I know its Tuesday, but the past seven days have been a roller coaster of teh greatest proportions! Like Magic Mountain proportions.

First I had a visit from Childrens Services.  Due to the nature and reasons for my separation from Paul, they have become involved.  If you are new to the story, read here, and here.  Long story short due to the nature and level of voilence that happened during my marriage to Paul, the children are no longer allowed to see him unsupervised.  And I am not allowed to supervise them.  This really throws a spanner in the works as it was during those visits that I got a few hours to myself each week without having to worry about paying a babysitter.  We had been talking about the possibility of reconsiling, but that is definately off the cards as I was advised that if Paul and I did reconsile, Childrens Services would remove the children from my care.  Yeah there went my appetite. For the rest of the day.  They are going to be seeking a court order to have it manditory for the supervised visits and exactly what the rules are going to be. Yea. Fun. NOT!

The very next day Healthy Weighty Wee Man starts vomitting.  Violently.  ALL OVER THE FLOOR.  He woke up complaining that his stomach hurt and as that is a normal thing for him in the morning which is usually solved by feeding him breakfast, I didn’t think much, if anything of it.  But he is a weird sick child HWWM is.  He went on like his busy little self and would stop long enough throw up, cry for a second and then continue on like nothing had happened.  By dinner time he is holding food down, but just to be on the safe side and as a preventative measure because I know its about to go rampant through the house, I get the babysitter in so I can run to WalMart to get some anti-nauseant and stock up on Gatorade.  While I was gone (a grand total of 40 minutes!) Healthy Weighty Wee Man has thrown up again. In his bed. All over his Blanket. Oh bother.  I get that cleaned up and eventually get to bed myself only to be woken again in the night to clean HWWM up again.  I hate vomit.

Thursday morning started out okay.  HWWM was better (PRAISE GOD FOR SMALL MIRACLES!) and the sun was shining and all was right with the world.  I had fenagled myself in to going to a formal ball on base in Edmonton with my sister, her husband and my brother and his girls, and I needed to get a little black dress.  So off to Winners HWWM and I go.  Dress, hand bag and a new wallet for me purchased all under $75 ~ I’m set.  I go to collect Wee Blonde Child from school and head home for lunch.  After lunch, we head out to do some groceries.  WBC starts complaining about having a sore tummy in the middle of groceries and I didn’t think much of it as I had given her some Fibre-Sure that morning and thought it was just starting to work.  We find a toilet, she goes in, I think she’s done her thing as she is in a better mood when she comes out and we continue shopping.  On the way home, WBC falls asleep in the van so I leave her there and make sure there is enough air flowing through the garage and the van.  While helping with home work, Wee Blonde Child comes in to the house having been sick on the way. Great its Thursday.  We are supposed to be going to Edmonton the next afternoon and a yucky tummy bug has just hit my house. Grrrrreat!

Later that night, Oldest Large Child and I are the next to succumb to the vomitting.  Have I ever told you how muc I hate vomitting?  I really hate it.  I hate the smell, the sight, the motion, the after taste.  I HATE vomitting.  So much I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

The only thing is WBC, OLC and I don’t seem as hard hit as HWWM was.  But I can tell you I felt it for a couple days afterward!  But as we were all feeling better by mid morning Friday, we decide to go to Edmonton for the weekend. We atill have a few things left to get ready before we leave ~ like packing! and Healthy Weighty Wee Man has preschool.  So I do my best to get it all together so we can trade vehicles with Paul to go on to Edmonton for the weekend.  We finally get to leave Calgary about 6:30pm, its about a three hour straight drive, so we should be there for 10pm.  All is good, accept HWWM fell asleep before we hit the highway and basically slept the entire way ….

