It’s time for Project 52, Week 48!

48 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 48 — June 14, 2012, to June 14, 2013.

Last week, I covered having a stroke, seeing all my siblings at my brother’s wedding, book conferences, and more.

The first big event of the year happened two days after I turned 48 – My youngest, Timothy, graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

Steve was at graduation, and so were his parents. But Steve didn’t say one word to me. And when his parents tried to get a picture with the three of us, he quietly backed away. That hurt a bit.

But to be fair, I had recently threatened to take him to court if he didn’t pay the lawyer fees the court had ordered him to pay me.

And that was the last time I came face to face with him. Which was sad – but also a relief.

But I was ever so proud of Tim! And I had one last summer with him home.

And the first thing we did that summer was go to California for the American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim – right down the street from my sister Becky, who now lived in Garden Grove!

I brought Tim with me – he stayed at Becky’s while I went to the conference. I rented a car and it was actually straight on one road to get to the convention center. This was good, because a year after my stroke, I still didn’t have a lot of stamina and went back and took naps a couple of the days.

Here’s my report of the conference.

I didn’t take as many pictures this year, but at the Margaret Edwards Luncheon, I stood in line next to one of my favorite authors, Garth Nix!

And then I had lunch sitting next to Susan Patron, whose Newbery speech was the first one I got to hear in person!

Here’s the honoree, Susan Cooper, speaking with Garth Nix.

The next big event was the Newbery Banquet. I always enjoy the schmoozing ahead of time and ran into Betsy Bird and Jon Scieszka. Betsy had on special Newbery/Caldecott jewelry.

I had to get a picture with Jon again!

The Caldecott Medal went to Chris Raschka that year:

And the Newbery Medal to Jack Gantos:

The next night was the Printz Awards Reception. I met Maggie Stiefvater, whose book I loved!

Then Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), who of course wouldn’t pose normally.

And John Corey Whaley, the big winner, was still awfully happy!

I showed a whole lot more restraint that year. My loot total was only 68 books! That year I didn’t have to mail them from the exhibit hall, but brought them to the post office near Becky’s house.

But I took a week off after the conference to have time with my family. Again, I didn’t take very many pictures – except on Tuesday, June 26, when I got together with my sisters Becky, Marcy, and Abby – and we went to Shoreline Village in Long Beach.

We met at my parents’ house. My Mom, who has Alzheimer’s, was still capable of taking our picture – sort of.

Once we got to the beach, we found someone to take a better picture.

We had a lot of fun with a bubble gun we bought there.

Apparently, we had way too much fun in a hat shop!

And we rented a pedal cart!

We had to periodically rotate who was sitting where, of course.

I have no idea what motivated this picture!

In this one, the dolphin on the bubble gun found a friend in the dolphin of the statue!

That week, I got time with my friend Ruth, a lunch with my friend Georgette, and my friend Lauri Ann took me shopping. She bought me this dress!

I got back from California right at the start of July. On July 4th, I finished reading a book I got at ALA before, but which had won a Printz Honor this year, Why We Broke Up, by Daniel Handler and Maira Kalman.

And that book for teens, about a romance that went bad, read on Independence Day, set off something in my heart.

Here’s what I wrote in the review:

I realized that though I had my heart broken not long ago, though I did get a divorce, I never did really break up. Instead, I got secretly betrayed and abandoned, while I was trying to cling by my fingernails to the marriage. Funny how reading someone else’s story, it’s easy to see what a good thing it was for Min to break up with Ed. Easy to imagine the satisfaction that Thunk must have brought. I got to thinking, what would I put in a box if I were to really act out a break up with a Thunk? What would I write in a letter? Now, mind you, there’s no box big enough for 24 years of marriage, and no book long enough. But Why We Broke Up did spark some deep thinking. I decided to celebrate Independence Day by putting away my wedding pictures. (Yes, I admit, I still had them up.) So not only was it a tremendously engaging story, it was therapeutic, too.

What I said in my journal that day, in part of an entry that spanned many pages, was:

Lord Jesus,
I think it’s time for me to put away my engagement ring, even though Steve said the single stone represented You in our marriage. It’s time to put away my wedding pictures. It’s time to break up.

Yes, it was time.

And I celebrated Independence Day with joy!

It’s time for Project 52, Week 47!

47 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 47 — June 14, 2011, to June 14, 2012.

So far this week, I’ve covered ALA Annual Conference and the stroke that followed, a big family gathering at my brother’s wedding, and some book-related events in September.

I was working at City of Fairfax Regional Library as a librarian in Adult Services, since the previous December. One of the things I really enjoyed at this branch was that I often got to work the information desk upstairs in the Virginia Room, where they had an abundance of genealogical resources.

I was told that one of the best ways to learn what they had was to research your own genealogy. So I began doing that and was really enjoying it. It turns out that all four of my grandparents had direct ancestors who came to America during the Colonial period – and all four had ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. (I was especially fascinated that among my Revolutionary War ancestors, there are four father-son pairs who fought! Can you imagine going to war alongside your son to defend your home? One ancestor, John Shreve, was 13 years old when he joined the Revolution as an ensign! His dad was a colonel, and it sounds like his dad may have just wanted to keep an eye on him, but wow! He did take some time off later for schooling. But that ancestor lived to his 90s, and I even found a photograph of him on the internet! A man who fought in the Revolutionary War! It’s in the book, The Genealogy and History of the Shreve Family from 1641, which you can find in Google Books.)

Another cool thing was learning that my Shreve ancestors were among the founders of Burlington County, New Jersey, and lived there for several generations – the very place where I’d lived for a year and a half after my husband joined the Air Force. What’s more, Burlington County College, where I taught for a year and a quarter, has an extensive genealogy section in its library. I remember browsing through it and seeing a lot about a name I recognized (Now I’m sure it was Shreve) – but not knowing if they were related to me at all. They were.

I need to make a trip back there some day! It would be some fun nostalgia. And I could visit the many family homes of my ancestors that are still standing!

But also incredibly cool was that one of my ancestors on the Bates side – came to America more than 200 years ago from Breunigweiler, a tiny little village right near the base where I was stationed! One of her parents was from Lohnsfeld – a village that I actually drove through every day for years! Okay, that’s another place I need to go back and visit!

But closer to where I live now, it turned out that the husband of the lady from Breunigweiler, Peter Shrout, who also came over from Germany – was the first person hanged in Hardy County, West Virginia, for murdering his wife of 44 years! He killed her with a broomstick down her throat!

I hasten to add, the blood is extremely diluted! He is my 8th-great-grandfather. This happened in 1804, so it was a long time and many generations ago.

But with that much time intervening, it raises so many questions. Did she ask him to sweep one too many times? Did one of them have dementia? Why would he snap after so many years of marriage?

His daughter who was my ancestor had long before married John Bradford, from England, but who had come over before the Revolutionary War and fought on the Patriots’ side. He had a farm across the road from the Shrouts and married the daughter. Their family left Virginia and settled in Ohio not long after the murder, and who can blame them?

Well – Hardy County is only two hours away from me, and I thought it was a good excuse to visit during the beauty of Autumn.

I waited for a day off, and on Saturday, October 15, I aimed for the library in Moorefield – which, alas! had a hand-written sign on the door that they were closed for the day. I also had directions to Patterson Creek, though, where the Shrout and Bradford families had their farms, so I drove past that, which was pretty cool. I didn’t take pictures, because I felt funny about taking pictures of people’s homes – there are still homes there. I drove on to Peterboro, where they also had a library that held a book of the descendants of John Bradford – but by then I didn’t have a lot of time before they closed. I made some copies and looked at it long enough to see my great-grandmother listed. So those were definitely my ancestors.

But – this was partly an excuse to enjoy the fall color in West Virginia. So I did find a state park that reportedly had hiking trails. What I didn’t realize was that the road to the trail was a dirt road! But anyway, I got in some very beautiful hiking before I headed home.

It was a lovely day! There was a catch, however. Four hours of driving, plus a short hike, plus going to libraries was more than I was really ready for in my recovery process after my stroke. Looking back, I was in denial about how much recovery I needed. Or I just plain didn’t know. The doctors didn’t explain it to me at all. They told me what symptoms to look for that would be another stroke. I was told I didn’t have any deficits. I could walk a straight line and passed the neurological tests. The deficits I did have weren’t so obvious. I didn’t have time to be sick! So I pushed myself more than I was ready for.

That day the first problem was that I did wipe myself out by the time I got home. But a bigger problem was that turning my head to do shoulder checks while driving – any time I changed lanes – hurt a lot, and more and more as the day went on. Also, when I drove the car over the bumpy dirt road, it jerked my neck. That hurt a lot – and made me extremely nervous, since my original vertebral artery dissection was from a jerk to my neck.

Then, the next weekend I went to a local SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) conference. I don’t seem to have taken pictures. If I remember right, I wore my prime factorization sweater and tried to talk about it with an agent. (I’d started thinking about writing a book about the concept.) But the agent’s eyes glazed over. Children’s book people aren’t necessarily the right audience!

However, another thing I remember about that conference was that was when I started sitting on the right side of the room. Only at that point, it wasn’t about my vision at all. So I still wasn’t getting the double vision when I looked up and/or to the right. That day it was that it hurt a lot to turn my head to the right – even the small amount it took to watch a speaker from the left side of an auditorium.

I did get revved up about my writing at that conference.

But the next day, I lost my cool. Here’s how I explained it to an email friend the following Thursday:

Sunday I got up late, but rushed to make it to church.  Once there, I noticed I was feeling light-headed and nauseous again if I stood.  It wasn’t real bad, but it was freaking me out.  Afterward, I talked with my friend who’s a nurse, and she and her husband took me to the Emergency Room.
 
So — a CT scan didn’t show anything, but I don’t trust those any more.  They kept me overnight and did an MRA & MRI — but said nothing had changed.  However, my INR levels (a measure of how well the coumadin blood thinner is working) were quite low.
 
They sent me home Monday night, and I took a percocet for a migraine — probably from hardly getting any sleep due to my roommate having her four kids in the room until about 2 am.  So I slept all day Tuesday.  Yesterday, I stayed home, too, except getting my blood drawn.  But today I’m back at work — and noticing that I still feel lightheaded if I stand for more than a few minutes.  But at least I’m no longer afraid it means I’m having a stroke.  Oh, and my INR is back in range at 2.1, so that’s good.  And the Coumadin clinic did tell me to go to the ER if my symptoms get any worse, so I do think they were saying I did the right thing.
 
But it’s all pretty weird.  And I felt like I got awfully behind while I was laid up.  But it may just be how my body reacts now when I get overly tired — all the symptoms relate to the original stroke — so maybe I just need to take better care of myself, or maybe my cold set me back.
 
Anyway, it is good to be back at work — I hope I can stay here!

From what I learned later, that was probably a vestibular migraine (which did eventually develop into a headache). But I was really puzzled by my symptoms.

Another interesting thing, looking back at journals and emails, was that whenever my INR was found to be low – I had more neck pain. Since my artery still showed blockage, that actually could have been a clot forming. So it was probably just as well I went to the hospital.

But my heavy-headedness and dizziness was bad enough that walking customers to the shelves made it worse. I remember at that time I also avoided “sweeping” the library (walking around straightening shelves and picking up books) – because that much walking made me feel worse. It was discouraging! But I also found that lying down didn’t seem to help a bit, so I figured I might as well feel bad at work instead of at home.

In November, though, I got excited about book things. I decided to do NaNoWriMo and start a new book. I found out I was accepted to attend the Morris Seminar in January this time! And I applied for the Youth Services Manager position at Sherwood Library – excited about getting back to youth services. I did not end up getting it, and this was a good thing. It’s way on the other side of the county from my church and where I live now. But the interview was good practice.

But my health still was getting worse. And that was when I first noticed the double vision. Here’s an email I sent to my siblings on December 22nd:

Dear Family,
 
I just thought I’d let you know….
 
A few of you knew that I’ve been having low-grade dizziness, low-grade headache, and queasiness for about 3 weeks straight now.  (With a few hours off a couple days last week.)  I went to the ER again on December 3rd, but they just sent me back home.  So I figured out this low-grade stuff is not the symptom of another stroke.
 
I finally saw the neurologist today.  He wasn’t at all alarmed by my symptoms (which I really have trouble describing, but were particularly bad today — enough that I went home after the appointment instead of going back to work) — until when he did a neurological exam, my eyes weren’t tracking together if I looked up and to the right (less so if I look straight to the right and no problem if I look down and to the right).
 
He said that I likely had a mini-stroke, which would cause that.  I forgot to ask him if that would change his opinion about the dizziness.
 
Anyway, I’m going to have an MRI and MRA done some time next week (as soon as Radiology calls me back I’ll find out when).
 
Then I was supposed to see the neurologist the week after that, but the first available appointment was January 25.  (Though they put me on the cancellation list.)
 
But the whole thing left me frustrated and worried.  Because I’m on Coumadin specifically to keep from having another stroke.  (And this also means I’ll probably have to stay on Coumadin longer than the 6 months they initially said.  Rather ironically, the 6-month anniversary is January 25.)
 
So…  I’d appreciate your prayers.  I don’t want to have another stroke!  And I’d also like to feel better.
 
And, your presents are definitely going to be late.  I am hoping I’ll get them mailed tomorrow, but I have my doubts.  But I guess I can still milk the I-had-a-stroke excuse?
 
Lots of love,
 
Sondy

Now, the neuro-ophthalmologist diagnosed me with Brown Syndrome and said that wouldn’t have been caused by a stroke – but I figure it doesn’t really matter at this point….

Oh, and on the light side – December 2011 was when I began writing Sonderling Sunday!

The author I’d met at a couple of ALA conferences, James Kennedy, posted that he’d gotten a copy of his book in German. And it had the word Sonderling in the title! Der Orden der Seltsamen Sonderlinge. I was tickled to death, and asked if he had a German copy to give away. He did! And so I began the Sonderling Sunday series on my Sonderbooks blog, looking at phrases from children’s books and looking at how they’re translated into German. Sort of a very silly phrasebook for travelers. My very first Sonderling Sunday post explains it all and is a lot of fun. I somehow thought I’d be able to get through the book more quickly than I have, but hey, I’m having fun.

Here’s my 2011 Christmas Letter. Mainly, I was glad to be alive!

And the first big event of 2012 was a very big event indeed. I went to the William Morris Invitational Seminar to learn to be on one of ALSC’s book evaluation committees – such as the one I already wanted to be on – the Newbery committee.

It was a preconference event for ALA Midwinter Meeting, and happened in Dallas. The lovely thing was that my writing buddy Vicki Sansum joined me, sharing a hotel room for part of the conference. The hotel room was ENORMOUS! We figured things are bigger in Texas?

I only took a couple pictures from the seminar, but you can see we’re having fun.

I did blog about my notes from the Seminar – first from the opening talk, then a talk by Nina Lindsay on how book discussion works, and a panel discussion with representatives from several different committees. Another important part of the seminar was trying it out – actually discussing books in small groups, as we would do if we were on a committee.

After the seminar was the opening of the exhibits, and the usual “Running of the Librarians.” Here I am that night with my loot!

And Vicki arrived!

I got to hear Susan Cain speak about Introverts and John Green speak about his new book, The Fault in Our Stars.

But the highlight of every ALA Midwinter Meeting is the Youth Media Awards, when you learn who won the Newbery Medal, the Caldecott Medal, and many other awards. John Corey Whaley learned that he had won both the Printz Award and the Morris Award (for debut authors). I ran into him in the exhibits while he was still radiating happiness from the news. (It was even his birthday!)

Here’s the inevitable Loot picture when I got home.

After ALA, I cut back on activities and tried to get answers about my health. I also had a new issue with Steve.

It turned out that my lawyer had made a mistake in wording our agreement. The Department of Defense wasn’t accepting it to pay me directly. We were required to put the numbers and dates in a certain form. So she drew up a new agreement in proper form and asked Steve to sign it. According to the agreement he did sign, he was obligated to “execute any instrument necessary” to get the DOD to pay me my portion of his retirement pay directly.

But he wouldn’t sign it.

So – I decided to ask my lawyer to take him to court. It’s interesting to me what got me to decide to do that. Here’s my email to a mentor and friend that I sent in February:

Well, I’ve done it now!  I sent the e-mail below to Steve.  And I’m determined to take him to court if he hasn’t returned the revised agreement, signed, by the start of March.
 
It’s the 8th of the month, and I still haven’t seen his payment for this month — and that’s par for the course.
 
He hasn’t said anything further to my lawyer.  He told her in November or December that he needed “time” to look at the revised agreement.  He has had time.
 
I’ve decided that leaving him alone is all well and good, but that doesn’t preclude asking him to keep his part of the settlement agreement.
 
Actually, what lit a fire under me was I read a great book last night — Midnight in Austenland, by Shannon Hale.  The heroine is a divorcee, and while she’s dealing with the romance and mystery, she also comes to terms with what her husband did when he cheated on her.  She feels like an IDIOT that she didn’t figure it out.  But how nicely she triumphs!
 
Anyway, I tweeted to Shannon Hale that she is a benefactress to all women whose husbands have cheated.  She tweeted back, “Sondy, you are a powerhouse!”  And to my surprise, I burst into tears!
 
