Some days it snows

You would think that by now, after living 33 years in Connecticut, I just might already know that some days it snows. I do know that it snows, but ever since we came back from North Carolina, I keep thinking that somehow it won't. Sure it snowed in North Carolina. Only once though. And it disappeared by morning. Which was nice :)
Now, everytime I read the news or listen to the radio, it seems like they are predicting snow. I don't remember it snowing like this before we went to North Carolina.

Ugh.
I am cold.
I am cold when it isn't snowing! I pull out the wool socks around the end of October and don't stop wearing my thermals until May, at least. It also affects my mood and I become increasingly cranky. You would figure that this would be motivation enough to move to a warmer climate. But.....
my job is here,
my Dad is here,
the kids have friends here,
heck we even have friends here!
so that means we are staying here.
We have recently have started looking for a new place to live. Our little cottage in suburbia is not going to be available to us this spring, so we have begun the search for a new home.
At first we laughed with glee, grabbed the laptop and searched all over America for a home. Sure there are beautiful bungalows in New Orleans for 20,000 where you can live on the top floor only, because there is still so much damage from Hurricane Katrina, the bottom floors are uninhabitable. How about the winding hills of West Virgina with a 4 bedroom 3 bath home on 17 acres costs $90,000 with a town population of 200? Where do these people go to work?
Then we realized that we probably aren't going to pack up all or belongings and travel half way across the country to move to a state that we have never been to without a job with 5 KIDS! That would just be too much for our poor frail emotional selves to handle at this point. Just surviving here, right now in Connecticut is hard enough.
So, here we are, looking for a home in Bristol of all places. The trappings of love.

On this last day of 2009, despite the snow and frigid temperatures, I want to officially thank the universe for all the blessings in my life. Health, Family, Love, Home, Food, Transportation that works, Friends and a good job.
And to all a happy new year!!

Jesse- The man of wonder

There is so much that I am blessed with and today I am focusing my thankfulness on my best friend, my husband, and the father of my children, Jesse.
I will never forget hanging up the phone after our very first conversation and something struck me. A knowing that I would marry the man I just had a 2 hour phone conversation with, sight unseen. It was an eerie feeling to get a piece of my future told to me. I was excited and scared, but I knew that it was true.
Here we are, after 15 years of marriage, now welcoming our 5th child into our lives and I am so very happy. It wasn't always this blissful. It took a LOT if work on both our parts to get to a place of selflessness, respect, and understanding to get our partnership to this point. I am so glad that we are together to share our journey in life.
He is intelligent, strong in principal, well spoken, funny, fun, silly, gorgeous, patient, loving, respectful, full of ideas, cataclysmic, constantly evolving, and struggling to remain open to what the universe has to offer. He is the one person I can share all the mess I have swarming in my head all the time and he helps me figure it out. He also lets me into his head and offers me advice. The look on his face when holding one of our babies is one of the most beautiful things that I have ever seen.

Thank you oh great universe for providing me with such a wonderful partner in this lifetime.

Simply living to live simply

Something that amazes me is how little we ever need for a new baby. Yes we will need diapers and yes we need clothing, but there isn't much else that we need. Diapers (cloth or disposable) are a given addition to our monthly expenses and clothing usually comes from Freecycle or tagsales since I always get rid of infant clothing once the babe has grown out of it. The things we need are patience, sleep, and a whole lotta faith! If we take things day by day or even moment by moment, it all ususally works out fine.
Our house is relatively small, around 1100 square feet with one bathroom. We have a ton of what we call dead storage space. What I mean by that is we have a 2 car garage with a loft, a basement and another basement type room that we call the "pool room" since the pool chemicals and such are stored there. This space isn't extremely useful to our every day living. While we store totes of clothing and linens in the basement and tools and outdoor toys in the garage, we can't store small kitchen appliances in the loft or basement or even shoes or jackets there because we need them within arms reach on a daily basis. Luckily, I am not a decorator and do not really care what my house looks like so Jesse has taken the liberty of putting shelving up on every wall and worked on our entry ways to make a small closet for our shoes in the side entrance and hooks for jackets and bags in the other. It isn't pretty or trendy, but it is definitely useful. That has been the key to living more simply for me. Not worrying how it looks so much as how it works.
Some people have asked, "Where are you going to fit another baby?". Well, our bedroom has 2 toddler beds, a queen sized air mattress, a crib and two dressers. This is the first time in 11 years we are using a crib too since we usually co-sleep. We have a tote on wheels under the crib for the clothing for the baby and there are totes under the toddler beds too. No- no closets in the room.
When I grew up I had my own very large room with a huge closet and a dresser. All for just little old me. And the closet and dresser were full of clothing. I never realized what a luxury it was when I had it. The way we live now, I could fit 2/3 of my family in that bedroom!
The thing is, it works for us. We have scaled back- a lot- especially for me from my stuff-filled middle class upbringing. It takes a lot of work, time, and creativity. But it has broadened my perspective of how things can work and helped me see what limits I was placing just for some idea of how something is supposed to look. We are all the better for it.

Hypnobabies

I have been having such a hard time this pregnancy trying to positively envision the cesarean birth. The last time I was up the whole night before doing breathing exercises to try and relax, only to just about make myself sick.

This time I know what will happen and I have been very anxious about it. I posted about it on a few message boards and got a lot of support. Someone suggested the book Birthing from Within and while it is wonderful, it just wasn't working for me. Someone also suggested a Hypnobabies CD set call - My Successful Cesarean Birth. I just started them this week and it has helped me let go of so much fear already. It made me realize just how much tension I have been holding inside. I feel like I can finally breath deeply again and I am even starting to look forward to the birth that is less than two weeks away. That in itself has made it a good purchase. Let's see how it does for the birth!

