#battle that gets more exhausting ny the days even as i continue to pass better and its just so tiring

[oshawatt4t]

.

[iron-hearts-ablaze]

Gale stood pensively by the opening of his tent before entering. They had drawn near the end of their journey through the Mountain Pass, and many had assumed the wizard to be naught but characteristically fatigued. When greeted, he simply stated he wished to be alone with his thoughts.

Yet, when evening had long since arrived and the time for supper had passed its usual time, Gale finally emerged properly from his tent. He appeared less forlorn than before, but there was still no joy on his features. A heavy weight clearly still rested on his mind.

It wasn't until he spoke properly to Karlach that it was revealed that it was nothing but a mirror image of the wizard.

"I apologize for the deception; I was merely a distraction to give Mr. Dekarios enough time to render a significant distance between him and everyone else prior to the orb's detonation. He wished for me to regretfully pass on the message that he found he was no longer able to quell the orb with the magical items that you have graciously supplied him."

The mirror image paused, as if Gale himself paused when constructing the message.

"Gale also wished for you to know that he cared for you deeply and valued your friendship. He has also requested that if you could keep Tara close for the duration of her stay at camp before her departure back to Waterdeep. He… he wished he was given more time to know you better."

Little did Gale know, come morn Elminster would have been waiting nearby.

Send my muse anons pretending to be someone they care about. The twist: make these anons as heartbreaking, disappointing, or anger-inducing as possible. Accepting

Karlach had felt Gale deflate over the last couple of days. Most brushed it off as exhaustion finally setting in but, calling upon her instincts, to her it felt...heavier. She had tried to speak to him, as they were always able to do, but it seemed he didn't want to talk about whatever it was bothering him.

Pain, no doubt... Something she was beginning to have a fleeting understanding in how he suffered. Her engine had started to become incredibly painful with it's heat. A small part of what he felt... She offered whatever magical trinket she had a hold of but he seemed more rejected by each one. They weren't working. He was getting desperate and she could feel him slipping away. But what was she to do? Wanting to be left alone, she didn't check in on him. Instead, stoked the fire - needlessly for her sake - as he mind raced.

When he emerged and approached, she put on her usual reassuring smile. Nothing seemed off at first, albeit he looked incredibly melancholy. Was he now ready to open up? Silently, she waited for his word. But her brow furrowed almost instantly when 'Gale' spoke. The voice sounded off. Tin-ny. As if echoing. Scrambling to her feet, her skin ran unnaturally cold. She had heard this only once before, when Gale cast it as a pre-measure when he fell in battle.

As the words continued to come out of the illusions 'mouth', her breathing became uncontrollable. Usually it was accompanied by pure anger. But this time...fear. Unadulterated, all-encompassing terror.

She almost tore Gale's tent down as she pulled back the flap. Gone. But his belongings remained. He truly never expected to return. Startling Tara awake, no doubt, in her ambush she quickly spluttered her way through an explanation. Hoping, and receiving, the Tressym's aid by flying ahead and trying to find where he could have gotten to.

By air and by land, they searched. Karlach stopped only for a moment to try and steady her panicked breaths. Spotting then, some sliding footprints. Someone had stumbled over here... Recently. Following them at a sprint, occasionally losing them but managing to pick them back up either by her own tracking instinct or from Tara's calls above her.

Eventually, which felt like an eon, she found him. Making his way through these lands neither of them knew.

There was relief, but only minimal and not lasting long. Sprinting closer, she yelled out as she went. "OI!" She bit back her tears, almost collapsing when she was within earshot. "I once said that if Gale was kicked out of the group, that I was going to! You think I fucking lied?! It wasn't a threat, it was a promise!" Panting, and fighting her sobs - steaming from her cheeks.

"It can't end like this... If you're going somewhere, I'm going with you! I-I can't hold you... I can't hug you, pat your back and clearly my words aren't working either... So I'll just BE. I'll be with you 'till the end." Karlach smiled weakly as the tears continued to fall and quickly evaporate away. "We may as well both blow up together, eh? Make a true show of it... If we must. Together."

[grimoirevol2]

Carn.

Yes, we’re finally back. It’s us. To stay, this time. (As long as we can.)

This is Seven. We’re glad to be home, so we’re going to compile everything we learned about the figures who broke into this blog temporarily using a spell. This Grimoire entry will constitute our moratorium on Carn for now. The arc is “over”, I guess you might say.

Please, don’t forget to ask us questions if you’re curious about anything we’ve mentioned here. In addition, please consider joining our Discord if anything urgent goes down and we cannot report on it here.

It’s going to be a long post. I think its our longest yet at 2200 words or so. We’ll add a break after this introduction so that the Grimoire doesn’t get overwhelmingly long.

The backstory.

Elcarn Jin (el-cahrn jyne) was an elf who had been recorded as arriving on this plane (constituting XPA09) using the ley line ‘Iagon Maenour’, apparently in 2015, along with several other naufragé beings constituting his “troupe”. This included ‘Yikes’, a pharye with an intense love for artistry, and ‘Fold’, a female dullahan seeking penitence for sin. Carn later confessed that there were 4 other companions, but they have either left him (leaving their mention unnecessary) or were disintegrated by Carn’s own hand. He claims his time in Leyland was long, boring, and terribly droll, not worth telling.

(For the record, ‘Iagon Maenour’ is our ley line.)

As an elf, Carn’s primary motivation appeared to be to carve out his own corner of the world. Elves are known to be very possessive people, so wherever Carn could sit down and find his own food meant everything was good… until it wasn’t anymore. See, because most naufragé were formed by sentient life energy, they do have a need for fulfillment, in any form. They need “progression”. Unlike celestials, they aren’t content with a duty where they just do the job forever, until they can no longer do it. They want more.

In 2017, Carn’s troupe began hunting elsewhere. He began expanding, searching inside his dominion for more tracts of land that he could use for his hunts. He searched south, following the ley line using the rivers of the area, and eventually came upon NY 3. Here, Carn learned that he and his troupe had to blend in better.

Eventually, he said, through trial and error and hitchhiking, in January of this year, they came upon Wolf Valley, staying at Grayskull Motel using an old converted ice-cream van, which Carn says they stole from a junkyard and restored to working order using spells. They had slipped into our town right under our noses, using their natural abilities to appear more human. They had been paying for everything using the same method they used to restore the van (even though the cash was faked, it would need close inspection to uncover its falsehood).

We didn’t catch their scent because it was around this time that we had been investigating the return of a particular clan of lycanthropes to the town, and on February 2, there was a particularly brutal battle in the Hotel Wolfen, that eventually spilled out onto the street where we achieved victory easier. Evidently, Carn saw us fighting that day, and although he knew he wanted this town for himself, knew the troupe couldn’t stay around our town without us noticing.

He backed off for a while. The troupe lived out of the van, traveling up and down NY 3, hunting when they had to and passing into Canada using magic when they had to. This is probably why in March we noticed that there was a Hell of a lot of disturbances on the ley line during that time, which we had attributed to Pearl Curlew (Rebecca’s daughter) attempting to control her magic. But obviously, that was only part of it.

In May, we traveled to Canada to investigate an unrelated invasion far north along the ley line. It was at this time that they discovered how they might teleport along the ley line. After we’d returned from Canada, we were told by a state trooper through the police that a vehicle, a restored ice-cream truck, had been abandoned at the nearby convenience stop for several days, and had been relocated to an impound lot downstate. Carn confessed this was almost immediately after they realized that they could teleport in such a manner, although spells of this sort are very taxing and result in exasperation for weeks on end.

The break-in.

In August, of course, I began this Grimoire after reminiscing about the one we’d lost. It was at this point that the troupe seemed to have remembered we existed. This is an unknown. We’ve had no idea how they came back across us, but it’s not like we were trying to hide.

