Barnmaven

The first week always sucks

Remember weeks ago when I said SG had a job offer here in our area? The start date finally materialized.  He had to wait until the holidays were over for the HR people, who are located in another state, to get their stuff together and get him scheduled for his background check, a DMV report and a physical.  The DMV apparently is slower than the social security office because after a whole month they decided to just get him started with the DMV report as a contingency.  (They also made him get a spinal x-ray - but no drug screen.  Weirdest hiring protocol I've EVER heard of.)

So he passes all his screens, gets his offer, quibbles over it for a few days, then accepts.  He finally started on Monday of this week.

While the weeks at a time of wrangling life at home on my own was a serious challenge, the upside was is that SG was also home for weeks at a time.  Home to get the kids dressed and fed and on the bus, the animals fed, dinner made, groceries shopped for and household chores done.  If a child ended up needing to be picked up at school due to illness or behavior, he was there to take care of it.  I got used to coming home to dinner on the stove and kids with finished homework every day. 

I was spoiled.  I had a househusband.

About Thursday of last week panic set in.  We had considered that this would mean drastic changes to our routines at home, but until it was staring us in the face we hadn't really thought it out in detail.  Kids going to before- and after-school care would be kids who needed to get out of bed and ready to go an hour and a half earlier than they were used to.  Dinners, especially when we wanted to create time at the end of our day to exercise, would need to be planned and cooked in advance.  Bedtime would need to be pushed up, undoubtedly spawning cries of outrage.  We'd need to plan around guitar lessons, obedience classes, homework and workouts. 

We laid out plans for meals, we bought groceries.  We identified who was responsible for what each morning and each evening.  We were the parenting equivalent of Rocky training for a fight against the seemingly unbeatable Ivan Drogo.

(What was that line of Dolph Lundgren's from Rocky IV?  "If he dies...he dies."  Yikes.)

Sunday night, groceries are bought and stowed.  Dinner has been eaten and put away and the kids have showered and are enjoying computer time before getting ready for bed.  I pull all the meat out of the fridge we will need for the meal plan I've written up for the next few days.

"Honey, there's only one package of chicken in the freezer.  Didn't you buy any?"

"No, I thought we didn't need chicken.  Do we?"

"I don't think four legs are gonna cut it."

Swap Tuesday for Wednesday on the menu plan and forge ahead.  Its only a minor setback, we're still on our feet and swinging.

So far we've dealt with:

• SG forgetting to set out all of his daily supplements and leaving the house about twenty minutes later than he planned and THEN forgetting his phone on top of it, causing him to have to go back to the house after dropping the kids at daycare
• Me forgetting to fill out Race Car Man's medication log resulting in a phone call in the middle of a meeting after I'd forgotten to silence my phone
• SG spending an hour on another day looking for his desk key, which just happened to be in his desk at work.  In the keyhole of his desk at work.
• Guitar lessons being missed
• I forgot to buy the M&M's for Race Car Man's class party
• Wednesday dinner being changed at the last minute from homemade Ginger Glazed Chicken to McDonald's.
• At least three separate instances of me dramatically announcing "I SWEAR I'm going to CUT MY HAIR OFF!"

On top of all of it, the Chihuahua has had diarrhea for three days which has added an extra half hour to each morning of changing crate bedding, cleaning the carpets with my steam cleaner, extra loads of laundry and lots of air freshener.  Because we were out of clean bedding last night we had to let the dogs sleep loose in our room.  Did I mention Zoey's favorite place to sleep is the bed?  Between her insistence on putting her big head so close to my face I couldn't breathe and SG's habit of hogging the covers I finally ended up retreating in a huff to the couch where Iwas then assailed by the cats trying to take advantage of available human real estate to curl up on.

Its only Thursday and I'm starting to feel afraid we're headed for a TKO.  Not to mention its Valentine's Day.  I'm here to tell you its a sheepish thing to give your husband his Valentine's Day card when you've spent the night in a huff on the couch.  To be honest, I didn't actually give the card to him, I just tossed it over onto his side of the bed after I finished getting dressed this morning.  I'm not usually this chickenshit, but I'm just wiped out.

