Managing

My girl and I...overlooking the Caldera in Santorini, Greece

A few months ago I took part in an online Twitter chat with others who have/care for someone who has diabetes. I can't remember the exact topic, but it had to do with 'controlling' diabetes. The discussion was fast and furious, and in my not-so-tech-savvy way I followed along, and even commented a few times when the urge struck.

What absolutely amazed me about the discussion was how wide the disease varied. There were the Type 2 diabetics who just watched what they ate, and the 'brittle' type 1's, who were just hanging in there. How do you 'control' something that affects people so differently? How can you keep your thumb down on something affected by so many variables?

In our house, we 'manage' diabetes. There's no controlling.

It's a delicate balance. My daughter does EVERYTHING a normal 8 year old does, from summer camp to somersaults. She eats sugary foods (sparingly, but no different than our other children). She swims, she dances, she rides horses...she flies across time zones and she canoes in the back-country.

Only sometimes in 'Dunnes vs Diabetes' the balance swings against us. Thursday, for example. Cell phone rings at work. It's the school calling...daughter's sugar levels are so high the test kit won't even register them (For those who aren't familiar with test levels, that's almost 5 times normal levels). A few suggestions, and I get back to work. An hour later, another phone call. During a recess martial arts lesson, another child accidentally ripped out daughter's catheter site. No catheter = no insulin. She's already super-crazy high, so this is an emergency. Thankfully my co-workers and patients are very understanding. I drop everything at work, tear off to the school at mach 5 to remove the rest of the old site, clean and insert a new catheter. Forty minutes later I'm back at my job, and it's business as usual.

Make no mistake. Diabetes never sleeps. Some nights I don't either. No matter how perfectly we measure carbs and calculate ratios, we cannot control it. And sometimes life gets so hectic we forget something. Insulin. Site changes. A test kit. Extra juice. A hug.

So we manage.

And hope. And pray. And test, and test, and test again.

Tomorrow is another day.

The Waiting Game

Today is January 19th. In about 5 months the Dunne clan are going to pack up all of their worldly possessions and haul their little behinds to somewhere else. Possibly somewhere in this province. Possibly somewhere on this continent. Possibly somewhere on this planet.

Where, you ask? Heck knows! Your guess is as good as mine. We've known this posting was going to happen for more than a year. We kinda know where we are going. And we kinda know when. But other than prepping our house to sell (which, by the way, I'm avoiding right now by writing this blog...) there's not much we can do to prepare until we have our magical piece of paper..aka (deep reverberating theatrical voice) 'The Posting Message'. Dunh, dunh, dunh!

Patience is NOT my virtue.

I suck at waiting. Really. You'd think after 13 years as a military spouse, and seven family moves I'd have gotten used to this madness. If anything it's getting worse. I'm on the real estate websites every day. I'm searching the properties for sale in our local area. I'm researching schools. I'm cleaning out closets, going through books, weeding out the unnecessary crap that builds up in a house after a few years. I've warned, rewarned and warned again my work, kids teachers, extra-curricular activity organizers and friends. I'm sure they are sick to death of the endless mind-numbing babble. They humour me and ask socially appropriate questions--all the while questioning my sanity.

I think I could coin a syndrome here. 'Moving Madness'. "Pre-posting Parapsychosis". "Radical Relocation Radiculopathy". Or how about..

Pre-move
SYstemic
Condition of
Housing
Over-preparation

PSYCHO?

My husband is afraid to come home because he knows I'll pounce on him. "Any news?" "Any emails?" "Did you talk to anyone?" "Come look at the house I found in (insert city here)!" He has this slightly terrified, cautious grin when he comes through the door. I try hard. Really I do. But I HAVE TO KNOW! NOW!

The good news is, that when that glorious (or awful-depending on where it says we are going) piece of paper comes, I'll be ready! Pre-printed info sheets abound! The house will be ready to show! The application forms will be ready to send! I'll have the hotels selected for our house hunting trip, the houses to look at, and the restaurant for the third day's supper selected! Life will be good! We'll be moving forward!

And two years later I'll be doing it all over again!

There's no life like it.

Brenda

Blogshead Revisited

Days hubby was gone.....151

Days til he returns.....NONE!

Current Work In Progress... Editing 48,000 wd manuscript from NaNoWriMo


Well, so much for November and December. Ummm...I lost them somewhere in the snow. How is it that when life is complicated and crappy I find lots of time to blog, but when it's busy but good...? Not so much.

I could bore you with tons of details about how my wonderful hubby came home(my kids had absolutely NO IDEA until he was standing in front of them), I took part in and won NaNoWriMo (along with my three children), and had a great Christmas with family and friends locally and in my home town...but there were no major catastrophes, blood sugars stayed relatively normal (well, except for the emergency roadside site change in Montreal), and people were happy in my house. I was happy in my house. November and December were good.

Enter January.

Snow. Cold. Dark. Editing.

As much as I dislike the snowy, dark, frigid days of late January. Editing really makes me shiver.

I've been a really good girl. I put away my NaNo manuscript for almost six weeks. And now, for the first time since I did my final NaNo update on Nov 29th, I've taken it out and am reading it.

It's always a bit shocking the first time I read something I've written. I wrote that?? Me?? Cool. It's not bad! Seriously! Sure, it's not publishable material yet, but the feeling is there. My problem is taking that feeling and expanding it to something vortexy. Something that sucks you in and spits you out panting on the last page. The bones are there, but my editing skills are not. Help!!

So....instead of editing (my plan for the evening), I'm blogging. Hmmm...avoidance is the best policy. And as a working, writing, miltary spouse and mom of three kids, there's always something else to do than edit!! Laundry! Dishes! Vacuuming! Cleaning the kitty litter! Scraping boogies off the wall! The list is endless.

But those all sound too much like work.

I'd rather just sit here and talk to you.

Brenda