Category Archives: My Writing

A small update

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It is surprising that it has been a month and a day since I wrote anything on here last. I have been very busy with medical and other things. Right now I am with Sarah at a dentist appointment, but I wanted to write something because I recently got the Finch app to try to be more productive, and I put “write something” on it and so I must write something. I did write a poem a few days ago, when I was in OKC for my yearly lady appointment.

Upon leaving an appt in the city

It’s fun to pretend to be a real person.
I think this thought as I travel the sidewalk
Like everyone else.
You are a real person, I remind myself.
But it’s okay; I know what I meant.

So anyway, I had the urge and so I wrote that. Because the thought was interesting to me.

I got a 2500 grant for ACT I this month and that’s the first one I’ve done. It felt really good to help in that way.

A job!

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Ben has a new job. He started on Friday and worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. He works from 6 am to 6 pm every day, or close to that, at least. It’s like in Midwest City or thereabouts. It’s not computer related. He’s a machine operator for a business that makes airplane parts. Ben R works there and that’s how he got the job. He could have interviewed there a year ago. But we kept thinking the mainframe job was just around the corner. Or the next corner.

I also wasn’t super excited about this opportunity because it is Aetna insurance. The insurer that doesn’t play nice with SSM Health, which is who almost all my doctors are with. Matter of fact, when Ben started job hunting, I said, “Take any full-time job you can find, but please try to not do anything with Aetna for insurance!” So here we are.

That hasn’t kicked in quite yet, so I am still seeing my regular doctors for now, and basically telling them goodbye. I will not be going to anyone new for a very long time. I’m still holding out hope that I do not have to part way with the entire support system I set up for myself. I can still pay out-of-pocket with my regular doctor at least a couple of times a year – I think that’s around $80 (we had to do this whole thing once before when his old employer had Aetna).

Ben hasn’t gotten paid yet. It is much less than what he made before, and that’s another concern of mine. The benefits we were receiving will stop. There will be cash, yes, but I’m not sure it will handle all of our needs, especially with medical co-pays returning to our lives. And now it feels like it would be weird to go to food pantries. He has a job. We need to make this work. Somehow.

However! I do know who can provide for all of our needs, and that is God! I sometimes forget to keep that at the forefront, especially when I am writing down what’s currently underway in our lives. but I know that He absolutely has this. And we will be completely fine (even though my vision of fine might not the same as God’s!)

We’re okay.

Thank you all for the prayers. Ben is still looking for something that uses more of his mainframe skills, so here’s hoping!

I have been going to Mustang in the mornings after I drop off Sarah at school, spending some time at the gym before going to the library to write. That’s where I am right now. I spent an hour or so on the novel, just trying to set up scaffolding stuff in Scrivener. This is going to be totally different than anything I’ve ever written, and I can’t really just write it down in a linear fashion by the seat of my pants. I absolutely have to have a lot of stuff set up ahead of time to make this thing happen. But when I am at the library with my headphones on, I can finally relax and get some work done on it. At home, I’m always tense, wondering who is going to come up to me and pull me out of my work to ask me to do something for them. And every little thing in the house that needs to be done also beckons to me. But I did this last week and I’ve done it this week, even though today I did not want to! A big key part is having to take Sarah to school. Then I’m already out so it’s not so hard to go to Mustang. I do have to look like less of a frazzled hag when I drop off Sarah though – there’s no going back home or I would just stay there!

I have a lot of things to do at home today. I need to reschedule all my PT appointments. They have been on Fridays, but with Ben working on Fridays I can’t do that anymore. I am very thankful he has been at home to help me with all this hard stuff with Mom and Sarah. I wish I’d been coming to the library and working a lot more in the past, but I suppose what happened in the past is what was supposed to happen. It’s okay. No ragrets, am I right?

So there’s that, and then I need to do DRS paperwork for Sarah and find out what Belinda needs to do for hers. I want her to try to do it herself but I feel I’m going to need to do some research on that before she dives in.

The other thing I need to do is resume scanning important documents. I was doing really well on that, and then the holidays came and it was all too much so I put that project away. I am trying to not only scan our important documents, but also all of Mom’s, and Mom has a LOT. I think that getting all of these scanned and uploaded to Dropbox and on my big hard drive is super important. I just really don’t want to do it!

