Woken At 6:37AM.

Afternoon, Kids…

So, I was woken from a dead sleep by our Lhasa apso, Chewy’s barking his head off on the other side of the house at the backdoor.  You know when you’re jolted from a dead sleep for whatever the reason, you’re disoriented as hell, right?  Chewy’s one to alert us for stuff out of the ordinary I can count on my hand how many times he’s woken us from a dead sleep since he showed up on our doorstep five years ago …so, this was serious business.

Joey woke a second after me, and climbed out of bed, crawled across the house with Chewy leading, then, I heard the backdoor chime, and Chewy haul out.  He had to pee.  After, everybody came back, and Joey had to pee herself and climb back in bed.  45 minutes roundtrip with a bathroom break herself, which isn’t easy without her shoes for support, so she has to use a urinal on the floor.

This has me thinking about being vulnerable.  OK, Joey’s more ambulatory than I am, I’ll admit.  What she can do, I help, and vice versa…BUT, like I said, it took her 45 minutes roundtrip.  She was worn out, and her provider comes at 8:30.  That ain’t a long time for a power nap, and Joey’s not one to get back to sleep easily when she’s been scared awake.  Thankfully, today wasn’t one of those days; she said she got an hour in.  I didn’t, but I can get by on minimal sleep unless I’m dog tired.  I’m a vampire by nature, bouncing up and ready to go, is nothing to me…hence, being awake to hang with you fine people.

Anyhoo, we want kids, always have.  But, there’s a lot of thinking that’ll go into making that happen successfully.  And, I’m not just us, because we’re crips, no, I know no kid comes with a handbook whether abled or not.  To take a catchphrase of sorts from Hitch, that’s really when you go skydiving without a parachute…and, hope to God you stick the landing.  We’ve talked about the “What ifs” and hows.  Would we have the crib by our bed, or let the baby sleep with us?  Feeding, dressing, getting to and from doctor’s appointments, how’d we make that happen?

Joey has a collection of reborn babies that range from micro-preemie to toddler that she’s constantly practicing on.  She gets frustrated dressing them, but she gets it in the long run.  Like she says, “It’s hard to be a perfectionist crip.”

Then, there’s the outsiders, who mean well, but again, they don’t live our life.  They only see certain aspects, and still they don’t see.  Joey and I joke that they’re not seeing 4^th dimensionally, thanks Back to the Future.  All kidding aside, we wonder how others’d make it in the same situation, because we’ve actually been told not to have kids, because it’d be too hard for us.  We’ve thought about these things.  But, where there’s a will, there’s a way, right?

Be good to each other.

-J-