Hey, we're still in one piece.  No one's lost a finger or gotten left behind at the grocery store, at least at the last head count.  

I'm sure we'll have this down in a week or two.  I just hope to God the Chihauahua's butt dries up.

 

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The Queen of Managing Everything

As crazy as my life can be structurally, in terms of schedule, it is highly organized.  It has to be.  There are a lot of things we can slide on, but my kids being where they are supposed to be and in the care of the right person at the right time, this is not negotiable.  I work 45 miles away from my home; two hours of my day is spent commuting.  Because my son rides the special needs bus, pickups and dropoffs have to be orchestrated through the school and schedule changes take up to five days to implement.  Knowing ahead of time what's going to be happening and when gives me an enormous (and highly illusionary) sense of control.

So you can imagine when, on a Tuesday, my husband announced he would be leaving over the weekend to go to Nebraska for six weeks, I put my head between my knees and hyperventilated just a little bit (well, maybe more than a little bit). 

I'd gotten pretty spoiled having a stay-home man all summer.  I didn't have to worry about schedules and buses and where to be and when - I just had to get up on time, get ready on time and show up to work. 

My husband was not impressed by my impending sense of doom.  "You'll figure it out," he said.  "You always do."  BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT, DAMMIT.  DOESN'T ANYONE CARE THAT I'M PANICKING HERE?  And I did get it figured out, with the help of my friend Debbie and my mother.  BUT STILL NOT THE POINT.

So we're sailing along pretty splendidly here.  I get to see my parents at least four days a week when I stop after work to pick up the kids, who have completed most of their homework and been fed.  Four days a week Debbie comes over and makes sure they're out the door in time to get on the bus and then feeds and waters all the animals.  Did I mention I have some pretty awesome friends, not to mention parents?

It never pays to feel too much like you've got things under control.

Yesterday afternoon I discovered that my ex's schedule would be dramatically changing - ON MONDAY.   All of my arrangements for morning and after school care just got flushed down the commode. 

My husband had the bad luck to call me about five minutes after that.  I treated him to about thirty seconds of hyperventilating and exited the call.

He hasn't called me back since, and I'm not sure if he's avoiding me completely or just too busy.  I'm fairly sure its avoidance.  Hell, I'd avoid me right now if it were possible.

Its not that I can't manage it, of course I can manage it.  Its that I would just once in a while like some empathy for the fact that its not easy, that its stressful, not to mention lonely and thankless.  It would be nice if there were some kind of monetary compensation or fancy award for being the "Queen of Managing Everything."  Oh, yes, it would.

 

 

 

All its cracked up to be

Someday when I write my autobiography - or someday when I'm dead and someone has the notion to make a television sitcom about my life - the title should be "Six of one," except I'd be borrowing the title from Rita Mae Brown and it wouldn't be a fictional funny drama about one woman's coming out story.  It would be the story of the woman whose life story seems to consistently be pointing how life is this continual mishmash of good stuff and hard stuff - ALL THE TIME with the good stuff and the hard stuff.

I suppose that's my blog theme.  I wish I'd figured that out a few years ago.  Here all this time I thought I was writing about horses and special needs.  See what the wine does?

I hit the grocery store yesterday after dropping the kids off with their dad (hint:  if you take your kids halloween costume shopping do not finish the trip by dropping them off with their other parent.  Kids with new halloween costumes want to go home and put them on, not leave them with you and go to their other parent's house).  Since my Mom has been picking up the kids after school , she does their homework and feeds them dinner, which makes my grocery list rather sparse.  Unless there's someone to cook for, I don't cook.  What's the point?  Its cereal for breakfast and dinner is eggs or soup.  So I'm at the grocery store and putting my things on the moving belt at the checkstand and I realize that everyone in line behind me probably thinks I'm a middle-aged single woman with no kids and a house full of cats. I was half tempted to throw a True Confessions in with everything just to say "La la la, I don't care what you think!" but actually no one even has True Confessions on the shelf anymore and I at least just managed to establish the fact that I'm getting a bit long in the tooth.

