disposable

    I think that's the best word to describe how I've been feeling the last few days.  Thursday I had a doctor's appointment and Ace came home to find the girls gated off in the basement and me in the fetal position in bed.  Before anyone attacks the frazzled mom let me assure you I  closed every door downstairs and made sure there was nothing the girls (read: baby) could get in trouble with.
    I texted one of my friends a couple months ago to let her know I was thinking about her and to tell her an early "happy birthday"- I figure the chances of me remembering on her actual birthday are pretty slim so I should take the chance whenever I can. She had no idea who I was.  My first text was to make sure she hadn't changed her phone number since it had been a while since I had last talked to her.  She had the same phone number but she didn't have my number saved anymore so she had no clue who this random person was who was talking to her.  I waited for a few texts to see if she could figure out who I was before telling her and laughing it off.  She said she would save my phone number again for future reference.  I should probably text her randomly and she if she was telling the truth about that. . .
    Last week I thought to call one of my roommates completely out of the blue.  I also haven't talked to her in years but my Ace is getting ready to graduate and I wanted to pick her brain about what her husband does for work.  This time I called.  Even though I had her number saved into my phone I was nervous that she would have changed it.  Are you noticing a pattern here?  Am I the only person who is concerned about changing phone numbers and that I will always have the wrong number?  Probably.  But I digress.  Again, she didn't know who I was based on my phone number.  I'm pretty sure it's the same number I had in college.  That may or may not be true but I do know for a fact that I have talked to her with my current phone number.  This time I didn't make her try to figure it out on her own; she said hello, I asked if I had the right number, she hesitantly said yes, and I told her who I was.  We visited for a little while and I got a bunch of my questions asked.  She was one of the roommates I loved and it was fun to visit with her again.  But, again, she didn't know who I was when I called.
    Maybe I'm at fault.  How long do you keep phone numbers in your phone?  I am always afraid to delete the numbers of people, especially friends, even if I haven't talked to them for a long time.  I always worry that I'll need to contact someone, someday, for some reason and I will have deleted their information.  Is there a statute of limitations on things like this?  If you haven't talked to someone in 3+ years are you obligated to delete their information, never to contact them again?  I do the same thing with just about everything.  What if I might need it one day?  I would hate to have to go buy something that I used to own.  Part of it is because I'm really cheap.  But I like to tell myself that it's really because I'm practical.  On a completely, not-at-all-related-to-what-I'm-currently-talking-about note, I can totally see myself becoming a hoarder if something ever happened to Ace.  You think I'm joking.  I assure you that I am not.
    As if all this wasn't bad enough (really, not that bad at all but my current mental state is apparently all sorts of out-of-whack), this weekend was my niece's baptism.  Over 2,000 miles away.  My sister, the one whose daughter was getting baptized, generously and so sweetly offered to pay for me to fly out for the baptism.  They wanted family to be there if at all possible and she knew we didn't have a snowball's chance in Hades of flying me out for the weekend.  I talked to Ace and he was all for it.  I would take the baby and he would hold down the fort back home.  The boys are in school until 2:30 then attend the After School Club until 5:00 so Ace would be able to make all his classes and get studying done.  After looking into it more seriously we realized we had one, small, obstacle to me leaving.  Poppie.  She wouldn't be able to go to school with Ace and we couldn't afford to get her a ticket to come with me.  I was so upset when I had to call and tell my sister that I couldn't make it.  I wanted so badly to be there.  She understood and was great about it.
    That all sounds disappointing but not that severe, right?  Well, my oldest sister was able to make the few-hours-long drive to be there.  My other sister (yes, there's another one but she's the last one) and my brother (yup.  I got one of those, too) and my parents were all able to fly in for the main event.  That meant my entire family was together.  Without me.  And I remembered that my mom's birthday was Saturday.  So everyone was together for that as well.  Again, without me.
    My siblings did call me Saturday evening to let me know I was missed.  I appreciated that.  A lot.  Really, I did.  But it hurt more than it helped.  They had no idea.  No one but Ace knew.  I had been struggling, really struggling like I haven't done in a long time, since Thursday and there all my siblings were.  Together.  Laughing and joking and having so much fun together.  Without me.  They tried to include me and I recognized that for what it was and did appreciate it.  But it hurt.  I even decided to not call my mom to wish her a happy birthday.  I know it sounds selfish and horrible and it is.  But I didn't want to call to talk to her and hear the party going on in the background, another reminder that I wasn't there.  I didn't forget my mom all together.  I know it's not the same but I did send her a text message on her birthday.
    And now, today.  Ace's birthday.  His presents sucked.  I had no idea what to get him or what he wanted.  He told me he didn't need anything but I just felt like a failure.  If I really cared about him (I do!) I would know the perfect gift to get him.  But I didn't.  And when I asked him what he wanted for dinner he said he and one of the boys had decided on chicken pot pies.  The frozen kind.  That you cook in a microwave.  So I made spaghetti and meatballs instead.  And his cake wasn't a cake.  Turns out it was brownies.  Which is actually a good thing because we don't really eat cake.  But Pip's birthday was over a month ago.  It was her first birthday.  And I didn't make a cake.  So I have pictures of my other three children eating cake on their first birthdays.  But not Pip.  So I was going to make Ace a birthday cake, but let Pip have first crack at it for the photo op.  But the cake wasn't cake.  It was brownies.  And it stuck to the bottom of the pan (I doused that thing with cooking spray!) so I couldn't get the what-was-supposed-to-be-cake-but-was-really-brownies out of the pan to decorate.  So no one had birthday cake.  Or birthday brownies.  So I cried.  On Ace's birthday.  Because I wanted everything to be perfect.  And none of it was.
    And that brings me back to disposable.  I had two friends somewhat (okay, not really at all, technically) forget me recently.  And my family doesn't need me around.  And I can't even make a decent birthday cake, or even brownies.  It's kind of a lot.  It's really not fun.  Most, if not all, of this is made worse by the fact that I'm currently coming off one medication and starting another one.  But I don't get that.  I'm coming off my first medication but it never really worked.  But if it never really worked then why am I having such a hard time?  It shouldn't make much difference to be stopping it because it wasn't very effective in the first place.
    I haven't struggled this badly, for this many consecutive days, for a long time.  Nothing is as bad as it seems, and I know that.  I have just had what seems like one traumatic bad thing happen after another, each new event piling on to the unresolved emotions of the previous event.  Now I just need to find some time to recover from these really-not-all-that-bad experiences so the next thing that doesn't go as I had planned doesn't seem worse than it really is.