I think it just really hit exactly those emotions that hit me so hard — feeling so stupid to have fallen for all the lies, etc.  It didn’t matter so much that the heroine found love (she did), but I especially liked the way she triumphed!  At one point, she’s in mortal danger, and you think the hero might save her — but she remembers what she heard in going to her son’s self-defense classes, that someone strangling you from the front has his hands busy and is totally unprotected — and she jabs him in the throat and then kicks him where it counts!  And proceeds to hit him with furniture and escape!  All the while she’s yelling things at her ex-husband. (He’s not there, but she just realized how far the lies went back.)
 
Anyway, you get the idea.  It’s easy to see how OTHER women should act, and I was so on board with this heroine.  I’ve been trying to be sweet toward Steve, but I think it’s at the point where I need to say he can’t break the agreement.
 
We’ll see how he responds.  If he doesn’t do anything by March 1st, I do intend to ask my lawyer to take him to court.

He did not answer by March 1st, so another court case started up…

Meanwhile, I was getting some fairly extreme dizzy spells that felt just like the original stroke, only shorter, and going to the ER a lot – but they weren’t finding any further problems. I got a referral to a top neurologist at Johns Hopkins on April 6.

Also at that time, I started attending Capitol Choices – a DC-area group of librarians that meets monthly and chooses the top 100 children’s and YA books of the year. They use the same discussion format as ALSC groups, which I had just learned about at the Morris Seminar.

And in the middle of March, I went to another library conference – this time the Public Library Association conference in Philadelphia. This one I could drive to! And on the way home, I stopped in Longwood Gardens.

And here’s the Loot from PLA picture:

March was also when it was time to nominate myself to be on the ballot to get on the Newbery committee – for voting to be done the next year. Spoiler: I didn’t get it that time. At the time, though, I stopped participating in my critique group and stopped submitting manuscripts to agents and editors. Because I didn’t want to be disqualified for conflict of interest. Maybe it was just as well I hadn’t gotten published yet. I could always try to get published after being on the committee, but there’d be big problems with trying to get on the committee after I was published.

When I finally saw the stroke specialist at Johns Hopkins, he was the one who told me that I wasn’t having lots of little strokes, but that my migraines had changed to vestibular migraines. It took awhile, but I finally came to realize he was right. That still didn’t keep me from getting scared when I’d get a month-long headache, but it helped me be less afraid of the small ones. And I started working on finding another migraine preventative – though eventually I went back to the one that had worked before, Zoloft. I had stopped when I had the month-long headache that led up to the stroke. But a migraine preventative can’t stop a headache caused by a vertebral artery dissection – so it wasn’t that Zoloft had quit working.

About the same time, Tim got some college acceptances – and decided to go to the College of William and Mary. It’s a state school – so I got to learn what a difference that makes! Boston University had offered the same amount of financial aid – and it didn’t go nearly as far! When I saw those figures, I was very happy about Tim’s choice!

I did go see the bluebells again.

And forgive me for all these pictures, but I do love taking pictures of flowers! And I visited Meadowlark Gardens again.

Now in April, my lawyer did take Steve to court and got him to sign the “Military Qualifying Court Order,” and he was ordered to pay $2000 for my legal fees. Too bad that didn’t completely cover the cost. Though we had yet to see if he would actually pay.

And I wrote this in my journal of significant things I felt God had said to me on April 14:

Yesterday, my lawyer filed a Military Qualifying Court Order. Steve signed and was ordered to pay me $2000 in legal fees. Remember how, when this first started, every time Steve mentioned a lawyer or court, Isaiah 54:17 came up?

Today it happened again!

I’m reading Always True, by James MacDonald, in my quiet times.

Today I opened to the final chapter. The highlighted heading is:

Promise #5: God Is Always Victorious
(I will not fail.)

“‘No weapon formed against you shall prosper,
and every tongue that accuses you in judgment you shall condemn.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and their righteousness is from Me,’ says the Lord.”
— Isaiah 54:17

Then on April 28, something big happened. It began with innocently heading into DC for the US Science and Engineering Festival. It was awfully crowded, but I did go to the Mathematical Association of America booth and posed with my Prime Factorization Sweater. I told the guy at the booth about it. (I realized later that was Ivars Peterson – I have his book on my shelf at home!) I told him that if he googled “prime factorization sweater,” I would come up! (I’m very proud of that. It’s still true. Try it!)

My friend Karla was in town, so I met her in DC at the metro stop, and we decided the festival was too crowded, so we went to the US Botanical Garden.

But when I got home, I noticed a whole bunch of comments on my blog, on the prime factorization post. (Alas! My blog malfunctioned later and the comments got lost – there were more than a hundred.) When I looked at my stats, I’d gotten 17,000 hits that day!

What happened was Ivars Peterson had done one tweet about my prime factorization sweater with a link to my post. The next day, I ended up with 28,232 hits! On my 2009 post about the sweater! Didn’t I mention I just needed to find the right audience? It got picked up by Hacker News and went wild. I had almost 40,000 hits in the month of April – almost entirely from the last two days!

And – people started asking about getting their own – so I made t-shirts on Café Press!

Here I am modeling my first version.

I tinkered with the colors, and here is the final version:

That’s also when I thought it was high time I did some more mathematical knitting. Here I’m knitting a new prime factorization scarf, with the yarn in my prime factorization tote bag and wearing a prime factorization t-shirt.

That was the start of a whole new wave of mathematical knitting for me. So much so that eventually I made a Sonderknitting Gallery page on my website to talk about all of it.

Looking at emails, it was actually at the very end of the year I was 47 that I finally thought to stop taking blood pressure medication. And what do you know, it really did help my dizziness to decrease. My theory is that it takes a little extra pressure to get blood through my teeny-tiny right vertebral artery – but I also checked my blood pressure when I was having a dizzy spell – and it was quite low.

While I continued to get vestibular migraines, I really was gradually recovering from the stroke, and the dizziness was getting less. By the end of the year, I’m still not sure if I’d had a pay period where I’d gone to work every single day for a full day, but I’m sure I was getting closer.

Tim was ready to graduate from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology – but he graduated two days after my birthday, so I’ll cover that next week.

There was one final drama of the year. That $2000 Steve owed me was due half on May 13 and half on June 13. When June started and I hadn’t received anything, I made it very clear that I would go back to court if the amount wasn’t paid in full by June 13. I’m afraid I went so far as to say that it would only make my birthday happier to have to go to court, because there was no way I wouldn’t win.

That interaction probably explains why, at Tim’s graduation, Steve didn’t say one word to me, and refused to get in a picture with Tim and me that his Mom wanted to take. But – that was our last interaction. I got one more child support payment in July, and then Tim turned 18. The Department of Defense was now paying me directly, and after Tim turned 18, we no longer needed to interact at all.

So that was the crazy year I was 47. Lots and lots of worries about my health – but so glad to be alive! And God was faithful – and so were my church friends who were so helpful to me through it all, and listened to all my worries when I was getting so freaked out and who prayed with me and took me to the hospital and helped Tim and made me realize I was not alone.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 47!

47 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 47 — June 14, 2011, to June 14, 2012.

Last time, I talked about the long process of recovering from my stroke – and the big family gathering that happened in Oregon when my brother Robert got married on September 4, 2011.

I’m not sure if I mentioned it this week, but I was back working in the library after spending six months working in the Office for Children during Year 46, due to budget cuts. However, I was a Librarian I working in adult services, rather than a Youth Services Manager, at City of Fairfax Regional Library, where I still work. The good thing about not being in Youth Services – I think it was easier for the library to do without me while I was recovering from my stroke and not working very many full weeks. There was less stress as well. And, spoiler alert, eventually I got the Youth Services Manager position at Fairfax – the RIF that brought me there probably helped me get that promotion in the end.

And I had another trip to the Pacific northwest coming up! This one was also booked before I had my stroke. KidLitCon was in Seattle this year, and I couldn’t resist going. Only very dedicated readers will remember – but I lived in the Seattle area when I was very young – and still kept Seattle as my ideal of the best place to live, with my youth-biased memories. So what a great excuse to visit.

(Also, I see from my journal entries that I was trying to do many more things than I was physically capable of doing so soon after the stroke. Take some time to heal, Sondy! Oh well, before long I started making trips to the E. R. when the vestibular migraines started up and I was afraid they were another stroke. Anyway, that got me to slow down a bit.)

Here is Melissa Fox, who I first met at KidLitCon ’09, my roommate Lisa Song, and Farida Dowler – whom I’d corresponded with for years – meeting because of Sonderbooks!

And at lunchtime, we’re joined by Maureen Kearney and Liz Burns:

On a break, I visited the Seattle Public Library:

I blogged about KidLitCon (of course!) and how it gave me Connection, Encouragement, and Fascinating Information!

For a long time, I’ve seen my website Sonderbooks and the associated blogs as a major part of my calling, of who I am, and of who I am as a librarian. Even though I write them on my own time. KidLitCon is about blogging about children’s books, and at the time I was temporarily not a children’s librarian – but I was still one in my heart!

And then came yet another book-related, even children’s book-related event – the National Book Festival! I blogged about that, too. That year, it was blistering hot! But I got to hear some great speakers.

Lois Lowry:

Kadir Nelson:

Patricia McKissack:

And Gary Schmidt, whom I honestly hoped would win the Newbery that year with Okay for Now:

Sara Lewis Holmes joined me in talking with Gary after his talk.

My calendar still shows lots of sick days and doctor appointments. I had another MRI on October 4th. My right vertebral artery was still blocked – no blood getting through. And yet in my journal, I said I thought I had healed from the stroke, and was just worried about a cold I’d had. Oh, Sondy, you’ve actually got a ways to go yet!

But meanwhile, I’d applied a second time to be a judge for the Cybils Awards (didn’t get it – that year) and a third time to attend the William Morris Invitational Seminar on Book Evaluation happening at ALA Midwinter Meeting. (I did get that!) I was taking an online class on the Printz Award. And I was even taking time to get out – on October 9, I visited Meadowlark Gardens and took some pictures.

Fall color was just beginning.

Well, years go by – but I still enjoy walking among flowers, butterflies, and fall leaves.

Now it’s getting late. This week’s going to need yet another Part.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 47!

47 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 47 — June 14, 2011, to June 14, 2012.

Last time, I covered the start of Year 47, when I had my cerebellar stroke.

I have often laughed at myself for saying, at the end of 2010, that 2011 couldn’t possibly be worse than 2010 had been. I was tempting fate – because then I had a stroke! But the truth was, having a stroke (at least one that I survived) wasn’t even close to as bad as my divorce. And I’d gotten RIF’d in 2010 as well.

And, believe it or not, there were good things about the stroke. It is no small thing that it really took my mind off Steve. My journals at the start of 2011 were still all about Steve and still praying that God would work in his life and he’d have a change of heart. Well, when I had the stroke, I had other things to think about.

I spent a lot of time on sick leave that summer – which my co-workers generously donated – and I got lots of quality time with my son Tim, the last summer before he graduated from high school. Not to mention that after the year I’d had, having lots of time where I just needed to rest and get well was good for my mental health.

Now that year ended up having a whole lot of great things happen. But I think I’d like to talk a little bit first about the recovery process, which extended throughout the year and beyond.

I did not have the stroke because of lack of fitness or high cholesterol or anything like that. I had the stroke because of a neck injury, a vertebral artery dissection. However, having the stroke destroyed my level of fitness. (I finally worked on that a couple years later when I moved into this home and started a walking program. But for a couple years, I was pretty out of shape.)

They automatically put me on statins in the hospital as soon as I had the stroke, before they’d figured out why. A few months later, after my cholesterol tested to be super low, I quit taking them. My stroke didn’t happen because of high cholesterol. Protocol for “regular” strokes didn’t fit my case.

Cerebellar strokes only make up 3% of all strokes that happen. Honestly? I don’t think the medical community knows a whole lot about them. (And a lot of them don’t get diagnosed in the first place.) I was evaluated in the hospital, and they decided I didn’t need physical or occupational therapy. I could walk a straight line, and was doing fine. Or so I thought.

But there were two problems I was up against. One was dead brain cells in my cerebellum. The other was a blocked vertebral artery – which later healed to be a teeny-tiny vertebral artery. Some blood does get through. We have two vertebral arteries, so they generally don’t intervene in a case of vertebral artery dissection – the blood goes around the other way. I was on Coumadin for six months to keep from getting any more clots. After six months, they figure however much healing you got – that’s your new normal.

It did hurt to turn my head to the right for a good year after my stroke. Though it gradually got less and less and now it’s fine. For a long time, I noticed it when I drove and tended to turn my whole body if I wanted to look right. It also hurt for a few months to hold a telephone with my right shoulder while typing on the computer. Something I used to do automatically.

I don’t know why my neurologist kept trying to find other explanations for my neck pain, like arthritis in my neck. Really? When you know full well I had a neck injury and still have a teeny-tiny right vertebral artery, and the pain is only on my right side, and precisely where the right vertebral artery is? Anyway, since about a year after the injury, that pain when turning my head is completely gone. Ummm, it wasn’t arthritis.

I still to this day will occasionally wake up with neck pain if I have been sleeping with my right side up. What I think is happening is that I’m lying so the blood can’t really get through the left vertebral artery and wants to go through the right one – and that artery is too small. Whether or not my theory’s true, usually if I readjust how I’m lying down so that the left side of my neck is on top and unobstructed, the pain goes away. (Though it does freak me out if the pain is strong or if it lasts through the day, like it did a couple weeks ago.)

I do get far more right side headaches than left side ones, since the stroke. If the pain is centered in my neck, behind my right ear, I do start to freak out.

The damage to my cerebellum has been a little harder to recover from. The cerebellum is the center of balance. That summer, if I stood for more than a few minutes, I’d start to feel woozy. It wasn’t dizziness like the room-spinning that happened when the first stroke hit. But “dizziness” was the best word I could come up with to describe it. Generally feeling off-balance. I didn’t like to call it “light-headed,” but “heavy-headed” fit well.

Basically, I think my brain needed to make some new connections for keeping my balance to replace some that had been lost.

I do remember that it was much worse shortly after the stroke than it is now. I was working with the babies in the church nursery, and I was holding a baby when I stepped over the side of a play fence – and almost lost my balance and fell. (I took a break from working in the church nursery.) But my sense of balance slowly recovered.

I think it’s interesting, though – to this day I can’t stand and sing in church, in an auditorium with a slanted floor, without holding onto the seat in front of me to get extra balance cues. I can do it – but I will get really dizzy. Also, I don’t close my eyes during the singing, because that’s a bad idea, too. (I definitely wish they’d let us do more singing from our seats.)

And after I’d gone back to work, I would get some dizzy spells that really scared me. I’d get a sudden wave of severe dizziness – and then I’d have that wooziness and feel awful. I went into the ER quite a few times about episodes like that. The fact that the hospital had missed my first stroke made me extra jittery. But I couldn’t get them to take me seriously when I clearly wasn’t having a current stroke.

Finally – months later – I went to see a top neurologist at Johns Hopkins. He told me that my migraines had changed to vestibular migraines. I was a little skeptical at first – but as I watched how it worked, that totally fit. An initial wave of dizziness was a new kind of aura – and then that weird sick wooziness was replacing the headache. The pain level wasn’t nearly as bad as a regular migraine, but it really did act like a migraine – just with dizziness instead of pain.

Unfortunately, Maxalt didn’t work well for vestibular migraines, so I did get some super long ones at times. But fortunately, Zoloft did help prevent them – once I was basically healed from the stroke. And in 2017, menopause seems to have mostly cured both my regular migraines and my vestibular migraines – though just last week, I made myself carsick by not paying attention when I was driving a winding and hilly road – and started a days-long vestibular migraine.

In general, I get motion sickness much more easily now, and it hardly takes any alcohol for me to feel tipsy. In fact, that may be a good description of this “dizziness” I get – how your head feels when you’ve had a little too much to drink. But now even the slightest bit of alcohol can set off a vestibular migraine for me. (And a doctor I mentioned this to said it makes sense, because alcohol affects your cerebellum. And I’ve already got a deficit in my cerebellum.)

Though I do remember that one thing that helped the dizziness get better that first summer after the stroke was when I stopped taking blood pressure medicine. If your blood pressure is too low, it can cause dizziness. Well, mine without medicine is slightly elevated – but I was getting dizzy a whole lot less than on the medicine. My theory is that it takes a little extra pressure to get the blood through my teeny-tiny artery. I don’t know if I’m correct, I just know I feel better when I’m not taking blood pressure medication, and my blood pressure isn’t super high anyway.

Oh, the other weird thing I discovered after the stroke was I started getting double vision – but only when I look up and to the right. At first my neurologist thought that meant I’d had another stroke. But when I saw a neuro-ophthalmologist, he said it was Brown syndrome, which is generally thought to have other causes. I’m a little skeptical. It’s the eye on the side that would have been affected by the stroke, and the nerves to the eye are super close to the area where I had the stroke. But anyway, I can solve the problem by either closing one eye or turning my whole body to the right so that my left eye doesn’t have to turn. This is why I try to always sit on the right side in an auditorium – so I’m looking to the left. I also prefer to talk to people to the left of me. It’s possible to have surgery that sometimes works to correct this problem – but I might as well just close one eye.