Its a big silence to wrap my thoughts around, those first hours after the kids have gone.  With SG on the road everything is at the same time both more and less meaningful.  I put away the groceries, empty the dishwasher, wash the few dishes in the sink.  I have six more hours before I have to go to bed, and I can pick and choose how I want to spend the time.  I'm lonely and not lonely, all at the same time.  I do realize that with a house full of pushy cats and large, noisy dogs that I'm never really alone, but since I'm the only one who can actually talk, its a lot quieter.  Being alone with my thoughts is a really dicey proposition.  I'm one of those people who can go either way -- and sometimes its a matter of a few minutes between happy as a lark and sooooooo lonely and sad.

Is this just part of the human process, learning how to accept while still retaining the option to complain when we don't like what's happening?  There's a distinct line between "doormat" and "punch life in the face." 

Last night life gave me a 90 pound puppy who thinks she's a lap dog and a 22 year old horse who was on the verge of colicking, a chicken intent on sitting on eggs I do not wish her to hatch and a husband whose phone couldn't get a clear connection to give us a chance to connect for five damn minutes.  Life also gave me a nice bottle of wine, a friend on the other end of the phone to be a substitute shoulder, and a nice cold evening to make my dinner of soup ever so enjoyable.  So who am I to complain?

Six of one.  Half a dozen of the other.  It all balances out in the end.  Its all good.

Pick your cliche'.  Any one of 'em will do. 

 

Puppies, headaches and mania, oh my!

Thanks to S, whose next contract job doesn't start until April(ish) I was able to volunteer to foster puppies for the rescue.  Wait, maybe I'm phrasing that wrong.

Because I'm a forgetful person and a total pushover for babies, I managed to get suckered into fostering puppies for the rescue, aided and abetted by my darling S, who apparently is a sucker of gre at magnitude.

Meet Bella:

and her litter mate Lexie:

As I write this, they are under my chair, chewing on my Uggs.

They are 7 1/2 week-old bundles of cuteness, charm, needle-sharp teeth and an endless reserve of piddle.  The boys have their noses seriously out of joint and the cats are hatching murder plots.  If they don't quit chewing on the power cord to my laptop, though, the cat's won't need to murder them.  I will.

Puppy antics aside, I'm enjoying a few days of relative calm.  I'm pretty sure C was cycling this weekend, the end result of that being a complete inability to cope with anything.  He spent much of Saturday night an Sunday either crying over things that weren't going right or screaming at the top of his lungs because things weren't going right.   He was on sensory overload and just couldn't cope.  Monday I had to get him from school because he was so upset about going to his class Valentine's Day party that he laid on the floor in the hallway sobbing for an hour.

We all survived it, mostly.  Last night after everyone else was sleeping C and I cuddled together on the couch and watched The Tooth Fairy.  He was tired and so was I, but neither of us was ready to give up each others company.  Those are the moments that get me through the trying times. 

A had a terrible headache last night.  Its the second one she's had in as many weeks.  Friday before last I ended up taking her to the ER.  She'd had a headache since the night before, and when we went to see our pediatrician, she also said her neck was hurting.  He was concerned about meningitis and sent us straight to Emergency.  Apparently when they suspect bacterial meningitis in children, they don't mess around.  AT ALL.  We were ushered straight into a room.  The pediatric doctor on rotation examined her, then had blood drawn to check white-cell counts.  It was A's first blood draw and she likes needles about as much as I do, so it ended being quite the rodeo, with four nurses and me holding her down so the nurse could get her samples taken.  Fortunately her white cell count was in normal range, so they sent us home with some Naproxen and instructions to rest.  The Naproxen worked its magic and she was much better within a few hours.  Last night the headache started again and she was unable to sleep, so I gave her another one.  She got sleep, but I tossed and turned.  Of course.

 

Anyone in the market for a puppy?

 

McTeacher's Night

My kids' school had a fundraising event tonight at the Mecca of McNuggets. 

The Golden Arches are a favorite of millions of children the world over, mine included.  Going there has become more troublesome of late, primarily due to my son's tendency to obsess over the Toy du'Jour being offered in the Happy Meal.