On Tuesday, August 28th, as we were returning home that night on foot from a monthly Town Hall meeting, we noticed that the Church’s power was out. As we walked up, we realized that Sally, the keeper of the church, was nowhere to be found. It was very peculiar to us. In the quiet night, amidst the crickets, we suddenly heard a very loud BANG sound, almost like a gunshot, come from the back of the church. We dashed in and then upstairs. Sally was holding a large knife, probably from Six’s stuff, and upon seeing us she dropped it and collapsed in exhaustion.

She explained to us, after calming down, that several beings had broken into the church’s upper floors (the Agency), breaking the ward that Rebecca had placed on our window and dashing away with something black and rectangular. One quick search later, we realized Six’s fucking phone was gone. Of all the valuable things, they took that. I would’ve thought they were a human attacker by stealing something monetarily valuable, but Sally assured us that these things weren’t from how they appeared to her.

After Yikes’ last post, we searched our records for everything on Carn. We didn’t have anything for a name like that, although his actions (using subordinates, playing arbitrary games, condemning people who do not play his games correctly) were telltale signs of an elf on the warpath.

Since we were obviously hacked, I texted Rebecca to try and log in. When she couldn’t, I panicked. There was no way I was going to lose another Grimoire, let alone Six’s phone. She texted me back after my minor panic attack that they mentioned a warding spell, and their repeated use of the word “YOU” was emblematic of a spell’s maintenance.

After searching the woods for a bit by doing some flyovers, we deduced it’d probably be best for us to continue the search the next morning. That’s when the “gift” at midnight on the 29th was released.

They were recording Six’s phone playing a old-timey tune.

I quickly recognized that they were begging us to find the phone. After some deduction we followed a foot trail into the woods.

To make a long story short, we found the phone at around 12:35 AM, and the song “The Girl in the Little Green Hat” playing on repeat. It had to be telling us something. This was a very obviously a game by an elf who was trying to be very obvious.

The search.

We regained our energy through rest after that. Our investigation into these individuals began almost as soon as Rebecca put up that post warding the Grimoire in kind.

The most boring part of any investigation is interpreting every clue as fact and trying to draw a plan of attack to an enemy you can’t find. So I’ll cut to the chase.

The song was used to lead us to a particular glen in the forest. We knew they were spellcasters. They broke the ward without making a sound, something only a celestial using their aura or a naufragé using their mind could. Considering their motives and commonality, and Sally’s eyewitness account, we were quick to recognize the threat as a naufragé rather than a celestial.

The glen had something to do with everything going on, right? We went there and realized quite quickly it rested on the leyline, and nearby we found a number of memorabilia, undoubtedly from the thief’s escapades and travels, as well as a lot of convenience-store food (and associated receipts), from various points along Route 3 and Canada beyond it.

They were living in that glen for at few weeks before making an attack. And that’s when I remembered. After I answered the question about being okay on August 14th, and knowing that they could consume our full attention, it was likely at this point that the thieves began planning their return to Wolf Valley. After all, we’re their major roadblock, so it only makes sense to make themselves known in a very public attack towards us, so they could try and get us out of the way. And they can only be very publicly known by knowing as well that our guard was down at the very end of the month.

See, we weren’t super inclined to make this a high-priority case, because by our counts they hadn’t done anyone any harm, and we’d retrieved Six’s phone, seemingly the only thing they took. Before Rebecca made that post in the morning, we dropped by the police station and learned essentially that there were no other incidents that had occured that night.

But something about them striking the Grimoire rubbed me the wrong way. They wanted the attention of everyone. And considering they were willing to leave behind their camp and use magic, they were important.

We uncovered a teleport signature that led us on their tail to Canada. From there the story gets a lot less interesting, so we’ll cut forward to how we took them down.

In New Brunswick, we cut them off as they were trying to escape to the Atlantic Ocean. After reading our post when we were back in Wolf Valley, they surely were afraid of coming after us, so they decided to flee to the ocean and get back to their homeground eventually.

Naturally, that didn’t happen. We found them hiding out in Flatlands, a small one-road town about an hour from the ports to the sea. They were probably trying to shake us off their trail by being in such a small town with proximity to an escape route, but having three naufragé in one concentrated area kind of draws you straight to them.

The troupe.

The troupe was defeated quickly after that. So, this is the part where we explained who we eliminated and how.

‘Yikes’, the creature who spoke on Carn’s behalf, is a pharye (far-yeh) - an antiquated creature once mistaken for fairies, hence the name. Standing 2 feet tall and humanoid, a pharye has a knack for leadership and guile, especially among non-magic creatures, even though they come off as overly posh or bright. When a pharye bends the knee, it is usually only to service their own goals of survival, longevity, and eventual subjugation, like an apprentice attempting to overthrow their master. Pharyes have a strong sense of justice, but not a strong sense of good or ill. One might call them the ultimate “lawful neutral”. They give themselves overly poetic names that cannot be stated in most human language. Yikes was very typical of their kind, from what we saw of her. 

Yikes escaped our capture by diving into the Restigouche River, but, because of knowledge we have on pharyes, we expect she will reappear sooner rather than later. We’re keeping our collective eyes out.

‘Fold’ was a female dullahan, a vengeful spirit seeking penitence for some sin committed in life. A dullahan is an undead which was killed through beheading, escaping Purgatory by wandering aimlessly without their head. In the World of the Living, they regain their head until they achieve their goals, which are typically to discover the fate of their killer or atone for the sin that brought them to death. Like most undead, dullahans are versed in future-sight, although their fortunes tend towards whatever vision contains the most spectacle. As such, Fold was probably supposed to see us coming, hence them settling in Flatlands. However, she did not properly predict her own failure. Fold was banished in combat back to Purgatory.

‘Carn’ was an elf. We’ll tell you more on them (and their varied kind) for this month’s Monster File on September 19th. However, this post alone should tell you a great deal on who they are and their motives for doing so. Carn was bound with a spell to extract most of the information for this post, then banished to Leyland.

Finally, there was another name which came up in our investigation. The name was ‘Guardia’. Carn thoroughly denied knowing anything of them, but they appear to be leaking information on magic and the other planes to the internet through backchannels and deleted posts. We have no idea where they are or who they are, but they’re somehow responsible for whatever the Hell’s going on. They were not present anywhere in the investigation, but their name was mentioned among the troupe’s things.

We’re looking into Guardia, whoever they are, for now.

Keep safe, everyone. - ⑦

[thebrowneyedlolita]

MILLI

A long time ago, during what I would call a moment of self doubt, I remember writing to one of my friends this particular message: “ Wish I didn’t feel this much all the time”. I guess the signs were all there already… Now, his reply is the best part. He simply, without any further context given, just said: “I thought about it, but I always end up with the conclusion that I’d rather feel too much than too little”. And there you go. Here I am at the brink of my mid twenties, coming to terms with the reality of it all, and it is slightly terrifying but definitely liberating. I feel too much, I internalise every single little movement and word spoken and to feel for me is to live, experience in strong waves that exaggerate and amplify ‘til my whole body and mind are left exhausted.

My sadness, no matter how little, comes and leaves a mess of shattered glass everywhere, which I diligently and continuously pick up again and reassemble in the best way I can, ‘til the next wave of hurricanes hit the port. And the regularity of it has made me the best of my class at it. I have developed different techniques and methods to regroup and return to a formation, fit enough to fight the next battle. This shouldn’t inspire feelings of pity in the reader, as there is nothing quite as vulgar and easily manipulated as pity. I don’t want pity, in fact it’s not at all as bad as it seems. Happiness for example, can translate into a very strong and powerful emotion to me too and trigger a beautiful wave of intensity that washes over me and leaves me feeling complete.   