At the same time I noticed that, I noticed that I see halos around lights. But it turned out that’s truly not from the stroke – no, I have a genetic progressive eye disease, Fuchs’ syndrome. But here’s hoping it will progress slowly enough that I won’t need surgery for it. I guess I was now hyperaware of how my body was working.

Anyway, I slowly started back to work. On my first week back, in fact, we had an earthquake! And I was super-relieved when people started milling around and I knew that the building was moving for them, too. For a second, I’d thought I was having another stroke! That’s what it was the last time I’d seen the building move. As a California girl, I was very proud of myself for getting under the table by the stairs (and away from the shelves, where I’d been heading to get a book for a customer). I didn’t tell anyone to join me – I just got under the table and thought about how I was doing it right and everyone heading for the exit was doing it wrong.

It was months, though, before I made it a whole pay period where I worked the entire pay period. Many months.

But first, when I thought I should be back to work – it was time to go to Oregon for my brother Robert’s wedding. ALL my siblings were going to be there! And I’d get to see Jade! (Then called Josh.) Josh and Peter and Josh’s girlfriend Sunny had all moved to Portland while I was in the hospital. They were rooming together. My youngest sister Melanie had moved to Oregon at the same time, for a job with Intel. And Robert had moved there the year before to be near Laura, his bride.

And I got to stay at Grandma’s House! My Aunt Susie still lived there, and let Tim and me stay. Oh my, it brought back old memories! And Aunt Susie was kind enough to let me do a lot of resting on that vacation.

It was great to see Josh! And for the first time, I visited Powell’s City of Books in Portland.

Tim and I took a day trip up into Washington State, near Seattle, to visit Evergreen State College, and I got another flood of nostalgia. I remembered the road from Oregon to Seattle – at least those green bridges – from 40 years before!

We saw a deer on campus, which would have been enough to hook me!

Forest in Washington State fits my idea – formed in childhood – of what a forest should be.

Later, a bunch of siblings and cousins and an aunt went hiking with us at Silver Creek Falls.

Here’s my brother Randy and his wife Vickey.

Marcy and her husband John:

Tim and me:

And here I am with all of my sisters!

Finally, Robert and Laura’s wedding was so beautiful!

Here’s my whole family with our new member, Laura!

All my siblings:

And here we are in order, from oldest to youngest!

I love this picture of Mom and Dad. Mom seemed to pretty much know what was going on at this time.

Here’s the whole family with the children and spouses who were able to come to the wedding.

My sweet kids!

With Dad and Wendy:

Robert and Laura had a Disney “Tangled” theme, which could have been hokey, but turned out magnificent. This picture shows off their great outfits.

All my brothers:

All of us siblings:

All of us sisters:

Becky, Wendy, and Abby being especially charming!

So – Year 47 started with something to thoroughly get my mind off Steve, then a forced rest time and quality time with my son. Then I had a wonderful vacation to thoroughly refresh and reset myself. I was ready for a surprisingly excellent year….

It’s time for Project 52, Week 47!

47 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 47 — June 14, 2011, to June 14, 2012.

Last time, I covered the year the divorce became final, in November 2010. The year I was 47 began with excitement. Tim finished his junior year of high school a week later, on June 21. Then on June 22nd, he left to spend two and a half weeks with Steve.

But I didn’t have time to mope about missing Tim, because I was making plans to go to ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, and I was super excited about it!

Oh dear, when I blogged about the first day of ALA Annual Conference, there’s an ominous reference to “a crick in my neck.” Sigh. I believe that is when my right vertebral artery was badly injured with a vertebral artery dissection.

Here’s what happened. I was flying to New Orleans through Boston. I didn’t bring a neck pillow, because I was flying during the day, and I planned to read, not sleep. (I now ALWAYS fly with a neck pillow.) Anyway, I stayed awake on the flight to Boston, but on the flight from Boston to New Orleans, just couldn’t stay awake. I had a window seat and leaned against the window. I believe the plane encountered turbulence while I was sleeping in a bad position, and gave my neck a bad jerk, which jerked me awake. I remember that my neck hurt badly when I woke up. And I had a headache, which I attributed to needing food as soon as possible. I also remember that through the whole conference, my shoulder hurt – all the way up to my neck – on the right side as I was filling my bag with free books.

[This is why I got a doctor’s note for all ALA conferences since then to bring a wheeled cart onto the exhibit floor. Carrying heavy bags of books is not a good idea when you have a vertebral artery dissection. I am absolutely sure that didn’t help.]

But – I still had a lovely time at ALA! I had a roommate this time – April Pavis (now Schroeder), who I’d connected with through Susan Kusel’s KidLit Book Club. She was delightful, as youth services librarians so often are. Here’s April with her friend Katie when we went out to eat.

That first night on the exhibit floor, I met Laini Taylor!

And the next day, more authors!

Marilyn Johnson wrote a book about librarians, This Book Is Overdue!. She’d given me ten copies to send to each member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors during the budget cuts.

I met Tom Angleberger again. In just a month, his book may have saved my life! (Stay tuned.)

Franny Billingsley! She had been at the Writer’s Retreat I went to in Paris in November 2005. She didn’t remember me, but she did remember the conference. I believe this was her first book since the conference – and it was worth the wait.

After watching a movie in the evening about children’s books, I met Grace Lin again.

And I accosted Maureen Johnson on the streets of New Orleans! I knew her especially as the funniest person on Twitter.

In fact, when I got back to my room, I tweeted: “I bet @maureenjohnson was surprised when she was accosted on the street. But that’s what happens when celebrity authors come to a city full of librarians.”

Imagine my delight when she tweeted right back, “I liked it!”

And more the next day!

Here’s Catherine Gilbert Murdock, signing an ARC of her newest book:

And Mo Willems! Since I was wearing a t-shirt with his characters, this seemed only right to get a picture.

Ingrid Law!

Maureen Johnson again, this time signing a book!

Kirby Larson!

And that night was the Newbery/Caldecott Banquet! More schmoozing before the banquet.

I saw two bloggers, Travis Jonker of 100 Scope Notes, and John Schumacher of Mr. Schu Reads. They were on ALSC’s committee on Children and Technology, a committee I was just joining (and my first ALSC committee).

And I met James Kennedy again – but this year, I’d been reading his book, The Order of Odd-Fish, on the plane on the way to ALA Annual Conference. It was the copy he’d signed the year before. (Hey, when a book doesn’t have a due date, it doesn’t get read until I go on a trip and don’t want to bring library books.)

And here are some of the librarians at my banquet table.

And there was still another day of the conference. I met Brandon Sanderson.

And Nnedi Okorafor:

The conference finished up with the Printz Awards Reception. I met Paolo Bacigalupi.

And Marcus Sedgwick, who writes good books, and has a gorgeous Australian accent. (His speech was fun to listen to!)

That was the year I got my favorite sleep shirt!

I didn’t get as much loot that year, since I had to ship it home. But I still got plenty!

I got home on June 28, and went back to work the next day. I was getting lots of small headaches. At first, they just get mentioned in emails and my journal as little annoyances. I marched in the July 4 parade that year. I remember that it was very hot, and the little headache I had got worse. (I have never marched in the July 4 parade again, because I connect it with that year as the headache lasted weeks and got worse and worse and worse. Walking in a parade on a hot day did not help.)

By the 9th of July, I started writing “Headache” on my calendar. (I do that when I have a significant headache to keep track of trends.) Then I continued to do so each day right up until July 24, after which I stopped writing in my calendar for awhile, because I was in the hospital.

By July 15, I started praying about the headaches in my quiet time journal. I noted that Zoloft wasn’t working any more. I was seeing a doctor and asked for wisdom for them. On the 17th, I read, “This headache is bad.” And I was scared I was going to run out of sick leave. (Mostly I was going to work during this headache because if you get a headache that lasts for weeks, you can’t stay home the whole time.) I did take Sick Leave on the 18th, though, and had a doctor appointment. I noted that I tried Maxalt (a migraine-specific medication) – no effect.

On July 19, I say, “Father, I have such a headache! Please grant me relief.” I do remember that this headache was centered specifically in my neck, behind my ear, which seemed very odd.

On July 22, I took sick leave again, because I had menstrual cramps on top of the headache. And that meant that on Sunday, I’d start up on birth control pills again. I’d been taking them to end the ovarian cysts I was getting each month. But I’d let the prescription expire, so I’d been off them the last month. I did have some pelvic pain with that cycle, so on the advice of the gynecologist, I got a new prescription refill and planned to start again after my next period started.

Dear Reader, you may not remember, but long before, when I was a young mother, I’d asked about birth control pills and had been told that when migraineurs take them, they are at higher risk for a stroke. When I’d brought this up with my new doctor in 2011, she said that birth control pills are lower dose now, and it’s no longer a concern. Well, maybe if you don’t have a vertebral artery dissection….

So, to sum up, I’d unknowingly injured my neck (this was determined later) when sleeping on a plane going to ALA June 24th. My neck hurt a lot at the conference. When I got back, I was getting lots of small headaches, and they progressed to a constant, very bad headache beginning July 9 – and continuing on and on.

But here’s how Tom Angleberger’s book, Stonewall Hinkleman and the Battle of Bull Run may have saved my life.

The 150th anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run was coming up. I purchased two tickets (for Tim and me) to attend a reenactment on Sunday, July 24. But the forecast was over 100 degrees. And I’d had a headache for 3 weeks. I started reading this book, and in the book, Stonewall Hinkleman is a middle school kid whose parents drag him to reenactments. He thinks they are stupid!

Stonewall – plus my headaches – convinced me. I’d stay home and read the book instead. I was feeling bad enough, I didn’t even go to church.

It did get to 104 degrees that day. You had to park and take a bus to the reenactment site and then stand around a lot. I had a stroke the next day. If it had happened that day, when I was in the crowds at the reenactment – I’m not sure what would have happened. So I’m really glad I didn’t go! And the next time I met Tom Angleberger, I thanked him for his book!

Though now for the timing I blame the birth control pills. Though as bad as the headaches were before I started back on the pill, I didn’t have an actual stroke until I started them again. But who knows? The headaches were getting progressively worse.

So I stayed home on Sunday. By that time, my Quiet Time journal said, “Lord, I have such a headache! Give me strength to overcome. Show me what I should do. Should I quit caffeine? Maybe go to the E.R. and beg to be put out? I want to overcome – but it’s hard to focus on anything but the headache. Have mercy, Lord. Show me what to do – or not do.”

The next day, July 25 was a late day for me at work, so I got to sleep in. Here’s an email I wrote to a friend that morning.

Alas!  The headache is still going strong.  This is about the 4th week.  I’m not quite sure what to do.  I tried calling the neurologist I saw a year and a half ago, and she doesn’t work there any more, so I would need a whole new referral.
 
I am really thinking about going to an emergency room and begging for a shot to give me at least temporary reprieve.  But I would have to find someone to take me and bring me home.  And I don’t have sick leave left.  And my next day off is Friday, which is Timothy’s birthday, so that would not be a good day to go in!
 
It actually is better than last week, so if I could just chug on, ignoring it, that would be good.  But it’s really worn me down, and I’m having trouble thinking about anything else.
 
Now, I’ve only been on the birth control pills for two days, and my period is just finishing up.  So maybe things will settle down soon.  But my fear is that now my headaches just settle in.
 
I do think maybe I should try cutting out my caffeine intake, as long as I have a headache anyway.  But I know I wouldn’t be able to work if I did that, and I would want to have some kind of way to get rid of the headache.
 
Sigh.  I was doing so good, too….

Otherwise, I’m getting more and more obsessed with the card game Tim & I are playing every day. [This, folks, was when I got started on my obsession with Dominion!]  Yesterday we played twice.  We’re both really enjoying it, and I like doing it together.  The game changes every time, because you use 10 sets of cards for each game — out of a possible 50 different sets.  I bought Tim two more expansion packs for his birthday, so then there will be even more possibilities.  The game DOES distract me from my headache, though I wasn’t playing it for a couple weeks there because I didn’t even want to think about playing with a headache.  As it turns out, it’s a nice distraction.
 
Anyway, on the good side, the whole ovarian cyst thing seems much better.  I may cancel the appointment next Monday with the gastroenterologist.

Because of my low sick leave, I did go to work. I was thinking about going home early, but once I got to dinner time, I figured I might as well stay. I had leftover spinach casserole for dinner. (I learned later that spinach has lots of vitamin K which helps blood clot. I wonder if that was a factor.)

Then I was working at the Information desk during the 6:00 hour. Just minding my own business. When suddenly, the whole room started spinning. I said to Ivelisse, who was working next to me, “I feel really dizzy.” I thought I was sounding casual, but she immediately said she’d help me get to the back and lie down. Well, then a customer walked up to me and asked for help looking for a book in the YA section. I motioned to Ivelisse. I knew I couldn’t walk to the YA books. I tried to close the windows on my computer, but only managed to close one and gave up. I put my head down until Ivelisse came back, and then she helped me get to the back room. I couldn’t walk straight.

I was still completely coherent – but the room was spinning. I laid down on the couch in the break room – and the room was still spinning, even when I was lying down. After about five minutes, I remembered about birth control pills and strokes, and since the dizziness wasn’t stopping, and since I’d had a bad headache for more than 3 weeks, and since I’d never experienced anything like that – I did ask my hovering co-workers to call the paramedics. Gari Plehal, the branch manager, was especially helpful and got my purse for me from my office.

When the paramedics came, just moving my head to scoot into a position so they could examine me made me vomit. (But we had time to get a bowl from the kitchen!)

I did describe the night in my blog, written a few weeks later.

Riding in an ambulance wasn’t nearly as fun as it looked when I was a kid watching Emergency!. Of course the ambulance moving made the dizziness worse, though the paramedics gave me an IV with something that was supposed to help that.

They took me to Fairfax Hospital, which is supposed to be a stroke center. By the time I saw a doctor, the dizziness had just subsided. By that time, it was probably 45 minutes from when it had first hit. I did hear the paramedics report that I was negative on the stroke scale, which soothed my worries.

They did a CT Scan, which came out clear. What I didn’t know at that time is that cerebellar strokes are in an area surrounded by bone, and they don’t necessarily show up on CT scans when they’re first happening.

I told the doctor that I get migraines and that I’d had one for the last three weeks. They decided this must be some sort of change in my migraines – and sent me home! I could barely hold my head up as I waited for my friend Marilynn to come drive me home. I was nowhere near feeling good enough the next day to figure out how to get the prescriptions filled they gave me.

No – they should not have sent me home. I’d never had a headache remotely like that. More on that later…

Here’s the note I sent to my small group the next day. I was clueless and feeling dragged out and awful.

Hi Gateway folks!
 
I just thought I’d update folks on what happened yesterday, and ask for your prayers for some kind of resolution.
 
Some of you know, I’ve had a headache for more than 3 weeks now.  It was a little worse last week, but mostly it’s been pretty low-level.  Yesterday, it seemed low-level again, but it had gone on so long, it was hard to stop thinking about it, and I felt a tiny bit nauseous.
 
I have been doing fantastic, headache-wise, since I started on Zoloft in January 2010.  Hadn’t even needed headache medicine during my periods, which was a first.  But I had started on birth control pills because of the trouble I was having with ovarian cysts.  After 3 months, that’s mostly, but not completely resolved.
 
Anyway, what I suspect happened was at ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans, I didn’t get enough sleep and missed a “dose” of caffeine and got headachy again.  At the same time I finished up the birth control pills and let them lapse for a month.  (I had an appointment and started them again on Sunday, so I was hoping that would resolve the headache.) [So I knew it had started at ALA, but didn’t realize the problem was a neck injury that happened on the plane.]
 
I’m guessing that a long, long headache is my new “normal”, since that’s what was happening before I went on Zoloft.  Just not sure how to resolve it.
 
Anyway, last night I was scheduled 12:30 to 9.  I wasn’t focusing very well, but was doing okay.  About an hour after dinner, just sitting at the reference desk, I suddenly got hit with severe vertigo.  I could hardly even walk straight.  My coworker helped me get to the lounge and lie down on the couch.  The dizziness didn’t pass at all, and if I moved my head at all, the room spun.  I was also in a cold sweat.
 
I started thinking that birth control plus migraines could mean I’m at risk for stroke, so I did ask my boss to call the paramedics.  When they came and I moved my head just a little bit, I vomited up all my dinner.  They gave me an IV to help with the nausea and the dizziness finally went away about the time I got to the ER.
 
They did an EKG and a CT scan, and it wasn’t a stroke or a tumor or heart problems.  So that’s all good.
 
They sent me home with a neurology consult (I think I probably still have to go through tricare first) and prescriptions for headache drugs and antinausea drugs, which I still haven’t filled.  Marilynn gave me a ride home.  Thank you so much, Marilynn!
 
Today it was all day before I could stay vertical long enough to do anything more than eat.  But I am feeling better as the day progresses.  Perhaps from the medicine still in my system?  I do have a slightly elevated temperature — 99.1.  Normal for me is about 97.4, and last night in my cold sweat, it was 95.1.  So maybe a bug?
 