He memorizes the toys on the readerboard.  When he's earned enough stickers at school to get the much-anticipated Happy Meal, he will immediately begin considering which of the current toys he wants the most, the top selection being chosen on a rating scale of physical attractiveness, its "coolness" factor and whether or not he's already got it.  Getting a not wanted toy is second in disappointment only to getting a toy that he already possesses.  If the toy that is received is not the toy that he has been building himself up to anticipate, a meltdown generally ensues.

He's not just being a rotten child. He's not just being a "typical" six year old who is disappointed because he didn't get what he wanted.  The meltdown stems from his complete inability to accept an outcome that is outside of his expectations.  Inflexibility is one of the many symptoms of his issues.   He doesn't want to be this way;  rather, he can't help it.

But, tonight was McTeacher's night, and both the kids really wanted to go see their friends and teachers.  We wanted to support our school.  So we went.

The place was packed to the gills with elementary students and teachers, and even the vice-principal and the librarian.  The kids happily greeted their educators and their friends. 

Unfortunately, it was also LOUD and CHAOTIC.  And then...the worst. C wanted the RED TONKA TRUCK.  The one with THE HOOK.  Of course, they didn't happen to have that one available.  And they looked, trust me, they looked.  Nobody wants to disappoint the cute little kindergartner who is crying his eyes out because he wants a certain truck.  But they didn't have it.

How fast can you get out of a crowded McDonald's with your kindergartner who is melting down?  Who is the ONLY CHILD IN THE RESTAURANT who is crying?  Every other child there was happy.  Of course they were happy.  Why not?  They were enjoying the great treat of having their McNuggets and sodas with their friends, teachers and parents.  As far as they were all concerned, life was Grand.  Wonderful.  With the sole exception of my son.

I was as patient as I could be.  I got our meals together.  I got an ice cream cone for my daughter.  The lady behind the ice cream counter was patient enough to wait for a sobbing boy to select his orange sherbet cone.  And then we collected ourselves and departed.

He cried all the way home.  I cried from tiredness and frustration.

Naturally, within ten minutes of arriving home, he was happily showing off his new tonka truck to me.  It wasn't the one he wanted, no, but it just took him enough time to get used to the concept of having something unexpected. 

God, please forgive me for looking at all of those happy, smiling children in that restaurant tonight and wishing that for just once, JUST FUCKING ONCE that we could be just like them instead of being the weird family with the child who screams for reasons that aren't readily apparent to everyone else.

Please forgive me for wishing for once NOT to be the family that gets stared at as we exit yet another public event with a howling child who simply cannot handle being there.

Forgive me, when things could be so much worse than they are.  Because I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. 

Even when I am.

Inadequate Parenting

Most of the time I feel like I have a grip on this many-tentacled sea-beast that is my life, but like all of us I have days and nights where I feel overwhelmed and lost.  Where I fail at staying calm, staying focused, keeping my temper, keeping sight of the bigger picture.

The parenting of any child is a process fraught with worry.  Just navigating the stormy shoals involved in raising a child safely to adulthood is a gamble.  So many things can go wrong, even when parents are connected, involved, watchful, devoted. 

My kids find ways to challenge me daily, in devious and skillful ways that my jedi training has left me woefully unprepared for.  Many times I duck and parry and successfully ward off the attack that has been brewing; sometimes I'm even prepared far in advance of the onslaught and my defenses respond like the well-trained machines I've prepared them to be.

Then there are the days when the reasoned response, the practiced "I'm going to do and say this the next time they [insert crazy batshit childish misbehavior or even worse crazy batshit sensory/oppositional issue here].  And sometimes my preparation works, and I manage not only to retain some dignity and composure and still shepherd these willful charges into a semblance of order. 

Then there are the other days.  The days, that, for whatever reason, from the starter's pistol to the final ribbon -  are doomed. Every stride in between either leads us to injury, misery or treason.  They are in tears, I am in tears, we are all in pieces and it sucks.

We made it tonight, by the skin of our teeth. 

 

That's good, right?

 

I shouldn't post today

But I'm gonna anyway. 

