Archive for the ‘This is My Life’ Category

We have these wonderful things out here called a Chinook.

On Chinook days it will go from “Oh dear gawd I’m going to freeze my nipples off!” to “Hey, is it legal to go topless?” in a matter of a few hours. In terms of actual degrees, think 0C (32F) to 20C (68F). Yeah, radical.

While the sudden warm weather (minus the accompanying migraine ) is a nice change, there are some side effects… muddy, dirty, wet side effects.

Because sudden warm weather melts all that lovely snow that’s been sitting in my backyard. And melts it in a hurry.

Which means my quarter acre winter wonderland turns into a giant lake. A muddy, dirty, wet lake that two dogs and a toddler want to go play in. (and if you ever come over to my house you’ll understand why my floors are perpetually muddy in the spring).

With this latest thaw, and the fact the dogs have worn out the grass at the bottom of the deck, there’s a nice mud… well it’s not a puddle because there’s no water.  It’s just a big mud pit.

When Vista wanted to go out this afternoon, I first had to get her over the “Oh no!  Oh no, Mommy!  Mud!!”.  And then… well, it’s easier just to show you what happened next.

Needless to say, Bil is picking up some paving stones for that bottom area on his way home

Sometimes I feel like, as a mom, I have these wonderful, magical powers.

Have a boo-boo?  One kiss from my lips makes it feel all better.

Crying over spilt milk?  One hug with my arms wrapped around you makes it feel all better.

Scratches, scrapes, hurt feelings, and insecurities are no match for my mommy powers.

But right now we’re battling sometime that can’t be fixed.

Vista’s brain.

Would it be ironic to say that it has a mind of it’s own?

Because some days it really feels that way.

We finally got her EEG booked for March 9th.  Yeah, a month away.  This will be her third and that’s 3 too many.  Believe it or not, out of all the tests she’s had in her life, these EEG’s are the worst, because it involves me holding her down while she screams and cries and screams as they attach the electrodes to her head.  After getting her all worked up, I have to calm her down enough to fall asleep.  And after sleeping for 10 minutes or less, I get to wake her up.  I end up going home after them and crying as Vista clings to Bil wanting nothing to do with me.  And I can’t blame her.  I wouldn’t like me much either after all that.

But what’s the most frustrating is that I know the test will come back normal.  Just like the last two.  So I have to put her through all that for nothing.  Or rather, so we can see the neurologists so they can tell us “Yep, everything still looks OK, other than her normal brain malformations.  We don’t know why she’s seizuring or why she regressed so much after her last seizure.”

Did I mention being a mom also makes you a psychic?

I had a long talk with Vista’s Speech and Language Pathologist yesterday as she put V through her paces.  She’s confirmed for me that it’s not uncommon for people to regress after every seizure.  It’s just something that is.  And will be forever.  As in, when she’s an adult and has a seizure, she will experience loss of skills.

I watched, as we talked, as Vista struggled with a toy that a month ago had been a breeze for her to play with it.  A toy whose ins and outs she had mastered.  Now, it’s like she’s seeing it for the first time.

It makes me sad for her.  It makes me frustrated for her.  It makes me angry for her.

And Vista is all of those things right now as she struggles to make herself understood.  She went from being a toddler who was well on her way to being at a normal speech level.  She was talking in sentences.  She was easy and clear to understand.

Now our days are filled with “I’m sorry, sweetie, I don’t know what you’re saying” and she screams the same garbled words at me over and over hoping that volume will make me get what she is trying so hard to communicate.  Words that only weeks ago, I understood perfectly.

How do you explain to a two year old that half of what she’s trying to say is now reduced to babble sounds?  You can’t.   How do you explain that even though she was able to open that door a few weeks ago, it’s going to take some time for her to learn how to do that again?

So the next couple of months will be spent trying to return her words and motor skills to her.  And trying to manage the frustration and anger, both hers and ours.

I’m hoping one day we’ll learn this dance.  One step forward, two steps back, side shuffle, side shuffle. This stumbling along, trying to figure out what comes next is making my brain and heart hurt.

Those of you that follow me on Twitter have probably heard about Sam.

Sam is Vista’s special friend.  And we’re pretty sure he’s a ghost.  Yeah, I’m living in a real life haunted house.

I can remember vividly the first time Sam showed up.  We we all  sitting in the living room and all  of the sudden Vista started to talk to ‘Sam’.  Sam was apparently standing right behind me as I sat on the couch *shudder*.   Vista was happily chattering to him and trying to hand him things.

Bil and I just looked at each other.  And decided she had an imaginary friend.  How nice for her.

But on the off chance, I called my mom and asked her if the name ‘Sam’ rang any bells for her.  As we ran through the family roster of the dead we came up blank.

I was still clinging tightly to the fact that this was an imaginary friend.  Perhaps, I reasoned, she’s talking about Sam from the Wiggles.  She loved watching the Wiggles at that point.  Perhaps she had just picked that name.  So, I put the Wiggles show on and when Sam showed up, I pointed to the TV and said “Look!  Sam!  Is that your Sam?”

I’m pretty sure Vista is going to be really good at that ‘OMG you are a complete moron’ look when she’s a teenager, because she threw that look at me and slowly explained to her idiot mother “Sam on TV,” pointing to the tele.  “Not Sam,” pointing to the other end of the room.

Well, fine.  Nix that idea.  But, I still wasn’t giving up on the imaginary friend idea.

Until the morning I went to get Vista dressed.  I conversationally asked her “Where’s Sam?”

She pointed to the floor next to her.

“Oh, he’s sitting next to you?” I said, very pleased with my deductive reasoning skills.

I got the ‘you’re an idiot’ look again and she patiently explained “No.  In ground…. buried there.”

I have to tell you, hearing your two year old tell you about someone being buried in the ground (they certainly don’t teach that on Dora or Sesame Street) is kind of a conversation killer.

So I changed gears.  Fine, Sam probably wasn’t just an imaginary friend if he’s buried in the ground.  So we played 20 questions with a 2 year old with limited vocabulary.

Q: Is Sam a boy or a girl?

A: Boy

Q: Is Sam a little boy like [cousin] or is he old like Daddy?

A: Like Daddy

Q:  Is he old like Grandpa or just old like Daddy?

A: Old like Daddy.

Alright, so we had a male ghost, somewhere in the 20 – 50 age range.

Q: Is he wearing a hat?

A: No.  He…  *at this point she started point to her forehead*

Q: Does he have an owie on his head?  A bandaid?

A: No…  *it took a few days, but we finally figured out that Vista was trying to tell us he was wearing a headband of some sort, after she started wearing insisting on wearing her hairbands around her forehead rather than to hold her hair back*

We continued playing these games.  Showing pictures, asking questions, guessing answers.  Near as we can tell, Sam is an adult male, Native American, ghost… who likes to swear.

Oh, did I forget that part?

Yeah, I came in one day to get Vista up from a nap and she was happily chattering to Sam.  And they were talking about ’sunny beaches’

I sent Vista out of the room to go play in the living room, and turned to (where I thought) Sam was.  I gently explained to him ‘Listen here you son of a bitch.  You teach my daughter to fucking swear and I will exorcise your ghosty ass.  Are we clear?’

I’m assuming he got the message, because there’s been no more mention of sunny beaches or any beaches for that matter.

But then, a few months ago, Sam went away suddenly.  Vista explained he had gone to the mountains for a while.  I smiled and nodded like this made sense and figured maybe we were rid of our ghost for good.  Not that I really minded him.  I mean, he seemed to be friendly enough.  And Vista certainly enjoyed talking to him.  On days when he would chat with her as she woke up from a nap I could here fits of giggles.  But still.  A haunted house really doesn’t draw friends to want to come over for coffee.

Months went by, and no Sam.  Until about a week ago.

Vista woke up and started talking about Sam again.  I figured, not a big deal.  So he’s back.  Good for him.

But, something’s changed.  Or rather he’s changed.  He seems to want to be more helpful.  Which is nice… but, dude, it’s creeping me the fuck out.

The first incident was the other day when Vista and I were in the living room.  She was dancing around and I said “Should mommy put some music on so you can dance?”

As soon as I said that the DVD player turned on.  Now, that, in and of itself, I could ignore.  But we have one of those fancy players that also acts as a radio tuner and you can hook your ipod into it.  We have never use the radio part (because the reception is crap and while I’m pretty sure there’s something we could do to fix that, we’ve never bothered and just don’t use it), and very rarely use the ipod dock, so it’s always set to play DVDs.  Except when it turned on, it was set to a radio station playing music.

OK, I must have sat on the remote or something and accidentally turned it on.

Except when I stood up to look, I saw the remote sitting across the room from Vista and I.

I looked at V.  “Where’s Sam?”

“He just went outside”

“Yeah I bet he did.  Tell ghosty boy to quit touching Mommy’s technology”

I walked over and shut the DVD player off.  I wasn’t in the mood for dancing anymore.

Then the other day, I went to put Vista down for a nap.  She laid down in her crib and I was tucking her in asking her if she wanted me to put her white noise machine on for her… when her Winnie the Pooh music box turned on by itself.  Neither Vista nor I were anywhere near it.  And not only that, it’s not a little push button switch to turn on, that I could have hit accidentally this time.  It’s a slider.  And to put it on the song and setting that it was on the slider has to be slid down from it’s off position at the top, alllllll the way down to the bottom position.

I turned it off.

“Where’s Sam?”

She pointed to the end of her crib.

“Could you tell him to stop doing stuff like that please.  It’s creeping Mama out.”

I got a nod from her.  I finished tucking her in and let her sleep.

Oh, but the best was yet to come.

This morning I woke up to hear Vista chattering through the baby monitor (Yes, she’s 2.5 and we still use a baby monitor.  Don’t judge).

I looked at the clock.  7:00am.  Bil would have gone to work a few hours ago.  So it was time to get up and grab a quick shower before I went in to get her.

Until I heard a male voice respond to one of Vista’s chattering questions.

A voice that I didn’t recognize.

A voice that certainly wasn’t her father’s.

I went racing out of my room and threw open her door…. only to find her alone in her crib.  With no one else in the room.

“Hi Mama!”

“Hi baby.  Who were you talking to just now?”

“Sam….and my dollies”

Holy fuck.  Had I just heard her ghost over the baby monitor???  Are you fucking kidding me??

I’ve come to the conclusion we have one of two things going on here.

Either

1. Vista has a friendly ghost who watches over her and likes to make sure she’s happy.  And who now seems to be able to turn on things in the house and make himself heard…..or
2. I’m loosing my ever living fucking mind

I’m kinda leaning towards number two.

Just a quick Vista update for those who care.

So… we had an appoint with our family doctor on Monday to talk about Vista’s inhalers and I also wanted to talk to him about some of her specialist flagging some of her behaviors as autism markers.

Visiting Dr.F is always interesting. First of all he is the ONLY doctor that Vista likes. She will let him check her, and even pick her up, with no screaming and crying. And then there’s the fact that Dr.F totally think the sun rises and sets with Vista. You see, she was his very first patient in his practice (in fact before he even had a practice). He was her doctor when she was in the Special Care Nursery (a step down from NICU), when she was born. And so he’s always taken a special interest in her.

I love the fact that she’s so relaxed with him. It makes a visit to the doctor so much easier. And I also like the fact that I feel like he listens to me and doesn’t dismiss me as a neurotic mother. That’s a rare and valuable quality in a doctor these days.

The first thing we discussed were her inhalers. And the fact that, yes, the doc at urgent care had prescribed her an inhaler that was way above her age range (thank you Dr. Lori for bringing that to my attention).  We confirmed that she doesn’t need to be on inhalers full time, but when she gets a cold, she’ll go on them for a week or two to keep her airways open.  I’m happy with that arrangement and it seems to work for Vista.

Then we talked about some of the autism makers we’re seeing.  Stuff like lining up toys, counting things over and over and over, and other OCD quirks she has.  He agreed that it was probably time to get her in for a formal screening, so he’s made a referral to the Children’s Hospital in the city.  He’s not overly concerned, especially because he’s thrilled with where she is with talking and walking in light of her brain issues.  He said  that any autism she may have would be mild and it may just be her quirky self.

Before we left, I asked him if he had received a call from Children’s Services back in December.  Surprise, surprise, they didn’t call him either.  That’s 3 names I gave them and they called none of them.  Unreal.  I still have to check with Vista’s pediatrician to see if they talked to him.  What I found interesting is Dr.F guessed within 2 seconds of hearing my story who it was that had reported me.  He’s asked me to gather some information about the CS investigation and pass it on to him and then he is going to file a formal complaint against the pharmacy (and pharmacist) who filed the report with CS.  I’m apparently not the only person who has had problems with that pharmacy.

