Today I’m wondering why I haven’t fully embraced this blog yet. Why I seldom write, though writing is one of my great passions. I think I have an answer. I’m still grieving the loss of my last blog. The website was pulled down and if they gave me any notice, I sure missed it somehow. Which means the documentation of my life is just……..gone.

My entire pregnancy with Troy, my fourth child, was documented there, the initial announcement, the sonogram when we found out it was another boy, the ultrasound showing an echogenic spot on his brain, the fetal MRI, the worry, the relief when they said he was probably ok, the little nagging bit of worry that hung around until well after he was born. The story of his birth, how they ignored me and told me I wasn’t in labor until he was born with no one ready to catch him, landing instead on the bed. Of how he was born blue and still had the membrane intact over his face. The fear when he wasn’t moving, when he came out blue, the resuscitation. My refusal to pay the hospital for “labor and delivery” when no one delivered him or paid one bit of attention to me during my labor, the charges for the IV and fluids that I repeatedly declined that were forced on me anyway, complete with pitocin even though I had just gone from zero to pushing a baby out in an hour and a half and the pitocin seemed redundant and possible damaging to me. A copy of the letter I sent to the hospital informing them that the 90% paid my insurance and the 5% I paid up front were, in my opinion, more than what they deserved. His first days home. All the cuteness and ups and downs of his first year, including his fluctuating muscle tone and really odd and atypical reflexes that may or may not have been caused by birth trauma, we shall never really know. The million funny stories as he began to talk.

Katies experience with preschool, the time she busted out the plate glass window at Jump N Land. Brandon’s junior, then senior prom. His high school graduation and all my mixed emotions about my oldest growing up. The wonderful long post about Todd’s potential ADHD and the list of his ridiculous messes. The announcement that I, at 44, was going to have baby number five after all.

My entire masters degree program was documented there from deciding to do it through the excitement, the hard work, the long hours, the induction into several honor societies and the pride as I graduated with a 4.0.

My grandmothers death, the grief over the loss of a friends child. Me, eleven years later, processing grief over my fathers death as my uncle was dying of cancer.

The frustrations of the state sponsored budget cuts to ECI services and the ensuing loss of services to families and benefits to employees. Being laid off after ten years with the same program.

Vacations and family trips, the kids first visit to the zoo, the museum, etc. In short, my life! All of it, just gone.

I have always been a journal writer, the transition to blogging wasn’t easy for me. For one, I enjoy the physical feel of putting pen to paper. For two, an inherent distrust in the internet not to eat my posts and three, the publicness of it all. Putting myself out there for the world to see. I thought for sure I would edit myself more knowing it was for public consumption. The more I wrote, the less I edited. I figured no one really read it but me anyway. But issue number two was valid and I should have backed my writing up. A few of my posts were copied and pasted over to Facebook or into a word document, but most of it was just lost, never to be recreated. Sure, I can tell you about Troy’s birth, but I will never be able to recreate the feeling and depth of the original post coming immediately after experiencing it.

However, I think I’ve learned from my mistake! What I ought to be doing, in addition to creating word documents (because hard drives crash) is printing. Although, nothing lasts forever. Looking back at my old hand written journals, many of the twenty or thirty year old pages are already filled with ink that has begun to fade. I don’t examine that too closely, because I’m sure it says something about the fragility of human existence and how time erodes everything and that’s another post entirely!

At any rate, I shall try to be a more faithful and entertaining blogger for you, my three readers!