Never fight when you're mad.

Never drink when you're mad.

Never, EVER blog when you're mad.

Instead?  Wait a few hours until the hot fire of mad dulls down to icy rage, reconsider doing all of the above, sleep on it and mull it over a bit longer until the icy rage melts down to a sad understanding that you've been played, the same way you've been played for years  by someone with control issues, and resolve that the last vestiges of the codependent crap you've continued to foster must - simply must - go.

If the last year or so has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that I can be my own person.  I don't need permission to make decisions for myself.  I don't need someone's approval or agreement to know when I'm doing the right thing.  Yes, I'm going to make mistakes.  I'm going to make decisions I'll look back on someday and wonder which cues I missed, how I failed to see the outcome.  That's my right as a human being, a right we all share.  But I have children.  Smalls who depend on me, and, the ripples I make when that decision hits the water overlap lives other than mine, so I'd better be careful and I'd better be right.  And I'd better not make decisions in anger.

I know, this is cryptic.  I'm sorry.  One of the purposes of this blog is to provide a way for me to understand my own thoughts and feelings. Its serving that purpose right now, as the words flow from my brain to my fingers to the screen.  I compose, I consider, I erase, rewrite, reword, rethink.  I begin to understand.  And after that's all said and done, people toss their comments in the mix, and those often give me yet more perspective. 

Still, I have to be careful what I say here, in this public space.  My words affect others, but most importantly my words have the ability to affect the two most important people in my life.  Being angry with their father isn't a good enough reason to hurt my kids by writing unkind things about him here.  But know that were I not restrained by those self-imposed rules, this post?  Particularly if I'd written it yesterday?  Searing epistle of rage. 

I guess its human nature to think that we are different from everyone else.  We are special.  We often don't recognize when we excuse ourselves from the expectations we carefully thread around others.  We all do it.  I do it.  And maybe we don't like it when people point it out to us.  Who knows? 

Another thing that is natural for people is the need to be heard, to be listened to.  To have our feelings acknowledged.  One of the biggest challenges of my life as a young girl was living with a father who was equally as emotional - maybe even more so - than I am.  And my dad, when he would get upset at something, he'd go silent.  I suspect now that he was burning, icy hot, and couldn't bring himself to talk about what was making him mad or didn't want to talk about it for fear of saying something he'd regret, but quiet he would go.  And when he was mad at me, that quiet was unnerving.  Nothing I did or said could make him talk to me about it until he was ready.  That was his way of handling it - and his right to do so - but the residue of that within me is a sense of utter desperation when I need someone to hear and acknowledge me and they refuse.  Its usually followed by blinding rage at being ignored. 

Some people know that about me.  And I think when they don't like something I've done, they use it against me.  Or maybe I'm giving too much credit - maybe not acknowledging me is simply the way they handle conflict and its a simple accident of fate that I somehow managed to marry the one person who could evoke that helpless rage of my childhood.  However, whatever.  Somehow in my recovery the one lesson I still need to improve on is the ability to sense when I'm too emotional about something, when I need to let go of having expectations of others, when I need to release myself from the expectations others put on me,  when I need to remember that nobody is responsible for how I feel and what I do but ME. 

I'm deep in that right now, and its uncomfortable as hell. 

I have some decisions to make.  I can't make them lightly.  They affect my kids too, and therefore every move I make must center around how to make a bad situation as good as it can possibly be FOR THEM. 

And while I strive to protect them as much as I can, I still have to honor myself.  I have to stand up for myself.

And so I type and read and erase and reword and backspace, go back and reread, and I ponder.

Its hard to understand how we go from the harmony and ease of the holidays to the current state, but here we are.  One thing changed, I met someone, and I suspect that's the biggest factor affecting the events of the last few days.  Never underestimate how hard it is for your ex to see you move on, even if they already started dating months ago. 

Remembering to breathe

Tomorrow morning we have the first meeting of C''s team at school to discuss the results of his IEP testing and to hear the recommendations the school will make.  To find out whether they agree that he qualifies for services.  IF he qualifies for services, what interventions they will put in place.  And I'm really anxiety-laden about it.  The stomach-in-knots and sweaty palms kind of anxious.

