u/Snaps816

It's been two weeks since my husband died, and tonight was my birthday. I had a lot of family around me to help make it feel like a pretty good day, but when all the fun died down and I was alone I felt so sad to have a birthday without him celebrating it with me. Then I remembered it was actually my birthday when he called me and asked me out. It was my 26th birthday, some friends had taken me out to dinner and on the way home I got a call from him (we'd known each other through mutual friends so we'd had each other's numbers) and he wished me a happy birthday and asked if he could take me out sometime. I remember being impressed because at that time (2000's) and that age (our 20's) everyone was all about "hanging out" and hooking up, doing group hangs and things like that. I was impressed that he'd called and asked me out on a proper date.

Tonight was my 44th birthday. I keep thinking back to that night and then in my head I see one of those movie montages that flashes through time going faster and faster like a tape playing at double time. First we're those two young kids planning a date and then it's a blur of love and sex and moving in together and jobs and pets and trips and marriage and pregnancy and a baby and another baby and a house. And then it's like that record scratch noise and here I am. He's gone. Those two kids had no idea what was in store, and I certainly never thought I would end up here. It's crushing. This would be one sad fucking movie.

On the other hand, I'm now acutely aware that our next birthday is not guaranteed. One of the first things I thought this morning was, how strange and unfair that I get to have another birthday and he doesn't. I guess that realization propelled me to enjoy the day to a certain degree, but damn this is hard.

HI, I hope this is okay but i would just like to share my story. Writing is cathartic to me and I'm hoping people here can relate and maybe we'll feel less alone or something. It's going to be long. I'm still in shock over what happened and it helps to write things down. Be warned, this post talks about a sudden medical emergency and it's obviously not easy to read.

Over the weekend my family and I (Husband, 45, me 43 and kids 6 and 9) went on a family road trip from Colorado to South Dakota for his cousin's wedding. After the wedding we planned to go to the Black Hills to see Mt. Rushmore and some of the other sights around there. The trip started great, a beautiful drive that flew by even though it was 9 hours because everyone was happy. Lovely rehearsal dinner, a fun day seeing family, playing in the pool with the kids, and then the wedding. My husband was so happy to be with his extended family who he adored. He has lots of aunts, uncles and cousins who live scattered across the country and they were all there.

In the shuttle van home after the wedding, my husband mentioned he had a headache. I asked if he'd had any water to drink and he admitted not since before the wedding, so I said he should drink some. This was such a routine interaction about a small ache/pain one of us might have, I didn't clock it as a warning sign. At the hotel we all got changed into pajamas and ready for bed. My husband laid down in bed next to my son for a while to look at a game my son was playing on his tablet. He dozed off there, which was pretty normal for him, he's one of those people who can fall asleep basically anywhere he gets comfy. I read the kids a book for a while and was dong a few final things to get ready for bed.

Suddenly my husband started snoring really loudly and fast. He sometimes snored but this was a very weird, loud, unnatural snore. At first we all thought he was goofing around doing this silly snore thing. But then my son started telling him to stop and then was like "Mom, his eyes are open! What's wrong with him?" So I go running over and sure enough his eyes were kind of open, kind of rolling back, and the "snoring" was more like some kind of gasping, rhasping breathing. So I started slapping him and yelling at him to wake up, because I still thought maybe it was some kind of sleep apnea thing or like a reflux/GERD thing happening in his sleep. Then my son started shouting "he peed! He peed himself!" I called 911 at that point, realizing this was very serious. I told my kids to go in the bathroom and shut the door, spoke briefly with 911 to give them our location and whatnot, then dropped the phone and started trying to do CPR. It was hard to do on the bed because it was bouncy, so I had to pull him to the floor. His head hit hard which was scary but I figured getting a proper surface to do CPR was most important. I did chest compressions and tried the breathing thing, which did seem to something, made him cough/vomit mostly, but I kept going. My kids were screaming in the bathroom and my son kept coming out. He saw things no child should see. He kept saying he wanted to run and get help but I told him no because I didn't want him just barefoot and on loose at night in a strange town, and the likelihood that anyone around would be a doctor or something seemed slim. Eventually, the kids ran away anyway, while I was distracted with my husband.