My headache isn’t very bad today, but I am still feeling kind of weak and sick.  Though better as the day progresses.  Though I will probably go lie down after sitting up to type this.  I did take the time to play a game of Dominion with Tim, though!  🙂
 
While I’ve got a headache anyway, I cut down on my caffeine intake and only took one Naproxen instead of my usual daily 2.  So that could affect the temperature, and it could mean that the headache gets a lot worse tomorrow.  But it seems like if I’m going to cut caffeine, I might as well when I’m feeling bad anyway!
 
Tomorrow, I plan to try to find someone to take me to the library (City of Fairfax) to get my car.  I’ll either try to work a few hours (I’m scheduled 12:30 to 9), or take the car to go get the prescriptions filled.  At least if I feel like I can drive — I’m hoping that will be no problem.
 
So — that’s what happened.  I’d really appreciate your prayers.  I’m trying to turn to God about this rather than “wail upon my bed.”  In fact, here’s a meditation about that that works in some ideas from the book we’re going through, plus Pastor Ed’s sermon:
http://sonderbooks.com/sonderblessings/?p=1261
 
An added worry is that I’ve run out of sick leave, and will end up not having enough annual leave to go to my brother’s wedding at the end of the summer, as I had planned and have plane tickets.
 
So I’d really appreciate prayer: 
That this headache would end.
That if there’s a direct cause I should find out about, that it will be found.
That I can go back to work.
And that I’ll depend on God.
 
Oh, and Tim’s birthday is Friday, so you can also pray that we both have a great day!  (That, at least, is my day off.)
 
Thanks for caring about me!  I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, but it’s good to know people care.
 
Sondy

So that was Tuesday after the Monday incident (which was, actually, a stroke). On Wednesday, Kathe drove me in to work to pick up my car. I told folks that I was fine. I had a doctor appointment on Thursday, so I told them I’d plan to come in to work after the appointment.

On Thursday, I woke up needing to go to the bathroom – and got super dizzy and almost fainted in the bathroom. I ran back to my bed before I fell over. Then I noticed that my right leg was numb. Had I slept on it funny? Then I noticed my right arm was also numb. Why, my whole right side was numb.

I lay there, trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t want to call an ambulance. I didn’t want to scare Tim, who was asleep in his room. And besides, with all the piles of books in my room, the paramedics wouldn’t have room to bring their stretcher into my room. (Oh, the stupid things you think of! Sondy, call 911!) But I didn’t. After awhile, I started feeling less dizzy. I was afraid to take a shower. At the very least, I didn’t want to faint while I was naked! But I got dressed. Then laid down. Then went downstairs to figure out what to do. I made breakfast, my usual oatmeal, with frequent breaks to lie down on the couch. I laid on the couch and called to cancel my appointment. I asked the nurse what I should do, and she didn’t sound alarmed – said I should go to Fort Belvoir, the military hospital.

When I started eating my oatmeal, I realized that even the right half of my lips were numb! There was no way that was from sleeping on them funny! I decided I should definitely go to the E. R. I called Marilynn, who couldn’t pick me up, and Kathe, who said she’d be right over. I woke up Tim and told him I’d be going to the hospital, but I’d call him.

While I was waiting for Kathe, I thought I’d get on the computer to print directions to the hospital out at Fair Oaks. Believe it or not, I sent another email to my small group! Here’s what it said:

Well, instead of going to my doctor appointment this morning, I’m headed for the ER at Fair Oaks.  Would appreciate more prayer.  The nurse at the doctor’s office said I could wait for a friend to pick me up, though that was before my whole right side started tingling again.  Kathe’s going to take me.
 
I woke up this morning and got real dizzy when I went to the bathroom.  Then my whole right side started tingling — arm and leg and even my face.  I rested and managed to eat breakfast, got dressed, but didn’t try a shower.  Cold sweat with the dizziness.  Oh, and an intense right side headache, too.  Anyway, I went online to print directions to Fair Oaks, but now think I will lie down until Kathe comes.  I admit I’m freaked out!
 
Sondy

By the time I’d sat up that long, I was feeling really bad again. I laid down, but decided I really should call an ambulance. I called Kathe to tell her not to come – but she was one minute away, so she did drive me.

She had to help me walk out to her van. It was almost comical – I honestly couldn’t walk in a straight line! I wasn’t able to sit in the front seat, so I laid down on the back seat.

So – God showed me all kinds of grace. I so should have called 911 in the first place!

When I got to the ER, they gave me a wheelchair fairly quickly (I must have looked bad) and quickly let me lie down. I was pretty out of it. I blogged about the whole experience later.

They decided to do an MRI because of my right side tingling. And that was what revealed the stroke. I ended up being in the hospital for 10 days.

I called Tim that first day. I felt terrible – because the next day was his birthday! But he was planning to go to Steve’s on his birthday anyway, so I had him call Steve and ask if Steve could pick him up a day early. So at least I didn’t have to worry about him.

It wasn’t until the second day that they did the test that determined the stroke was caused by a vertebral artery dissection, which had caused a clot, which had gone to my cerebellum.

Fair Oaks hospital is cool, because you get to keep the copies of your scans. Here’s my stroke! It’s the white heart-shaped area in the bottom left of this picture. (The images are flipped – the stroke is on my right side. Interestingly, the cerebellum is one of the few parts of the brain that affects the same side of your body.)

I did a heartfelt post answering the question, Was I Scared?

But what really shook me up was a couple weeks later when I read an article about cerebellar strokes. 35% of cerebellar strokes, presenting as vertigo – get misdiagnosed. Because they don’t always show up on CT scans when they’re happening. (Like mine didn’t.) In fact, CT scans only catch 26% of cerebellar strokes.

For people whose cerebellar strokes are missed – 40% of those patients go on to die when they have another stroke! 30% are permanently disabled. So I was in the lucky 30%!

Now, I do have lasting effects from the stroke. A very small one is that when I stand and sing in church, in an auditorium with a sloping floor, I have to hold onto the seat in front of me and keep my eyes open – to give my brain extra balance cues. The cerebellum is the center for “balance and grace.” (Fortunately, I never used it much!) I was very glad my higher thinking wasn’t touched at all.

I did have a lot more trouble with general dizziness in the weeks and months directly after the stroke.

I’ll talk about that more in next installments. Now it’s getting late, and I have a small headache tonight – and writing about this definitely isn’t helping!

In summary – I’m so glad I’m alive!

I did end up staying home from work a couple weeks more – and got some great time with Tim, with lots of playing Dominion. I was so glad the stroke happened during the summer. For one thing, Tim could go to Steve’s while I was in the hospital, but also I got some great time with him. I made him a belated 17th birthday cake. And the cake made a smiley face in the oven! I figured that’s the sign it would be a happy year!

I did run out of sick leave – and my co-workers generously donated all I needed. I was really having trouble with no energy, general dizziness, and still having lots of headaches. I was put on Coumadin for six months to keep from getting another clot – but they had to check my blood levels frequently to make sure the dosage was right.

But another wonderful thing about the timing? It very effectively got my mind off of Steve!

And just when I was starting to feel up to going back to work – it was time for the vacation I’d booked to Oregon to see my brother Robert get married.

It was actually very good timing – because I thought I was ready to go to work – but I really don’t think I was. On vacation, I spent a whole lot of time in bed – and got a little bit stronger and readier to go back to work.

And I will write about the Oregon trip – and all of my siblings together for the first time in years – when I tackle the next part of Year 47.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 46!

46 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 46 — June 14, 2010, to June 14, 2011.

This was one of the hardest years of my life, honestly. Though I noticed something interesting – thinking about that year makes me happy – because now, six years later, it’s pretty obvious that God did work out those things for good. There are some things in my life that I haven’t figured out what good has come out of them (like my stroke in Year 47). But the hard big things in Year 46 – losing my job and getting divorced – have already had good outcomes.

Not that those weren’t awful things! But I’m here to testify that God can bring good out of anything!

Last time, I covered the big things that were looming. I already knew I’d lose my job at Herndon Fortnightly Library and had accepted the offer of a job at the Office for Children in its place. I’d already taken the big step of filing for divorce. The changes happened fast after my 46th birthday.

My birthday was the Monday of my last week at Herndon Fortnightly Library. That week I had a lot of time as Person-in-Charge, and things kept going wrong! So at least in my new job I wouldn’t have to deal with the ceiling of a supply closet collapsing! At least I wouldn’t have to call the police about a problem patron!

We had a Scheduling Conference for our divorce case on June 17, scheduling a custody/visitation hearing in August, and a hearing on November 22 and 23 “to address grounds for divorce, equitable distribution, child and spousal support.”

But then I actually got good news! After the scheduling conference, Steve signed the latest version of our Custody and Visitation Agreement – so we were able to drop the custody/visitation hearing in August.

And that brings us to Phase 11 of the divorce: Finalizing Legal Details. Steve had finally engaged his third lawyer, so now we could actually make progress coming to agreement – though he was still very angry with me for not going to mediation. (But doing mediation with someone who wouldn’t bring all his financial records really didn’t seem like a good idea. And I still was trying to be nice to Steve – I needed a lawyer to advocate for what was right.)

I mentioned last time that when I tried to do something nice for Steve and sent him a picture of our kids, he told me that I was being cruel, reminding him of what he’d lost. In that same email, Steve told me there wasn’t a single area of his life I hadn’t chosen to ruin.

I wasn’t even tempted to believe that accusation – I knew that I hadn’t chosen to ruin even a single part of Steve’s life. So in that sense, it was easier to deal with than earlier accusations about our years married that were based in the truth that I wasn’t a perfect wife.

However, I think because it was easier for my mind to dismiss such accusations, I didn’t realize that they still wounded my heart. This was someone I loved who was telling me I was despicable. That opens wounds.

So one of the good things about my new job at the Office for Children, Provider Services – It was much, much less stressful. And while the divorce was being finalized was a good time to have less stress at work. I didn’t supervise anyone, and was essentially doing bureaucratic paper-shuffling in support of the USDA Food Program. The job did not require a Master’s degree.

Some good things about it were no more nights and weekends and much less stress. Nice people, too.

Now, don’t get me started about the stupidity of the job. If you have a federal program, you do need to make sure that people aren’t cheating the system, even if we’re only talking pennies per child. But oh my goodness, the amount of bureaucracy to keep people from cheating the system! (The position was mostly funded by the USDA food program, too.)

What really got me angry was that this position of Management Analyst 1 was the exact same pay grade as a Librarian 1. But it didn’t require a Master’s degree, unlike the Librarian position, and it didn’t supervise anyone, unlike the Librarian position. And it was much, much less responsible work, requiring much less intelligence and judgment and skill.

To make matters worse – while I was in the position, they upgraded it from S-20 to S-21 (without giving any raises to people who already were Management Analysts) – so for future RIFs, Librarian 1s would no longer be considered qualified to take a Management Analyst 1 position! (This is so wrong!)

When I asked Library HR about it, they said the Librarian pay grade is based on what other vicinities are paying (though I know they’re paid more in DC) – which just tells me that all public librarians are underpaid. After all, it’s primarily women who hold the positions, so this shouldn’t be a surprise.

Anyway, that’s a battle for another day – I knew I wouldn’t get far pursuing that in a year when the budget is tight, and it hasn’t really loosened up in later years. I later checked all the S-20 job classes in the county, and there is only one other than Librarian that requires a Master’s degree. All the others require at most a Bachelor’s.

But the good side – I had a job! I was getting my same salary! No homelessness or lack of food for me!

I learned at that time that I’m not only detail-oriented, I’m freakishly detail-oriented. One of my favorite things was checking attendance sheets, comparing with what was in the computer. They were marked with Y or N – which are both three strokes and look almost identical when hand-written. But I was crazy-good at spotting errors!

I also, not coincidentally, got a smart phone at this time and loaded it up with music. We were in cubicles, and when some of the people in the office were talking with a provider in a nearby cubicle – it was helpful to listen to music instead. Though I did have to be told to refrain from humming or singing along.

I started working at the Office for Children, Provider Services, one week after my birthday, on June 21.

On June 24, Ruth was in town! We met at Darlene’s house.

Ruth with her daughter Nadia:

And here we are with Darlene’s daughter Michelle:

The day after that, June 25, was ALA Annual Conference. It looks like I took Friday and Monday off from my new job to go. (No, actually, I took that whole next week off in order to have a break in between jobs.) ALA was in Washington, DC, again that year. It felt really good to go, especially after having been RIF’d from the library – because it reminded me that these were my people. It reminded me that I might not have a library job, but I was still a Librarian.

And I was drawn to the Children’s and Teen Services programs, so I could see that I’m still a Youth Services Librarian at heart.

Here’s what I said in my first blog post about ALA:

Going to ALA Annual Conference this year was a no-brainer, since I wouldn’t have to pay for travel (except parking) or a hotel.  And it ended up being a peak experience.  Three years ago, ALA Annual was in DC and I went and was inspired.  But that time, I didn’t see a soul I knew.  This time, every day I saw librarians I’d worked with, bloggers I’d met, and authors whose books I’d reviewed.  I felt like part of the great big wonderful Kidlit community, and it felt good.  I did realize that I am a Librarian by calling, not just by job.

I spotted David Levithan and John Green on the exhibits floor on opening night!

Karen Cushman at SCBWI Drink Night:

I learned lots of good things at the conference.

And the YA Author Coffee Klatch (like speed dating with authors) was when I first met James Kennedy, who was later responsible for my starting my Sonderling Sunday blog posts.

I met more authors that day! Here’s with Jessica Day George in the exhibits hall:

And Tom Angleberger, author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda:

Author Superstars Mo Willems and Jon Scieszka:

And I went to help with a recording, reading a page from The Wizard of Oz – and Grace Lin walked in behind me! She was due to get a Newbery Honor Award that evening!

But by far the highlight of the day was the Newbery/Caldecott Banquet, the second one I’d attended. This time my friend Susan Kusel, whom I’d met at KidLitCon and whose kidlit book club I attended, had bought ten tables, so I could sit near the front! And I talked some folks from Fairfax County Public Library into attending the banquet with me, including my former branch manager, Nancy Ryan.

I did lots of schmoozing before the banquet! It was so much fun meeting authors!

Here’s Brian Floca:

Laurie Halse Anderson!

Jon Scieszka!

And Nancy and I accosted Mo Willems!

Here’s the whole group of us from FCPL:

Here’s Sara Lewis Holmes, whom I’d first met at KidLitCon:

Just to be in a picture with the stunningly handsome Jim Averbeck felt good! He’s an author and a nice guy, too!

Tanita Davis!

And the sweet Soroj Ghoting, a trainer in Early Literacy techniques for ALSC:

See why going to ALA Annual Conference was hugely therapeutic to me after having just been cut from my library job? I felt so connected!

Here’s Susan at the end of it all, clearly frazzled from organizing ten tables! And I think I was bubbling over and couldn’t stop talking!

And that wasn’t all. There was still another day of the conference!

I met M. T. Anderson in the exhibit hall:

And that night was the Printz Award Reception! I was sitting right behind Diana Peterfreund and Ally Carter! And that’s John Green in front of them.

And then I met the brilliant Libba Bray:

And my conference started and ended with meeting John Green!

And when the conference is in DC, Oh the Loot I collect! I don’t have to ship any of the free advance reader copies – just make trips to my car to put them in the trunk! So here was this year’s loot!

I can’t say that Tim was impressed by my loot, but I think even he was surprised by how far my biblioholism had progressed, when confronted with piles of free books.

That week I had off, I handled some errands like getting our ID cards renewed and applying for more librarian jobs, but I also managed to go hiking with Tim again in Shenandoah National Park.

Tim was a good traveling companion. I noticed I wasn’t as perfectionistic when I was with him. Our hike went long – as you can tell by the sunset picture. But Tim was so laid back about it, I managed not to beat myself up about having not planned it perfectly. We had a nice day. And Tim turned 16 years old that summer!

The summer was hard, though. I kept applying to librarian jobs – and not getting them. I even got an interview, but didn’t get the job. In the meantime, I had a dream where I was hoping to get to talk with Steve, and then he turned away when he saw I was there. After all that, I still missed my husband.

But I still felt like God was speaking to me, reminding me that He was with me.

At the end of the summer, August 27-28, I went to the “Women of Faith” conference in DC with some ladies from church. This wasn’t something I was able to do when I worked at the library, because they always needed me to work either Friday or Saturday, but it was no problem now. I was blessed and encouraged.

Here’s a note from my journal that weekend:

Zephaniah 3:17 —
“The Lord your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.”

Lord,
Four different times this weekend, speakers referred to this concept that You delight in me and will rejoice over me with singing.

No matter how much I knew in my head, the battle as I was hearing so much rejection from my husband was always against feeling utterly unlovable. And God was helping me with that.

In September, Tim began 11th grade at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Wow!

October 1-3 had a big event for me – I went to Boston to attend the first Simmons College/Horn Book Award Symposium. Unfortunately, my flight was delayed 5 hours – and I missed the Horn Book Awards on Friday night. But I did get to attend the Symposium the next day and do sight-seeing in Boston on Sunday.

My hotel was near the Boston Public Library. (It was very easy to get around using public transportation. I passed the library going to the subway stop.)

Helen Oxenbury was on a panel! She’s the author and illustrator of the Tom and Pippo books that J. loved when they were small. I love the way she looks like one of her own illustrations.

