Relaxed?

So I joined a book club a few months ago.  It's mostly made up of ladies that I barely know, but I it's still kinda fun.  We've read two books so far.  Freedom by Jonathan Franzen - a book that I really liked despite the excessive sexual discriptions - and Handle with Care by Jody Picoult - a book that I also enjoyed to a slightly lesser extent but was considerably cleaner and that I would have enjoyed more had I not seen other work by Picoult in the past (meaning that since I know how her endings usually go, I found this one slightly predictable).  Both books were relatively thought provoking.  Both brought good conversation. And I can I just say that I enjoy having a social outlet?

Up next, we're reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  After that, we're not sure.  We might give the Canada Reads top nominations a try. It would be nice to read some more Canadian authors.

But I didn't start to write this post to bore you with details of my book club. Instead I thought I'd tell you all about what a fake I seem to be. I must be.

Or am I?

And if I am, it's definitely not on purpose.

We met the other night to talk about our second book, Handle with Care. I almost cancelled because it was at my house and I was sick, but we'd planned it over a month ago and my hero of a husband stepped up and helped me get everything ready. This month's book, Handle with Care, is about a special needs child. Being the mom of a special needs child myself, albeit not nearly as severe this child was, I had a little bit in common with the mother in this story. I got talking about our trip next week to see the developmental pediatrician and all the hopes we have for that appointment and the ladies were all impressed with how matter of factually I was talking about it. I'm not sure why this would be a surprise, I mean, it's been my life for 4 years now (minus 4 days). It just is. And as I told them, Finn's not medically fragile. I don't worry about her dying on a regular basis, I just deal with her crappy tantrums - which have been worse in the past couple weeks as we've had a pretty bad case of strep throat hit half our family starting with Finleigh who found it hard to sleep which means so did her parents.

Ugh, can I just say how horrible having strep throat is???  And of course Finn took it one step further and made it Scarlet Fever, which I guess just means that she had a rash and fever too.  And so she'd barely been sleeping and it took forever to get her some antibiotics to help her get better.  We've been through several bottles of Tylenol.  Then Nate and I got it and currently, I'm hoping beyond hope that the lack of pain I'm feeling right now means that the the antibiotics (that thankfully the kid's pediatrician prescribed for me so that I wouldn't have to try get into my family doc or go to emerg) have kicked in and not just that the Tylenol/Advil combo I took this morning is doing an exceptional job.  Strep throat really, really hurts.  

But back to the meeting last night. As I sat there (barely keeping my head up because that stupid strep was taking everything out of me) listening to moms of typical kids and non-moms telling me how relaxed I seemed about it all, I wasn't sure what to say. I shrugged and told them that the late talking and atypical behaviour was nothing compared to the tubefeeding we had to do when she was a baby and that the anxiety/mild depression I've been dealing with this past year really, really sucked (meaning that I'm not handling it as well as they may think). But now, I may, just may be over it.  I dearly hope so cuz that was even worse than this crappy strep throat. Anxiety is pretty tough too.

I then collapsed after everyone left... it was fun but I was SO tired.

I'm not even sure what the point of this post is except that I feel the need to post again. And that I suppose all is not always what it looks like on the outside. I'm not as relaxed as I guess I appear to be. But life's not all that bad either. I have accepted Finn's difficulties, but they certainly don't define her.  They're part of her, but so are her sense of humor and her laugh and her sweet, sweet smile. And what would I do in a day without a Finleigh hug, her little arms squeezing my neck so tight? That moment right there really does make it all worth it.