When we had A's testing done, she had already been in an intervention program.  Instead of going into the mainstream kindergarten class, she went instead to a small classroom for kids from K to 2nd grade who had behavioral issues/learning disorders. The school was able to place her there because she had an IEP from New Jersey with diagnoses and recommendations for interventions.  But between some maturing, the help she got in her classroom, the medications and the therapies, she was doing much better by the time the school got around to doing their own testing on her.  So she wasn't qualified for an IEP by the school.  They didn't feel that she needed formal interventions to function, that her issues didn't provide a significant impairment to her ability to learn and to receive an appropriate education. 

I was new to the process, and I acquiesced. Caved to the "experts."  I wrote up a 504 plan for her, to provide her accommodations in the event that she did have issues, and so far things have gone well - but still, I wish I'd fought a little harder.  She's doing fine, really, but I think there would be tremendous benefit to her having learning assistance, extra tutoring, OT, additional help with behavioral adjustments.  She has difficulty focusing in school even with medication, and I know that she's not even close to living up to her learning potential.  But because there is no IEP, its up to me to provide all that she needs.  And I simply don't have the resources, financially, or time-wise to get OT, private tutors, etc.  Her meds wear off by dinnertime, and I'm not giving her more stimulants at night -- so homework just doesn't happen.  Its either a knock-down, drag-out fight to get her to do it -- or she does it, but she's all over the place and I know she's not getting anything out of it.  

Please don't take any of this to mean that I feel she's not an amazing, smart, talented, loving, creative and unique child.  Because she is all of those things, and more.  Every day I am blown away by my daughter, by her thoughts, her beauty, her maturity, everything about her.  I love her with every fiber of my being.  And I wish I could do more for her.

So tomorrow, I am already anticipating the worst.  I know, there's no reason that I should, but its one of those things I do.  I plan for the worst, hope for the best, and then if the worst should happen, I'm prepared.  Except when it comes to my children, when it comes to the one thing in the world I care the most about, I lose rationality.  I desperately want my son to get the things he needs, all the things he needs, not just the things I am able to provide him.  I need the school for that.  I know how impaired his functioning is in the classroom because of his issues.  He's not cognitively impaired, not by any means -- but without interventions, I fear he'll be one of those gifted children who end up dropping out of high school and climbing into that hell-bound handbasket, because he never got help to function in the school environment.  So I know more now than I did before, I am armed with better resources and information.  And I know which words to use and what to ask for.  What my rights are for appeal if we don't agree on what he needs.

I'm working hard to prepare myself to be calm, logical and rational.  Calm.  Logical.  Rational.  I can do that.  I can do that.  Now all I need is an infusion of optimism.  Tell me that its going to go well.  PROMISE me.  That all my anxiety and fear amounts to nothing.  Can you do that?

If you're the praying type, send a few up for my boy tomorrow.  If you're not, just spare him some good thoughts. 

Thanks.  I owe you.

 

Oooh, you're entitled all right.

In the completely egocentric world of a six year old, there are things worth wishing your mother dead for.  Or so I hear.

In the last week I've heard "I hate you!"  "I wish I had a different mother!" and even, "I wish you were dead!"

The first two I often just shrug at.  I clamp down on the response that wants to be said on the really difficult days, because even though I'm not fond of my son's behavior when he's throwing these kind of "I want something and you're not giving it to me" tantrums, the last thing I ever want him to think is that I don't love him. So I simply say things like "You're entitled, I suppose," or "I know you're mad at me right now, but I still love you no matter what."  I figure somewhere down the road he'll be legitimately mad at me for one of the many mistakes I've made or will make as a parent, and I want him to know its OK to be mad and I probably deserve it -- but he should save the UNLIKE button for true blue parenting offenses.  Not the fact that I won't buy him a damn hot wheel every time we go to grocery shopping.

It can be something as little as the drive-through gave him a toy he didn't really want and I won't turn around and go ask them for a different one. Or that he didn't want to leave the activity he was doing as the sitter's and I made him go anyway because I was on a deadline to pick his sister up on time.  Or I don't give him a sugary snack that he's asked for, instead offering something along the lines of fruit or yogurt. 