For as long as I’ve known how to talk and fully understand emotions, my cognitive ability to process the world around me has always fascinated and scared me at the same time. Every stimuli from the external world has the ability to single handedly knock me off my feet and affect me in such a way that I can’t quite put into words. I’ve decided to scrap up a list of things that I am, the good and the bad, in an effort to come to terms with all of it and hopefully use this as a therapeutic ground for acceptance and growth. 

When I was a kid, my grandparents had a cassette of Riverdance (Irish dancing),the whole thing fascinated me so much I spent two weeks learning the dance over and over again until my legs hurt. I devour books and songs, to the point where people don’t get how excited a bass line makes me feel that it changes my whole mood. Not to mention the immeasurable amount of times I’ve attended a concert and felt my heart would explode, or the times I’ve fallen into a complete trance whilst listening to musicians play jazz at my favourite spot. 

I hate confrontation to the point where I physically feel pain after an argument and my stomach closes up, I frequently laugh and smile whilst walking on the streets which I recognise might scare the people surrounding me but I can’t help it. 

I associate every track to a moment, a word, a feeling, an image, a time and space. I daydream on a regular basis which causes me to miss my tube stop very often. I am obsessive about my hygiene and will floss and oil pull and wash myself way more often than necessary but strangely am not compulsive about anything else. If I think a song sounds like another one I will spend the whole day trying to find what the other one’s name is. I look at colours and images very often and associate them in my head.

I am extremely responsible and I never wanna rely on anyone so am often the person that takes you home at night, tucks you in and leaves water by your bed. I don’t like change to be honest, I love the routine but only if it has excitement in it, if not I try and construct a new set of habits that incorporate that. I dance when I brush my teeth, when I take a shower, when I cook and when I’m supposed to work out. I am not great at sleeping, I am very wired at all times so to ask my head to shut up is a mission.

I love people that are passionate about something, and I will surely fall in love with you if you spend time trying to explain to me how much your passion means to you and let me into your crazy little world. I don’t care if your passion is collecting pencils, just walk me through it with lit up eyes and excitement and I’ll love it.

I love to make other people feel better even if I am not feeling great, I have a bit of a nurse complex but hey it is what it is. I don’t like criticism unless it’s feedback. I have developed a fear of heights which particularly affects my ability to climb up ladders.

I find comfort in music and being alone. I work well in social environments but thrive alone. Sometimes I am very hard on myself and it sucks cause no matter how well I do, it’s still not good enough to my ideal standards. I’ve been put on a pedestal my whole life and I’ve just recently found pleasure in stepping down from it and doing the unexpected. In fact being a bad girl turns me on. I love studying and academics is something I do miss a lot. I love past times and nostalgia for places and people I’ve never met. I’m extremely anxious about missing out and not knowing enough so I try to listen and learn as much as I can about history and science and music and movies and cultures and all the rest this world has to offer.

I can be a bit of a moon in scorpio but I guess it balances out with my sun in Leo. I make a lot of playlists and wish the days of mixtapes were still around. I idealise everything and everyone and it always bites me in the ass when reality hits. I find it hard to receive affection these days because of a rotten apple I’ve had in my past relationships but I’m working on it. I love the mountains and I could spend my whole winter season there. I can be very spiritual as well as very cynical and it’s a weird balance if you ask me. 

I don’t suffer from PMS nor have a painful period which is usually very short lived and I thank the gods every time for this. My mother says I was born to be a mumma and to be fair I can’t wait to have lots of kids and have them wear Led Zeppelin t-shirts and buy them as many instruments as they want. I write a lot and it helps me process stuff. I eat pretty healthy but would down an IPA and pasta every day of my life if I had the chance. When I was a kid my dad used to cook pasta with tuna when my mum was away flying and that was pretty much the only dish he knew how to cook.  Still to this day, I make the best pasta with tuna and vinegar and it’s my favourite dish ever.

I am a very sunny person that lives off of light and warm energy but unfortunately find myself contemplating the darker side of things more often than I wish. 

I am extremely sensitive to people’s emotions and can usually get a good sense of how the other person is really feeling, therefore I go out of my way to make them feel comfortable and give them whatever they need which in return drains the energy out of me. 

I love Woody Allen’s movies and walks at night in lit up cities. I love breakfast, it’s my favourite meal of the day. I have a necklace my grandad gave to me before he passed away and I always carry it with me so when I walk it sounds like him walking in the house. I am not scared of death and would be okay if I had to leave tomorrow cause I believe in fate. 

My favourite movie is When Harry Met Sally and it’s a comfort blanket for me, I used to be able to recite what Billy Crystal said to Meg Ryan at the end. For a long time I wanted to be an actress and got into the actor’s studio in NY but decided I wanted to pursue music instead as I couldn’t see myself living without it. I also wanted to be a ballerina for many years and pursued ballet, frequently visited Julliard with my mum until I grew up and decided it wasn’t for me. 

I don’t get along with technology and partly, I admit, it’s due to my rejection of all things that I find lack human touch. I am extremely fascinated by complex individuals, people that have different layers to themselves and think too much. 

I am scared of clowns and anything relating to the circus.  I have found out after an unfortunate incident that I talk a lot and calmly in situations of danger as an adrenaline release, like this one time where a robber came into my house whilst I was home and as a 15 year old girl at the time, I had long meaningful conversations with him although in a situation of panic and terror. 

He caressed my face before leaving and said “You’re a clever girl”, that episode is still stuck in my mind. He was actually nice to be honest. I also didn’t cry for a while after that.

I don’t like to look at violence not even in movies. I am constantly split between a more tomboy aesthetic that comes naturally and a less comfortable feminine look. I can definitely tell the difference between filtered and unfiltered water and admit I might have a slight addiction to coffee. I don’t like to relinquish control, that’s why drugs have never really had a hold on me. 

My dream is to get to see Michael McDonald perform live. I also wish I could just take a plane and go to New York tomorrow, see Allen perform and eat the best bagel from Zabar’s but I also have rent to pay. I never go shopping for clothes, and if I have to I will smash it out in a couple of hours. Lord knows how people find that interesting. 

I sing because my granddad made me fall in love with it and was my biggest supporter. I love high end fashion but have mixed feelings towards it as I realise the negative impact it has on the environment. Sometimes I wish I could just be reckless and impulsive instead of a responsible routined human but can’t do much about that. 

If I tell you I love you, it means I love you. I once had an outer body experience at a Tinariwen concert and I keep trying to see them live as much as I can to get that feeling again. My favourite instrument is the bass and unfortunately I have a tendency to start many things and never finish them.

I am a bit of a hypochondriac and am always freezing, always. Leo in Titanic was my first ever crush and as a funny coincidence, I too, draw with charcoal. In the summer of 2017 I couldn’t get out of bed, a really special person helped me get out of bed, gave me a job, a purpose and helped me get over it. I weighed 48 kilos, I made a promise to myself one day I would always make sure to never let myself get to that place anymore and I’ve been pretty good at that. I am thankful for people in my life that saw me at that time and helped me through it, I will never forget.

Other than that instant, I am generally very happy and my favourite flower is the sunflower. My favourite colour is dark green and if I could have a superpower I’d probably wanna fly. I have a very bad habit of chewing loudly and I’m tryna work through that. I also have a long time dream of doing stand up comedy but am not great at delivering punch lines. 

I do believe that Christopher McCandless really hit the jackpot when he wrote “happiness is only real when shared” in his diary and I also think that people should put down their phones and talk more. I’m trying to make an effort to improve on that. I think that sums it up, although I do think I’ve left out a lot of stuff for sure. Ah yeah one last thing, no cilantro and Waffles over Pancakes any day. 