And I met Megan Whalen Turner! Her books are some of my very favorites! I had brought A Conspiracy of Kings on the trip and reread it and had her sign it.

After the Symposium, I walked back to my hotel, and was able to mostly stay in parks while I did.

The next day was just for sight-seeing before a late flight. I had to do a Make Way for Ducklings pilgrimage to the Boston Public Garden!

I walked along the river and headed toward Cambridge.

I had fun walking on M.I.T.’s campus.

The museum of technology at M.I.T. was fascinating!

But by far the highlight of the entire weekend happened when I got to the airport an hour early for my flight. Because after I checked in, I saw Megan Whalen Turner! She was also an hour early for her flight. I was planning to get dinner at the airport. So – we sat down in a small restaurant and talked for an hour! I got dinner, and she got a coke. And we just had a lovely, friendly conversation!

It turns out she’s only a year younger than me. It should be obvious that she’s a kindred spirit – I enjoy her books so much! But it was just such a treat to get to talk like friends, even though I’d just met her that weekend.

Meanwhile, though, our divorce court date was getting closer. My lawyer issued discovery against Steve – basically the same questions she used two years earlier, which he had never answered. She was still telling his lawyer that if Steve would give us copies of his pay stubs, maybe we could work out an agreement. It was nice that now Steve at least had a lawyer.

While working as a Management Analyst, I had a lot more time that I could go to county training I was supposed to attend without leaving my co-workers with low staff. So I caught up on training. One training I attended was Domestic Violence Awareness – which is often a problem in the work place.

That class had the effect of making me more afraid of Steve and what he might do if he badly lost the court case. Especially since he’d told me that in the past he’d had a plan to kill me. I decided to use our employee assistance benefit to see a counselor for six weeks, to get me through the divorce. That was very helpful – and another thing I wouldn’t have had time for if I’d been working library hours.

I did go on some lovely hikes that Autumn (again). This picture of glowing leaves in an S shape made me feel loved. Hey, it’s the little things!

Meanwhile, I went to another small YA literature conference and met Catherine Gilbert Murdock.

On October 24, I hiked at Manassas Battlefield Park.

And Tim and I went to the Rally to Restore Sanity in DC! I was reminded that I really don’t like crowds! But it was fun to be there and read the signs.

My own sign had to do with library funding, of course.

More hiking. I still love Fall Color so much!

And the tree out my window was simply beautiful:

Meanwhile, we were preparing to go to court. My lawyer said she couldn’t fathom why Steve thought a judge wouldn’t award me half the marital portion of his retirement plus guideline child support.  That this case should NOT be going to trial.  And she was going to ask for 100% of my legal fees from there on out as she and her staff prepared for trial.

But she continued to negotiate, and Steve continued to reject the negotiations. When he finally answered the interrogatories, he stopped with the view that I had destroyed his career – because he denied ever having gotten the letter of reprimand for his relationship with Amy. He didn’t want to produce those. Instead, he was claiming that he had to leave me because of my anger management issues. Well, I was going to call Kathe as a witness. She stayed with us for more than a week while our marriage was in crisis and Steve was having his affair – but Kathe never heard me raise my voice to Steve.

I went to the lawyer’s office on Sunday afternoon to prepare for trial. We were talking with Kathe about what her role would be.

And Sunday evening, my lawyer told me that Steve had signed the agreement, with a few minor changes, after all. His lawyer had talked him into it (knowing they didn’t have a strong case). Steve was also planning to file a complaint against his own lawyer.

The agreement continued child support until Tim turned 18. It gave me basically 45% of his retirement, but we put that off for six months to give Steve time to find a job. He didn’t pay my legal fees after all.

I said to a friend:

Tomorrow I still have to go to court, and we will file for divorce on grounds of separation for a year.  Kathe will still need to testify that we have been living separate and apart.  But Steve will not be there!  And since the thing I most dreaded was having to face him, this is fantastic news.
 
My lawyer kept saying it should have settled so long ago.  But at least all this made me finally really grasp that divorcing him is a good thing.  Even this last ridiculous bit made me glad he signed the agreement instead of regretting that he’s getting away without paying my legal fees.  He doesn’t have the money.  I’m going to think of it as paying a wonderful person (my lawyer) who did an incredibly wonderful service for me — dealing with Steve so I didn’t have to!

So Kathe, who had been my matron of honor in my wedding, was also the witness in my divorce. That’s a true friend! Kathe and my friend Marilynn took me out to eat after the short hearing.

It was a good thing to have happen – but it was still very hard.

And this began Phase 12: Officially Divorced

At the same time, though, I learned that a full-time librarian 1 opening was due to happen soon at City of Fairfax Regional Library! I would get back to the library!

Also, my Dad paid for Tim and me to come to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving!

By this time, Jade (then called Josh) and my brother Peter had moved to an apartment in Hollywood. But they came to Thanksgiving and brought Jade’s girlfriend Sunny!

My sisters! (All except Wendy.)

My kids!

When I got back, the news was official. A Librarian was retiring, so I could have her job at City of Fairfax Regional Library. I didn’t even have to interview. It was not a youth services position, but honestly, it was a whole lot less work for the same pay. (I still say that they really need to upgrade the positions of Youth Services Manager at the community branches. It’s a lot more work than other Librarian 1 positions.)

But I was back in a Library! Calloo! Callay!

I began working at City of Fairfax Regional Library on December 6, 2010. I was newly divorced, and had a library job again, and life was looking sweet.

Here’s my Christmas Letter that year. I did make the mistake of telling people that 2011 couldn’t possibly be as hard as 2010 had been. And then I had a stroke in 2011. (Spoiler alert.) But you know what? Even a stroke (that I survived) was not nearly as bad as going through divorce – so I was right.

I will quote this part of the letter:

First, I’ll report that, as of today, my divorce from Steve is final.  Both condolences and congratulations are in order.  He was a very good husband for a very long time, and I’m very sad it came to this.

But I am seeing this was a good thing in my life right now.  It was time to let him go.  Clinging wasn’t going to bring about a change of heart, and it was time to settle legal and financial matters between us.  I’d better not say any more than that.

So I’ll only say that it feels incredibly freeing to be a single adult, responsible only for myself and my son.  There are some wonderful things about it.  Life is good!

When I said “as of today” – I really did get notification that the divorce was final after I got home from the Christmas Eve service. But when I looked more closely, the judge had signed the order on the day of the trial – basically at Thanksgiving.

So – that was the big event of the year I was 46. As the new year 2011 started, I was back in a library – and I was adjusting to thinking of myself as a divorced woman.

I see in my journal that God gave me the verses Hosea 2:14-16 —

“Therefore, I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.
There I will give her back her vineyards
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will sing as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
In that day,” declares the Lord,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master.'”

I felt like God was telling me three things:

1) Stay far away from Steve. (He was in God’s hands.)
2) Treasure this time of singleness.
3) Shine like a star.

Hmmm. Those things still pretty much hold true.

Looking back, though, this all seems happy – and it was – but I can’t emphasize enough how devastating it is to your sense of self, to your feeling like a lovable, valuable person to be rejected so strongly. I’d been injured to my core, and now God was healing me.

Our church had a Ladies’ Retreat in April! That was a lot of fun, and helped restore me.

In the springtime, though, I did have some trouble again with ovarian cysts. Bad enough for an E. R. visit one month. That was when I started using the shorter desk at work, because it hurt to climb up the taller chair. Eventually, I decided to go back on birth control pills to stop getting them. This worked, but may not have been worth the stroke I had later (spoiler alert). But after a few months on birth control pills, I never did get any more ovarian cysts, anyway!

Spring was full of blossoms again, of course!

A significant thing happened on April 29, 2011. I felt very much this was from God. Here’s what I wrote about it:

I was memorizing in Hosea 4, and I usually take a verse from the chapter I’m memorizing for my quiet time.

But Hosea 4 is about Israel sinning and nothing seemed appropriate, so I thought I’d have to look somewhere else.

So I prayed, “Lord, show me what verse you have for me.” And specifically: “Do you have anything to say to me in Hosea 4?”

As I was turning to go to some other passage and praying, my eye fell on verse 17:

“Ephraim is joined to idols;
Leave him alone!”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that!

Let me also clarify that in an earlier passage, I had identified Ephraim with Steve. It amused me that God needed to give me this message with an exclamation point!

The thing was, despite everything, my love for my husband still wasn’t completely dead. And he seemed so miserable! I wished I could somehow help him, somehow show him love.

Well, God made it pretty clear that wasn’t my job.

Since then, there were many times I was tempted to decide this word to me had expired. But I think it would be awfully easy for God to show me that it had. But God has not done that. For that matter, Steve knows where to find me.

Getting that direction from God was also helping me heal. Helping me see that for me, divorce was a good step. That I was not to be partners with Steve any more. And God was showing me how much He loved me.

On April 30, I visited Meadowlark Gardens, another lovely place in the springtime.

Though at the end of May, Steve was supposed to start sending me my portion of his retirement – and we had a problem with the wording of our agreement, so DFAS wouldn’t pay me directly. We needed a slightly reworded agreement to be signed by Steve, for the sake of DFAS – and eventually we had to go to court to get him to do it. That was only beginning then, we were still trying to get it done with written requests. I was still communicating with Steve to arrange Tim’s visits, which were usually every other weekend. But Steve was doing all the driving, so mainly we just had to find out which days.

So – my life was settling down. My wounds were a little less raw. I was submitting my second novel to agents. I was looking forward to attending ALA Annual Conference again, in New Orleans this time. And then I got a big distraction….

It’s time for Project 52, Week 45!

45 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 45 — June 14, 2009, to June 14, 2010.

Last time, I got through November. I was still dealing with difficult communications with Steve about visitation and about him wanting me to have my lawyer draw up a separation agreement he’d be willing to sign – but never explaining how that would be different than the one she’d already drawn up. I was still hoping and praying he would have a change of heart and our marriage would be restored – but I was slowly coming around to thinking maybe I should file for divorce in the mean time. I was praying over and over for wisdom, and God was gently leading me.

I was also finding great joy in my job at the library. I’d started attending a new small group on Friday nights, led by John and Lisa Maulella in Herndon, and that group of people was helping me through. That Fall, after a couple years without much trouble with headaches, I’d suddenly started getting the longest lasting headaches of my life.

But there was some other very bad news in November. My Dad had a heart attack. He refused bypass surgery, and they put in several stents. Here’s an email I wrote to a friend on November 15, 2009:

Well, as of last night my Dad was still in ICU, as they try to get his blood pressure stabilized.  I don’t think they’re alarmed — just trying to wean him off the medications that kept things in line when they were waiting to put in the stents.  We think it’s just as well they’re keeping him resting that much longer!
 
But my talk with Becky dropped a much bigger bombshell.  My siblings really think that my Mom may be getting Alzheimer’s.  She’s only 68!  The progress may have been accelerated by the open heart surgery 7 years ago (sometimes that happens), which is why my Dad didn’t want open heart surgery.
 
There have been symptoms for a long time — which we were mostly passing off as my Mom’s little eccentricities.  But they’re getting more extreme.  Becky said that now she does a lot of typing, and she regularly forgets how to spell words.  That is NOT like my Mom.  I guess last week she misplaced a book and was sure someone had stolen it.  She can’t find her way to my Dad’s room in the hospital, which hadn’t been changed and Becky says is very easy to find.
 
Anyway, my siblings out there had a family meeting about ways they can help Mom and Dad, and one thing is they are going to somehow insist that she sees a neurologist.  Those kind of problems are definitely treatable, especially if it doesn’t end up being Alzheimer’s.
 
Now, she’s been seeing doctors for awhile about feeling “yucky” and “like a rag doll,” but I guess she was offended when my Dad suggested she see a neurologist, and thinks she’s just having “senior moments.”  So the first challenge will be getting her to get to a doctor.
 
Sigh.  I had known she was having some definitely alarming symptoms, but now Becky came out and said that the siblings are sure there’s a problem, that her behavior is definitely not normal.
 
It’s probably a good thing, in the long run, that with Dad unable to take care of her for awhile, my siblings were motivated to take action.
 
But today I’m busy mourning the news, trying to absorb the blow.  At the same time, I’m worried about my Dad.
 
But the biggest thing, of course, that’s wearing me down is this headache.  It’s still very low level, but I’m getting more and more of a sense that something’s very wrong.
 
And it’s low level — but at our new location for church they are experimenting with the lighting and are opting, for now, for very dark house lights with bright lights on the stage — and that is just the WRONG lighting for a headache!  So my headache was much much worse during the singing, and that definitely put me in the wrong spirit for church!  (Besides, it’s a series on marriage.  Today was “speaking the truth in love.”  YES, I agree that is important!)
 
There was also a church business meeting afterward, and I tried to explain to the pastor, after that, that the lighting is physically painful for me, but ended up crying.  (I don’t think I convinced him this could be painful to any other migraneurs in the audience, but I think that’s true.  He asked what I do when I go to movies, but I definitely DON’T go to movies when I have a headache — but thought I could go to church.)
 
Tim and I had lunch out after that (too expensive, but tasty and with leftovers), and then went to Barnes & Noble to spend a gift certificate he’d been given.  Then I napped — so much for my day.
 
Tonight I even have a slight fever with it.  This is just not normal for me.  I sure hope the neurologist can hit on the correct diagnosis quickly — and I hope it’s not a particularly nasty one.
 
Meanwhile my other worries are if my job will be targeted to meet the budget — should get a clue about that on Wednesday.
 
And of course Steve’s upcoming retirement and if I should divorce him.  I haven’t heard back from my lawyer yet.
 
Sigh.  So I just want to have a good cry feel sorry for myself for awhile — but I don’t think I really have time for that.  I’m hoping today was enough to brood over my Mom’s condition.  Then, really I can be guiltily thankful that I have plenty of siblings (and even a son!) out that way to deal with it.  Though I am worried.  It is a very, very sad thing.
 
And truthfully, what’s most filling my mind is this headache.  And thinking of the conditions it could be that could keep me from working.  Then where would I be….  But that’s borrowing trouble, definitely.  Thank goodness I have an appointment only 3 days away.
 
Tomorrow I have a day off, too, which is lovely.  I hope, hope, hope I can get some good writing done, and rake my leaves, too.  But rest is good, too.
 
Anyway, forgive me for moaning, but I do feel really sad about this news about my Mom.  And pretty freaked out by the headache.  All together, I just really needed to do a little moaning!
 
Yeah, and for some reason I never thought we’d have to deal with Alzheimer’s.  My Mom’s grandparents didn’t have any trouble with it — well, one grandmother had some mental trouble in her 90s.  And her parents, in their 80s, were sharp as tacks.  My Dad’s parents didn’t have any trouble with it either.  Anyway, that still may not be it….

Well, that was it, all right, as gradually became apparent. First they just called it “vascular dementia.” Today, in 2017, my Mom is still living at home, with my Dad tenderly caring for her. But she no longer talks much and seems pretty far gone. A very sad thing – I didn’t even understand how bad it would get at that time.

Then after that, I got word that I was likely to lose my job because of budget cuts for the next fiscal year, starting in July. Scary, since I had lots of debt and no fallback.

And I began seeing a doctor about the headaches. She was trying various things. Corticosteroids, new preventatives. Looking back, I wonder if it had anything to do with going on birth control pills to regulate my cycle. Since they always were affected by hormones. Or if maybe I had a vertebral artery dissection back then but that time it didn’t cause a stroke. (Though I don’t remember it being as focused on the neck as the one I had when the vertebral artery dissection happened.)

Jumping ahead, in January, we finally tried going back on the antidepressant Zoloft as a preventative – and it worked beautifully, as it had done before. When I first started taking it in 2005, the doctor told me you only need to take it six months to a year, and the effects last. Well, perhaps the effects had suddenly stopped – because going back on Zoloft drastically reduced my headaches, as it had done before. Zoloft’s main side effect for me is completely numbing my sex drive – and I figured that was doing me a favor at the time!

Tim was at Steve’s for the last half of Thanksgiving break. I wrote a fun blog post about making an absolutely perfect batch of brown sugar fudge and eating it all myself. Yum!

I’d already started feeling around, talking with friends, about where I could apply against the strong possibility of losing my job. I had just taken my librarianship as a Sign of God’s Goodness, so this was scary. Though I reminded myself that God had a big hand in every job I’d gotten in my adult life. He wasn’t going to abandon me now.

But yes, I was scared. What if I used up all my sick leave, had to take Leave Without Pay, and couldn’t pay rent? What if I lost my job in the budget cuts? What if Steve stopped paying child support when he retired from the Air Force in February. A whole lot of scary things – and they were harder to deal with when I had a constant headache.

I had my very first MRI done on December 4, 2009. Funny, but it was comforting to see that I really do have a brain! I wrote an amusing blog post about it, talking about how the “loud, rhythmic tapping” they warn you about actually sounds like the red alert siren from Star Trek. It reminded me of the line in Galaxy Quest: “I know that sound! That’s a BAD sound!” It was also on the 23rd day of a headache – breaking a personal record I really didn’t want to break.

That was also when I figured out that Topamax was the WRONG preventative for me. I ended up going back on Zoloft – which solved the problem! My headaches were back under control for awhile.