As we were in Paul’s truck, we also had all the gadgets that go with a man’s truck.  GPS, radar detector and of course a CD player.  Thinking I’m going to be smart (yes you all can laugh yer little hearts out!) I plug in directions for the shortest distance from my house to my sisters house.  Yeah I shold know what thinking smart does for me. NOT A FREAKIN THING!  Picture this map, I live in the furthest most southern corner of Calgary, close to some major roads and highways.  My sister lives in the most Northern side of Edmonton, not so close to some major roads and highways.  It was pretty much smooth sailing until we come to Edmonton.  At first its not so bad. then we end up on a one way street, which happens to be a hill in the middle of a park that has no other access (at least according to the GPS AND THE MAP BOOK!) other than the one way I got on to the road I was on.  So now I am stuck, haven’t got a clue where I am in teh grand scheme of things.  And there are lots of red lights for as far a as I can see.  Lovely.  AND I have a re-curring chirpping “are we there yet?” coming from the backseat.  yes I could have reprogrammed the GPS but what is the point when I can’t even turn on to a side street BECAUSE THERE WASN’T ANY!  I had the joy of sitting in the traffic until we could pass through the construction that was causing the lack of movment of vehicular structures on the road surface.  We finally arrive … at 11pm.

Saturday was a fairly quiet day for all of us.  The children enjoyed annoying their cousin as only they can do, Zachery is an only child and therefore is not used to other people in his space using his things … its sometimes intriguing to watch.  My sister and I did some last minute shopping and getting her hair done, then home to get ready for our big night out!

Scrub up well don’t we? Between trying to convinve me to move to Northern Alberta, my niece, The Horsey Woman, kept commenting I looked more like their sister not their Auntie!

After a slow moving Sunday, we finally climbed in the truck for our journey home.  Once here it was all I could do to stay awake long enough to get the children in bed, my self ready and climb in to my own. After all we had to get ready for Monday.  Monday was fairly uneventful other than again dealing with Childrens Services and again the ugliness of their involvement.

So I have an Avon order arrive this morning and as it happens it worked for me to deliver an order to its owner and still have time to get back to collect Wee Blonde Child from kindergarten.  All is well in my world for a minute.  So off Healthy Weighty Wee Man and I go to deliver the order to our friend and we have a great wee visit with our friend.  Then back to collect WBC from Kindergarten, head home for lunch and get HWWM off to preschool in the afternoon.

Yeah right!

After collecting Wee Blonde Child from school and having a play on the playground, we head home.  We pull up to the house and reach over to the place I put my keys when I get in the van …… no keys.  NO KEYS! What the @%*(&*(^$# where are the keys!  I am positive I locked the door.  I am POSITIVE I PUT THE KEYS HERE!  The van is searched for any possible place I can think they may have slid or been knocked to and no keys.  WHERE ARE THE KEYS!?!!???  Maybe I left them in the door of the house.  Not the first time I have done THAT one.  NO KEYS!  I gave a set of keys to the landlord, maybe someone is home there and I can get a set … no they aren’t home …. OH! MY! GOD!  Back to our house, borrow the use of a phone from the neighbour call our friend we delivered the Avon to and no my keys were not with her.  AGHHHHHHHH!  Okay I have two hungry monsters ….. off to the McDonalds drive thru we go.  Grrrrr.  After that we head back to the landlords house just to see if they are home yet.  And bless them, George was!  So after explaining that I have lost a set of keys and the spare set is, oh, IN THE HOUSE! I get the key from him for the front door.  The front door that is barred from the inside.  I should have just borrowed a ladder from George.  I get my hands on a ladder and now am climbing up in to the facade of the house so I can try to pop the screen out of my bedroom window so I can climb through and open the door.

If you know me at all, you know I HATE HEIGHTS!  I can’t even cope spending any length of time near the childrens bedroom windows because that is a straight drop to the ground.  I don’t do second floor balconies or patios either.  I DO NOT DO HEIGHTS! PERIOD.  So now I am on the facade of my house trying to get a screen to pop out of a window that is designed to go inside while having to get the window, on the inside of the screen, to open further.  I was near ready to just tear the screen when another neighbour appeared beside me and we figured out how to get it open with out having to replace the screen.