EL xx

[xtruss]

— By Occupy Democrats | May 5, 2020

"I am a Covid ICU nurse in New York City, and yesterday, like many other days lately, I couldn’t fix my patient. Sure, that happens all the time in the ICU. It definitely wasn’t the first time. It certainly won’t be the last. What makes this patient noteworthy? A few things, actually. He was infected with Covid 19, and he lost his battle with Covid 19. He was only 23 years old.

I was destroyed by his clinical course in a way that has only happened a few times in my nursing career. It wasn’t his presentation. I’ve seen that before. It wasn’t his complications. I’ve seen that too.

It was the grief. It was his parents. The grief I witnessed yesterday, was grief that I haven’t allowed myself to recognize since this runaway train got rolling here in early March. I could sense it. It was lingering in the periphery of my mind, but yesterday something in me gave way, and that grief rushed in.

I think I was struck by a lot of emotions and realities yesterday. Emotions that have been brewing for weeks, and realities that I have been stifling because I had to in order to do my job effectively. My therapist tells me weekly via facetime that it’s impossible to process trauma when the trauma is still occurring. It just keeps building.

I get home from work, take my trusty companion Apollo immediately out to pee, he’s been home for 14 hours at a time. I have to keep my dog walker safe. No one can come into my apartment.

I’ve already been very sick from my work exposure, and I’m heavily exposed every day that I work since I returned after being 72 hours afebrile, the new standard for healthcare workers. That was after a week of running a fever of 104 even with Tylenol around the clock, but thankfully without respiratory symptoms. I was lucky.

Like every other healthcare worker on the planet right now, I strip inside the door, throw all the scrubs in the wash, bleach wipe all of my every day carry supplies, shoes and work bag stay at the bottom of the stairs.

You see, there’s a descending level of Covid contamination as you ascend the stairs just inside my apartment door. Work bag and shoes stay at the bottom. Dog walking shoes next step up, then dog leash, then running shoes.

I dodge my excited and doofy German shepherd, who is bringing me every toy he has to play with, and I go and scald myself for 20 minutes in a hot shower. Washing off the germs, metaphorically washing off the weight of the day.

We play fetch after the shower. Once he’s tired, I lay on the floor with him, holding him tight, until I’m ready to get up and eat, but sometimes I just go straight to bed.

Quite honestly, I’m so tired of the death. With three days off from what has been two months of literal hell on earth as a Covid ICU nurse in NYC, I’m having an evening glass of wine, and munching on the twizzlers my dear aunt sent me from Upstate NY, while my dog is bouncing off the walls because I still don’t have the energy to run every day with him.

Is it the residual effects of the virus? Is it just general exhaustion from working three days in a row? Regardless, the thoughts are finally bleeding out of my mind and into a medium that I’m not sure could possibly convey the reality of this experience.

There’s been a significant change in how we approach the critically ill covid-infected patients on a number of different levels over the last two months. We’re learning about the virus. We’re following trends and patterns. We are researching as we are treating.

The reality is, the people who get sick later in this pandemic will have a better chance for survival. Yet, every day working feels like Groundhog Day. All of the patients have developed the same issues. This 23-year-old kid walked around for a week silently hypoxic and silently dying. By the time he got to us, it was already far too late.

First pneumonia, then Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), essentially lung failure. Then kidney failure from global hypoxia and the medications we were giving in the beginning, desperately trying to find something that works. Then learning that it doesn’t work, it’s doing more harm than good in the critical care Covid population.

Dialysis for the kidneys. They are so sick that your normal three-times weekly dialysis schedule is too harsh on their body. They’re too unstable. So, we, the ICU nurses, run the dialysis slowly and continuously.

They are all obstructing their bowels from the ever-changing array of medications, as we ran out of some medications completely during our surge. We had to substitute alternatives, narcotics, sedatives, and paralytics, medications we’re heavily sedating and treating their pain with, in an effort to help them tolerate barbaric ventilator settings.

Barbaric ventilator settings while lying them on their bellies because their lungs are so damaged that we have to flip them onto their bellies in an effort to perfuse the functioning lung tissue and ventilate the damaged lung tissue. Ventilator pressure settings that are so high that some of their lungs are being blown out completely in an effort to give them enough oxygen, because lung-protective ventilation measures aren’t working for these patients.

Lungs that are perfused with blood that doesn’t even have adequate oxygen carrying capacity because of how this virus attacks.

Blood that clots. And bleeds. And clots. And bleeds. Everything in their bodies is deranged. Treat the clots with continuous anticoagulation. Stop the anticoagulation when they bleed.

GI bleeds, brain bleeds, pulmonary emboli, strokes. The brain bleeds will likely die. The GI bleeds get blood transfusions and interventions.

Restart the anticoagulation when they clot their continuous or intermittent dialysis filters, rendering them unusable, because we’re trying not to let them die slowly from renal failure. We are constantly making impossible treatment decisions in the critical care pandemic population.

A lot of people have asked me what it’s like here. I truly don’t have adequate descriptors in my vocabulary, try as I might, so I’ll defer to the metaphor of fire.

We are attempting to put out one fire, while three more are cropping up. Then we find out a week or two later that we unknowingly threw gasoline on one fire, because there’s still so much we don’t know about this virus.

Then suddenly there’s no water to fight the fire with. We’re running around holding ice cubes in an effort to put out an inferno. Oh yeah, and the entire time you’ve been in this burning building, you barely have what you need to protect yourself.

The protection you’re using, the guidelines governing that protection, evolved with the surge. One-time use N95? That’s the prior standard, and after what we’ve been through, that’s honestly hysterical. As we were surging here, the CDC revised their guidelines, because the PPE shortage was so critical.

Use anything, they said. Use whatever you have for as long as you can, and improvise what you don’t have.

As we’re discussing medication and viral research, starting clinical trials, talking treatment options in morning rounds for your patient with the team of doctors and clinical pharmacists, suddenly, surprise! Your patient developed a mucous plug in his breathing tube.

Yes, that vital, precious tube that’s connected to the ventilator that’s breathing for them. It’s completely plugged. Blocked. No oxygen or carbon dioxide in or out. It’s a critical emergency.

Even with nebulizer treatments, once we finally had the closed-delivery systems we needed to administer these medications and keep ourselves safe, they’re still plugging. We cannot even routinely suction unless we absolutely have to because suctioning steals all of the positive pressure that’s keeping them alive from the ventilator circuit. One routine suction pass down the breathing tube could kill someone, or leave their body and vital organs hypoxic for hours after.

Well, now they’re plugged. We are then faced with a choice. Both choices place the respiratory therapists, nurses, and doctors at extremely high risk for aerosolized exposure.

We could exchange the breathing tube, but that could take too long, the patient may die in the 2-3 minutes we need to assemble the supplies and manpower needed, and it’s one of the highest-risk procedures for our providers that we could possibly carry out.

Or we could use the clamps that have been the best addition to my every day carry nursing arsenal. You yell for help, you’re alone in the room. Your friends and coworkers, respiratory therapists, doctors, are all rushing to get their PPE on and get into the room to help.

You move around the room cluttered with machines and life sustaining therapies to set up what you need to stave off death. You move deliberately, and you move FAST. The patient is decompensating in the now-familiar and coordinated effort to intervene.

Attach the ambu bag to wall oxygen. Turn it all the way up. Where’s the PEEP valve? God, someone go grab me the PEEP valve off the ambu bag in room 11 next door. We ran out of those a month ago, too. It’s all covid anyway, all of it is covid. Risk cross-contamination or risk imminent death for your patient, risk extreme viral load exposure for you and your coworkers, and most certain death for your patient if you intervene without a PEEP valve.