[I’m pausing here for a moment of thanking God for getting very few headaches for the last two YEARS – since menopause, in fact. HOOOOOOOOORAY!!!!! At the time, it was a very awful thing making a dark time worse.]

And then – my Dad offered to pay for Tim and me to fly out to Los Angeles for Christmas! With Jade (then called Josh) there, the thought was all the more wonderful!

But this time, going to L.A. didn’t make us miss all the snow of the winter! In fact, I was in for the most snow I’d seen fall in my life so far! Here’s what I wrote on the 18th:

Woo-hoo!  We’re getting an expected one to two FEET of snow tonight and tomorrow and the next night!  They have already closed the library for tomorrow and cancelled the play I was going to go to.  I hope they will also close the library Sunday. 
 
The last time they got even six inches of snow in December here was in 1982!  So it is quite the storm.
 
So all day we were watching the forecast, and watching it keep saying more and more and more snow.  Now we’re right in the cross-hairs of the middle of the storm. 
 
Unfortunately, the time the storm was to start also got earlier.  Originally, it wasn’t to start until after midnight.  But I went to a potluck tonight and left around 9 pm, and had to drive home through the first couple inches.  It is really coming down!  I’m pretty tense and shaky from my first snow drive of the season.  There was one intersection where I wasn’t able to stop for the light, but there were so few cars, I was able to just turn right and then make a u-turn.  I went much much slower after that!  And I’m reminding myself:  I drove in the snow, and I was FINE.  Of course, that was only an inch or two — and they are expecting a foot or two!
 
So it will be a nice cozy weekend, hunkered down inside watching it snow!  And it is pouring snow!  And this time I don’t have a headache!  YAY!  Maybe I can get Christmas cards written!

And pictures:

Here’s when we cleared the snow as it was still coming down:

The next day:

The yardstick said 20 inches! By far the most I’d ever seen fall at one time. It actually broke records for December snowfall in the DC area.

And this was my car!

Mine is the smaller one to the left of the van.

The path to our house. Tim helped clear it.

And hooray! I really did go to my parents’ house for Christmas! I captured a few random pictures:

Here are Melanie and Wendy, with my Dad in the background.

Abby and Peter:

And two people I love most, my wonderful children, Tim and J:

And the cat, Jeff, and my Mom:

I love this set of Hatches and Eklunds playing the video game Rock Band:

And here’s Becky with her daughter Kristen and son Jason:

It was a short trip, but it was restorative, and good to be with my family.

At the start of the year, I got caught up, along with many others, in the hope that Jerry Pinkney would win the Caldecott Medal for The Lion and the Mouse and “lionized” myself. He did win!

So 2010 began – one of the hardest calendar years of my life. But one blessing was that the Zoloft kicked in, and I stopped having those nearly constant headaches. So that was one less worry.

Steve started communicating more, but he was still trying to get me to pay my lawyer to modify the agreement she’d written in unspecified ways.

And it looked like I would lose my job. Why the county wanted to cut libraries when it was less than 1% of the budget and when we were in a recession and people needed libraries more than ever? I didn’t even know. The cuts of positions would be based on seniority – and I was coming up on just two years working there.

I was still trying to respond to Steve with love, grace, and compassion. I wanted to do nice things for him. One thing I’d done in the past that he had thanked me for was give him pictures of our kids. So I sent him that nice picture of Tim and J. that I’d taken on Christmas morning.

Steve responded, “There was a time I was a husband, a father and a successful Air Force bandsman. Your abusive behavior has taken all of that from me. I think it’s cruel of you to rub my face in it this way.”

Okay, so I realized that there was no loving thing I could do for Steve that would be interpreted by him as loving.

After awhile, Steve started trying to convince me to go to mediation. But the mediator’s site said that mediation couldn’t go forward if one party didn’t bring all documents. Since I’d already presented all my financial documents to Steve’s lawyer in the earlier case he’d filed – but Steve hadn’t provided financial documents at all – I didn’t see a whole lot of point to going. I wouldn’t have minded if Steve had paid, but I didn’t have $450 to spend when I’d already spent thousands on an agreement his lawyer had agreed to.

Finally, I decided to contact my lawyer and file for divorce.

And so began Phase 10: Filing Myself.

Here’s what I wrote to my friends in my small group:

I wanted to write to some of you who were my listening ears and support way back at the beginning of my marriage falling apart, and tell you personally.
 
I made a big decision this weekend.  I’m going to file for divorce, on the grounds of adultery and desertion.
 
Yesterday’s sermon was about listening to God’s voice, and it gave me some moments of doubt.  Was I just taking matters into my own hands and failing to trust God?
 
But I talked with several people after church, and I realized that I haven’t had any trouble listening to God’s voice when He says that Steve will repent some day.  When I have trouble listening to God’s voice is when He clearly tells me, “You need to let Steve go.”
 
I have this fantasy of Steve coming back some day because of his loving, faithful, forgiving wife.  Isn’t she wonderful?  She waited for him in spite of everything!  What great faith in God she had!
 
That’s the fantasy I need to let go of.  I don’t think that’s coming from God.  If Steve ever comes back, it certainly won’t be because I held onto our marriage in spite of everything.  And I don’t want to make it too easy, anyway!  I will really need to know that he had truly changed.  And meanwhile, I can be the person God made me to be much better without his poison in my life.  (Lately, he again allowed e-mail, and has flooded me with harsh messages.  He seems to be trying to get me to agree to a settlement where he doesn’t have to pay anything.)
 
Anyway, I am now a 20/20/20 military spouse.  But unless there is a court order, I can’t even be sure that Steve will keep me signed up for benefits.  I definitely won’t get any of his retirement unless there is a court order.  And he is retiring Feb. 1st and doesn’t have a job yet — and he says that means he can’t pay child support.
 
So it’s time to say that’s not okay with me.  (My lawyer says generally the courts will treat it as his own fault he’s not employed and we can figure child support based on what his income was.)  There are lots of laws protecting me — If I file for divorce.  But almost nothing if I stay married.
 
And I think it is time.
 
So — I have an appointment with my lawyer tomorrow morning.  I think we can get into court for child support fairly quickly, but the divorce itself will probably take much longer — It took a year when Steve filed, though we might be able to skip a few steps?
 
I appreciate your prayers for me!  I’ve had trouble sleeping since I decided to do this, but I hope that will pass soon.

And meanwhile, we were getting piles and piles of wonderful, beautiful, glorious SNOW! In fact, I was in my first “official” blizzard! 26 inches in Centreville the weekend of February 5-7.

The next morning:

My car’s in there somewhere!

Here’s our house:

Looking at the front walk:

These beauties were shining outside the window above my shower (at the top of the house) in the morning.

Here’s how the neighborhood looked in the sunshine:

Digging my car out was a long process!

Here’s where “extra” snow was getting thrown – this mountain was actually flat ground.

The path to our house:

Believe it or not, we got more snow the next week! When I finally went back to work, I brought my camera and took some pictures of the snow-covered Herndon Fortnightly Library.

The Herndon Town Green became the “Town White”!

And meanwhile, we were still trying to convince the Board of Supervisors not to try to squeeze water out of a stone and cut Library funding. I bought a t-shirt.

And I made a display at my library about School Library Journal’s Battle of the Kids’ Books, and won a t-shirt for blogging about it!

Then in March, I had a breakthrough in my thinking about the divorce. Here’s how I explained it to my friends:

Dear friends,
 
I thought you’d be interested in a breakthrough that came for me this morning from Hebrews 11, which our Life Group is going through.
 
You know that I had decided to file for divorce, and I really thought it was the right thing to do, and how God is leading me now — but I still wondered if I was showing a lack of faith.  With all this talk — at church and in my Life Group — of hearing God’s voice, I wondered if I was ignoring all those things I heard from God about marriage restoration.
 
Yet I think I heard from Him about divorce, too, so how could that be?
 
Here was my reasoning:
I really believe that God had revealed to me that one day Steve will repent and have a change of heart and one day our marriage will be restored into a thing of beauty.  So is my filing for divorce an action in keeping with that belief?
 
Then this morning, I was reading Hebrews 11, and I’ll highlight the part that leaped out at me:
 
“By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice.  He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’  Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.”
 
If Abraham were reasoning like me, he would have said, “I really believe that God promised me that my descendants will inherit this land through Isaac.  So is my sacrificing Isaac an action in keeping with that belief?”
 
No, I think it’s time for me to give up my ideas about keeping the marriage and offer it to God.  If He really wants to restore it, surely He is able to resurrect it from death.
 
And that thought was very comforting to me.

Meanwhile, despite trying to negotiate a divorce agreement, despite fears of losing my job, despite applying for new jobs and hitting dead ends – Spring bloomed as beautiful as ever.

Here are the trees next door:

And on the other side:

And I went back to Bull Run Regional Park to enjoy the Bluebell Trail.

I bought another t-shirt: “Cutting Libraries in a Recession is like Cutting Hospitals in a Plague.”

But despite protests and despite many job applications, on May 11, I got a notice that I was going to be part of the Reduction in Force and lose my job at Herndon Fortnightly Library. I was the most senior Librarian 1 getting a RIF notice, but I indeed got one.

Here’s what I wrote in my journal a few days later:

Tuesday I got my RIF notice. I’m scared and sad, and I’ve been having headaches. But friends are pouring out their love & support.

God gave me three forms of encouragement right away, plus one before.

A few days before, when I was thinking about the RIF, God gave me Psalm 34:32-34:

“The wicked lie in wait for the righteous,
seeking their very lives;
but the Lord will not leave them in their power
or let them be condemned when brought to trial.
Wait for the Lord
and keep his way.
He will exalt you to inherit the land;
when the wicked are cut off, you will see it.”

On the morning I got the RIF notice, a song was going through my head:

“Be strong in the Lord and
never give up hope.
He’s gonna do great things,
I already know that
God’s got his hand on you,
so don’t live life in fear;
forgive & forget,
but don’t forget why you’re here.
Take your time and pray.
These are the words I would say.”

That evening, when my CD finished and the radio came on, they were just beginning that very song.

The second thing that same day was on a card my branch manager gave me. It echoed almost exactly what Heather had said in the Mother’s Day sermon – be still and listen to God.

Here’s what the card said:

“All the truth
and beauty.
All the peace
and strength
you are seeking
are right there
in your heart . . .
Be still
and listen.
Be brave
and believe.”

Finally, the third thing was a message from Mabel that echoed what I’d been thinking – that this emphasizes that getting through this will be all God. I was proud of dealing with my divorce by getting my MLS and a librarian job. But there’s nothing I can do to keep it! It is all in God’s hands. And offering up my marriage, marriage restoration is also in God’s hands.

Here’s the verse Mabel included: Revelation 3:8 — “I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”

Thank You, Lord, for all this encouragement.

I went hiking again on May 30, at Ellanor C. Lawrence Park in Centreville. It was actually a Sunday. We didn’t have church and were told to take a Day of Rest, so it was a Prayer Walk for me.

All through May, I was still afraid I was going to be jobless and out of money. And at the same time was trying to negotiate with Steve about a custody and visitation agreement. But in June, I got God’s answer to tide me over. I wrote an update to my friends on June 13, 2010, so that’s how I’ll finish up Week 45’s post.

The big news is that I am employed!
 
Now, in case you don’t know why that is big news:  I’ve known since November that the proposed library budget cuts would probably mean I would get a laid off as part of a Reduction in Force for the county.  Sure enough, although people advocating for the library meant they “only” cut the library budget 12.68% instead of 15%, in early May I got a RIF notice.
 
It was definitely a blow.  I’ve applied for jobs 22 places, but no nibbles yet.
 
And living as a single Mom so long now, I have no savings whatsoever, but plenty of debt.
 
However, my job was a total gift from God in the first place.  I don’t believe that He has abandoned me.  What’s more, if God can bring good out of my losing my husband (and it’s more and more clear that He is doing that), then surely it’s easy as pie for Him to bring good out of a trivial little thing (comparatively!) like losing my job!
 
Anyway, the first step in the RIF process is to look for vacancies in your same job class.  They offered me a half-time Librarian I position.  I had to do a little agonizing.  Is half a job better than no job, since I’d be needing unemployment either way?  But since I can’t live off a half-time job, I decided to say no.  When I went in to the Government Center to sign off that I was not interested in a part-time placement, the HR rep went ahead and moved me to Step 2 of the RIF process — and showed me two job vacancies at my same pay grade, but at different county agencies.  Both were Management Analyst I positions.  One was the Fire Dept and one was Family Services.
 
Anyway, to make a long story short, I decided to take the job at Family Services.  It’s in the Office for Children, Provider Services.  That department licenses hundreds of child care providers in the county, processes USDA grants for nutritious lunches, and all the paperwork for being licensed.  It sounds like I would mainly be managing data, as well as some visits to Head Start and School Age Child Care programs to be sure their paperwork is in order.
 
When I went to meet the people they were super nice.  They were excited to have someone coming who likes numbers!  🙂  And they were already thinking I might want to get involved in the provider training to speak up for the library and early literacy.
 
Of course the best thing is the hours!  8:00 to 4:30, and only about 15 minutes from my home.  During the school year, I would actually leave after Tim left for school and arrive home before he does (his bus ride is so long).  With budget cuts, my schedule at the library would have been just awful — 9:30 to 6:00 most days, but 12:30 to 9:00 pm twice a week.  Plus working every other Saturday.
 
But my emotions are definitely in a mess.  I’m very very sad to leave my job.  I loved being a children’s librarian, and I love the people I work with.  And I got a Master’s in Library Science so I could be a Librarian, not a Management Analyst!  (And the Management Analyst position only requires a Bachelor’s degree — kind of points out that Public Librarians are underpaid.  But anyway, all the other librarian jobs I applied to pay better.)
 
So I’m still looking.  But this does take away the urgency.  Now I have the luxury of only accepting a job that I am absolutely sure I will love.
 
Meanwhile, I don’t know if everyone knows that I did file for divorce last January.  Although I still believe that God is telling me that some day Steve will have a change of heart and come back to God, and God will restore our marriage, I felt that God was telling me it was time to file for divorce.
 
I didn’t understand, but it did seem necessary to get some issues settled.  Anyway, I kept asking God, “I thought you told me You’re going to restore our marriage.  Does this mean I am lacking in faith?  Am I really hearing You right?  How can that be possible?”
 
But God was gracious.  He directly answered my questions — using one of my longtime favorite chapters, Hebrews 11…. 
 
So by filing for divorce, I’m putting the whole matter in God’s hands.  He can surely resurrect our marriage if that is His plan.
 
Meanwhile, God is blessing me and drawing me closer to Him.  I’m excited to see what’s going to happen with my next job, and grateful that He is providing for me while I’m looking.
 
This week, on June 17, we have a Scheduling Conference for the divorce.  They just set the dates for trial, etc.  I very much hope that, now Steve has a lawyer, we can get a Custody/Visitation Agreement signed.  If we can sign one before the Scheduling Conference, that will save us a whole trial — they schedule one for Custody/Visitation and one for everything else.  I think we mainly agree about Custody/Visitation, but my lawyer has written up 3 different agreements, and Steve has not been willing to sign them, but has not told us how to change it.  I’m hoping that now he has a lawyer, his lawyer can draw up something that he would sign.
 
Anyway, with all this going on, my emotions are going crazy.  So sad about leaving Herndon, so sad about my marriage ending.  Yet so happy that God is clearly coming through for me and I have a new job that it looks like I will really like.
 
Today God was especially gracious.  In the morning getting ready for church, I asked God for some encouragement.  I knew my emotions were volatile.  Started thinking about the divorce and got discouraged….
 
Well, encouragement came in a way I didn’t expect.  Now, the background is this:  Many, many times, whenever Steve mentioned getting a lawyer or taking legal action, God would send me the verses Isaiah 54:15 & 17–
 
“If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing;
whoever attacks you will surrender to you….
No weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and this is their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”
 
Today the worship leader was teaching us a new song (Desert Song, by Hillsong), and there in the middle was the line — “No weapon formed against you will stand”!  Right when I was thinking about the divorce….  It reminded me that God is paying attention to my emotions, and He is looking after me.
 
As if that weren’t enough, the song after the next one had the words of a hymn we sang at our wedding!  I reflected that those words were committing my marriage and my life to God, and I don’t want to take it back, despite how it is turning out.  God has been faithful, and I want Him still to have my life:
 
Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee;
Take my moments and my days —
Let them flow in ceaseless praise,
Let them flow in ceaseless praise.
 
Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love;
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee,
Swift and beautiful for Thee.
 
Take my voice and let me sing
Always, only, for my King;
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee,
Filled with messages from Thee.
 
Take my silver and my gold —
Not a mite would I withhold;
Take my intellect and use
Ev’ry pow’r as Thou shalt choose,
Ev’ry pow’r as Thou shalt choose.
 
Take my will and make it Thine —
It shall be no longer mine;
Take my heart — it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne,
It shall be Thy royal throne.
 
Take my love — my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store;
Take myself — and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee,
Ever, only, all for Thee.
 
Amen! 
 
So — that’s why I haven’t written much lately.  I’m kind of overwhelmed with getting out applications, and all kinds of things going on.  But God is being good to me, and I know I’m going to make it through this.  Life is still full of reasons for Joy.