One solo cop got there first and told me to keep going with the CPR while he set up some things. He set up a portable defibulator thing and tried it. Nothing happened, he kept doing CPR. Then another cop came to assist, and then finally a team of paramedics a few minutes later. At this point I started to feel like I was in the way in the small room so I put on shoes and a bra and grabbed my purse, thinking we'd be heading to a hospital, and I went to find my kids.

They were in the lobby being cared for by a very kind older woman who was working the night shift at the front desk. She was the only person around. I tried to comfort my kids and held them and we waited and cried and the lady brought us water and blankets. As time went by it seemed strange that they weren't wheeling him out yet. I thought if they were going to treat him they'd be rushing to the hospital. I started to assume the worst, that he had died, with a small shred of hope that they'd come down and be like, "he's all okay, turns out it was a seizure but it's passed," or something. Finally, I believe about half an hour later, three first responders came into the lobby looking grave, nervous, and not rushed -- and I knew. They pulled me aside and gave me the news in their kind, clinical way. It was just like in the movies and I felt kind of out of body, like i was watching this happen to me. I didn't cry or scream and I was just kind of like, "what the fuck? Really? What do I do?" I was in shock.

Then I had to go back to the lobby where my kids were demanding answers. There was no time to prepare or plan or do research on the best way to tell them, it was just like, this is happening now. So the hotel lady let us go into an empty conference room and I had to tell my children the worst news of their lives. They screamed and cried and it was terrible. Then there was just more and more waiting in the lobby. I had to let the hotel lady watch the kids while I stepped back into the room to call my sister and law and mother in law, since they were staying together in a hotel nearby. I then gave them the worst news of their lives. They came over to our hotel in a little while and we all cried and hugged and just waited to some clue of what to do next. The hotel lady found us a room at another hotel since this one was all booked up and obviously we couldn't go back to that room. After yet more waiting, I asked my SIL to take the kids to the new hotel room and be with them. It was like, 1 am or something by this point. My SIL called my brother in law who was staying with the wedding party at a lodge about 20 minutes out of town. I hadn't called him initially because he was farther away and also he'd been partying it up at the wedding and I didn't want to tell him something like this if he was drunk. But, his wife got the call and she and BIL came. The news and whatever sleep he'd got seemed to have sobered him up enough to be present with us. Then the next thing we knew a coroner was there and I was being asked questions about embalming or cremation and stuff like that and it was so surreal. Then I had to go clean out the room (didn't HAVE to, chose to, because we needed all our stuff and I didn't want to have to come back later or the next day. I wanted to F out of that place, and I didn't want anyone else going through all our things). Then they took me to a new hotel and let me be with my shellshocked kids.

I guess I should stop there. The good news is that following this part, my kids and I were surrounded with love and support by my immediate in laws and a lot of my husband's other family. I hate that this put a damper on this lovely couple's wedding night and their families, but I am so damn grateful that if this had to happen, it happened when I had so much family around. My husband's family were so kind to my kids and me in ways big and small that I'll never, ever forget. Maybe I'll write more about it as a follow up tomorrow or something. I know this post is long and maybe I'm just shouting into the void. I hope this kind of post is okay here and if it's not, please be kind and just scroll on.

I have a few WIP's under my belt already that are all dual POV. This summer I started a new book that I've done as a single first person POV (the FMC's). As the story came to me it just felt like it was rooted in her emotions, her backstory and her growth. There is tension in the story because she's not quite sure where he stands as the relationship is established.

But now I'm starting to wish I could get more from the MMC to round out his character a bit more. More of his interior world, his history, and the way he perceives the FMC (especially when it comes to his attraction to her). It's hard to do this when it has to be established mainly through dialogue. This is a story about two people who meet while traveling so there's a lot of "getting to know you" talk already. But then I think if I do dual POV, I need to establish his world, his day to day life, give him equal time, and equal amount of history, etc and that's not quite necessary for the story I'm trying to tell. So I'm wondering if that would all feel like filler, or if it would give me the room I need to fully form the character.