You clamp the breathing tube, tight. The respiratory therapist shuts off the ventilator, because that side of the circuit can aerosolize and spray virus too if you leave it blasting air after you disconnect. Open the circuit. Respiratory therapy attaches the ambu bag. You unclamp. Bag, bag, bag. Clear the plug. The patient’s oxygen saturation is 23% with a PERFECT waveform. Their heart rate is slowing. Their blood pressure is tanking. Max all your drips, then watch and wait while this patient takes 3 hours to recover to a measly oxygen saturation of 82%, the best you’ll get from them all shift. These patients have no pulmonary reserve.

All of our choices to intervene in this situation risk our own health and safety. In the beginning we were more cautious with ourselves. We don’t want to get sick. We don’t want to be a patient in our own ICU. We’ve cared for our own staff in our ICUs. We don’t want to die. Now? I’ve already been sick. I am so, so tired of the constant death that is the ICU, that personally, I will do anything as long as I have my weeks old N95 and face shield on, just to keep someone alive.

I’ve realized that for many of these patients in the ICU, it won’t matter what I do. It won’t matter how hard I work, though I’ll still work like a crazy person all day, aggressively advocate for my patients in the same way.

My coworkers will go without meals, even though they’re being donated and delivered by people who love and support you. Generous people are helping to keep local restaurants afloat. We can always take the meal home for dinner, or I can devour a slice of pizza as I walk out to my truck parked on the pier, a walk I look forward to every day, because it gives me about eight minutes of silence. To process. To reflect.

I’ll chug a Gatorade when I start feeling lightheaded and I’m seeing stars, immediately after I just pushed an amp of bicarb on a patient and I know I have at least five minutes of a stable blood pressure to step out of the unit, take off my mask and actually breathe.

Every dedicated staff member is working tirelessly to help. The now-closed dental clinic staff has been trained to work in the respiratory lab to run our arterial blood gases, so that the absolutely incredible respiratory therapists who we so desperately need can take care of the patients with us.

Nurses in procedural areas that were closed have been repurposed to work as runners. To run for supplies while the primary nurse is in an isolation room trying to stabilize a patient without the supplies they need, runners to run for blood transfusions.

Physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists being repurposed to be part of the proning teams that helps the nurses turn patients onto their backs and bellies amidst a tangled web of critical lines and tubes, where one small error could mean death for the patient, and exposure for all staff.

Anesthesiologists and residents are managing airways and lines when carrying out these massive patient position changes. Surgical residents are all over the hospital just to put in the critical invasive lines we need in all of our patients.

The travel nurses who rushed into this burning building to help us are easing a healthcare system. The first travel nurse I met came all the way from Texas. Others terminated their steady employment to enlist with a travel agency to help us. Every day there are more travelers arriving.

A nurse from LA came to me after she found out I was part of the home staff, in my home unit, where this all first started in my hospital what feels like a lifetime ago, and said, “I came here for you. For all of the nurses. Because I couldn’t imagine working the way you guys were working for how long you were working like that”. During our surge and peak in the ICU, we were 1:3 ratios with three patients who normally would be a 1:1 assignment. And they were all trying to die at the same time. We were having to choose which patients we were rushing to because we couldn’t help them all at the same time.

The overhead pages for emergencies throughout the hospital rang out and echoed endlessly. Every minute, another rapid response call. Another anesthesia page for an intubation. Another cardiopulmonary arrest. A hospital bursting at the seams with death. Refrigerated trailers being filled.

First it was our normal white body bags. Then orange disaster bags. Then blue tarp bags. We ran out of those too. Now, black bags.

The heartbreakingly unique part of this pandemic, is that these patients are so alone. We are here, but they are suffering alone, with no familiar face or voice. They are dying alone, surrounded by strangers crying into their own masks, trying not to let our precious N95 get wet, trying not to touch our faces with contaminated hands.

Their families are home, waiting for the phone call with their daily update. Some of their loved ones are also sick and quarantined at home.

Can you even IMAGINE? Your husband or wife, mother or father. Sibling. Your child. You drop your loved one off at the emergency department entrance, and you never, ever see them alive again.

Families are home, getting phone calls every day that they’re getting worse. Or maybe they’re getting better. Unfortunately, the ICU in what has quickly become the global epicenter for this pandemic is not a happy place. We are mostly purgatory where I work, so this snapshot may be more morbid than most.

These people are saying goodbye to their loved ones, while they’re still walking and talking, and then maybe a week or two later, they’re just gone. It’s like they disappeared into thin air.

That level of grief is absolutely astounding to me, and that’s coming from a person who knows grief. It changes you immeasurably.

But this grief? This pandemic grief? It’s inconceivable. These families will suffer horribly, every day for the rest of their lives. They might not even be able to bury their loved one. God, if they can’t afford a funeral with an economic shut-down, their loved one will be buried in a mass grave on Hart Island with thousands of others like them. What grave will they have to visit on birthdays and holidays?

Yesterday, I was preparing for a bedside endoscopy procedure to secure a catastrophic GI bleed in this 23-year-old patient.

It was a bleed that required a massive transfusion protocol where the blood bank releases coolers of uncrossmatched O negative blood in an emergency, an overhead page that, ironically, I heard as I was getting into the elevator to head to the fourth floor for my shift yesterday morning; a massive transfusion protocol that I found out I would own as a primary nurse, as I desperately squeezed liters of IV fluids into this patient until we got the cooler full of blood products, and then pumped this patient full of units of blood until we could intervene with endoscopy.

Before the procedure, I stopped everything I was doing that wasn’t life-sustaining. I stopped gathering supplies to start and assist with the procedure.

I told the doctors that I would not do a required “time-out” procedure until I got my phone out, and I facetimed this kid’s mom because I didn’t think he would survive the bedside procedure.

She cried. She wailed. She begged her son to open his eyes, to breathe. She begged me to help her. Ayudame. Ayudame. She begged me to help him. She sang to him. She told him he was strong. She told him how much she loved him. I listened to her heart breaking in real time while she talked to her son, while she saw his swollen face, her baby boy, dying before her eyes through a phone.

Later in the day, after the procedure, his mom and dad came to the hospital. He survived the securement of the bleed, but he was still getting worse no matter what we did. He’s going to die. And against policy, we fought to get them up to see their son.

We found them masks and gowns that we’re still rationing in the hospital, and we let his parents see him, hold him. We let them be with their son.

Like every other nurse would do in the ICU here, I bounced around the room, moving mom from one side of the bed to the other and back again, so I could do what I needed to do, setting up my continuous dialysis machine, with the ONE filter that supply sent up for my use to initiate dialysis therapy. This spaceship-like machine, finicky as all hell, and I had one shot to prime this machine successfully to start dialysis therapy to try to slowly correct the metabolic acidosis that was just ONE of the problems that was killing him as his systolic blood pressure lingered in the 70s, despite maxing all of my blood pressure mediations.

Continuous dialysis started. You press start and hold your breath. You’re not removing any fluid, just filtering the blood, but even the tiniest of fluid shifts in this patient could kill him. But you have no choice.

His vital signs started to look concerning. I could feel the dread in the pit of my stomach, this was going south very quickly. Another nurse and the patient’s father had to physically drag this mother out of the room so we could fill the room with the brains and eyes and hands that would keep this boy alive for another hour.

She wailed in the hallway. Nurses in the next unit down the hall heard her cries through two sets of closed fire doors. We worked furiously to stabilize him for the next four hours.

Twenty minutes before the end of my shift last night, I sat with the attending physician and the parents in a quiet and deserted family waiting room outside the unit. I told his mother that no matter what I do, I cannot fix this. I have maximized everything I have, every tool and medicine at my disposal to save her son. I can’t save her son.

