Interdimensional Holes in my Living Room

Since it's the season for creepy tales, I thought I'd share one about the time I experienced what I'm pretty certain was sleep paralysis. It happened when I lived in Alaska in the yurt and worked nights on the slope. I was sleep deprived, working nights and with the weird hours of sunlight and darkness messing with my sleep schedule even further. Apparantly that makes you more prone to it. I think it was set off that day because I was alone watching The Fourth Kind before I fell asleep on the couch in the loft. The Fourth Kind is a creepy movie about alien abductions in Alaska if you aren't familiar with it.

So I started to drift off. I felt that sleep heaviness where you can't lift your eyelids and you start to lose track of your body and you feel so relaxed. But then it changed. I started to feel tingly, sort of numb and dizzy almost. I could feel my whole body, I was aware of everything, how my hands felt and where my toes were, but I couldn't move anything. Then it felt like my head was this stationary point and everything else was orbiting around it. My head felt still but my body felt like it was continually spinning around and around, faster and faster, making sharp changes in direction and speed. My head was the pivot point. It wasn't scary yet, just disorienting and uncomfortable. Then that feeling slowed and I could feel where I was laying. It felt like my body floated back down to the couch. And I could see again. I knew my eyes were closed, but I also knew I could see my living room again, the real room, not a dream space.

Then this little pinprick of light started to appear to the left of the tv. Right above the corner. I can still picture it. It started to grow slowly. It was silver and shiny and as it started to grow, I could see it spinning, like a mini little galaxy. At first it didn't make me feel anything but curious. But then it started to make this noise I've never heard before or since. It sounded metallic. That's the only way I can describe it, it sounded like metal tastes. A completely foreign thing. And that's when I knew it wasn't benign.

And then something told me that there was a thing in there. A think that wanted out. I don't know if it was a thought I had or an actual voice, but I knew it was true. Something was trying to get through that little spinning metallic hole in the air. I started to try and move but I couldn't. I tried to roll, shake my head, twitch my fingers so I would wake myself up. I was aware I was sleeping. But also I felt like whatever was happening was real. That if I didn't wake up before whatever was in there got out, it would be out in the real world for real, not just a hallucination or whatever.

I just kept thinking to myself, "You can't see what's in there. You CAN'T." Not, "I don't want to see," but "I can't see. Can't, can't, CAN'T. " Just this feeling of dread that if I see it...the worst will happen. It was a sense of wrongness. Whatever was in there wasn't supposed to exist. The whole time this is running through my head, that metallic noise is still there. The spot is turning and turning and throbbing with this pulsing light. I'm starting to panic more and more. I've had some lucid dreams before, but this is different. In those dreams I can't feel my real body and I can control my dream body and fly around, do whatever I want and make anything scary disappear. This was the worst nightmare I've ever had, this wasn't in my control.

When trying to move my body didn't work, I tried to make noise. I started trying to say something. I started to say, "No, stop, help, wake up." But it wasn't working. So I gave up on words and started trying to scream. I could feel my body laying there and I was just watching that spot hoping nothing would crawl out before I could wake up. But I also know it's getting closer somehow. The noise is getting louder and louder, the spot is growing and the light is pulsing faster and brighter. It's right there, just out of sight. If I see it, I will never unsee it, and I know instinctively that it's something my mind can't handle looking at.

So I'm just screaming silently in my head when it finally works. I make the tiniest whimper, a real out loud, not in my head whimper that I meant to be a full on scream. All the feeling comes back to my body and the spot vanishes as I open my eyes. And that was it. It was so eerie that my surroundings, minus the mysterious hole in the air, had stayed the same the entire time. I know my eyes were closed, but nothing ever took on that dreamlike unreal quality.

I didn't go back to sleep that day. I've never seen anything as terrifying in my sleep since, but I still think about it. I'm waiting for it to happen again. For that hole in the air to come back. And dreading what happens if I can't wake up quick enough the next time. I don't want to see what's in there, I don't want to let it get out. 

Decisions and Updates

I've tried to write an update post a few times and every time I'm unsatisfied and they sit in the post queue going no where. They just ended up sounding to depressing or annoyed or some other off feeling I can't quite put my finger on.

So the basic status update. I'm not pregnant this month, I'm not going to try this next month and I am 99% likely wait out the rest of the year before trying again. I have a whole post written about this paragraph right here. But I'm not sure I'm posting that. In summary, I feel very conflicted.

I want to be pregnant again but also I like having my body to myself again. I'm also really working on being less codependent and being more independent a baby would tie me up again in some ways. I wanted a small age gap between kids but it's already going to be larger than I wanted even if I get pregnant now, so what's a few more months. I wanted to be pregnant by my due dates. But there's no chance of feeling "safe" by either one. I won't be feeling the safe zone until halfway through when I start to feel the baby kicks. I don't want a miscarriage on one of my due dates, that would be an emotional disaster. Plus medical bills, I don't need more of those. But also I wanted to be hopeful and optimistic about it, I wanted to be fearless. But maybe that's the point. Maybe I still am. Admitting maybe the best thing for me is not what I wanted and the right thing to do sucks. So I'm going to wait.