How do you all decide whether a dual POV serves the story or if it's overkill?

I'm looking for advice on how to approach something with my son who is 9 and has ADHD. He takes medication and overall it's been pretty effective for him but there's one issue that persists and drives me bonkers, and that is his apparent need to make noise all. The. Time. He's constantly making some kind of repetitive noise, like either singing a single line from a song, tapping or banging on something, kicking his foot loudly against something, repeating a phrase that he thinks is funny, or literally making nonsensical sounds like "bleep-bloop-blorp" or a high pitched velociraptor screech. He does it in the car, in the shower, at school (especially in the afternoon when his meds are wearing off), just all the time! It's especially a problem in shared spaces like restaurants. And school, of course. He's done it during testing, which obviously didn't go over well.

I think it's very hard for him to sit/stand and just do nothing so that's how his energy comes out. Sometimes he does it even while he's doing another activity like eating or playing a game. It gets to a point where it's really driving people crazy around him. He'll be like "but I'm not doing anything to them!" I'm trying to get him to understand that repeatedly doing something that is bothering people around you, when you've been asked to stop, is doing something to them. No, it's not hitting or touching, but it's still kind of a harassing/needling behavior. It's rude. Or at least that's how it feels to people whether or not you intend it that way.

I would love to come up with a code word or something that I could use to remind/correct this when it comes up so I'm not constantly saying things like "be quiet" or "that's annoying" or, the thing I find myself saying the most, "please, PLEASE stop!" I want to curb this behavior but I don't want him to feel like "everyone's always telling me to shut up and that I'm annoying," you know? Has anyone dealt with this?

I’ve been reading the Romancing the Clarksons series by Tessa Bailey. I wrote a salt post about the first one a few weeks ago, and because I’m obsessive about completing a series, now I’m on the 4th and final one, {too Beautiful to Break by Tessa Bailey}. The thing I noticed in the first book was that aspects of it felt oddly old-fashioned and out of date. For example, the MMC is from a small town in New Mexico, and his dialog sounds like something out of a John Wayne movie, “I reckon.” The second and third books didn’t have as much of that, but the fourth one, Too Beautiful to Break was published in 2017 and is supposed to be contemporary, but it’s like the author watched a bunch of old Hollywood classics for inspiration but took it a little too far. It’s honestly kind of hilarious and making the book more entertaining by accident. Some examples (mild spoilers ahead, but I’m only at 20% so nothing too revealing):

A scene where FMC gets on a train and her beloved stays on the platform. She’s taking a train from Ohio to Louisiana, like one typically does in the year 2017. There’s a long goodbye at the train door before a porter says “closin’ the doors, folks!” She watches him out the window and then considers “finding the train operator and asking him to go back” before “running to the back of the train” to watch her man recede on the horizon from the caboose. Ma’am, that is not how Amtrak works. 

Meanwhile, MMC doesn’t know where she was going on said train. It’s like “she was headed to Charleston, but she could have boarded any train from there!” He’s desperate to track her down and resorts to digging through her old scrapbook to look for clues about where she’s from. Meanwhile, she’s his sister’s best friend. Why not just call her? Why not ask your sister to call her? Fortunately for our guy, he eventually does discover technology to follow up on a clue (side note, the “clue” is a church called First Baptist. In the South. Good luck googling that). He “waits for the laptop to boot up” before “opening a search engine.” I swear to god, I thought she was going to say “world wide web” next. 

Turns out, FMC was returning to her hometown, a small town owned and controlled by an evil mine boss who has everyone under his thumb. It’s all very It’s a Wonderful Life or On the Waterfront coded. “You gonna take your Daddy’s place in the mines, girl?” Yes, she's an LA wedding planner, but she's returned to take her Daddy’s place in the mines. Like one does. And this mine seems to exist in a universe where OSHA and labor unions don’t exist. She trains for the job in one day, and of course gets trapped alone in a collapsed tunnel soon after (on Christmas Day!). This is all very triggering to the MMC because as a child, he was trapped in a well for four days. Not sure yet if he got rescued by a collie. We'll see. When he finds FMC, he insists on taking her place in the mine, because that's how jobs work. 