Okay in I go. I feel the bruise on my leg from climbing through the window darkening as I write this.  And yea the door is unlocked.  But I am still missing a set of keys.  Okay I inhale my McChicken whatever it was and Wee Blonde Child and Healthy Weighty Wee Man finish their Happy Meals, then the spare set of keys is pocketed and off we go to take HWWM to school and then on to Home Depot to get another set of keys cut.  Back in the van at Home Depot after spending $22 in getting keys cut, Wee Blonde Child for some reason has her head on the floor and is all suddenly scrambling and shouting and then sticks her little arm up to her elbow up under the center console of the dashboard and pulls out the missing set of keys.  I won’t repeat the words that came out of my mouth at that point.  Needless to say I wasn’t exceptionally happy.  So now the dilemma is where to hide a spare set outside in the event I misplace a set of keys again.

as part of the counselling the children started this summer we had to spend some family time together doing “family orientated activites”.  Now for all of those who know me personally you know that I often do just that with my children with out having counsellors or anyone involved.  However we have not done face painting at home unless it was around Halloween time.  Maybe I should break out the face painting kit a bit more often …  Here are some pictures from one evening in “family time”.

So it is Labour Day Weekend in North America, in particular this section of Canada we live in.  Normally Labour Day Weekend signals the unofficial end of summer as school would start on the Tuesday following.  This year school started for us nearly two weeks ago.  However we still have the weekend to enjoy and try to fit in a last hurrah of nice weather as the crispness of autumn is already creeping in to the coolness of mornings and evenings.

Yesterday the monsters and I spent one last day at the Lake playing and swimming and enjoying the last of the summer sun.  Already it was cool and what was to be several hours was cut down to four.  I have to marvel at the determination of children to make the most of it and their strong headedness that they were not cold when standing in front of me with blue lips, shaking violently, covered in goosebumps!

 this ”bird” was going from group to group of people and looking for bits to eat.  A couple times she even ate from a wee girls hand.

Today I introduced the monsters to the cheap theatre.  Oldest Large Child had been to movies on a couple different occasions and even to the cheap one, but this time Wee Blonde Child and Healthy Weighty Wee Man got to come too!  We went and saw UP!.  It was really quite enjoyable although I think I’ll wait a wee while before I take HWWM to another movie … he didn’t enjoy having to sit for so long.  But at the end of the day it only cost me $12 for the four of us to enjoy (sort of!) a movie together on a Sunday afternoon.

Irony being what it is, we had to move to Canada to afford Irish Dance lesssons!

I had to do a really rotten thing yesterday and I am not proud of it.  In fact it really nearly made me sick to have to go through the whole process, but I really felt my hands were tied and I had no other choice.  I honestly felt “pushed against the wall” and when you’re pushed so far, you have to start fighting back.

I suppose I should start at the beginning.  When I made the split with my husband, I had to get the police involved.  Again, sadly I really felt I had no choice.  Because the police were involved, there was a no contact order in place which meant (as I was told by the police), among other things, that my husband was not to contact me in anyway shape or form directly or indirectly and I was to contact Calgary Police Service if he broke those conditions.  HOWEVER! Those conditions did not extend to the children.  So I was letting some contact happen to arrange visits for Paul and the children.  And doing my best with trying to keep it to just that.  Unfortunately, Paul was not leaving it at that.

So. As it happens, Paul had left me a letter in the house just after he was released apologizing for not seeing the writing on the wall per se, and to be honest, I did not contact the police telling them he had done so.  One week later I get a phone call from the gentleman that is helping Paul out asking me to reply to Paul’s letter to let Paul know where I stood etc etc.  Sadly I did.  I shouldn’t have.  I should have just left it alone.  However it was arranged that Paul would have visits with the children and how we would “work that out” and that way things were fine.  I tried to limit my replies, knowing we were both venturing on a slippery slope.