It is 95% likely we won't do foster care but we are giving the last day of training class a shot first before calling it for sure. If nothing else it's a good free parenting class. And it brought up/let me work through some stuff from the days my family of origin did foster care. I won't get into that any further though, because too many other people's feelings and lives are tangled up in that. Foster care just isn't the way that seems right for everyone involved to expand this family.

The social worker running the class said two things that stuck with me, "you can set up your license to only accept certain ages and issues, but if I think you'd be really good at handling a certain situation, I will try and convince you," and "the best foster families know when to say no." Here's the problem. I want kids younger than Lyra. I'm not willing to take any older than her. I'm not willing to take any risks concerning Lyra's safety or well being, and I'm not ready for the lifestyle change that would be an older child or teenager.

What gets me, is that what I'm pretty certain I'd be good at, and what I'd have a hard time saying no to when presented with a specific circumstance or child, are the hard placement cases. The anorexic or bulimic kid, a kid who cuts, a transgender child, a pregnant teen, those kind of more intense situations. And I feel guilty about that. I have a lot of both personal exposure and experience with some hard things and I've managed to make it through and build up skills to survive that I think could be useful for a kid going through something tough. But that's not a good option right now. I think going into this with both eyes open and having had personal experience with it all, makes it a harder complex decision.

I feel like I'm at this odd crossroads where my life could go in any number of directions. Sometimes I think it could all be this big moment I look back at and point to and say, "Oh, right there, that's what led to everything important today." And other times I think it all could just be any other moment in life and say, "Why was I so worried about it all?" I think that's just kchildren for you, they have to throw any plan you ever had out the window for better or worse from before they ever arrive.

I've thought a lot about my conclusion here. That's my weak point in writing, especially in this case where I've been so conflicted about my decisions in the first place.  So I'm trying a new writing (and life) style where I say, "The heck with conclusions,  I'm not done living yet."

A Shitty Situation

I mean that literally. Actual Shit.

So Lyra is 2 and sleeping in her own room and somewhat potty trained. This means she wears pull ups to bed and usually comes wandering into my room to cuddle with me around 6 am. Usually 5 or 10 minutes of intensely wiggly cuddles later she'll hand my phone to me (she used to hand me my glasses too but now I keep them out of her reach after she handed me a pair she had ripped in half) and demand that I "git up" or state that she needs to "pee potty." 

On this particular morning I heard her usually loud stomping coming from the hall a little early at 5:40. She burst in through the door like the kool-aid man babbling, "pee potty pee potty pee potty," at top speed. I jumped up to comply with haste as she seemed more urgent than usual. I touched her side as we walked to the bathroom and thought to myself, "Hmm, her pull up must have leaked. She seems damp." I should have known then.

This is where I made my fatal mistake, though the situation would have been dire either way. I pulled her pajama bottoms and pull up down to her ankles before I hit the lights. Even in the darkness I could see something was amiss as soon as the pull up hit the floor. "Oh no," I gasped, "That's poop," as I switched on the bathroom light.

So much shit. Apparantly something didn't sit right with her and had led to explosive morning diarrhea. That was the first time anything like this has happened since she stopped having those not too terrible breastfed baby poops and starting having normal mini person poops. It makes a huge difference. It's so much worse when they take normal shits. Trust me on that one. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh noooooo," was my refrain for the next 20 minutes. At that point the only option was a shower for both of us, there was no saving the situation. And hand washing out clothes and starting laundry and wiping up the floor and the lightswitch. There was poop on the wall. The WALL. It was full scale decontamination before 7 am.  

Not the first poo mess, won't be the last either. The other day at dinner Lyra was sitting at her little table while I finished up cooking. At one point I glanced up and noticed some thing suspicious sitting next to her on the floor. Right next to the little baby potty, I might add. Sure enough, she'd dropped a big ole number 2 right there on the floor in between bites of her noodles. Sure glad we don't have carpet.

My other favorite potty training story was the day my friend without kids was texting me about how awesome my lifestyle was and how he was kind of jealous sometimes. I was explaining it's not all sunshine and flowers. Meanwhile, Lyra peed her pants. I set her on the toilet and went to start laundry. And promptly stepped into a puddle of pee. I think a dog is to blame for that one but I will never know for sure. I cleaned that puddle (and my feet) and checked on Lyra to find her shoving half a toilet paper roll into the toilet. I sent her on her way and cleaned that mess. Immediately afterwards, Lyra came up to me, clearly wet, and I pulled down her underwear only to have poop fall out onto the floor. As I was setting Lyra on the toilet again, planning to leave her there for at least 30 minutes, and contemplating using diapers until Lyra is 6, my friend called. I answered the phone with, "You remember how you were bitching about how great my life is? Let me tell you about the last 20 minutes of my life in excruciating detail."

Despite the mess, there are upsides to a potty training toddler. Besides the obvious, like not having to use diapers, I have my own personal cheering squad. Everytime I pee on the potty I get a round of applause and a "Yay! Mama pee potty!" Followed up with an announcement to whoever is around about my victory. Travis tries to high five me when Lyra tells him "Mama pee potty." I flip him off behind her back instead. This is my life now.