The doctor explained that no matter what we do, his body is failing him. No matter what we do, her son will die. They realized that no matter how hard they pray, no matter how much they want to tear down walls, no matter how many times his mother begs and pleads, “take me instead, I would rather die myself than lose my son”, we cannot save him.

We stayed while she screamed. We stayed until she finally let go of her vice grip on my hands, her body trembling uncontrollably, as she dissolved into her grief, in the arms of her husband.

This is ONE patient. One patient, in one ICU, in one hospital, in one city, in one country, on a planet being ravaged by a virus.

This is the tiniest, devastating snapshot of one patient and one family and their unimaginable grief. Yet, the weight is enormous.

The world should feel that weight too. Because this grief, this heartbreak is everywhere in many forms. Every person on this planet is grieving the loss of something.

Whether that’s freedom or autonomy sacrificed for the greater good. Whether that’s a paycheck or a business, or their livelihood, or maybe they’re grieving the loss of a loved one while still fighting to earn a paycheck, or waiting for government financial relief that they don’t know for certain will come. Maybe they’re a high school senior who will never get to have the graduation they dreamed of. Maybe they’re a college senior, who won’t get to have their senior game they so looked forward to. Maybe they’re afraid that the government is encroaching on their constitutional rights. Maybe it’s their first pregnancy, and it’s nothing like they imagined because of the terrifying world surrounding them.

Or maybe they lost a loved one, maybe someone they love is sick, and they can’t go see them, because there are no visitors allowed and they’re an essential worker. Maybe all they can see of someone they love is a random facetime call in the middle of the day from an area code and a number they don’t know.

Everyone is grieving. We’ve heard plenty of the public’s grief.

I don’t blame anyone for how they’re coping with that grief, even if it frustrates the ever-living hell out of me as I drown in death every day at work. It’s all valid. Everyone’s grief is different, but it doesn’t change the discomfort, the despair on various levels. We are at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Basic survival, physiological and safety needs. I’ve been here before. I know this feeling. How we survive is how we survive.

Now that I’ve had the time to reflect and write, now that I’ve let the walls down in my mind to let the grief flood in, now that I’ve seen this grief for what feels like the thousandth time since the first week of March as a nurse in a Covid ICU in New York City, it’s time you heard our side. This is devastating. This is our reality. This is our grief."

— Jeannine Nicole

[tricraftbeer]

Recap of the tri-fecta

Over the weekend, I completed my third race in as many weeks. I started the trifecta with the Des Moines Escape Triathlon, an Olympic distance race in the new Escape series. From there, I came home for a few days, then drove with Gloria and my parents up to Santa Cruz for IM 70.3 Santa Cruz. Then home for the week before the Nautica Malibu Triathlon on Saturday, another Olympic distance race. 

Training between each race was necessarily limited a bit, so it actually made for some easy weeks with extra time to spend with Gloria and friends. And now that I’m taking a full week off before a final push to Los Cabos 70.3 in November, I weirdly feel lazy. Triathlon is a strange sport and I’m a strange person.

Escape Des Moines

The trip to Des Moines started to go downhill when I locked myself into the Nursing Room at LAX at 5am to use my breast pump and realized I’d forgotten all the pump parts on the drying rack at home. I wasn’t scheduled to land in Des Moines until 2pm. Oh boy. The discomfort got pretty extreme, but luckily I had a sweatshirt to hide any unsightly leaks. On landing in Des Moines and meeting my Dad, who amazingly flew out to meet me and hang out, we drove directly to Target to purchase some pump parts to I could relieve myself on the parking lot. 

That done, I could think and breath again, so we found our hotel downtown, and the trip continued the downhill slide. I was racing with my brand-new Liv Avow 0 bike, after about 3.5 hours of ride time. The mechanic at my shop, Giant Santa Monica, helped me pack it. But there were some surprises when I tried to assemble, just due to growing pains with a new bike, and my ineptitude. So we used FaceTime on and off for about 2 hours trying to troubleshoot. Once that stress was done, Dad and I then went to find some beer. Downtown Des Moines was surprisingly great and there were lots of places to drink local beer and get some good food. 

The following day we went to the nearby race site and I took the fully functioning bike out for a little spin. And as a bonus, my wonderful friend from college Brooke was driving to NY from South Dakota and managed to meet us at this park in Des Moines to a quick visit with her and her daughter. The trip definitely took a sharp uphill swing at that point, and stayed up! The rest of the day was easy, as we went downtown again to the finish site to register and attend the pro meeting. I met Sarah Haskins, the other lactating mama on the start list, and was able to tell her how helpful her blog was to me throughout pregnancy and during the beginning of my comeback training. Dad and I found some more good food and beer and set the alarms for a somewhat early day. 

Another great surprise was in store as my cousin Melissa, who just took a teaching job at nearby Iowa State, was able to meet us for race day! Who knew Des Moines would host two great reunions?! Race morning was chill, as the lake was an easy trip from downtown. I managed time well, getting in a good warmup jog and swim before the start. 

The swim was in warm water on a chilly morning. No wetsuits! And with a field of good swimmers, I was soon alone looking at feet splashing in the distance. I came out of the water a disappointing 5 mins back from the lead pack of 4 who swam together. But, that did make the rest of the race pretty simple.

It was an individual time trial bike ride on my brand new Viserion the Ice Dragon to try and make up time. I ended up with the fastest bike time (but only by about 20 seconds over Sarah Haskins, Lauren Goss and Heather Lendway)

Then, a chase on foot to see how much time I could make up. It wasn’t enough to move up any places, and I had to be satisfied with 5th place, the final spot for some money.

But, looking at the results, I was happy with my bike time and the power I sustained. I was also happy with my run, the third fastest of the day, after a good effort on the bike. The swim was about what I figured it would be, as my elbow is still healing, and I’ve cut most of my swim workouts short. And also, those athletes are just better swimmers than me anyway!

After happy post-race musings with Dad and Melissa, we got ready to repack my bike (much easier than building it) and head to the airport. I was able to fit in three more local beers before boarding my flight home to Artie and Gloria. It was a great trip!

Santa Cruz 70.3

My parents arrived Wednesday so they were around to help out for my last couple pre-race shake-out workouts. We picked up a minivan Thursday afternoon and packed it up for an early Friday morning departure. We made it up to Santa Cruz in about 7.5 hours. Not bad with a baby! Thank goodness my Mom sat in the back to entertain G the whole way. Our arrival in Santa Cruz was not without drama, as our reservation for a large enough room for three adults and a baby was nowhere to be found. But after some cajoling, almost tears, and a 60 minute walk around the boardwalk, the room was located, cleaned and inhabited. Exhausted from the day, we opted to use the hotel kitchen to heat up some Trader Joe’s meals. The following day I got in a ride on the beginning of the bike course and a jog. I opted to stay out of the water because it’s cold, I’m lazy, and there was a vague warning about blooming red algae. Gloria cried through her nap time, so I put her in the baby carrier so she would fall asleep. While I kept up the constant bouncing and jiggling, she slept on me through registration and the pro meeting. After lunch Gloria and I met up on the beach with a friend who was there for his first ever triathlon. The rest of the day was a sleepy blur and we ended up eating some more fine Trader Joe’s meals for dinner.

Race morning logistics were easy since my Mom found a hotel directly across the street from transition. I was able to use the breast pump in the hotel room before heading down, set up transition, and make it to the water in time for a swim warmup and final snacks. But then, fog rolled in, no one could see, and the start was delayed at least an hour. Kudos to the organizers for figuring out how to move forward with a swim. They condensed the course to 750 meters on one side of the pier and lined the course with paddlers. It was impossible to see beyond the paddler right in front of your face, but they had enough that we could navigate the course without too much difficulty. The shortened course helped my elbow a lot, and also got me out of the water before I got too cold. I was grateful for that as well.  The chilly water and air were causing me some terrible Santa Rosa flashbacks of shivering for 2 hours on the bike. I spent some extra time in transition putting on arm warmers and socks, so I was comfortable the entire bike ride with no shivering. Hurrah. I did feel gypped of the spectacular coastal views though! 