With Lenora and Ben R no longer in the apartment, I do have some space free. I have been thinking about doing something temporary out there, with just the card table, to work on the scanning project. Separating it from everything else might be a good way to proceed. Everything I do feels so jumbled up in my mind right now. I need to organize my new novel and I need to organize my entire life!

Last thing, I’m reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and it is amazing.

This post was all over the place. That’s okay.

A poem I wrote at the children’s hospital

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I wrote this while we were in the waiting room at Children’s National Hospital earlier this month. I don’t know if the quality is that great, since I wrote it and didn’t really edit it at all, but I felt like I had to try to capture the space, and the mood, and the feel. It was one of the most poetic places I have been in a while. The poem doesn’t seem to follow many writing rules, but it was what was happening around me. I wrote this in the notes app since I didn’t have any paper.

Children’s hospital

Forgotten crayon on the floor
Yellow, alone on polished cold tile
Mickey and Minnie frolic on tv
Above a woman with her head in her hands
Children’s cries. Cranky. Tired.
Kids’ waiting room at the surgical center.

Bright painted walls. Blue, green, purple
Elmo, Moana, colored carefully or scribbled
Equally displayed, Scotch taped to doors
Edges flap as blue paper cap wearers
Rush through. Hurry, hurry
Kids’ waiting room at the surgical center.

Quarts of hand sanitizer
Join tinsel and gnomes by the silvery tree
No eating
No drinking
Kids hunger and thirst, parents must too
“Take it out,” warns reception. Offenders comply.
Kids’ waiting room at the surgical center.

Filling out forms, swiping through phones
Texting ‘no news yet’ to loved ones at home
An empty car seat at the feet of Grandma
Waiting for good news
And a small one back in her arms
Mom with tan backpack called out with her teen
Kids’ waiting room at the surgical center.

Dad grips white bag of somebody’s clothes
Twists the band strapped to his wrist,
Bar code printed by somebody’s name
Mama brings in a very small wheelchair
Warm jacket and marble game tucked
In the seat
Speaks on her phone in an unknown language
Smiles and laughs, then her voice goes soft
Kids’ waiting room at the surgical center.

My child hungers. She closes her book
And now scrolls cat memes, sharing a curated handful with me
“I think that’s A.I.” I say, and
She doesn’t mind. Her leg bounces lightly
Betraying her calm cool classy demeanor
Our pager lies silent, useless, as we shift in hard seats
Kids’ waiting room at the surgical center.

A memorable journey from the year

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“December Journaling if You Think You Haven’t Achieved Much This Year” Day 28: A memorable journey from the year.

One thing that was memorable was Belinda’s final dance nationals competition. I got credit cards to pay for it, which I know wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I was unable to even consider not letting her do it. Getting to see her dance like that one last time was so wonderful. It was also really special to have that week where it was just Ben, Belinda, and me. We didn’t go too crazy with spending but we ate out a few times and I bought passes to go to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, the Ripley’s Aquarium, and some Ripley’s mini golf thing. I really just did it for the aquarium, but the other things were interesting too. And Belinda loves mini golf. We got to go with her duet tap partner and her family. It was fun hanging out with them. We also went to the library, rode the free trolley a LOT, explored, went through the national forest, saw a lot of cool things. And I got to spend time with just Belinda. I am so glad we had that time before she went to college in August. I can treasure that forever. One thing I did not do is post any pictures onto facebook about it, because I was waiting for the dance media to go along with the post, but now I can’t even remember what I’ve done with that now. I’m sure it’s all saved on the hard drive, but I would like to do a post about it, so it will be in my memories each year. I’m thinking I will do it on the one year anniversary. Along with Bennett and Mia’s wedding. One year anniversary isn’t even a month away for that, so I need to gather my photos now!

Another memorable journey was Karlene and my journey to support Sarah’s first year in marching band. We went to almost all the football games (Northwestern Parents Day got in the way one time, and the haunted house at the theater was the other) and not only did we get to see her perform, we also got to watch the Tigers have an undefeated season and win state! Sarah had never been to a Tuttle football game before this. What a way to start! Not only that, we got to see the band perform their routine at competitions and I really enjoyed that. Sarah was always so happy to see me there. Made my heart joyful! And Karlene and I traveled to out of town games, had dinner together at interesting places, and stayed the night in a very odd motel. We spent the night because the next day we all buried Sarah’s stepmom’s ashes, and that was quite a journey in itself. And it’s not quite over, since she doesn’t have a headstone yet. That can be a 2026 project.

