A dear friend of our family passed the other day. It’s not clear to me if the accident caused the death or that something like a heart attack caused the accident. In many ways it doesn’t matter. He’s not here anymore. He left behind his wife, 2 children and their spouses and several grandchildren. That huge place he held in their world is now empty. A chasm. A void. I keep finding myself thinking of his daughter. A grown woman with a family of her own but without her daddy nonetheless.

In some ways I’m anxious to know what happened. If he had a heart attack first, he maybe would have died anyway. But if he fell and hit his head, it was a freak thing. Something that could have happened to anyone. It could have happened to me or you or your dad. And just like that, your gone. They’re gone.

I can’t help wonder, what was his final day like? Did he talk to his kids that day? Did he kiss his wife goodbye on his way out or was she out too? Had he seen his grandkids and given them piggy back rides? I’m sure he wasn’t thinking that this was his last kiss goodbye or his last piggy back ride.

Life is so fleeting. It’s so short, even when it’s not. People pass in and out of our lives. There are some people that we know for all of our days and some we know for short periods of time. Some losses are felt deeper than others and some we learn to deal with and some we never get over. But life is so short and sometimes it’s so cruel.

There’s no great line here to sum it all up. Hug your loved ones and make the most of your time together all goes without saying.  Life is so short. Somedays are so long, the whine is ripe and the tempers are short. We run from breakfast to preschool to the nap and to a meal and to the grocery store and the car needs gas and the need to check Twitter and Facebook and oh look, a new app for the phone. And that’s all before lunch. I’m going to try and spend more time giving more hugs and belly kisses and enjoying the moments I do have. Sometimes the cruelness can serve as a reminder. It’s a hard reminder to have to take, a slap in the face, a kick in the pants. Life is just so short.

I haven’t been feeling like myself lately.  I can’t determine if it’s the hormones that are still whacked in my body due to the nursing or it’s something else, something biological.  I’m feeling so out of sorts, and my hair is continuing to fall out in such alarming clumps, that I’ve made a doctor’s appointment to get things checked out.  Is my thyroid out of sorts?  Am I low on vitamin B or D or iron or what?  I can’t explain it, I just know I’m not me and I don’t like how it’s impacting my relationship with Paul and making me feel.  Because, of course, poor Paul is the one who takes (or gets) the sharp end of my emotions, the fly off the handle and say things that I don’t mean end.  Maybe it’s not biological and a multivitamin won’t “fix” my problem and I’ll have to deal with it in another way.

Or maybe this is all the end of my 30′s slapping me in the face.  I’ll be 39 in a few weeks, the last year of this decade.  My 30′s have been great for me, way better than my 20′s.  I wonder if I’m in a mourning of sorts.  I don’t know, I can’t explain it.  I just know that I’m not me.  If you see me out and about, please tell me to return home.  I’m missing myself.

I’m not sure what should be going on, where the fun and stimulation should be coming from but I feel like the boredom and inertia of my life has left me at a loss for words.  I could talk about how I’m running a 10k in July yet Saturday while running 3 pathetic miles, I tripped over a pine cone, twisted my ankle and fell.  Boring.  Or I could tell you how I’ve been doing some sewing and have completed Courtney’s Easter dress.  Boring.  Or, I could tell you how I did nothing but eat all day Sunday, despite the fact that I had the worst stomach ache all day.  Boring.

I mean, where is my mind and my creativity and my energy.  And what kind of stimulating conversations will I have with others when the extent of my day consists of twisting my ankle being thrown up on twice, shat upon once and discovering TWO BALD SPOTS ON MY HEAD!!  I wish I could say I was lying about that but I’m not, those are the days I’m having.  I went shoe shopping on Saturday.  I normally wear an 8.  The shoes I wanted I tried in a 7.5 and then a 7 and then a 6.5 and they were STILL too big.  I would have tried on a 6 but they didn’t have any, I should have looked in the kids section.  But I’m feeling like my mind and my brain are shrinking like my shoe size, rapidly.

I’m hoping this is just a phase.  That I’m in a rut, a lull and that things will improve.  Or I’ll just feel better about the lack of new and different and exciting.  I’m hoping.  Because it’s not just this blog that’s suffering.

Yesterday I got a “courtesy call” from the hospital letting me know that my portion of the bill is $2500.  $2500 and that’s AFTER I’ve met my deductible, the bill has been adjusted $8000+ for the hospitals agreed upon fees and another $3000+ is paid by insurance.  I mean, really?  My bill to have a baby from the hospital alone is $13,000+.  That doesn’t include random bills I get for the anesthesiologist, the OB, and other fees that aren’t included in the hospital charges.

I get that people need to get paid and that everyone has a piece of the pie but really, why is this all so expensive.  What if I didn’t have insurance?  Here I thought our insurance was good, now I’m thinking it’s pretty much crap.  Sure, I’d rather only have to pay $2500 but I’d be much happier only having to pay $500.  Oh, and that $500 is what I had to pre-pay and was told that’s all I was going to owe…  Looks like I’ll be spending the next several weeks on the phone.  Good times.

Paul does the bath, books and snuggling and he puts her down for the night.  And then she SCREAMS.  Bloody murder.  BLOODY MURDER.  She throws her pacifiers on the floor, her stuffed animals across the room, stands up and SCREAMS.  Part of our problem is that she can’t sleep without the pacifiers.  She has one in her mouth and one in each hand.  But, she has all that when we put her down so we have to go in at some point and give it back. But this is totally out of hand.  She screams for a while, we go in there and give her all her things back, she screams more, we go back after a while and then eventually I go in and hold her for a while.  She immediately throws her arms around me and pats my back, as though I’m the one who’s been screaming my head off for an hour or so.

I don’t know what to do though.  She’s SCREAMING.  I’m almost certain that if we don’t go in there to give her her things back, she’s not going to stop screaming.  Ever.  What do I do?  What’s going on?  What’s with the screaming?  We’ve changed nothing about the routine.  She’s going down around 8, maybe 20 minutes later than she was at one point but still not late.  We’re at a loss.  Someone help me.