I have to hand it to him, he is one stubborn kid.  Reminds me of myself in some ways. And I know this is  something that many kids go through.  I try not to overthink it.  But when your six year old, from the back seat of your car, says "I wish you were dead," as you're driving him home on an icy highway filled with 18-wheelers and farm equipment, it sort of takes you aback.  Actually, if you're me, it makes you cry a little bit.

I think parents of special needs often find themselves in a conundrum where we have to learn to separate what is simply normal childhood behavior and developmental change from behaviors that stem from the disorders.   Its hard sometimes to tell.  I'm afraid if I just chalk something up to normal development, then I'll fail to bring it up to the doctor and it turns out it was important.  But if I bring up every little thing that transpires, then I feel like I'm being overly concerned about minutiae.

I'm looking forward to the passing of this phase, if that's indeed what it is.  I know my daughter went through one similar, but I don't remember it being as bad as this or as prolonged.  Maybe its something like what we do mentally with childbirth - it sucks while its happening, but after its over we tend to forget some of the more unpleasant details in act of self-preservation.  We remember it as being better than it actually was, which is nature's way of ensuring we might be fooled into doing it again at some point in the future. 

This WILL pass, right?

Heavy

Some days the weight of it all becomes unbearable. 

Its not just the things that are unique to my situation, though those are a large part of the heaviness.  Living one paycheck away from God only knows what kind of financial disaster may befall is scary.  Looking at the half-ton of hay left in the barn and Christmas rushing at me on the calendar and knowing the old gelding needs his teeth floated and my daughter wants to sign up for basketball and my life insurance premium is coming due and my son needs interventions and god, the house needs cleaning and things need fixing and I need a haircut and I forgot my meds and we're out of groceries and and and...makes my heart want to thump right out of my chest and go careening madly down the street.  There's the faces of my kids and the other inmates at the zoo who all need some portion of time and attention, which becomes harder to give the more stressed out and tired I get.  There's the ungodly amount of work waiting for me at my desk and the burden of finding a new hire before the job kills me.  There's the worrying about so many things and so many people.

There's the stuff that we all go through - am I doing the right things with my kids?  Setting the right examples?  When I make decisions about life, career, finances, am I making the right ones?  Am I OK with my loved ones?  Am I OK with God?  AM I DOING THIS RIGHT? 

So.

Thursday I will cook a big ass turkey and all the trimmings and I will sit down at the table with my kids and my ex husband (yes, we do holidays together) and I will try, for at least one day, to put these things out of my mind and remember to be damned grateful for all the things that I DO have and stop worrying about the things I don't.

I have parents who support me in so many ways you can't even imagine.  Who love and listen and care and give, time and money and hugs and words.

I have beautiful, amazing children.  Children who are funny and smart and creative and kind.  Children who are sensitive and special and miraculous.  Children who out of the blue will come up to me and squeeze me around the middle and tell me they love me "more than the whole everything."

I have friends who love me.  Friends that come get me with their rig so I can ride my horse somewhere outside of my own pasture.  Friends who drive cross country to see me.  Friends who take me out to listen to a band when I'm so stressed out I can't breathe.  Friends who send me funny emails and make me laugh.  Friends who pray for me all the time.  Friends who find little ways to pick up some of the balls I drop. Friends who live in the box on my my desk, that share their daily struggles and joys and who listen to mine.  Friends who write comments here and other places that show me they are listening and that they care. 

I have these furballs, big and small, who bring meaning and joy to my life.   The warmth and weight of the purring cat on my lap, the dogs curled around my chair as I type, the horses who rumble and look happy when I emerge from the house.  My horses who let me hug them and hang on them and who put their soft noses near my face and breathe their horsey breath on me.  My silly little chickens who follow me around whenever I'm out by the barn and who give me breakfast almost every day.

And I realize that sometimes the heavy thing that I feel is not the burden of responsibility, but a large, solid blanket of love and support that wraps me up and helps me carry the weight of all the other things.