Next week I’ll get to talk about my new job that started June 21, and Steve signing the custody/visitation agreement on June 19.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 45!

45 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 45 — June 14, 2009, to June 14, 2010.

Last time, I got through the first part of the year. I was still in Phase 9 of my divorce, a weird sort of Limbo. Now that I think about it, burning the copy of The Giving Tree that I gave to Steve in college was symbolic of what I was learning that year.

Is it possible to love someone, and yet to stand up for yourself and not let them cut you down and take all your branches and all your fruit? I believe that it is possible, and that’s what I was learning.

But now I’d like to backtrack a tiny bit to October 11. I had started a separate journal listing times I felt God was telling me something. And there’s an entry on October 11, 2009, that goes like this:

I asked God for a verse for my librarianship. To help wipe out any resentment that I’m working full-time. I was thinking in the next week or so.

[Interruption from the present: When I read this I had completely forgotten about that resentment I’d had. I had never expected to have to work full-time while my children were in school. My own mother had never worked at all. I was working full-time because Steve had left me, and there was some resentment lurking in my heart.

But I’m happy to report in the present that fighting that resentment worked! Now I’m so happy about my career. Why, I’m even on the Newbery Committee!!!! (You knew that would come up again!) Continuing:]

But the thought came to me even as I was turning to the “Promise of the Day,” and I felt this verse was given to me:

Psalm 86:17 —
“Give me a sign of your goodness,
that my enemies may see it and be put to shame,
for you, O Lord, have helped me and comforted me.”

My whole new career as a librarian, all my connections as a writer and a blogger — all those things are a sign of God’s goodness to me.

The best revenge is living well? Yes, God being good to me will put Steve’s ill will to shame.

But indeed, the Lord is helping me and comforting me and showering me with signs of His goodness.

Thank You for my full-time job, Lord.

And that very week, I got to go to my first KidLitCon in Arlington, Virginia!

I’d started Sonderbooks in 2001 as an email newsletter and eventually converted it to a website and blog. Well, around 2006 and 2007, when I was busy moving back to America and attending graduate school, there’d been an explosion of blogs about children’s books, the Kidlitosphere. I’d been somewhat unaware, because of those details like my marriage falling apart and moving and going to grad school. But now that the dust was settling, I was finding out what’s what.

And going to Kidlitcon was wonderful! Children’s book bloggers are people who love children’s books enough to spend their spare time reading and talking about children’s books – just like me! So October 17 was when I met many Children’s Book Bloggers who are still my friends and who I’ve worked with on Cybils committees or seen again at other conferences or friended on Facebook.

That was when I met Susan Kusel, whose footsteps I’m following. Susan had just been accepted to the William Morris Seminar on Book Evaluation – and I had just been rejected. But the next time I tried, two years later, I got it. After that, Susan was on the ballot for the Caldecott committee the same year I was first on the ballot for the Newbery committee. Susan was elected, and I was not – but the next time I tried, three years later, I got it. So Susan’s just paving the way for me! Also, Susan had a children’s literature book club that met one Sunday a month that I attended for awhile.

I was also still thrilled to meet authors. I had just read and adored Diana Peterfreund’s book Rampant, so I was so excited to meet her!

I’d also found Laurel Snyder’s book Any Which Wall to be completely delightful.

And I loved Elizabeth Scott’s book Stealing Heaven.

And I’d read Letters from Rapunzel, by Sara Lewis Holmes, just before the conference.

So KidLitCon had me energized and inspired. I told all about it in this blog post. And yes, I was wearing my Prime Factorization Sweater in all the pictures, so I wrote a post explaining my Prime Factorization Sweater.

Now, I hate to admit this – but in general children’s literature folks and librarians don’t get super excited about my Prime Factorization Sweater. They are wonderful people, but many of them are sadly blighted when it comes to math. I did explain it to Greg Pincus, who was appropriately enthusiastic, and maybe more would have been excited if I had dared to explain it. (Greg had done a talk in which he mentioned both knitting and Fibonacci numbers, so I had to explain it to him.) Anyway, this particular blog post was due to get attention when I finally found its true audience a couple years later.

Right after Kidlitcon, I got a 10-day migraine. My headaches were definitely acting up again. But I was still taking an online class about the Newbery medal and reading a Newbery winner from each decade of the award (since 1922).

On the 25th, I went for a hike in the beautiful Fall forest there in Centreville.

As I left, I took a picture of the tree in front of my own home.

This California girl still gets very excited about Fall Color!

And I saw a mother deer and her fawn!

Then November started with a 10-day headache. Then two days off – then a 36-day headache, or at least 36 days in a row where I wrote “headache” on my calendar. Yikes! No, I wrote in my blog on Thanksgiving Day that it was “only” a 14-day headache.

In my quiet times that month, I’m still regularly agonizing over the question of whether it was time to file for divorce and divorce Steve. I still believed God was going to bring about a change of heart in him. But for now, he was not someone I wanted to be partners with. I wanted to express love to him – but he wasn’t seeing anything I did as loving.

Lest you think I was dealing with the headaches well, here’s what I wrote to a friend:

Well, now I’m on Day 3 of a new headache.  And my patience with it is going very quickly.  This one is more a “normal” headache — bad — than the earlier ones.  On the good side, it is responding to the rizatriptan, though not going away completely.  I suspect the problem is hormonal this time, since last night my ovary was aching, or at least something in that exact location.  Urgh.  Today I’ll try again to make a neurology appointment.  (They’ve been putting me off, because I will probably have to go with a civilian provider.)
 
Today I woke up with it pretty bad, but knew I had to open.  I was going to leave when my boss came in, but then someone else called in sick (sounds like flu), so I think I’d better not.  The triptan is kicking in, anyway.  And tomorrow I’m only working 4:00 to 8:00.
 
But it’s really frustrating.  This morning I thought about going to an emergency room and saying, Get rid of this headache.  But how would I get home if they drug me?  And besides, when I did that back when I was a 23-year-old, they almost gave me a heart attack and didn’t get rid of the headache anyway.  That was when I learned that I should not take Demerol and Vistaril.
 
I’m realizing that this is the first time I’ve had prolonged bouts with headaches since Steve left.  So it’s the first time I’ve had to fight off the chant in the back of my mind:  This is what Steve was going to kill you for.  It was when I was having prolonged headaches that he decided everyone would be happier without me.  So I can’t even look back with longing at the times when I thought Steve was caring for me when I had headaches.  He was definitely not doing it compassionately, if that was his solution.
 
Okay, so those are the thoughts haunting me — but definitely ones I can do without.  No, it’s not easy tending a sick person, but maybe that’s why we put “in sickness and in health” in our wedding vows.  A kind person does not abandon (or murder!) someone for being sick.

I got another letter from Steve pressuring me to have my lawyer write up a new separation agreement according to Timothy’s best interests (as if we didn’t already have one written with those in mind) and that I should share the driving to show Tim “an example of adult cooperation.” I emailed Steve a short response, including that I had shared the driving for more than a year and Tim had seen exactly what level of cooperation Steve had responded with.

This, then, is the email I sent my friends and advisors on November 7:

Dear, wonderful and kind friends,
 
I’m sorry.  The votes were two against and one okay, but I sent the e-mail anyway.
 
To me, it was the equivalent of saying, “Do not talk to me like that.”
 
Although it is not good to engage in argument with an abuser, I do think there are times to say, “Do not talk to me like that.”
 
In me, it feels very much like standing up for myself.  I don’t care that he won’t hear it, but perhaps after reading what I wrote, repeating the lines about “adult cooperation” will begin to sound foolish to him, so perhaps he will move on to other lines.
 
But it’s mainly a declaration for me:
 
I will not allow my teenage son to see his mother acting like a doormat.
I will NOT allow my teenage son to see his mother acting like a doormat.
I will not act like a doormat.
 
Not saying anything really felt to me like cowering in terror of him.  I needed also to say that I am not afraid of you, and I am not going to let you tell me how I should act.
 
And not accepting e-mail is ridiculous and uncooperative, so I sent it in an e-mail.  He can feel free to ignore it, but I felt very, very good to send it.
 
I think I’ll be able to restrain myself for quite awhile again now!  (We’ll see!)
 
Okay, enough of that!
 
Today I went for a walk in the woods right by our house.  The leaves are mostly gone, but there are still some left, and I got some truly beautiful pictures.  I’ll post them on Facebook one of these days.
 
The headache is still eating most of my energy and stamina, but I did also get the grocery shopping done, with Tim’s help.  (I always like it when he comes along.)  Tomorrow I have to work at the regional library.  I think I will take a Maxalt in the morning.  The other four times I took it with this headache, it did help for awhile, and that should get me through the work day, I hope.
 
(Rachel, when I went to urgent care on Thursday, my blood pressure was actually quite low, so I don’t think that’s it.  They gave me a shot of an NSAID, which took away the headache for about 4 hours.  Anyway, I have an appointment with neurology at Bethesda on November 18.  If this is from a hormonal fluctuation, it should STOP by then.  If not, well I’ll have that much more reason to tell them that they should take it seriously.)
 
Anyway, the walk in the woods made Steve seem trivial.  But it’s also where I decided that, yes, I would send that e-mail for my own sake, not being afraid of his reaction.  I like my life.  I can walk in beautiful Autumn woods!  I take gorgeous pictures!  I am making friends in the library world!  (One of my classmates in the Newbery class, who has a kidlit blog with quite a following, just friended me on Facebook.  And that’s just one of many, many connections I’ve made lately.)
 
I just finished going through Ephesians in my quiet times, and thought that in between a next book, I’d do a little word study.  I was playing with ideas for words to look at and ended up choosing “stand.”  The first instance in my mini-concordance was Exodus 14:13 — “Do not be afraid.  Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today.  The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.  The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
 
I know, it’s definitely open to debate — but for me, sending that e-mail felt like taking a stand.  Now I will work on being still.
 
Thank you for your advice, your love and prayers!

And it seems to me that email sums up well where I was in November 2009. And now it’s late, so I’ll have to save the rest – the resolution of the headache and the decision to divorce Steve – for another installment.

I do want to say though that I’m struck by three things when I think of Year 45:

1) I’m so glad I got divorced!

There are many reasons for this. Even though we had years of a good marriage, even though I will always feel affection for Steve because of those years – he is no longer a good partner for me.

It is so good now, in 2017, to no longer face a barrage of anger and abuse, even if it was only in letters then.

You can try to be loving, compassionate, and kind. But there is a time to let go.

If God had answered my prayers with a dramatic change of heart in my husband and a restored marriage (and God often does this! I’ve seen it!) – well, knowing who I am, I then would have had so much less compassion for other marriages. I would have thought I know what you should always do. You should always pray until God restores your marriage! I no longer think it’s so simple. And I know I’m not a model.

But God is gracious.

2) God so gently led me to the place where I was willing to file myself.

He answered my prayer against the divorce when Steve filed – that case was thrown out. But then God slowly and gently brought me to where I was willing to file. I felt guilty at the time. But I’m glad I did file. And God was gracious with me.

3) I had so many good advisors!

I sent every letter from Steve past several people and my own proposed responses as well. They helped tremendously. I knew I was not alone, and they gave me new perspectives and brought me out of my own head.

And more about all that in the next installment….

It’s time for Project 52, Week 45!

45 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 45 — June 14, 2009, to June 14, 2010.

Last time, I covered how I began Phase 9 of my divorce – Limbo. Steve and his lawyer had a disagreement and the case was dropped. But now Steve was pressuring me to have my lawyer draw up a new custody and visitation agreement – even though she already had one that I had signed. Finally he agreed again to do visitation, but I was no longer willing to help with the driving.

But the rest of my life was going well. I’d now been a full-fledged Librarian and Youth Services Manager at Herndon Fortnightly Library for more than a year. I still loved the job. Tim had finished his first year at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. And we had moved to a nice rental townhome in Centreville, costing less for a nicer place.

Jade (then called Josh) was living with my parents in Los Angeles. The idea had been to get a job with the film industry, but instead J. had started working for my brother Jeff, writing software that makes graphing calculators easier to use.

That summer was laid-back. Tim took two weeks with Steve in July. And then he had his 15th birthday.

I took a week off work and had a simple vacation. I worked on unpacking (still) and writing, but we also did some day trips. First was a hike at Manassas Battlefield Park, which ended up being only 5 minutes away from us.

I did a couple more days of unpacking and organizing, then on August 6, we went to Shenandoah National Park. I tried to follow directions to get to Rose River Falls, but instead hiked down a fire road on the other side of Skyline Drive – but had a lovely time.

I was so bothered, though, by the bit of the instructions I’d missed, that we went back to Shenandoah National Park two days later and this time successfully found the path to Rose River Falls.

After our long hike, we were relaxing at the lodge overlooking a large meadow, and saw a bear!

So it was a nice and low-budget week off, and I did make great progress getting my boxes unpacked and making my home feel more like home.

The next week, my friend-from-high-school Susan Leinen came to visit! She and her husband Randy took me out to eat, and we visited Sully Plantation and then went swimming at Darlene’s house.

Meanwhile, I was still agonizing about things with Steve.

Before I talk about that though, let me draw back and talk about the big picture. From the vantage point of 2017, when I think of this time I think of it this way: God answered my prayer and miraculously stopped the divorce case Steve filed against me. Then, in Year 45, He was gently and slowly bringing me to understand that Steve had truly changed, and it was time for me to file for divorce. In 2017, I’m so glad that happened. And God was gracious to me about bringing me to that place.

Back in 2009, I was doing plenty of agonizing. Here’s a journal entry from July 28, 2009:

I miss my husband! I can’t seem to forget the good times, the loving words, the life we built together. Then I remember the cruel things. And my mind goes in circles.

Lord, it would be so much easier if I could forget him. So much easier to go through life not thinking about him.

Lord, back when I was a teen I asked and asked you to make [someone] “like” me. Finally, I asked You to change my heart instead – and You did. He was my friend from then on, and that friendship no longer caused me pain.

But, Father, I promised to love Steve, so it seems wrong to ask You to change my heart toward him.

Still, give my heart peace, Father. Help me be able to let him go.

That summer, Pastor Ed was preaching out of Ephesians, and I was having my quiet times there. On August 16, looking at Ephesians 5, where they talk about people with sexual immorality, the words jumped out at me: “Therefore do not be partners with them.”

Was it time to divorce Steve? At the very least, I shouldn’t be partners with him as he was living a life rejecting God.

I decided, for now, to take it as another indication that I should work on letting Steve go.

And meanwhile, I was trying trying to be loving and forgiving toward him and to “live as children of light.” But how to do that while still being hurt with his words?

As the summer went on, I had asked Steve to give a week’s notice about when he would come pick Tim up, and he wasn’t doing it. It did dawn on me that with Steve doing all the driving, a week’s notice as to times wasn’t nearly as important.

But Steve sent another letter saying that my reasons for not sharing the driving were not important compared with Timothy’s best interests. Never mind that I thought my reasons were in Timothy’s best interests.

Then I journaled:

Ephesians 4:31 –
“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”

Lord, help me to get rid of bitterness. Help me to forgive and give me joy in its place.

Yesterday I got another letter from Steve. Father, it hurts, hurts, hurts when he implies that I would not even act according to Timothy’s best interests.

Father, speak through my advisors. I don’t think I should even answer his letter. If I should, let me know. But I don’t want to defend my actions to him. Bottom line, I’m not helping with driving any more because I’m afraid to be in his presence. And his showing no compassion for me has added to that fear. It is not in Timothy’s best interests to have his mother afraid for her life with his father….

Give me wisdom, Lord, how to act, toward Steve, and toward Tim.

Thank You that You are helping me be a good mother and a beautiful person.

And that was when the “shining like a star” story happened that I shared when I told My Story at church. Here’s the blog post I wrote about it on August 23, 2009.

Basically, I had an odd prompting to pray that the verse Philippians 2:15 would come up in the sermon, and that would be a sign from God that I was not, actually, a bad person and a bad mother, but that God was making me shine like a star.

And that exact verse was part of the closing song.

And I felt so loved.

Of course, the punchline was that it also helped confirm that I should not argue with Steve about his letter. I knew that was the best advice, but the whole passage starts with “Do everything without complaining or arguing.”

Here’s what I wrote in my journal after that church service:

Father, You’re saying to me through this:

I love you, Sondy.
I care about the details of your life.
I care about your emotional pain.
I know it’s difficult, and I’m giving you extra grace, holding you close to me.
I am making you shine like a star in the universe.
You will help hopeless and broken people be hopeless and broken no more.
You don’t need to argue your case.
I am making you shine.

In September, Tim started tenth grade, which went better for him than ninth grade. He got into AP Computer Science, because he’d enjoyed his computer project the year before.

On September 26, I went to the National Book Festival. The thing that made my day was when I got in line to get a book signed by Shannon Hale, and she knew who I was! I’d reviewed her very first book, The Goose Girl and named it the best book I’d read that year. Over the years, I’d been a huge fan, and we’d even exchanged some emails. But I was tickled to death when she immediately recognized my name. “Of course I know who you are!”

That was the year I figured out the best way to enjoy the National Book Festival – Get a seat in a tent and stay there. The children’s authors ended up being great speakers! I got to hear Mo Willems!

Steven Kellogg was a dynamic speaker!