And it’s not really traveling, but this journey through being “poverty people” (a Righteous Gemstones reference that I adopted) was extremely memorable. Food pantries, medical issues, financial assistance, cutoff notices, watching our bank account dip below zero once again, pushing pride to the side to accept help from other people, and still knowing that God has held all of us through all of it has been so good for our family. I would have rather learned these lessons without being so strapped, but I know that if this is the path God chose it was the right one for us! I am so thankful for everything that has happened this year.

Lifelong goals and achievements you’re still working toward

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This one is a lot easier than the others have been lately. It’s much simpler to think towards the future than remember the past, at least with the way my brain has been the last few years.

So this “December Journaling If You Feel LIke You Haven’t Achieved Much This Year” is Day 27: Lifelong goals and achievements you’re still working toward.

-To be a better Christian.
-Pray more, read the Bible more, proclaim God’s love more, and love more.
-To remember to be thankful in everything, and to express that thankfulness regularly.
-To have the fruits of the spirit all the time.
-To be a better wife, parent, daughter, relative, friend.
-To actually have a clean house that stays cleanish and organized.
-To be traditionally published!!
-To be a best-selling author!
-To be more healthy.
-To not always feel like I don’t know what’s going on and that I’m left out and don’t really understand how things work. (I should probably change this one to continuing to accept myself for who I am!)

I think that’s a pretty good list.

Favorite Movies and TV Shows from the Year AND What You’ve Learned This Year

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I’m not sure how this pertains to “December Journaling If You Feel Like You Haven’t Achieved Much This Year,” but maybe this one is the proof that I actually did not. Here is 19: Favorite Movies and TV Shows from the Year.

It’s hard to remember. There is so much TV and we watch too much of it. I don’t think we went to the movies once this year, but of course, there were movies on streaming. We need to cut our streaming services, that would be something.

I enjoyed The Righteous Gemstones a lot. That is my favorite TV show now, I think. The language is bad but the humor gets me every time. It is perfect humor for me, great writing, great visuals. I’m going to miss that show. I think I have watched it seven times (I kept watching it with other people!) I’m actually streaming a playlist of Righteous Gemstones songs on Spotify right now.

We also watched Severance, and that was also really good. I love stuff like that, where there’s weird things and secrets yet to be uncovered. I hope they finish everything and tie up the loose ends, unlike Lost, which did NOT explain a lot of things and that was frustrating!

I know I watched more things, and I know I enjoyed lots of things. But I don’t want to write them down because I don’t want to upset any friends who lean to the right or the left more than I do. I like political things. I like to study what other people are thinking, saying, and doing. I do not like biased news. It’s hard to find anything that isn’t biased. I used to be so insulted when people would talk ill of the news media, and I would remind them that I was the editor of a newspaper, and they would say, oh, I don’t mean you, I mean real news, and that was also insulting.

Anyway, interesting that I feel no compunction to not talk about our medical, financial, or employment situations…but I do draw the line at political. That’s going to stay on my livejournal and in my own head, thank you very much.

Oh yeah, I hit publish but now I’m editing because I forgot I was going to try to do more than one on here.

20: What You’ve Learned This Year

I learned that I should look at these calendars with more of a critical eye before I dive right in.

I think we learned Belinda had MCAS this year, and later we learned that I do too.

I’m still learning the rest, I think. Right now I’m learning how to adjust to big life changes, like three children moving out in the same year and a new one moving in who has all her own idiosyncrasies instead of something I’ve worked to curate all of her life. I’m glad the things are always changing and not being boring…but I do yearn for the days when it was just little old Garvie Fam Five. Sigh.

Washington DC

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Yesterday Belinda and I flew into Washington DC and today we went to Children’s National for her procedure. It was an endoscopy with possible dilation (they did that). We are here because she still goes to the pediatric surgeons that performed the POEM procedure for her achalasia.

So yesterday we got to the room and didn’t want to do anything. After a while we bundled up and walked to Domino’s and got pizza. Belinda did not wear gloves and her hands were so cold! I considered giving her mine and then I did not.

Beautiful view from our hotel room

This morning we called an uber and got to the hospital early. We went to see the chapel and the Healing Garden, which were underwhelming. But I’m glad I saw them because I had wanted to see them for a long time. There is allegedly something on the roof as well, but I wasn’t brave enough to try to find that.

We were in the waiting room for a really long time. I wrote a poem that didn’t rhyme, after an abandoned yellow crayon under a chair piqued my interest.

