? Everyone is playing their part in pretending there is a point to living!" I started laughing/crying hysterically, Jolene and her sister looked at me with freaked out looks in their eyes, because I had not said a word to them this whole time except that I was drinking my coffee. We should go they say.. Then I spotted this man pushing a 5-6 month old baby in a stroller which the man parks near us and sits down. Takes the baby out and plays with him, the baby is bald except for one long lock of hair in front. The baby and dad are smiling at each other the baby grabbing the dads face and giggling.

Then CRACK suddenly I am back in reality, sitting at Caribou coffee at the mall, tears streaming down my face. I was shaken and scared and after smiling at the dad and the baby told Jolene I was ready to go and walked away. After that we went out to eat, to a salon where I had my hair straightened, and except for feeling a little dazed I was in contact with reality the whole time and have been since. I love my hair, I think i am going to keep straightening it. Later we went out for a few drinks, had fun, danced came home and passed out. Today, i had no out of reality episodes, which is good because the kids are home, I am so glad this particular part nightmare seems to be over. Drugs are scary things, never will I again confidently pop a pill in my mouth I haven't researched.

Isaiah is still a bit unstable, spring break is here, but so is Mommy, and that is a very good thing. I think i might be needed around here or something LOL

I wanna ride on a while horse.

far far away from this life. Elijah is having issues again in school, everyone is sick with something or other, and I have the sinus infection from hell! (yes again!) ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh