Kids, Coffee, Chaos

Life as a working mom of three, chasing my next cup of coffee through the chaos of our lives while I get a few words written

The Difference of a Year

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I’m struck this morning by how different my life last year was compared to my life this year. For a significant portion of last year, I worried that my marriage might be ending. I was hurting a lot both emotionally and physically, and toward the end of the year, beginning the journey to figure out what was wrong with my hips.

For most of 2012, I was unwinding. I had taken a new job after leaving the one that had made me horribly miserable for most of the prior five years. My new job was a leap of faith because it was not a permanent position. But, slowly, I was feeling like myself.

But my marriage was still rocky. Then, I am not sure what happened. Late last year, my husband started participating in our family more. And what a difference it makes. He does more with the kids. He helps more with family chores. We talk more, opening ourselves up to each other more than we have in years.

The change in our house has been amazing. And it has continued for much of this year. I don’t feel like I am parenting solo most of the team and instead feel like we are a real family team.

We are also taking some big strides that would have been hard to do without us working together. Like buying our first house. We still have areas where we can improve, but I feel like we are moving forward this year and it’s awesome.

What has change for you over the last year?

Summer Fun, Special Projects, and Fall Sports

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So our summer flew by. Busy days going places, doing things. I wanted the kids to have fun and I think we did.

School started about a month ago. Oldest Kidlet (OD) is now in second grade. Middle Kidlet (MK) is in her last year of preschool, and Littlest Kidlet (LK) has started his first year of preschool. So we are busy doing all of that.

Then I took on a two month special project that started in August for work. While a good move for my career, it’s been eating up most of my time at work and some of my personal time. Luckily, I was able to complete it successfully.

Just in the knick of time for fall sports to begin. OK is doing both soccer and cheerleading. MK is doing soccer. LK just runs around like a little demon. These are all recreational, so they are not super intense, but we are busy and this is where I am super thankful for the Cozi web calendar and app because I can see at a glance what is going on when.

However, I am writing more than I was before. NaNoWriMo is coming up and I’m trying to decide what to do for it. I have arranged for some time off during November since I can do that at New Job. Hunter Husband seems to be more understanding this year as well, so that helps too.

Over the last few months, I’ve encountered so many things where I think, “That would be good to discuss on the blog,” and then I never do, so I am going to attempt to do that a little more often.

What does everyone else have going on during this fall season?

Life in the Fast Lane

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Time flies when you are busy with all kinds of crap! It’s hard to believe that it is summer already and we’re in the middle of the sixth month of the year.

There have been all sorts of things going on around here, from successes to more illness. I am hoping the warm weather and the sunshine put an end to all this nasty germs.

The oldest finished her year of first grade by winning all the awards except attendance. She won the President’s Physical Fitness award, made High Honor Roll for the entire school year, made her Marathon Reader goal, and made her AR reading goals for the entire year. I am so proud of her hard work for all her accomplishments for this year!

Middle child finished her second year of preschool. She goes back for one more year before she begins kindergarten. I sometimes worry that another year of preschool and then kindergarten will bore her to pieces because she is so smart already, but I fear her social skills need the extra time to develop before she enters elementary school. I can only hope I am making the right decision for her. One of my favorite school tales is the time I was almost sent to the principal’s office during first grade because I was so bored I was smearing Elmer’s on my hands and picking it off once it dried. I don’t want my children to suffer that same boredom.

The youngest child begins his first year of preschool in the fall. I am thinking he’ll really enjoy it. He hated having to leave every time his sister was dropped off all last year.

I’ve been battle sinus infections some more. One of those triggered a nice case of iritis. But after spending ALL THE DOLLARS taking everyone to the doctor for tonsillitis and strep, I self-treated with the medication I already had.

However, I got to meet up with my rheumatologist to go over my x-rays. It turns out there is abnormal inflammation on the iliac side of both my sacroiliac joints. So he recommended I get an MRI to determine if the cause was degenerative or inflammatory and if it was inflammatory, he thought I would need to start on a biologic. MRI results came back, but I have not met with the doctor to discuss in person. Best I can tell from my e-chart is that there is some inflammation, but it is not acute. He recommended a different drug than the biologic at this time.

But then I think I’m going to have to see an ENT about my near-constant sinus pain.

Recommendation:  Don’t let issues fester!

I think I am going to attempt Camp NaNoWriMo in July. I am getting a handle on new job and there are far less restrictions on time off than my previous full-time job. I need to get my writing back on track. This is one thing I really want for myself.

The other things I am going to focus on including developing a daily exercising routine and actually doing it, and doing more fun things with the kids. Both are in progress. I think we will like the results.

What fun things do you have planned for the summer?

Hey, You Slacker!

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Don’t mind me, I’m just talking to myself again. So much for blogging every day. I missed yesterday’s post, so I suppose I must do it twice today.