Sadly Paul contacted me again and again and kept contacting me to the point I felt I had no choice but to contact CPS and tell them what was happening.  So yesterday afternoon, I ended up having a semi-lengthy visit with one of Calgary’s finest and what started out as Paul just getting a “talking to” ended up with Paul arrested, again.  I was nearly heartbroken myself when the officer looked at me after Paul sent one more text message and said, “That’s it I’m going to arrest him.”  Great.  Seriously, that was the last thing I wanted!  No. Really.  I just wanted Paul to stop messaging me by texts and email unless it was about collecting or dropping off the children.  And no matter how I tried to get the message to him to stop (did call Alex and ask him to tell Paul to stop), he just didn’t.  Part of the purpose of a no contact order is also to allow the people involved time to “cool off” and do what needs done on each others part to make things work again if that is possible.

Is making things work again possible for me?  I can’t say right now.  Too much has happened for too long.  It was not over night that things went wrong in my marriage and they certainly aren’t going to be fixed over night.  The “invisible” wounds run deep and will take a long time to mend.

So this morning I was supposed to go to an appointment in downtown Calgary.  Lets just say I didn’t make it.  Last night my brother-in-law and nephew stopped for the evening and night on his way home from his parents house in south eastern BC.  And he was gracious enough to offer to stay with the monsters so I could go to this appointment.  Which was supposed to be at 9am.  In downtown Calgary.  I was going to have to leave about 8am so that I could get my car parked at my old office and jump on the train to join the last of the morning commuters in to downtown.

So I get up, I had slept in a wee bit, but it wasn’t enough to make me late.  As I start my morning ritual of emptying the dishwasher, and getting lunches ready, I start to get a not so nice pain in my lower abdomen.  Thinking I just have to “go”, I “go”.  No problems in that department.  But the pain is getting worse.  Much much worse, I was also having full body sweats.  As Healthy Weighty Wee Man comes down stairs to get his breakfast, I am no where near ready to leave when I should have been and as it were, I nearly passed out from the pain and spilled a great deal of Cheerios on the counter and floor.  As my brother-in-law, Army Dude, comes down stairs I escape in to the bathroom one more time, but again, that is not the issue.  Because of the nature of the appointment, Army Dude thought that I was having a case of “nerves”, but I know my body, and this was not nerves.  If it were nerves, why would the pain not go away when I canceled the appointment?  I was still in some pain for several hours in fact, but back to the time line… after calling to say I wouldn’t be at the appointment, and I would like to reschedule, I did succeed in having a shower, but still felt no better, so I called the doctor and was able to get in rather quickly.  As I wasn’t going to be needing the children minded, Army Dude and my nephew left to make the rest of their journey home.

At the doctor, I was poked and prodded and then pulled off the ceiling as he hit the not-feeling-so-hot-spots and after giving him the run down of how my morning was consumed with a pain I have never felt the likes of before (keeping in mind I have given birth to three children naturally with very little pain meds), he states that he feels I have an enflamed appendix and sends me for blood tests ~ stat, with the instructions that if the pain gets any worse or changes to straight to Emergency.

Yeah great, JUST WHAT I NEED RIGHT NOW!!  So after waiting the better part of an hour and a half in the lab still in a great deal of pain, I get home.  That was after having a not so gentle lab tech take my blood, while trying to sit comfortably in a not so comfortable chair and keep Wee Blonde Child and Healthy Weight Wee Man occupied and not fighting the whole time.  By now I have a headache and just want to go to bed, but can’t because it was only 2pm …. hmmm nap time was looking good here, but these two monsters haven’t had naps in the afternoon in almost a year!  So I pop a couple headache tablets and low and behold … the rest of the pain goes away.  But not my headache.

By this time, Army Dude has rung to say that he and my nephew have gotten home safely and asked how I was feeling.  I tell him about the doctor visit and getting bloods done and at this point I say …. “See I told you it wasn’t nerves!”  So now we’ll see what does or doesn’t develope.  The pain is starting to come back, so I’ll go take a couple more tablets and see what that lets me do.

But really, I need a hospital stay like I need a hole in the head!