I have to say, I came away from this appointment feeling good about where things are and very supported.  Having a good doctor, when you have a child with issues, can really make such a huge difference.

As we were walking out of the office, we ran into Dr.F’s wife who had brought him some coffee.  The Dr introduced us and his wife immediately looked at Vista and said “Oh!  Is this Vista Avalon?”.   I must have had a “how the fuck do you know my daughter’s middle name” look on my face because she started laughing and explained that Dr. F talks about Vista all the time and they both just love her name, so it’s always stuck with her.  Huh.

The biggest surprise of the whole visit, though, came with Vista gave Dr. F a hug before we left.  And not just one of her ‘I’ll sort of lean into you and let you touch me’ hugs.   I’m talking about an arms around his neck, squeezing hug.  Apparently even she knows a good doctor when  she sees one.

There is no such thing as a normal conversation around these parts.

Oh, sure.  It may start out innocent enough.  But somewhere there’s always a divergence and we end up scratching our heads going ‘How the hell did we get here??’

Case in point was the conversation we had last night.

Bil was in the living room and … well, I don’t even remember what Vista said that prompted it, but I told her “Just call Daddy, Obi Wan Kenobi”.  If you don’t know who Obi Wan Kenobi is, you are dead to me.  Seriously.  And seriously consider coming out from that rock you’ve been living under.

Anywho…

Bil responded with “No way.  I’m Yoda”.  (Vista, of course, is dutifully running around the house screaming “OBI WAN YODA” at this point)

I stopped.

And this is where the conversation went all wrong…

Me: You want to be some wrinkled green mutant?

Bil:  What?  Yoda is cool!

Me: You can’t be Yoda.  He’s got no penis

Bil: WHAT?  What ARE you talking about.

Me:  He doesn’t.  I’m sure of it.

Bil: How the hell would you know if he had a penis?

Me:  OK, maybe a penis.  But he’s definitely a eunuch

Bil: ….Yoda is a eunuch….

Vista now screaming “YODA EUNUCH” ad nauseum

Me: Totally!  You don’t see any little Yoda’s running around.  And you totally know George Lucas would have exploited that angle if it was possible.  So see… eunuch.

Bil: It disturbs me that you’ve actually thought about this.

Me: So see, you can’t be Yoda.  You’re Obi Wan.

Bil: How about I’m Han Solo and you can wear a Princess Leia slave…

Me:  No.

Bil: No?

Me:  Dude, so totally not going to happen…

Bil:  How the hell did we get here?

Me:  I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it’s your fault.

Bil and I found ourselves in an unusual position this afternoon.

Vista went down for a nap and so that meant Mommy and Daddy had free time.  *nudge, nudge, wink, wink*

So we did what any couple who never gets one-on-one time would do….

We sat our asses on the couch and turned on the TV.

Oh yeah.

Sunday afternoon boob tube.

It’s been years since we got to do this.  I had forgotten exactly what it was like.

Completely crap shows with even worse commercials.

Like that Dollars 4 Gold one.

Pure awesomesauce.

Let me give you a brief run down of it…

Two women talking about the gorgeous (if you’re a suburban hooker) new pair of shoes one of them got after getting money from sending all her old gold jewelry to this place.

I try to control my eye rolling as I wonder if people actually send stuff to this company.  I guess there’s always a sucker somewhere.

Finally our regularly scheduled program resumes before I’m forced to jab an ice pick into my brain.  *everyone breath a sigh of relief with me*

And we’re watching…Gene Simmons Family Jewels.

What can I say?  We’re high class reality whores, all the way.

I half zone out (come on… it doesn’t take all your brain cells to watch a show like that) until his partner Shannon “I would totally hit that” Tweed refers to Gene as her ‘boyfriend’.

Bil looks at me.  “She calls him her boyfriend.”

I give him the eye.

“Fine.  Give me your wedding band.  I’m sending it in so I can buy a new pair of shoes and then I’ll call you my boyfriend”

“Uh… no that’s OK”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so”

So, now I need a new pair of shoes AND a boyfriend.