The husband and are talking again. Really talking. I think there comes a point where you have been together so long and things are evolving and life is changing. We’ve been together for 16 years now and there are so many things going on right now.

But I feel like things are going in a positive direction and we can solve just about anything if we are willing to work at it together.

A Day at a Time

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Hello there, you smexy thing. I’m back for another round of blog posting. I’m going to try this new thing were I build my habit by posting every day, even if it’s just a tiny little bit of whatever.

My day started at 2 am when Kidlet Three woke up. It wasn’t all that unexpected seeing as he fell asleep on the way home. I was even pleased when he took one bite of a “hoptart”, drank half a glass of milk, blew out a bunch of snot, and fell back to sleep. I would have happily gone back to sleep too, except our 12 year old Cocker Spaniel/Chow Chow mix thought that I wanted to stay up and proceeded to bark from his kennel for over an hour. So I cleaned out my inbox and deleted a bunch of emails I didn’t need before finally deciding to get up and take a shower.

So now I am caffeinating, because that is the best (and only!) way to start the day. There is a light snow/sleet mix coming down and I need to get ready for work. Yet here I sit at the computer.

My marriage is facing struggles again. Or perhaps I should say that we are back to the same struggle we’ve had. Yesterday it just hit home again. Somehow we got on a path that causes my husband to say that I don’t deserve a break away from the kids or family stuff ever. Unless I want to fork over the dollars for it. I pay a decent wage for my babysitters so that gets expensive fast if I go that route. Meanwhile, all over my real and my online lives, other mothers who have spouses that tell their wives, “Go. Take that break. you deserve it.” And all I can wonder is why I am not worthy. He gets to go do things. Other mothers get to go do things. I NEED that time alone for my sanity and I’m not getting it. I suffer. but I can’t seem to convince him that I would be a much happier, healthier, BETTER wife and mother if I got that time.

So we’ve reached a bit of an impasse. I can’t let it go and he won’t give in. This produces a lot of stress. Coincidentally (or not), this has a produced an increase in my hip pain.  I thought my reduction in pain was from another cause, but multiple variables changed when my pain decreased, and I now suspect stress and anxiety are a big trigger. I was finally able to see a rheumatologist and while he doesn’t think I have signs of ankylosing spondylitis, there appears to be something going on. My bloodwork is normal, but on the borderline of the high end of the range, and  I wasn’t having a lot of pain issues when it was drawn. Today I get X-rays, which I am looking forward to. Hopefully some answers and some better pain management. Now that I’ve made the stress/anxiety connection, I need to figure out how to minimize it. A conflict that cannot be solved doesn’t help.

Getting lost in the crazy world of day job doesn’t sound so bad right now.

House of Ick! And Gross!

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2013 has proved to be an interesting year. New job. New schedule. More activities. And a buttload of illness. For a house that rarely gets sick, we’ve been rocking the Sickness Salute since Christmas. Every week seems to bring something new. Stomach bugs. Colds. What appears to have been a mild flu. Sinus infections. Either a new illness strikes or a new family member gets it. I’m exhausted. Because nothing says awesome like waking up at 2 am to clean puke off the floor.

New job is going well. I am getting home earlier, but lately I have been battling exhaustion in the evening and I’m not nearly as productive as I had hoped to be. Perhaps when spring comes with some sunshine and warmer weather, things will ease up a bit. Sunshine is always good. My days at work are busy, but I stay just this side of panic about task overload. The hours sure fly by and the people are fun to work with. I like this company. Every time I’ve worked there (intern, 2 temp gigs, & now full-time employee), I feel right at home with these people.

The kids are getting busier than ever. Soccer will start up soon. I’m kind of disappointed that Kidlet One wanted to take a break as she seems to have a bit of natural talent. However, Kidlet Two is super excited to be big enough to play this year in the preschooler group. I am also trying to round up other activities and opportunities for the kids, even if it means I’m exhausted. Kidlet One has Girl Scouts, which always seems to be busy.

On the writing front, my novels (yes, that is plural) call out to me, mocking me about my lack of attention to their causes. Every time I sit down to write, it seems something comes up with the kids demanding my attention and I end up so exhausted it is hard to think once I finally sit down again. I am hoping some of this clears up with the warmer weather. I’ve also made efforts to get to bed earlier so I can get up earlier. This morning I got up a littler earlier, but so did Kidlet Three and he woke his oldest sister in the process, so I don’t quite call it a success. More like yet another work in progress. But isn’t all of life?

In the meantime, I keep trying to make progress, including a complete declutter of the house. It’s time to purge a great many things. I’ll keep trucking after my goals and get there eventually, including blogging more. I do enjoy it.

2013: Year of Many Things

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At one point I was going to write all these delightful goals for 2013. Things I was going to do, all these wonderful things I was going to accomplish. But alas, life has a way of taking all of my plans and scattering them to the four corners of the earth. So, let’s recap a bit.

Thanksgiving holiday I was as sick as a dog. The week I had off between Christmas and New Year’s, I was sick as a dog. I’ve started a new job. The past week I started fully into my new job and my brain is mushy, full of new things. It will all sort itself eventually though. I’ve also had a horrid headache for the last two days.

So let’s just say that for 2013, these are the things on my plate:

  • Settle in to my new job
  • Write more
  • Get the house decluttered & hold a garage sale
  • Save a significant amount toward a Disney vacation
  • Focus on eating right including more real, whole foods
  • Make regular exercise a thing for me
  • Pay off some debt

That seems to be plenty. Some of it is simple. Some of it repeats from last year. And some of it is new to a public list but has been on my mind for quite a time.

I am excited to get back into the writing seat. I am also grateful for a new job that allows me more time with my family and involves working with a great group of people. I get home much earlier than I have in years and my commute is cut in half. Score!

If you are a urban fantasy fan, Ilona Andrews is putting out the Innkeeper Chronicles. Book One is called Clean Sweep. The link takes you the beginning. I find it awesome.

Some of my friends are out in an anthology called A Spank in Time! Way to go, folks!

I think that’s about all I have for now. I am currently reading Tiffany Allee’s Lycan Unleashed. Just started. Somewhere I need to keep a list of books I’ve read this year.

Organizing Our Life (or All the Kids’ Crap)

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Five people. Three dogs. Itty bitty too small house. What are the chances we have crap flowing out of every corner? That answer would be 100%. And I’m tired of stuff being everywhere I turn. I’m tired of things being every which way and there being no order in this house.
So here and there I’ve been collecting things we don’t really use to donate or hold a garage sale or something. I got very lucky that someone I know is pregnant with a boy, so all of Kidlet Three’s baby stuff went that way, other than a few keepsakes I couldn’t part with. I have some supplies from the breast pump to sell or donate still. I’ve marked up most of the clothes that Kidlet Two has outgrown so I can sell them. Though if I ran into someone who needed them, I’d just give them away. (Getting rid of the kid stuff makes me sad that there will no more little babies coming to our house, but I digress.)
I need to go through all the rooms and gather up all the stuff we don’t use and don’t need to get rid of that crap. There are pack rats in my family tree. I started to display some of those tendencies once upon a time. I think I’m cured now though, as parting with things is becoming less and less difficult. Especially when I stuck a bunch of stuff in a corner to get it out of the way and I haven’t touched anything in those boxes in months. It seems like plenty of reason to part with that stuff to me.
The kids’ stuff is a little trickier. The oldest kidlet is a pack rat. Getting her to part with anything is exceedingly difficult to the extent I’ve tossed stuff when she’s gone because we really don’t need to keep every scrap of paper she may have ever doodled on at some point in her six years. Really. Plus we have a range of toys because of the range of ages. They. Are. Everywhere!
So, The Feminist Breeder did a blog post on her obsessive organizing habits. She’s using the Trofast system from IKEA, which is not wallet draining system. She even labeled it all and everything looks Type A perfect. It seemed like a system that might work for us. Unfortunately, the closest IKEA is in Chicago, six hours away. And the shipping costs are heart-stopping. So short of a road trip (And hey, I could make weekend of it!), I’m not getting these pretty neat organizing devices.
In a fit of inspiration, or maybe it was frustration, I used my Google Fu to look for something similar to this system. I found a DIY hack of the Trofast framing, which makes it possible to get organized. I might be able to talk to the husband into building pretty things for me to put all the kids’ crap into. Then I can put pretty labels on all the things and hopefully have less disaster and more things mastered.
Because I tried to clean the hellacious room that is the computer/play room this weekend and There. Is. Crap. EVERYWHERE. Tubs that used to hold things are overflowing. There are things that need to be thrown away and/or replaced. Toys that could probably be pitched or given away. The kids destroyed that room and I turned a blind eye to it and now there is a giant mess. Denial is a bad, bad thing.
While I have some vague ideas on making all this stuff work, I need to create a concrete organization plan so I know what I need and how it will look when I’m done. I have to know these things. And I need to organize my home office supplies as well. It’s all getting so messy. I need a month off of work to make it all happen, too. I may have to call in some favors to get this accomplished, but I have to have the supplies first. This will be my big winter project. What will you be in working on over through the end of the year?

NaNoWriMo 2012: I’d Really Like to Win This Year

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So the fall weather announces one of the most exciting times of the writing world for many folks. November is National Novel Writing Month. For the thirty days that make up November, writers all around the world push themselves to write 50,000 words. For some it’s a challenge, for others it is as easy as pie. Some writers are not a fan of the concept, some writers use it as a chance to make a change and break away from the normal habits of the other 11 months.
I’ve attempted for several years, some harder than others. I have yet to win. Most years it seems like something super serious and time consuming comes up and I drop everything. So I tried Camp NaNoWriMo this summer. And failed. I also may not have been motivated.
Some of it I think is me. My motivation is craptacular. I want to write. I love the way it feels when the words pour out of me and a story is formed. But things are kind of stressful right now too. Small children, full time job, rocky marriage, sleepless nights. They all add up and sometimes it seems like they suck the life right out of me. I have a great group of online writing buddies to turn to for some motivation, but I’m not particularly close to any one person. I never have been really close to many people. Sometimes I wish for one good friend that I could stay connected with besides my husband. But I don’t get a lot of time to build relationships, so I take what I can get.
My online buddies push me to meet my writing goals sometimes. We have Word Wars and discussions. I just need to figure out how to turn this into a Thing, which means building some new habits. My preferred method would be to get up before the rest of the house and write quietly with a cup of coffee. However, sleeping through the night is overrated and I am often awakened at least two times a night, and when the alarm clock goes off, I am not ready to climb out of the bed. I am hoping since Kidlet 3 only has one more molar to break through, that we will have more restful nights in the near future.
Back to this year’s NaNo, I am considering hiring a babysitter/mother’s helper on the weekends some to help me free up some time to write. It’s hard to concentrate on the story when every five seconds you have to go chase a two year old off his latest climbing expedition. It also makes it physically hard to type on the keyboard when you aren’t at the computer. But with a helper, I have a possibility of escaping to the library or coffee shop to do a little writing. Or even just plugging earbuds in and not having to worry about kid disasters for awhile.
We will see as we get closer to the start of November, but I worry that trying to manage the job, the kids, the house, my sanity and doing it all may make reaching my writing goal harder. It’s hard when your spouse doesn’t support what you do.
Anyone else giving NaNoWriMo a try?

It Feels Like Fall. Busy, Busy Fall

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While I had grandiose plans of all the things I wanted to accomplish this summer, it mainly fell to two things: doing some things with the kids and resting/rejuvenating myself.

I have been enjoying every Friday off since around the beginning of summer and each week I make a list of the millions of things I am going to accomplish. Each week, I have accomplished very little on these lists. Most of the time, I have demands from the two littlest people in my life to contend with. My middle child doesn’t act like your typical three year old and would give most adults a run for their money. Meanwhile, Mr. ClimberPants is busy trying to scare the daylights out of me and find new, exciting, Dangerous! things to do with his time.

Other mornings, it takes the whole morning before I can enjoy my coffee and catch up on the internet. That may sound like some serious time-wasting to some folks, but the internet is where most of my friends live. Particularly my writer friends. I spend quite a bit of time hanging out with the cool people of the Absolute Write (AW) Water Cooler, so this is my socialization. I don’t get to maintain many real life friendships, so the online ones really count. Plus, the people are really awesome and get all the weird facets of my personality. Fellow writers unite!

But the last couple of weeks have welcomed a change. I think I’ve finally decompressed enough from some of the stress in my life to start living it again, which is a major thing. But I’ve managed to tackle some of those projects waiting out there for me to get done.

I’ve been writing again as well. I think that is an effect of hanging out with the hooligans of AW’s chat more often. They encourage and pester and challenge me to Word Wars until I want to write. Then the words flow like magic, which is awesome. My biggest writing hump is usually getting going. If I stay away too long, I lose my momentum and forget what I was going for when I wrote the last time.

One of the other big things to tackle is to getting rid of the clutter in our house. I have let things get severely out of hand and now the job is enormous. I really just need to break down the cleaning up and tackle chunks at a time. So, I’ll keep making lists and work harder to get more things checked off. Motivation seems to be a hard thing to hang onto these days.

And I’ve got some big things planned for the kiddos for Christmas this year. A kid-sized entertainment area, which requires getting rid of some of the things we have now and implementing new systems to manage and store things. I’m still sketching out ideas in my head, but I think the kids will like having a private area just for them

Quite a bit of the time lately has been me in pain again. It’s all in my hips and lower back. I strongly suspect ankylosing spondylitis, which is a degenerative, inflammatory spinal disease that is autoimmune based. It’s also hereditary and my dad was diagnosed many years ago. I keep putting off going to the doctor to get an official diagnosis, perhaps out of denial? I can’t acknowledge what isn’t confirmed, you know? But the pain is getting out of hand.

Also, I need to take up yoga because that would help a lot. But I don’t really have the time or babysitter to get to any of the classes around here, so I’ve been looking for a good beginner’s video. Then once I get the computer room cleaned out and the kids’ area set up, I should have the perfect spot to do yoga. Maybe I can get the kids to join me. They’d like that.

I have a lot of topics I’d like to write about. I’ve been trying to give my writing the attention it deserves, so I hope to get started on those sometime soon in the future.