And I got to see Jerry Pinkney present The Lion and the Mouse before it won the Caldecott Medal!

And Jon Scieszka and David Shannon spoke together, sharing their new book, Robot Zot.

So good things were happening, mixed with agonizing about Steve, and – a return of my headaches. I got an 8-day long one in September – the first bad headaches since I’d started on the preventative Zoloft back in 2005 after Steve started his affair. I’d quit taking the Zoloft in 2008, but the effect had lasted – at first.

Here’s an email I wrote on October 3rd that had a nice summary of how things were going.

I found a new Life Group!  And I think it’s a great fit.  It meets Friday nights at 7:00, like the other group I tried, and is only a mile further away – but it’s in the opposite direction, closer to my work.  And I would be one of the younger members, definitely not the oldest, in this group.  And my good friends Kristi and Marilynn, who have given me advice about Steve, are in this group.  And another sweet older lady who has been divorced.  Definitely people who can give me help and encouragement.  And I really like the leader of the group, too.  So I’m excited about the good fit.

[My new home was too far from Ashburn, where Rachel and Mark Morgan’s group met. And now I was wanting to be out of the house on Friday nights, so that Steve could pick up Tim without me being around.]
 

Last night Steve didn’t get Tim until about 8:45 (I had him call me).  The time seems to be different every week.
 
I still feel a little guilty about how MUCH driving Steve is doing — but the lack of interaction is so much better.  I think if a judge ever orders me to share in the driving, I can insist that Steve also be ordered to allow me to e-mail him — trying to arrange that by snail mail was just ridiculous.
 
Today I got the syllabus for my class on the Newbery Medal!  I’m excited!  It looks like I will have to be adjusting my reading significantly for the next 6 weeks.  I’m supposed to read one winner from each decade it has been given.  But mostly I can pick out books I’d been meaning to read for a very long time, so that’s cool.  I may have to stop myself from reading more than one!  And of course fitting in time for class discussion may be a big challenge.

[That was a really great online class. I was already thinking about trying to get on the committee some day. In fact, I was applying for the second time to go to the William Morris Seminar in January to be trained for committee work. But I didn’t get accepted until the third time I applied.]
 

And today I’m on the 4th day of a headache.  It feels exactly like that 8-day one — definitely lower level than the norm for me, fluctuating in intensity, not affected at all by medication, but persistent.  It’s possible that this one is hormonal — since all week I’ve been off hormones – this is the week with the fake birth control pill.  But I’m thinking such a drastic change in my headaches should probably be checked.  I’m due to get my blood pressure rechecked anyway.  I will ask her to check my thyroid.  Otherwise, I just don’t know what’s up with this.  I was doing so well for so long, and these are quite different from my “normal” headaches.  A rule of thumb is that you should always get checked if there is a change in your headache pattern — and this is definitely a change.  I don’t think stress or lack of sleep or allergies or anything like that would account for it.

[I’d started on birth control pills to try to adjust some super long cycles. I asked the gynecologist about what a doctor had told me years ago – that people who get migraines are at higher risk for stroke if they go on birth control pills. She said they’re lower dose now, so it’s not a problem. Umm, I don’t think she’s right about that. It did make my cycles much better – but I’m not sure it was worth the stroke I had later.]
 

Other than that (which is kind of major), I’m doing great.  Excited about the new Life group, excited about the class, excited about the Kidlitosphere Conference in two weeks.  Oh, and did I tell you?  Thursday night it was finally cold enough to try out my new fireplace — so I began burning the book The Giving Tree.  (I say “began” because it turns out I should put in some kindling.  But it was fun burning it a page at a time!)  It’s a nice symbol that I am NOT choosing that pattern for a relationship any more.  Seemed like a kind of ironic way to celebrate Banned Books Week!  (Other people are welcome to read the book, I’m just burning my personal copy — actually Steve’s personal copy!)

Ah! The Ceremonial Burning of The Giving Tree. I still had the copy I’d given Steve when we were dating in college. It was inscribed, “May you never grow up!” I felt like I’d asked him to leave me and chop me down and take all my apples!

So during Banned Books Week 2009, I did the only book burning I’ve ever done – and it felt lovely!

And on Columbus Day, Tim and I did more quick hiking at Manassas Battlefield Park.

And it’s getting late! So that will be all I’ll cover tonight.

It’s time for Project 52, Week 44!

44 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 44 — June 14, 2008, to June 14, 2009.

Last time, I talked about Fall 2008 and Phase 7 of my divorce. (I also listed the phases I’d been through. Still several to go!)

Also that Fall, my youngest son Tim, now 14, started at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. By the end of the semester, he was in danger of getting low grades in English, due to not turning in homework. It’s a magnet school, so they had criteria that if your GPA got below a certain level, you’d have to leave the school. I was worried about Tim.

Here’s what I wrote in my quiet time journal during Thanksgiving break. It was based on Philippians 4:6-7, so I was laying out my requests.

Father,
I want to be a good mother to Tim. My requests are:

That Tim would get his homework done.
That Tim would take responsibility for his own work.
That we would still have a good relationship when we’re done.

Oh Father, thank You!

While I was still praying (writing the above), Tim came out, presented to me rationally and clearly why my monitoring him and interfering was not working, and we’re friends, and we made a deal that I will not interfere with his doing homework this weekend.

Thank You, Lord, You answered while I was still praying!

Essentially, I made Tim the same offer I’d made many times to J. when they were in high school: I would allow them to manage their homework – but if their grades dropped, I would step in and start monitoring.

The crazy thing: Tim took me up on it! I NEVER again had to nag him about doing work while in high school. He didn’t do every single bit of homework, but he totally took responsibility and knew what he was doing. A very cool thing was that his friends helped him with this. And that’s where going to TJ was helpful. The friends Tim made there were highly motivated people. Mostly with much pushier parents than I was. Tim’s friends helped him become a conscientious student. Wow!

That Autumn, I also did a lot of hiking across the road in the woods at Frying Pan Park.

On one of the weekends when Tim was visiting Steve, I visited my friend Phoebe, from Sterling Library, at her home in Point of Rocks, Maryland, and we walked along the Potomac.

Now, regarding the divorce, when Steve had a fight with his lawyer and refused to sign the agreement our lawyers had drawn up, the case was dropped, and we entered

Phase 8: Visitation Pause

Steve did not get a new lawyer after he had his lawyer parted ways. Steve told me that he fired his lawyer. My lawyer told me that Steve’s lawyer said he was planning to quit if Steve didn’t sign the agreement, once he and Steve had a shouting match when he learned about Steve’s affair from reading my Discovery. But anyway, Steve didn’t have a lawyer.

But shortly after the case got thrown out, Steve told me that he wanted us to work out a custody and visitation agreement. He presented me with one that he’d written, which wasn’t acceptable to me, and wasn’t in proper legal format. I asked why not use the one I’d spent thousands of dollars for my lawyer to write, and which his lawyer had agreed to, which I had already signed and had notarized. But Steve said that one wasn’t acceptable to him.

And then Steve said he wasn’t going to host any more visitation unless I signed an agreement.

Well, that was an empty threat. Tim was pretty stressed from spending every other weekend away from home and trying to keep up with his homework. Although I didn’t want this to be permanent, I just couldn’t feel sad that I was going to get a break from dealing with visitation. And I certainly wasn’t going to sign an agreement I didn’t agree with.

But things had really deteriorated between us. I had persisted in periodically telling Steve I still loved him and wished him the best – and he told me I lost email privileges. So we were trying to work out visitation schedules via phone calls or letters.

I didn’t like phone calls, because Steve would yell at me. One time he swore at me and then said, “See what you made me do? I hope you’re happy!” So – I stopped answering if he called. He could leave a message.

And niggling in the back of my mind was the fact that Steve had told me he’d once had a plan to kill me. I was starting to be afraid to be in his presence. Many times when we tried to meet part way, Steve wouldn’t be where he said he’d be when he said he would, and communication was so cut off. So all this added up to I stopped offering to help with the driving.

Oh! I have to mention another wonderful author whose books I must have first read during Fall 2008 – several books about verbal abuse by Patricia Evans. SO helpful! I hadn’t even realized that what Steve was doing could be called verbal abuse, because it wasn’t usually name-calling. But Patricia Evans explained that when someone tries to define you in ways you disagree with, that’s abusive. It was VERY helpful for me in dealing with the messages from Steve to understand why it hurt so much when he told me things like how I was trying to start arguments.

The fact is, Steve could not actually read my mind and actually did not know my motives.

[These books are WONDERFUL, by the way, and I can’t recommend them highly enough. They’re even good for people not in an abusive relationship to help watch their own words and stay civil on the Internet. Follow the link to my reviews and I highly recommend all of Patricia Evans’ books. Thank you, Thank you, to my friend Marilynn for recommending them to me!]

Steve had one last visitation over Christmas, so I had my first Christmas alone. But before Tim left, we had a pre-Christmas together. A big hit was the Flying Monkey, Flingshot, from Think Geek. (And Tim’s wearing a Think Geek t-shirt featuring their mascot, Timmy the Monkey.)

Here’s my 2008 Christmas Letter. It actually was a good year, despite all the drama with the divorce. I had now been a Youth Services Manager and a Librarian for almost a year, and I was loving it.

Here I am wearing a scarf my staff member got me in India.

I was still worried about money. I’d switched dentists, thinking a “participating provider” would be cheaper – but didn’t realize they specialized in finding expensive work to do. I ended up charging a thousand more dollars to pay for the work they did. Before I discovered that I wasn’t supposed to pay what my insurance refused to cover – that was part of being participating. It was a mess. I went back to my wonderful dentist Kathe had recommended, Dr. Wanda Garrett, long may she live and work!

But when I was fretting about money, I felt God gave me these verses:

“You will eat the fruit of your labor;
blessing and prosperity will be yours.”

and Deuteronomy 16:15 —

“For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.”

[Spoiler Alert: I was reflecting this morning that while I still have far more debt than I would like – far more – It is very nice not to live with that fear that something could easily happen and I might not be able to pay my rent. I have a good job and I am slowly, slowly paying off that debt and paying my bills.]

So, as 2009 began, things had deteriorated so badly that Steve was demanding that I sign a legal agreement or he wouldn’t do visitation with Tim. I told him that any negotiations about a legal agreement, he would have to talk with my lawyer about. I was hoping he’d get a lawyer, but he didn’t. He also didn’t ever tell us what he specifically didn’t like about the agreement she’d already drawn up and his lawyer had agreed with. He only insisted that I sign the one he’d written. So we were at an impasse.

And Steve berated both of us for keeping him from his son.

Now, that didn’t have a whole lot of sting. I was perfectly willing for Tim to visit Steve. Withholding visitation until I signed his agreement was entirely Steve’s idea.

Meanwhile, it was such a nice break not to deal with this.

Tim and I had fun in January during a really cold spell hiking on top of the frozen Frying Pan Creek.

Oh, and Steve marched in Obama’s Inaugural Parade in January 2009! I like the post I wrote about it. I was learning to get some joy out of the situation!

And my sister Abby came to visit! She was looking into grad school possibilities on the East Coast. And we learned that one of the best possible days for coming into DC was President’s Day – especially a month after the whole country came to visit for the Inauguration. The city was empty!

This picture is actually Abby and Tim, not me and Tim:

We went to the Library of Congress!

The reading room was open! And I got to pretend I worked there!

More fun in DC.

And here’s a new shrug I knitted with yarn from a local yarn shop.

Meanwhile, Steve was still trying to get my lawyer to write a new custody agreement. Even though she’d already written one. I wasn’t going to pay her to draft a new one. He was welcome to hire a lawyer to do so, and then we could make revisions. Or he could say what revisions he wanted with the one already written.

Now the problem with having Steve communicate about the legal agreement with my lawyer is that of course she charged me for the time it took to read them and respond. But looking back, it was worth every penny. He spent much of his time berating her and me for not doing what he wanted. It was nice having a buffer, though I did wish he’d get his own lawyer to tell him that he was being unreasonable.

And looking at the old emails, it turns out that March 2009 was when Steve told me that for years, I’d been making him miserable. Present tense. Here’s what I said to my girlfriends about it:

His saying on the phone that I have been making his life miserable for several years now — It was very present tense.
 
It’s weird to me that that statement made me feel better.  But instead of hurting like the ones in his letter to my lawyer, it just struck me as so ludicrous!  I have not lived with him for three and a half years, and he still believes, that I am, present tense, making his life miserable?!!!
 
I thought up a response that I would love to tell him.  (Don’t worry I won’t!)  I would laugh heartily, and say, “Steve, you are not making MY life miserable!  In fact, the cruel things you did have driven me to God.  And right now my life is going far better than ever before!”

“Steve, I still don’t want a divorce, because I still believe that’s wrong.  I do hope that some day you’ll decide to come back to your family and share in all the joy that our lives are full of now.”
 
You can see why this would not be a good thing to actually say to Steve!  But you can also probably see why thinking it out makes me feel very, very good!
 
I guess what it boils down to is that the letter and the phone call made me feel sorry for Steve, which is a much more pleasant emotion than anger and frustration.

That phone call was when I tried to arrange for Tim to see the movie Watchmen with Steve. It’s a comic Steve recommended. I offered to do some of the driving. But Steve would only do it if I would do all of the driving, and I wasn’t willing or able. We were back to our impasse.

And – I started looking for a less expensive place to live. And I found one! A townhome for rent in Centreville, costing $440 less per month than the apartment in Herndon, and much cozier. And since it was a private rental, the rent didn’t go up every year, either.

Once again, Gateway folks helped me move. Though I had a couple of weeks of overlap and did lots and lots of trips myself, moving little things like boxes of books.

Here’s what I wrote about my new home. It felt like a symbol of my joyful new life.

Here’s the tree next door and the front of my new home.

At the end of March, when I was getting ready to move, this happened:

Oh, and on Sunday, God spoke again.  I’d been asking Him again, “Did I REALLY hear you right that You are going to transform Steve and restore our marriage, because I can’t imagine a healthy marriage with him.  How would that be possible?”  The answer was in a sermon on Ephesians 3, culminating in “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us….”  and the sermon was about how God transforms us from the inside out.

But it was also clear that I am just to trust that God will do it, but not try to monitor the process.  To not worry about trying to manufacture love for him in preparation for that day.  The whole thing will be God’s astonishing work.

And then this week I’m working on being thankful for the blessings God’s giving me now.

Dear Reader, I have a very different interpretation of what that meant looking at it now! God did something I didn’t ask or imagine — a beautiful life as a divorced woman! [On the NEWBERY COMMITTEE, no less!]

Now, on immediate guidance I was correct. I was to let Steve go. And notice all the blessings God was pouring out on me. And I had the assurance that God would do something awesome in my life, something beyond what I could imagine. On that, I was absolutely right!

When we moved in during April, Tim still wasn’t doing any visitation. His grades had improved greatly, and he seemed less stressed out, too. So he didn’t seem to be suffering from the pause. Steve was still calling him almost every night.

On April 27, 2009, I got a letter from Steve. He’d been to see the base legal office and was making vague threats about seeing me in court, mixed in with lots of accusations. When I told my girlfriends/advisors about it, I told them also about how every time Steve would make a legal threat, God would send me the verse “no weapon forged against you will prevail” from Isaiah 54.

And then I checked my Page-a-day Promise calendar for the day. I laughed aloud! Here’s what it had for that day:

No weapon forged against you will prevail,
and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
and this is their vindication from me,
declares the Lord.

–Isaiah 54:11

And on May 1st, Steve decided to resume visitation. I refused to help with the driving any more, because I didn’t feel safe being near Steve. Well, Steve took issue with that! But from then on, Steve picked up Tim and dropped him off from my house in Centreville. And we no longer had to try to negotiate a place and time to meet. And I wasn’t afraid. And Tim got good time with his Dad in the car.

That put us into the next phase of the divorce:

Phase 9: Limbo
Still married. Steve had no lawyer. No legal agreement signed by Steve on either custody/visitation or equitable distribution of property.
Tim spent every other weekend with Steve, and Steve did all the driving.

And that was how the year I was 44 finished up.

I was still happily working at Herndon Fortnightly Library, though, sadly, we’d had budget cuts and lost my fabulous 15-hour Information Assistant in the children’s department.

I was attending Gateway Community Church and Rachel and Mark Morgan’s small group. I was already friends with some other women having marital difficulties and we were encouraging each other.

I was still standing for my marriage and praying that Steve would have a change of heart, but I was more and more glad I wasn’t living with him then. I’d learned about verbal abuse and could now recognize it in his emails – but that didn’t make it stop hurting each time I read words of accusation and blame.

I’d learned from Tim that Steve was planning to retire February 1, 2010, and I wasn’t sure what that would mean as far as child support. I was pretty sure Steve probably wouldn’t give me the marital share of his retirement money if we weren’t divorced. So I was starting to stew and trying to remember to pray.

And, Spoiler Alert, since then, God has truly done exceedingly abundantly beyond all I asked or thought at that time.

My 45th birthday fell on a Sunday, and Darlene and two other ladies from church took me out to eat for lunch!

And John Maulella gave the message and mentioned a verse that I’d long loved, Isaiah 43:18-19. I decided it was the perfect passage for my birthday.

Isaiah 43:18-19
 
Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up;
do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.