Music Therapy

One of the benefits about working out of the house is that the I can listen to music while commuting to work.(With a house full of chatter, there is never time to actually listen and hear music I like) My commute is about 30-45 minutes to/from work, so that gives me time to listen to my prophets and let vibration dance through me inspiring me to cry, laugh, sing, or shake my shoulders. Yes, I am one of those crazy people that sings in their car!
Some bands have traveled along with me for many years now. They include
Indigo Girls--Nothing beats starting my day with Closer to fine following it up with a little introspection with Loves Recovery.
John Frusciante This is a rediscovered love.
Red Hot Chili Peppers These guys keep growing on me in new ways
IncubusSo much confusion that really works together with fantastic lyrics
Tori Amos My journey with what I think a woman should be
Earth Wind and Fire Inspiring and makes me want to choreograph!
And one song from that I particularly have been groving on lately is from Funkadelic "Can You get to that".

Six months ago

Six months ago we had just moved here from NC. We were all still tanned, things were green, the sun was still hot at times and we were still hopeful. I was still into wearing my dangling sequence earrings, brightly colored ribbed tank, skirt and flip flops. The kids spent most of the time outside and Jesse and I were trying to figure out what our next move was.
Back then, just that short time ago, my mother was still living, I wasn't pregnant, we were both home, catching up with old friends and learning about this neat old house we had come home to. I could feel the energy pumping through us and while we were definitely aware of bumps in the road ahead, we still felt that something good would taking place.
It has. Just not the way we thought. My mother has passed through this life and is on her way to the next, freeing the family she was part of to find our new places. I have gotten pregnant and now we are going to be blessed with another girl for the Gallagher clan. I have found a very interesting job, where, for the first time in my life, I am finally working like a responsible adult and not an uncommunicative whiny child.
Some things I just didn't expect to change were things like our social circle which has now become more of a social spot, the tan and vigor that seemed fixed has waned and I have been struggling with things like resentment and confusion. I sit in this city, this state full of people and feel as if perhaps we are just crazy after all. To think that we could treat everyone like family, with love, honesty, encouragement, and respect--to live with people that share these values and try like we do to do what is right and not just feed our egos-- and most importantly to get that openness back from friends, neighbors, acquaintances and live in an enriching circle. Feedback that is honest, that is open,so that I will take in and look at and try and see their point of view. So I can learn what about me is keeping me from living according to my proported values. I am not saying I would like to change and please everyone. I am saying that if I am doing something that is hurting, irritating, annoying or just plain bothering someone I am with, I want them to tell me. Perhaps there is more there that we can both learn from and both change. Isn't that the ideal of a relationship?
No it isn't easy. But neither is living a life of denial where you spend your day filling your mind with rationalizations so that you can feel like you are doing the right thing yet you are so filled with fear you aren't free to move or do anything new anymore. I have been there and I have done that. And I am not going back.

My mother has died

Rena C. Dube, 78, of Bristol, wife of Edgard “Pete” Dube, passed away quietly at home on Jan. 23, 2009, after a long battle with cancer. Born Jan. 9, 1931, in Waterbury, she was a daughter of the late Albert and Almire (Charette) Violette. She attended St. Ann School and Wilby High School in Waterbury and worked at the Metropolitan before her marriage. Besides her husband, Rena is survived by her five children and their spouses, Sharon and Joel Templeton of Murrells Inlet, S.C., Lisa and David Anderson, Sandi and Glenn White, Stacey and Jesse Gallagher, who are all from Bristol, and Brian and Carol Dube of Wolcott; nine grandchildren, Brett and Todd Anderson, Amber and Cory White, Simone Dube and Athena, Huckleberry, Fiona and Shillelagh Gallagher; her sister, Viola Lamontagne of North Port, Fla., and her brother, Roger Violette of Murfreesboro, Tenn. A memorial Mass will be held Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009, 10 a.m., at St. Gregory Church, Bristol. Burial will follow in St. Joseph Cemetery. There are no calling hours. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Connecticut VNA Partners Hospice Program, 111 Founders Plaza — Second Floor, East Hartford, CT 06108. If friends wish, they may leave a condolence message for the family at

www.dupontfuneralhome.com

Just a vent

It feels like it has been years since I had a decent nights sleep. I don't care what all those attachment parenting advocates say, I haven't slept soundly since I was pregnant with Fiona, over 4 years ago. She has moved on to a toddler bed (in our room) and Shillelagh is still an active night nurser. It is so much work, but most days, I wouldn't want it any other way. It's that snuggle time that makes me feel like I am still connected to them, some how.
Lately, it has been even harder with my mother being sick. She has gotten into the "final phase" of the disease. She is a small sack of skin and bones, unable to move on her own or even speak. My dad has called us twice in the past week because he thought she wasn't going to make it. I have been visiting on a daily basis now which severely cuts into the time with the kids and Jesse. They have been very supportive, but it is still so much work for everyone. It is toughest for the littlest ones.
When I get home at night, I am just plain exhausted. It is all compounded by the constant nausea I am fighting with this new pregnancy and the absolute frigid temperatures, which makes me so uncomfortable. I keep trying to think back on all of what I have already gone through and remember how far I have come. But when I am falling asleep sitting up on the couch while the little ones are running and playing, the older kids are doing chores, and Jesse is catching up on some emails, I feel like I just don't know how much longer I can keep all of this going.
God give me strength.