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I have a few more posts coming in my relationship series, but I need to put them aside for a bit while I figure out how to proceed.  Like I said earlier, the posts aren’t writing themselves, like I’m used to, and with V being sick I simply can’t focus like I need to on such a touchy topic.  So you guys will just have to suck it up and wait.  Bloggers prerogative and all that.  Sorry.

So, Christmas.

Yeah… that was interesting.

We did end up successfully doing our 12 days of Christmas with Vista.  It worked well and allowed her time to process each toy.

We still had a few presents on Christmas morning and then her stocking.  That took 3 hours to open everything, but we let her go at her own speed.  Even that, though, was too overwhelming and she was pretty much in constant meltdown from noon on Christmas day on.  By the time she went to bed that night Bil and I were completely done in.  In a serious way.  I think next year we might just skip Christmas day, altogether.

The 26th we briefly considered hitting the Boxing Day sales, then came to our senses.

Bil’s assesment of the day ahead:

He was kidding…. I think…

After spending the morning dealing with cranky mccranky pants (aka our daughter) we figured the sooner we headed over to my parents the sooner we could make them look after her and we could sit and have a break.  Cause we’re awesome parental units like that.  So, we packed up the big pickup truck *cough* rednecks *cough* and hit the highway.

Vista had a bit of a cold and cough and we had another croup flare up in the days before Christmas.  We decided we would take her into our family doc in the new year as this is her 3rd go round with ‘croup’ in a month in a half.  Vista, however, had a different plan.

As we left our house to make the hour drive to my parents house when Vista started coughing…and coughing… and coughing… and oh fuck… she can’t catch her breath.  Do we pull over and call an ambulance or gun it to the nearest medical facility?  We veered off the highway and took the back roads the Urgent Care facility in the next town.

As we rushed from the truck into the medical center, Vista’s cough had slowed enough that she was at least not blue tinged anymore.  I had flashbacks to my own experiences with croup as a child.  These coughing attacks were eventually diagnosed as my signature asthma attack.  Yay genes.

And we walked into see a huge line of people.  Crap.  The debate.  Head back to the hospital ER in our town, stay here, or take her into the Children’s hospital in the city.  We decided to take our chances and wait it out here. I called my mom and told her we’d probably be a bit late for dinner.

However, when you walk in with a coughing child with dropping pulse-ox stats a funny thing happens.  You get bumped to the front of the line and get to see a doctor right away.  Two inhalers and instructions to follow up with our family doctor later and we were on our way again.  So much for making it through the holidays without a visit to emergency.  Vista is nothing if not consistent.

When we finally got to my parents house, my dad took Vista and my mom went and made me a stiff drink.  Because there are some days when it’s required and my mom, for all her quirks, gets that.

My youngest brother and his wife finally arrived with my nephew (how we can come from an hour away AND stop at emerg and still get to my parents house ahead of them when they live in the same neighborhood as my parents, I’ll never understand).  I had the sad realization that my nephew who’s now a year and half old isn’t a baby anymore.  *sniff*  He’s completely lost that cute, chubby, baby look and marched straight into toddlerhood.  I told my SIL that she needed to get with the program and have another baby for me to cuddle.   Because, really,  we all know it’s always all about me.

After required snuggles, we let the kids open their presents from Grandma and Grandpa (or Manna and Putta as Vista prefers to call them.  We’ve tried to correct that.  And she can say it properly.  But she’s adamant about those names.  *shrug*).  Can we say spoiled?  I think my parents went and won the lottery and forgot to tell us.  They even got Vista a gift certificate to the high end shoe store where we have to get her footwear, so her next pair of shoes are completely paid for.  Yeah, I may have teared up a bit over a gift certificate to a shoe store.  Just proves that I’m sensitive.

Heading back home in a semi-turkey induced-coma, we had to pull off on the highway again after V had another coughing / asthma attack.  Nothing wakes you up and gets your adrenaline pumping like your kid having trouble breathing.  Thank goodness for rescue inhalers.  But since then, she’s been good and we haven’t needed to use it at all. So, yay the inhalers are working.  Boo that they’re probably working because she has asthma.

All in all a good Christmas.  But really?  I am SO ready for a holiday now.

I’ll leave you with this daily dose of cuteness… Vista the ballerina (oh, and yes, she insists on wearing a toque in the house at all times.  And usually mittens too.  We got her to take off the mittens to open presents, but the toque?  Not a chance.  I promise you, we keep the heat on in the house.  Really.)

