Icky January
January is when I start to feel icky. And by 'icky', I mean restless and crawling out of my skin. It has only hit me in small bursts this year, but in the early morning hours of this Saturday morning, I'm feeling it. My family is asleep. Usually Mr. Bookworm is up writing by now. I'm wide awake because I woke before my alarm.
We already have lovely plans for Macy's birthday later this month. We ALWAYS celebrate her birthday and since it lands on a Friday this year, we've taken the whole weekend off. Yes, we take the girls out of school and Mr. Bookworm and I take the day off. There's no way I can focus on other kids on her birthday anyway. Well, I could--when I'm at the office, I go into doctor mode. But I don't want to on her birthday.
Even though we already have plans, I have this urge to run out somewhere today. Like back to Universal Studios where we celebrated last year at Hogwarts with the girls. Though after sitting in three hour traffic to get back home last year, Mr. Bookworm and I vowed to keep things simple this year. Simple meaning no theme parks. Since I feel 'icky' today, well, Universal Studios sounds like a good idea.
Except....it isn't. I have things I'm supposed to be doing today, like visiting a performing arts school with Mini Me today (for their stellar creative writing program). And, the main reason I won't convince my little family to go on an outing today, Hogwarts or otherwise? THE FLU!
The flu has hit early and hit hard this year. I know you're all reading about it, but somehow it seems to have hit all the states at once. And hit in time for the holidays a few weeks ago, when everyone was traveling and, therefore, spreading it around.
I don't want to get it.
But I need an escape. So we'll see what I come up with when my three lovelies wake up.
Typically it's hard to get things done for me in January. I'm behind on my Featured Fridays as it's Saturday today....but hope to get it out this weekend. That's not my grief--that's my tiredness. It was a loooong week with it being so busy at work and I had planned to put the finishing touches on this week's Featured Fridays during family movie night last night. But I was too tired.
And, here's the thing I thought about earlier this week: I have not opened Macy's hospital suitcase since we brought it home. Well, maybe I opened it, but I never unpacked it. It's still sitting in my closet. What's inside? Little baby preemie clothes that I bought and carefully washed when I was pregnant with her. At the time that I purchased them, we only knew about her trisomy 18 and I thought we might be in the NICU for a while if she had survived. And you know what that made me think of? I thought about how the NICU nurses at CHOC used to lovingly place handmade cloth bags by the baby's area in order to put their laundry in for their parents to take home.
But I just haven't been able to open it up. I could unpack everything and place a few things in her small box of things that includes a hippo doll and a handmade doll that we had made for her (a twin of it was buried with her). I could donate some or all of the clothes. I could do a lot of things. But I'm not sure if I want to, I'm not sure if I'm ready. We'll see.
BTW, Mini Me and I did end up going to visit that school. The Creative Writing program sounds amazing. I want to join the program myself. We left saying that we 'found her people'. Again. And then we had a lovely lunch together at a gourmet Filipino restaurant that I've been wanting to try. The food was delicious. I even ate my food "Filipino-style", meaning with a spoon and fork. My husband and Little Lion had their own outing to lunch and the park. Then we all came home together and I snuggled Little Lion while I was supposed to be napping. All in all, a very fulfilling and family-filled day. So I feel okay for now. Until that itchy, icky feeling comes back. That's the cyclical nature of grief, I guess.
For now, I'll just count my blessings. All four of them.
Tell Dr. Bookworm!
What do you do when you're feeling like you're crawling out of your skin and restless?