I moved into 8th position off the bike with a solid effort that I was happy with. Right before leaving for the race, Willie at Giant Santa Monica fiddled with my fit a tiny bit, and I was even more comfortable on Viserion. I went a little hard for the first hour, wanting to break free of the athletes I was nearby so I wouldn’t have to deal with jockeying for position with the narrow bike course and passing cars. Once I felt solidly in 8th place, I backed off the effort to a more sustainable one and cruised about a minute behind Ceclia in front of me for the rest of the course. It was fun having zero flats, just constant rollers out and back on PCH. It felt similar to riding on PCH outside of LA, except way less populated and way prettier.

Heading out of transition I heard the announcer say I was in 8th, but that most of the athletes ahead were fairly close together. With the shortened swim we all stayed together more, which made the race really fun. I knew I had a chance to run into a money position, so that was the goal. My legs were feeling good, so I just tried to hit a pace and settle in without surges. The steady pace was enough to get me into 6th place by mile 5, so then I just tried to keep my shit together. I’d lost some gels off the bike and managed to miss handoffs for more at aid stations. Then, I lost a gel running too somehow. I was afraid to take a new kind of gel, since I’ve had stomach troubles in the past doing that. I tried to make up for it with coke at aid stations, but still started feeling woozy and light headed around mile 8-9. It was a battle of wills from then on to not F up and lose my spot. I kept chugging coke and kept trying to keep the pace steady. Happily it worked out and I stumbled through the sandy finish happy with another payday and happy to see my baby and parents!

We finally ate at a restaurant that wasn’t Trader Joe’s post-race and found some race local IPA. And cookies. Those were delicious cookies.

Nautica Malibu Olympic 

Malibu is always on the race schedule, except last year when I was pregnant. I was excited to go back and try to regain my crown this year, even when I found out it would be my third race in three weeks. But at least Des Moines and Malibu were Olympics, so it worked out. I didn’t train that much in the week leading up to Malibu, and still woke up race morning feeling tired. But on a positive note, Artie and Gloria were both coming to the race! We got up there in plenty of time to park, get situated, get in a swim warm-up and be on the start line with a minute to spare. There were no nerves race morning, as I had spent the while morning chatting with friends. I absolutely love this race for that. The race started with pro women, men and a large wave of age group men, so the trip out to the first buoy was rough. After the right turn we all spread out and settled down. I came out of the water close to Madi and with a good swim time (for me), happy the my elbow hadn’t hurt at all. 

Vision felt great again, and I am starting to feel more and more comfortable on my new ride. My legs didn’t have much power, so I rode only a tiny bit above 70.3 watts for the course. That was ok by me, and enough to move me into 1st place with a decent time. I wanted to break 40 minutes on the run, so I didn’t want to overextend, just push hard enough to feel like I did some work.

I got to race with Coach Dusty cheering me on in person for the first time!

Heading onto the run course, I was pleasantly surprised with my legs feeling not-terrible. A run (and Olympic distance PR) were in play. It was fun to be at the front of the field, see the leading elite men run by on the out and back sections, and be able to cheer for friends. The cheers from friends who were spectating were awesome, and made the run feel a lot easier than it was. I didn’t have to dig as deep for motivation during this run as I often do. I knew that upon finishing I’d be starting a full week of zero activity and lots of beers. And, I knew Gloria was there. What more motivation could a mama need?! I squeaked across the line just under my sub-40 goal with a 39:30 run time for the 6.2 mile course. And, I think, a PR for the distance! I’d gone faster in Des Moines, but the course was a little short. Here, in photos, are two really great feelings:

I’m now on day 5 of zero activity and many beers. You might think I’d be going a little bonkers, but I’m vacationing hard. At least as hard as I train. I know that the 6 week block of training that’s incoming will be challenging, so I’m really enjoying this time with family, friends, beers, and sleeps.

Thanks for the continuing support family and friends! And among those I consider family and friends, my sponsors. Thanks to Skechers, Roka, Champion System, Bonk Breaker, RipLaces, ISM, Profile Design, and Triple C, I’m able to pursue this passion. And, huge thanks to Giant Santa Monica for all their work and help getting me aboard Viserion and getting him ready to race in such a short time frame. 

Three more days off until the work starts again!

[arplis]