There’s a childhood memory about “once, while she was picking up cigarettes for her father at the tobacconist…” Like, excuse me, I think you mean the Dollar General? 

Did I mention I'm only at 20% of this thing?

Honestly, I love old movies and some of these themes (like an evil mine boss and train travel) make for great storytelling. I even like the idea of writing a romance series based on nostalgic classics. Someone should do that! But you’ve got to make it believable if it’s supposed to be contemporary. In this book it just feels weird.

ETA: A small-town hooker with a heart of gold has entered the chat.

I'm a part time sub at my kids' elementary school. Somehow I never ended up subbing in my son's classroom until today, and I was shocked by how messy and chaotic the classroom was. It looked like a pigsty in there with stuff piled on nearly every surface, one whole corner of the room (probably like 15% of the floor space) fully occupied by piles various tote bins and bags full of random stuff, cords across the floors everywhere, and piles and piles of papers. It was above and beyond the clutter I've seen in any other classroom. It was very hard to walk and move around the room. Plus they have this thing where the desks are backwards in their "table" groupings so every time they want to get something out of their desks the kids have to get up and move their desks out to access the open part of the desk. When I first saw kids doing this I was like "whoa, hey, why are we moving furniture?" And the kids explained that this is how they do it so other kids can't take things from their desks (they switch classrooms for one period of the day so the teachers can "departmentalize" math and ELA). I can't imagine how kids can learn in an environment like this and I'm really dismayed that this is where my kid has spent the year. Is was just a depressing and stressful space to be in. Of course I've been in there for parent teacher conferences but I think the teacher must have cleaned up for those because it wasn't so bad then. I know teachers have limited storage space and have lots of papers to manage, but this just seemed beyond what a classroom space should be like. Don't schools have some level of expectations for how teachers should maintain their rooms?

ETA: Ok, in light of the very real possibility that many people have pointed out, that this could be a moving out/someone else moving in issue, I'll give grace to the teacher here. I wasn't going to say or do anything to get her in trouble or anything like that. I know teachers aren't always (ever?) given enough time and resources to do what's asked of them. My kid hasn't had a great experience with this teacher overall so I'll admit I vented a little hard here.

I will push back on the idea that the state of the classroom isn't a valid concern for parents, or it's all just a matter of taste/preferences. Many of these kids come from hard and chaotic home situations. They all deserve to come to a place each day that feels welcoming and functions well. At the very least, walkways should be clear. This room felt beyond the norm for the school, verging on a fire hazard. Looking forward to a fresh start with a new teacher next year.

Last year, my kids' school was advertising in the newsletters that they were in need of subs. I'd been a SAHM for several years, very involved in PTA, and was looking for a way to re-enter the work force that would work with my kids' school schedule, so I applied and it worked out. Now I've been subbing for most of this school year about once a week most weeks. It's been going well, but I can tell I'm kind of a second-string, JV player for the school. They often call me in as a "floater" while other subs take the classrooms for the day. In other words, I'm aware that I'm doing a mediocre job at classroom management. I fully admit that I'm not an actual teacher, just a mom who volunteered. I do better with kids one-on-one, and I am going to look into a paraprofessional certification for next year. I think I bring more of a mom vibe than a teacher vibe to the role. Still, the school needs me once in a while and I want to learn how to do a better job managing classrooms. I know I'm not a "real" teacher but I'd like to be more than just a babysitter for the times I'm assigned a classroom. I feel like I'm the kind of sub that when I walk into the classroom, the kids' "what can I get away with?" antennae pop up, and they just have no respect for me. Maybe I'm too nice? I don't know. I have two kids of my own, one of whom is a real "handfull," to put it nicely, so I thought I knew how to be firm with kids, but it's just different when it's 25 of them.

Anyway, summer is coming up and I'd like to use the time to improve. Does anyone know some resources where I can learn about classroom management? I would love books, podcasts or Youtube channels I could check out to come back stronger next year.