We had quite the week.  Amidst all of the prep for the girls' carnival birthday party I had to head to the ER due to kidney stones.  The pain was unbearable and started after Mike had already left for an interview over an hour away....and it was Safi's birthday.  We had prepared these neat little goodie bags for her classmates the night before and she was all jazzed about a "birthday girl" pin we bought for her back pack.  There was no way in hell that she was going to miss this day.

I struggled through our morning routine and told the girls I was sick.  I told Safi that when we got to school she would need to stand with one of her friend's mommies and I told Nixi that she was missing school and needed to go to the hospital with me.  We made it to school but the pain was increasing.  I handed my birthday girl off to another mom, along with the goodie bags, and managed to only look back once to see her standing there alone on my way back to the car.  Ran into her best friend and her mom just as I hit the car and, telling mom Amanda to look out for my girl.  It was awful.  As I started driving to the ER the pain intensified and a wave of nausea and tears took over.  I literally wasn't sure if the nausea was from whatever horror was going on inside my body or if it was from the horror that this blip, this  hiccup in the routine, this goddamn shitty ass body of mine, was going to ruin my daughter's birthday.  This may not seem like a terribly big deal to most.  But for my kid, this is a HUGE deal.  She's been watching other kids celebrate their birthdays in class with these damn cellophane goody bags all year.  She hasn't been invited to a single birthday party attached to these consolation prize bags, but at this point that doesn't seem to matter.  All that matters is that she is like everyone else.  Luckily, she had a great day.

Nixi was amazing.  I had to pull over on the way to the ER to get sick, she was scared but she told me that once we got to the hospital "they'll make you feel better."  She waited in the ER with for 2 hours.  I wasn't allowed to have any pain meds until I called someone who would drive us home.  I had to drag Emily and her baby out to the filthy, painfully slow Tulare District Hospital.  Eventually the girls' autism BIA, Heather, and her partner Sarah arrived and took Nixi home.  I told Emily to get the hell out of there and Sarah took me home.  Safi was obsessed with going to Olive Garden for her birthday dinner.  I was in pain and disturbingly nauseous.  Emily brought me her kids' Zofran and I was able to sit through dinner.  Had I not been able to make it to dinner, John had already told Mike he and his daughter (Safi's best bud) Sophia would go with them.

All in all, Safi had a great birthday.  The next two days were filled with me going to doctors and specialists, a scheduled surgery and then a cancelled surgery because the largest stone finally moved.  Emily, Heather, Sarah, and our friends Amanda and John are the reason we got through the week.  Hell, my friend Katie offered to pick me up that Tuesday and take me to a better ER after dropping her daughter off at school a town away.  Without our friends I have no idea what we would have done.

Nana and Grandpa Dan came up for the weekend to prep for the carnival and attend the party.  The girls had a wonderful time.  Mike and I were grateful for the distraction for the girls because we had a lot of catch up to do for the party.  One of the games just wasn't going to be able to happen, Amanda (Sophia's mom) hit the stores and began texting me alternatives and offering to pick them up for me.  Party went off without a hitch, again, because of our friends.  I had a couple of "helpers" bail and Emily and her husband were there to help pull it all off.  The girls' poor Auntie Shae got lost trying to find the party but pulled through in the end and was my emotional rock, as she's always been.  Amanda and John were there, she lending her "I'm down for anything" vibe and he providing his usual "human Valium" aura.  It was a wonderful party.  Our friend's the Shooks were first to arrive and dove right into the games which took the pressure off instantly.  The Olsens were soon to follow, dad Lex with his witty quips that always lighten the mood and make laugh and Katie and the kids lending a feeling of familiarity and comfort.  The key players in Safi's social world all showed and they had a blast.  Sadly none of Nixi's classmates showed, a fact lost on her despite Safi innocently pointing it out.  We ate pizza, cotton candy, and popcorn...played games, won prizes, collected balloon sculptures made by our makeup-less clown Lolli and her daughter, and the girls got their glittery number birthday candles courtesy of Emily and her sister Julie.  It was a good day.  A damn good day.

As I buckled Safi into the car after all of our friends had cleaned everything up for us and stacked all of our take home items neatly in one place I was struck with an intense moment of both joy and sadness.  I hugged Emily and said, "How can we leave?  How can we ever move?"  See, we need these people.  These are the only people in the world, or at least in our world, that understand how important the "little things" are to our girls.  And these people took the time to learn our girls' intricacies because they love our girls and they love us and know we're never truly happy unless the girls are happy.  They go out of their way to give us "normal" moments so easily taken for granted by most.  We always talk and plan for the day we get the hell out of here and move to a place where the girls can get what they need.  We research schools that literally make us cry because they are exactly where the girls should be to thrive.  We look at land, houses, communities where our daughters can live out the rest of their lives safely and happily long after we're gone.

People often ask us what we do for ourselves.  "How do you take care of you?"  We always laugh and answer that we don't have time to do anything for ourselves.  Are you crazy?!  Some days we don't even have time to shower and most days we don't have the energy to do anything other than raise the girls.  After this week, I finally have a better answer.  How do I take care of myself, what do I do for me?  I see, text, call, play date, commiserate, laugh, cry, and just "be" with my friends every chance I get.  Neither Mike nor I are very big on counting on other people.  We like to handle our business ourselves and that's that.  But the truth of the matter is, we need all of these people.  These people make our life complete and without any one of them our life would just not be the same.  These people are our family.  Ive never understood what the big deal was when someone talks about having to move away from their family.  I mean, you become a grown up and you live your life.  You can always visit and call home.  Its not like you're leaving your family, your just leaving a place.  Ok, I get it now.

When we got home and we were talking about the party Mike said "That'd be the bad part about moving", in reference to leaving our friends.  It hit him just as hard as it hit me buckling the girls into the car.  We certainly can't stay here forever and we can't take them with us...though I'm working on sharing our "vision" with them for a large scale board and care where each and every one of them could work!  Hint, hint, nod, nod, wink, wink.  I just don't know when we'll ever be ready to go out on our own again...Mike and I, that is.  Seriously, being a parent is awful.  For once I want to do something selfish.  I don't want to have to think about how what we do today may affect the girls 20 years from now.  I just want to be in the moment and live day to day.

Obviously that just can't be and that sucks.  It sucks bad.  For tonight I chose to live in the now and revel in the victory of the birthday party.  I chose to think only as far as the next park play date...tomorrow.  I chose to feel the warmth of my friends love and support all around me.  Tonight I will lay my head down and think of nothing....seriously, nothing...and actually go to sleep.  Tomorrow will come soon enough...insurance company to call to get a denial of coverage letter for Autism services, forcing Regional Center to continue to pay...Nixi, just Nixi....Mustache Monday for Safi...............

Goodnight, dear friends, goodnight.  Thank you for making your lives slightly (and sometimes extremely) abnormal so that I and my family can have moments of "normal".  It is divine, as are you.

Sarah