Holy crap!

Wow- I ignore blogger for a while (okay, six months) and it goes and gets all fancy on me. Followers? Reading lists? WTF???

Life here in the Problem Uterus household proceeds fairly smoothly. Dee turned three in September and is an Enormously Big Girl. She dresses herself (she likes to "match" the most garish items in her wardrobe together; fear not, I am taking pictures), she opens and closes baby gates, she attends (and adores) preschool, she helps herself to items from her snack shelf in the pantry, she uses the toilet with complete independence... I guess it's time to start booking college tours. She's still three, mind you (Why? Why? Why, Mommy, why?) but I am amazed by how independent they get at this age. With a healthy dose of tantrums thrown in, of course, just to keep it interesting.

Buddy is 10 months old. He's healthy, cute as a button (adorable dimples, if I may say so myself), an excellent eater, a somewhat light sleeper, but nothing out of the ordinary, and is currently experiencing the descent of his top two front teeth as they join the current pair he's sporting on the bottom. He's cruising around the furniture like a pro but hasn't worked up the confidence to try and go it alone. He may have a bit of a hearing loss- he's delayed with elements of his speech, so he's got a fancy hearing test scheduled for January.

I am well. No lingering aftereffects from the Great Amniotic Embolism Event that livened things up so much, barring an intense and constant itching of the scar on my chest where the dialysis catheter went in. Psychologically, I seem to have mostly gotten over the drama that defined my pregnancies and deliveries. I am mourning the loss of the possibility of any more children. I know it seems greedy, especially considering my story and the stories of so many others in the blogosphere, but enumerating the results of my good luck wasn't making me feel any better about my uterus being permanently closed for business, so I'm allowing myself to admit that it makes me sad, and I'm trying to deal with it.

My poor husband probably got the worst deal from this whole mess. Apparently nearly becoming a single father of one when your 5-weeks postpartum wife is whisked away in an ambulance after trying to bleed to death on your (BRAND NEW) floors isn't enough to scare him into a mental hospital. Add in the embolus, though, with the ICU, the transfusions, the renal failure and the liver damage, and its associated glimpse of single fatherhood of two, and the poor guy is lucky he hasn't had to check into a sanatarium. I'm doing my best to not use up any more of my nine lives, and we'll see how long this whole "time heals all wounds" crap takes.

I'm up to working about 20 hours a week. Life as an associate faculty at my college isn't bad. I was planning to keep things this way for another 3 to 5 years, but my department chair tracked me down a couple of weeks ago and encouraged me to apply for a full-time tenure-track opening the department intends to fill for next year. Hmm.... I didn't think I had enough experience, but the chair says I do. Something to ponder, at any rate. I'm teaching a new class this semester, which is taking up a truly enormous amount of my time. I have a great crop of students, and I'm loving it.

So, as turkey day approaches here in the U.S. I thought I'd pop out of hiding for this update. I'm still commenting and/or lurking about on everyone's blogs, which I really seem to enjoy. I thought I'd wander away from this community now that things here are the way they are, and that's certainly proved true for my blogging, but I can't seem to stop following along on all your stories, so I guess I really don't have to!