Waiting

Anyway, I made a bunch of notes of the day, mostly so I can keep the facts straight and remember which doctors and nurses worked on her (which came in very handy today with the phlebotomist).

Belinda told Dr. Kane that she had no symptoms and every thing was good and I told her to really tell him, and then she talked about how things were getting stuck sometimes and how she was having spasms. He told her that stress can make achalasia worse. So when she was unable to swallow in the cafeteria at school, that made her have to regurgitate, which made her even more anxious the next time. I am very thankful the school released her from the meal plan. I cook and freeze meals for her, and she makes herself an egg for breakfast every day.

Anyway. The nurse came and talked and talked. She was very nice but it was a long chat! We were both getting tired. Then the anesthesiologist came in, and he checked out Belinda’s veins and then she said not my hands, please, and he said what about your foot and she said sure and I DIED but he got it onthe first try and Belinda wasn’t even bothered. I felt nauseated but made it.

Shot in the foot time

Dr. Petrosyan came by to say hi. He and Dr. Kane are both her surgeons, and they performed the POEM together. Her last scope and dilation was also with them. Today Dr. Petrosyan was the surgeon who was doing all the emergency surgeries. We talked about languages a little with him. He knows Armenian, Russian, and English. He’s very smart!

So it took a bit longer because the consent form didn’t include the dilation, and so the nurse couldn’t let her go to the OR until that was fixed. So Dr. Kane fixed it, Belinda signed it. She was glad to get to sign it twice because she got her digital signature to look better the second time.

Dr. Kane said everything looked great and the dilation they did was very small, but they of course did it while they were in there. It looks like it went from 9.4 mm at the narrowest point to 12.0 mm. So that will be nice for her.

We got an uber back to the room and I had thought we might go to the Botanical Gardens this evening but she just wanted to order food and rest. So we got fettuccine and had it delivered. I’ve never done that before and the cost was horrible. Too cold to walk tonight though, and getting an uber would have been more expensive.

Tomorrow we are supposed to meet a senator in the morning. Then the art museum or library of congress or natural history. I’m letting her lead.

Routines you’ve upheld and stuck to that ground you

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These actually aren’t as fun as I hoped they would be. “December Journaling If You Feel Like You Haven’t Achieved Much This Year” is not making me feel amazing about myself yet, unfortunately.

Routines you’ve upheld and stuck to that ground you.

I’m autistic and I have adhd. I dislike keeping routines; I want every day to feel fun and fancy free, without burdens. And not only does it have to be a routing I’ve upheld, it also has to ground me? Like…what?

I don’t know about grounding, but I do get up most mornings to take Sarah to school. Sometimes I have an appointment in the morning or I’m sick or I’m just feeling super lazy, and I have Ben do it, but it’s usually me. I don’t think that grounds me. It’s just something I have to do.

Taking care of Mom in the morning is the same. I get her pills, turn on the tv (it’s finicky since we got a new router), make her coffee, make her oatmeal, bring the meal to her, and then change the channel to what she enjoys. Also not grounding. It’s also just something I have to do.

This year I have read my Bible sporadically, practiced self-care sporadically, ate healthy sporadically, exercised sporadically, kept the house clean sporadically, wrote sporadically, and worked in the car sporadically.

I breathed deep a few times, prayed less than I should, went outside and stood on the ground in my bare feet a couple of times, used essential oils maybe twice, and conquered a disturbing amount of levels of Candy Crush. Some of those (not the game, unfortunately) might be grounding, but I didn’t do the regular. I think the only thing I’m doing regular is playing Candy Crush. I also did Duolingo every day, but I mostly do the fastest review just to keep my streak up, because I’m not good at languages and I really have to be convinced to move forward in my lessons because I don’t want to go to fast and become completely confused like I did in high school Spanish.

So I don’t know about this one. I guess I wrote stuff about it though, so that’s good enough.

An ordinary, everyday conversation you remember

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Day 4 and it’s actually December 4! If I get it posted today I will be caught up on “December Journaling If You Feel Like You Haven’t Achieved Much This Year,” yay.

An ordinary, everyday conversation you remember.

I don’t know. This is odd. If it was ordinary and everyday, why would I remember it? I can remember lots of conversations, but there was something important and different about them.

I suppose one I remember very well was between me and Sarah and her therapist, mostly with Sarah talking, and that was a very rough conversation. I don’t really want to recite it here. Sarah’s been through a lot.

