Look, since that last post, my life has been … rococo. Rococo, as in filled with intricate detail. Lately, a lot of sad.
Bad stuff: our twins. A week before Thanksgiving, all is on schedule for a late Nov, early Dec. delivery. Both babies are healthy, appropriately sized on ultrasound, and Siddhary is doing well. Four days later, on Tuesday, one baby has no heartbeat. We do a C-section immediately and save the other baby - Indigo Phoebe Olsen, who is doing fine. We don’t know what happened to the other baby, Scarlet. Same weight, alive four days earlier, no sign of trauma or illness or cord mishap, nothing. Mystery. We will always miss Scarlet. Honestly, that alone is enough to put me into a shell and to not even think about updating this page.
Less than a week later, my grandfather died. Robert C. Olsen (the original, none of your cut-rate sequels). Obviously I’m named after him (and my dad). I could write (and have written) pages about what a great guy he was, great grandfather, and how much he and Grandma both meant to me… but you aren’t here to read that, I’m guessing. Suffice to say that he was close and that it really hurt.
All of this on top of my one and only mother having major cancer de-bulking surgery about the same time. It’s just body blow after body blow around here. Losing Scarlet still hurts worse than anything has ever hurt me before. This last couple of months have been really hard, and unfortunately having the best Bama team ever doesn’t really compensate for losing my Scarlet. I’d gladly watch ‘em go 0-12 just to get a chance to hold her and tell her hello…
… and life moves on, eventually. It’s hard. And even talking about it is hard. There was a guy on one of the SEC forums who announced the birth of his twin girls, right after the BCSMNCG - and I just couldn’t say a thing to him. What would I say? How do I talk to the exhausted mom of new triplets? I don’t want to rain on their parade, so I keep going and don’t talk about it. Violet gets sad sometimes about baby Scarlet; we tell her it’s OK to be sad, and we are very fortunate to have baby Indigo, and she accepts that. Must be nice to be four years old. I don’t know what we’re going to tell Indy. I think I’d freak right out if I was told I had a twin who died at birth.
We still have to do our Christmas shopping and gift manufacture. We basically just took the month of December off. Siddy’s not going back to work, I hated what that job did to her and her job doesn’t really pay enough to cover daycare for both girls anyway. Would have been even worse with twins. I’d have been fine with it, though.
But you know, my life isn’t JUST the sad shit. Despite being a Gator in terms of geography and in terms of awarded degrees, I love Alabama football more than any other team in any other sport. And there haven’t been many better seasons in which to be a Bama fan. It makes me a bit of an outcast at work (where we almost all have degrees from UF) but beating the Gators in the SECCG was as rewarding as any game I’ve seen in years. I’m still very bummed about Colt McCoy going down so early in the BCSMNCG, but the victory is sweet and stays crispy in milk. 14-0, SEC Champs over Gators, National Champs over Longhorns (and first ever victory over ‘em), first Heisman in Alabama history, most All-America selections by one team ever, most rushing yards for the season, most single-game rushing yards at Bryant-Denny… I’m sure there’s more, but this is easily the most-accomplished and most decorated Alabama squad ever. Thank you, coach Saban.
My University of South Alabama Jaguars have finally gotten a football team; I went to their first game, a solid victory over Hargrave Military Academy. Hey, first game isn’t going to be against Notre Dame, you know? But they played and beat all the teams they had on their schedule this year, just like Boise State, so I’m going to rank USA #3. Take that, Broncos.
As usual, there are recent photos at gallery.me.com/rco3 . Always interested in hearing what you think about any of those photos, if one causes you to think something.
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