Christmas time, for what ever reason, always makes me think about my relationships with people.

Those that know me well, know I’m adopted.

I was 3 months old when I was adopted and I can’t remember a time that I didn’t know.  My parents were always very forthright about it and it was something to be celebrated, not hidden in our house.

When I was 21, through a bizarre series of events, I got the opportunity to meet my birth mother.  And eventually her whole family.

I am a classic study of nature vs nurture.

I never really fit into my family growing up.  I feel bad for my parents because I was so different from them, they just had no idea what to do with me.

Then I met my birth mom, Deb.

Lets just say the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

I don’t look all that much like her, but personality wise?  We are two peas in a pod.

We have the same sarcastic sense of humor.

The same dry wit.

The same irritation with what we view as stupidity.

People who have never met me can pick me out as her daughter within minutes of talking to me.

Weirder still?

My aunt, my birth mother’s youngest sister, and I are practically carbon copies.  It freaks people out because we grew up in two different worlds not knowing each other.  But we talk the same, have the same mannerisms, the same gestures.  Her husband hates when we get together because we finish each others sentences and constantly say the same thing at the same time.

So any scientist says there’s no base for the nature argument with adoptees and that children are a ‘fresh slate’ can bite me.

What made me think of all this was the difference between the two Christmas cards I got from my mom and my birth mom.

In the card my mom sent to Bil and I she wrote in

“Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and all the best for a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year”

The card we got from my birth mom today had the following written in it:

May all your Christmas lights stay lit
May all your presents be a hit
May joy and laughter deck your halls
And may no one bust your Christmas balls

Any questions about who gave birth to me?  I thought not.

Ahhhh….winter.  Snowfalls, icicles, and weather so cold your nipples will freeze right off.  I only wish I was kidding about that.

It’s a good thing I don’t have a pair of truck nuts on my mega cab or they’d be shriveled up to the size of little peas.  That pansy ass truck of mine decided to curl up and die in the cold.  Despite plugging in the block heater, we couldn’t even get it to turn over.  So my neighbor, who managed to get his car started (which I’m not at all bitter about) came over and offered to boost the truck for us.

Our two dogs, tired of being cooped up in the house, took the opportunity of the open front door to dodge around the neighbour and I and take off down the street and around the corner.  Recall training my ass.  Bastards didn’t even give me a backwards glance.

I bundled up and headed into the arctic deepfreeze.  Nope.  Not joking.

Translated into American that is

Now you understand why my truck said “Oh hell no!” when I turned the key.

After talking about the merits of using jumper cables as nipple adornments the neighbor and I finally hooked up the vehicles and …. didn’t start the truck.  I’m pretty sure it was laughing at me.  Things with batteries always tend to die when I need them most.  Dammit.

I turned around and headed back inside for some reinforcements.  Also know as warmer gloves and a scarf.  Then I trudged down the road looking for the dogs.  I may have even had the local po-po on the lookout for the stupid mutts.  Gotta love small town living. (yeah, they eventually turned up and are both grounded for the rest of their lives.  Especially after *I* got yelled at by a local farmer because the dogs went to play with the horses.  Jerkoffs).

If you’ve ever been out walking for half an hour in weather so cold that your eyelids freeze together when you blink (again, I only wish I was kidding) then you know that getting warm after is damn near impossible.

So Bil and I are doing what any normal Canadians do to keep warm.

We’re drinking.

Little known fact: most Canadian babies are born in the spring, not the summer like you would think.  I’m pretty sure it’s because we spend the winters so bundled up in layers by the time you get them all off you forget what you were doing in the first place.  That, and after a few dozen hot toddies we’re too busy to trying to make the room stop spinning that the thought of rocking the bed is too much like a carnival ride.

Even lesser known fact: my father is a meteorologist (aka weatherman).  That fact is completely useless when the weather forecast is ‘Fucking cold today; you’ll freeze your ass off tomorrow; and you don’t even want to know about the rest of the week’.

That being reality, though, Bil made a supply run tonight (liquor, liquor, and more liquor) so we’ll be hunkering down in our igloo house until Mother Nature grabs a clue.

Oh, and if you see a frozen mitt on the door handle, don’t bother ringing our doorbell (cause it doesn’t work either in this damn weather)