One thing you overcame this year

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Another “December Journaling If You Feel Like You Haven’t Achieved Much This Year” entry. As noted before, it’s actually December 4 and I’m playing catch up. Truly, I only saw the list on December 2, so I always knew I would be late, but then I forgot on both the 3rd and the 4th. ADHD, woo!

One thing you overcame this year.

Wow, I wish I had done these each day so I wouldn’t be sort of rushing through the beginning. Also, Ben is watching TV and I don’t think my headphones are charged, so this isn’t the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Anyway…

Nothing is coming to mind…

Okay – her it is! I overcame the huge headache that was getting Sarah’s drivers license!!

Sarah took Drivers Ed at Browns at the beginning of the summer. As soon as it was done, we got online to do the permit test. But no, it wouldn’t let us because I’m not her legal parent. Even though I had the power of attorney. Okay, so we needed to go in person to do the permit test. And that required two forms of ID.

I also learned that in Oklahoma, the legal parent or guardian of the student needs to go along when they take their permit and drivers tests. I found there was an alternate way, if the parent signed a specific document and had it notarized. Sometimes Will comes on Sundays for lunch, but I wasn’t confident in bringing a notary in on short notice like that. So I got online and became an official notary public. Since Will isn’t a blood relative or anything, it was okay for me to notarize it. I ordered my bond and my stamp thing, and a few weeks later, Will came for lunch and I got him to sign it! Another thing checked off.

Anyway, Sarah didn’t have a birth certificate anymore at that point. Will said it had been lost. I needed to have certain documents to be able to get it. We had her social security card, and she signed it (after practicing cursive for a while, lol). But we had no photo ID, no mail here in her name, nothing like that. I had a power of attorney, but they wouldn’t accept it because the rules said it had to be court-certified (not a thing in Oklahoma, as far as I could find out).

So after failing with the power of attorney, I found out that at 16, Sarah could order her own birth certificate, so that started to help. BUT she needed that second ID. The Internet said a high school transcript would work if it had her address! I had that! So we sent those in. Nope, it has to have a photo of her on it. I pointed out where it didn’t mention that, but that was only for people who have a high school that was out of state…not those that are in Oklahoma. WHAT. So back to the drawing board. I considered just putting her photo on the pdf of the transcript, but I knew that could come back to bite me. Ditto on making a student ID for her. See, Tuttle doesn’t do student IDs.

So this went back and forth and back and forth for months and months and months. I cried to people on the phone from Vitachek (the company that handles this for the state) and people in Oklahoma. I had a lady from Oklahoma say that the power of attorney plus transcript would work fine, so I uploaded that to vitalchek, who denied it, and when I tried to find that lady again, she had vanished. And the next guy I talked to was another make me cry person.

So I just waited for a bit as I licked my wounds and prepared myself mentally for another tactic. In the meantime, I went to Parent Teacher Conference night at the school. While there, Karlene and I got to talking to Sarah’s geometry teacher. I mentioned my difficulty, and she said that I should ask at administration if they could make her a photo ID like the ones the teachers had. It was so simple it was brilliant. I knew those people at administration and they’ve been super helpful with the situation. I had an interview scheduled with the superintendent already for the newspaper. And what do you know, it was no big deal. They did it, I scanned it and sent it to Vitalchek, and it was approved! We wanted to come pick it up, but it turned out only Sarah could do that, not me, even with a signed note from her authorizing it, and she’d have to – lol – bring her photo ID with her to prove it was her. Hilarious!

So we waited two more weeks and it came in the mail.

I was so excited! So it took us a few days, just because Sarah does have a busy after school schedule, but then we drove to Chickasha and filled out a bunch of stuff and signed stuff and did her photo and eye test…and then she didn’t pass by one! UGH!

BUT…the nice lady there told us that now that she was in the system, she could take the test online without the earlier restrictions. We had more busy days, and then she got on there and passed right away. That was right before her birthday, and on her birthday we drove down there and got that permit!

She still has the paper version and it’s in the car so she’s ready to go. The real one (we did REAL ID too) is coming in a few weeks. She’s been driving (on the back roads) and she goes real slow but hey, that’s how this has been going so I’m used to it!

That’s something I overcame! Stupid bureaucracy and red tape, but we did it!

Reminds me of finally getting Belinda’s diagnosis, but that wasn’t this year. Accomplishments!