Arplis - News: “Hang on to your hat, toots.” — my life, the last few weeks

(Starting with this update.) We’ve officially transitioned mini to school and she loves it. We were pleasantly surprised at how smoothly it all went. The only hiccup so far has been figuring out pick up in the afternoon. For the first few days, I dropped her off and picked her up alone because she had such odd hours (i.e., one hour from 10:05-11:05 one day, then two hours from 9:30 to 11:30 the next day, etc.) and it would have been impossible for Mr. Magpie to handle either end given his work schedule. I would usually just post up in a nearby coffee shop and get some work done, but it was a pretty disruptive week, especially coordinating breastfeeding around it. Then we transitioned to more of the expected routine: Mr. Magpie drops her off in the mornings on his way to work. I had intended to have our nanny pick her up in the afternoons so I could stay home with micro for breastfeeding purposes, and so after I felt we had the morning routine down pat, I decided to bring our nanny with me to pick mini up so I could show her the ropes and pass the baton. When mini saw our nanny first (before seeing me), she dissolved into tears. I had given her a heads up that our nanny would be there, too, but I think she was upset that I wasn’t the first face she saw (the best part of my day has been seeing her beaming face when I arrive at the door — “there’s my mama!” she shrieks). The school had warned us about this, noting that kids can be very thrown off by disruptions to routine, and encouraging us to stay consistent with who drops off and who picks up. Now I know why. Mini was apoplectic and close to impossible to maneuver home (i.e., refusing stroller, refusing to walk, laying down on the subway floor — oh.my.GOD). After that incident, I chatted with her teacher and we decided that I should continue to handle pick-ups for the next few weeks before introducing our nanny into the mix — just too much change for that little one. Besides, I hadn’t anticipated it, but our little pocket of thirty minutes on our way home is nearly always the highlight of my day. I love hearing about her day, smothering her with kisses, holding her little willing hand as we walk towards the subway stop. And so this whole transition to school has been relatively smooth all things considered but still quite a change for everyone. Routines in the morning are planned down to a millisecond and I’m busy getting that little one fed, toileted, dressed, brushed, and out the door by 8 a.m. Gone are the leisurely mornings nursing micro in bed! And then — oh! The apartment is deafeningly silent in mini’s absence. She is a whirling dervish at home, flitting from activity to activity in constant chatter and singsong. I have found myself straining to hear her on multiple occasions, my heart in my throat. Changes all — most of them welcome, some of them…skeptically accepted. Meanwhile, the apartment hunt continued. We saw at least fifteen units all up and down the West side of Manhattan, a few spots on the UES, and one in DUMBO. It was exhausting, in large part owing to the underhandedness of the broker situation. There are so many misrepresentations in listings — “3 bedrooms!” is often “2 bedrooms but you can split the second to make a third with a partition” or “2 bedrooms plus a closet with a questionable window that could be a nursery” or “2 bedrooms plus a dangerous loft where no child should ever sleep.” And then there are things like “washer and dryer in unit!” — only you arrive and find you will be responsible for purchasing the washer/dryer, though there is a hook-up available. And “available immediately!” only you arrive with your baby in a carrier and your toddler wrangling out of your grip and find yourself in a construction zone, sawdust coating our lungs and electric saws buzzing inches from our faces (i.e., decidedly not available immediately). There’s this shadiness, and then there’s the fact that the NY rental market moves at the speed of light — aka a frenetic pace ill-suited towards families with small children and lots of moving parts. New places are listed daily and are often gone within a day or two, and you are meant to move in within a week — and if you aren’t planning to move in immediately, you’ll probably be passed up as an applicant for the unit because brokers don’t want to sit on a vacant unit. They’ll just wait another day or two for someone willing to move in sooner. I mean, can you imagine?! It’s too much pressure! How can you expect a family to find a place and move within a week?! At any rate, after seeing fifteen places, we put in an application on a unit with about a month left on our current lease and were passed up because the landlord’s broker pulled a weird stunt on us, using our application offer (rent is almost always negotiable in NY) to go back to another applicant that had been interested in the apartment to get them to counter with an earlier lease start date and a slightly higher rent offer. The brokers hadn’t made this information known to us, of course (we would have happily matched the offer), and had instead more or less counseled us to submit the offer we did (“I’ll encourage the landlord to accept it,” stated the broker — grrr) to push the other couple to sign immediately. And so we suddenly found ourselves back at square one, with no apartment lined up and the clock ticking. When we heard the news, it took every ounce of my personal resolve to avoid bursting into tears. I had loved the unit, but more than that — I had loved the idea of being done with the search and able to move forward with next steps. The night we found out, I woke up at 3 a.m. shivering uncontrollably — my teeth were actually chattering! — and aching all over. A few hours later, I woke up and had sweated through my clothes. It went on like this — sweats, chills, achiness, splitting headache — for several days. I eventually went to see the doctor who confirmed I had picked up some kind of virus but I’m convinced that my shock and stress level at discovering we had no apartment with less than four weeks to go had triggered it, or left me in such a state of weakness that any old virus could have shut me down. I somehow managed to muscle through last week, sick as a dog, visiting a new battery of listings all over the place. We also had a bizarrely busy social schedule (we’re normally homebodies), with two receptions and a cocktail hour we hosted — and then there was mini’s meltdown owing to the nanny’s pick up at school right smack dab in the middle. During that epic tantrum, I’d had to carry mini by her arms up the subway stairs while I also had micro strapped to me in the carrier. She had turned into a jellyfish and would.not.climb.the.stairs and also would.not.let.the.nanny.come.near.her. I had no choice, after attempting to reason with her and cajole her for about five minutes while no-nonsense, in-a-rush New Yorkers trampled us at the foot of the steps, but to pick her up by her arms and carry her up the steps in front of me, like a noodle. That debacle led me to pull a muscle in my abdomen which in turn made breathing hurt for a couple of days — though at the time, I wasn’t sure if the pain in my side was related to the virus or something more serious, and so the doctor ran a gamut of tests, had me x-rayed, etc. (It all turned out clear — just a strained muscle from trying to carry forty-five pounds of children up the stairs in the most awkward maneuver known to womankind. Go figure.) Somewhere along the way, micro picked up whatever virus I had and suddenly my world was literally collapsing on itself. There were a few nights where I was up with poor micro every hour of the night. It got so bad that I had to ask Mr. Magpie to split shifts with me, but even then it was impossible to sneak in a stretch of sleep because we are all about two feet from one another. The baby was running a fever and battling an upset stomach and so we were covered in baby vomit, shivering/sweating together, and mind-numbingly exhausted. And did I mention that while I believe I hold or can reach a sense of perspective in most parenting-related matters, when it comes to ill children, I lose my bearings?! I worry myself sick, wondering if I’m overlooking a symptom and what I believe to be a run-of-the-mill cold is actually something more nefarious. I clutch them in my arms and cry over them. It is physically painful for me to see my babies unwell. Then, on Friday, I woke with the worst migraine I have ever had in my life. I could not see straight. I could barely walk. Turning my head to the left or right was shockingly painful. I was so sensitive to light that I had to stay in my bedroom with the blinds drawn. I could not rally myself to put on clothes and pick up mini from school — I had to call Mr. Magpie and ask him to leave work early to get her. On top of it all, micro was scheduled to be Baptized two days later and I had my parents coming into town, with fabulous dinner plans to boot. I was defeated. That was the lowpoint. The lowpoint of this year (fingers crossed), and in fact the last two years — since the last botched and stressful move, come to think of it. But as quickly as everything had spiraled out of control, it all came back into focus. We found another — better! — apartment, this one a “classic prewar six” in Manhattan terms. (A classic prewar six refers to an apartment configuration with six rooms — three bedrooms (one smaller, typically referred to as a “maid’s room,” perfect for a nursery), living room, kitchen, formal dining room — in a building constructed before WWII, and therefore likely to be rife with traditional charm. You won’t find open concept floor plans with a classic 6, which Mr. Magpie and I rather like. These buildings also tend to be very well-constructed — i.e., “they just don’t make them like that anymore.”) When we went uptown to sign the lease, the broker walked us through the unit and something inside me relaxed. I could instantly see the wonderful life we would have there, with much more space, a dedicated nursery for micro, a larger kitchen, and a bedroom for mini that is large enough to accommodate all of her toys, her activity table, her dollhouse, and all the other bulky items that currently reside in our living area. I’m sure her toys will still find their way into our living room, but no longer will it be their primary home, praise God. A friend of mine recently said that “a cluttered house is a cluttered mind,” and I think this, too, is why this stretch of the last few weeks has been so overwhelming. We are busting out of this apartment as micro grows and has new needs and more clothing and bigger diapers and all that jazz. Micro and I both overcame our ailments (for the most part) around the same time and managed to enjoy his Baptism feeling more like ourselves. (I wore the dress mentioned here.) We had a beautiful morning with friends and family, enjoying brunch after his Christening smooshed in like sardines around a small table at Cafe Luxembourg, whose boisterous environment matched the general ebullience of the moment. I looked around the table at one point and thought how lucky I am, and how insignificant all my travails of the previous week were in the grand scheme. I mean, let me be real: everything is horrible when you feel sick, and everything is doubly horrible when you feel sick and are caring for an ill infant while going on four months of sleeplessness. And moving is stressful, full-stop. But there we were, closer to the other side, with the happiest occasion in front of me. A happy and newly healthy baby, welcomed into the Church, the presence of my loved ones, the promise of a new, more spacious beginning on the Upper West Side. And on we go… What’s happening with you? Post Scripts. +What are your most memorable golden moments/golden hours? Brunch after micro’s Baptism is up there. +OK, mini would die and go to heaven with this. +A perfect Christmas dress for a little lady. +Expect some more home decor related posts soon, as we need to purchase a number of pieces of furniture. I am already eyeing a couple of rugs, and Horchow has such a great selection (on sale) — love this for mini’s room, or maybe this. Although I’ve been chastened — probably not good to have a light colored rug in a toddler’s room. May need to explore darker/more patterned styles. +I love this oversized houndstooth scarf. +So excited we’re closing in on sweater weather. +Likely my next headband acquisition. +I like this slim hamper for micro’s nursery… +I’m a copycat. +I ordered one of these tags for mini’s stroller, which we store at the school during the day since Mr. Magpie drops her off and I pick her up. It’s perfect! I was impressed with the quality and speed of design/shipping. Going to order some more for her bags. A cute add-on to a gift for a little one, too. +I love these for keeping my phone free of fingerprints. +A good dupe for those Paris Texas snakeskin boots that are all over the place. +A fun tee. +A great dish to display fruit/citrus on your counter. The post Lately… appeared first on The Fashion Magpie. #Parenting #NewYork #Musings #NewYorkLife #Parenthood

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/hang-on-to-your-hat-toots-my-life-the-last-few-weeks