I blame facebook.
Who am I kidding, I'm a busy busy lady with lots and lots of things that keep me from writing.
But as I sit down in my beautiful house, in front of my windows that are open out on a strangely cool June morning, I realize how very thankful I am for this particular moment.
It's not because it's a great day. Nothing is really going on...I have a list of chores as long as my arm...bills too. I still need a better job, a better car, a better body. One of my kids is sick and the other two need a little "work". I'm closing a wonderful chapter of my life this week and I find myself excited and weepy by turns.
This weekend the girls and I cleaned out the school room...well, I have to go back a little farther. About a year ago, we had a huge flood. HUGE. It brought down the ceilings...we had to restore about 75% of the house...including all the flooring in the whole house, most of the walls etc. In the process, we also changed a few things that we'd always wanted to do. And it was great. But...
Maybe I have to go back farther. From 2015 - 2017 we had dear friends who lived with us...there were 4 of them and there are 4 of us...two ladies, six kids, eventually 4 dogs, a couple of birds and a myriad of fish. A houseful. During that almost 2 year period, we switched rooms (or moved within the house) 3 times just trying to figure out what worked best for all those bodies. Have you ever moved? It's stressful. Add all the bodies in there...some of whom weren't exactly onboard to be "helpful", you have a lot of excess brain power going into every day...because you don't know exactly where you put that thing, and you walk into a room and the baby or the puppy or the teenager has been there and it looks like a bunch of drunken pirates decided that this was the day to make confetti with tiny shreds of who knows what and cheerios. Also...Lord, SAVE me from the slime. But I digress. It was a beautiful time for relationships...not a great time for the organization of things.
The roommate-hood ended in a horribly medical way and I don't want to talk too much about it. Suffice to say, it ended abruptly, and everybody involved got a little broken and spent a good amount grieving after the fact. The medical situation is ongoing, but the crisis part is past and I'm blessed to still get to see my friend and ex-roommate several times a week, just to put a bow on that.
Beanie, my oldest girlie, graduated in 2017 and I immediately had to go to work (part-time), which changed the dynamic of our house irrevocably. It was a tough tough year.
That basically brings you up to date to 2018...which is when the flood happened. We had just barely gotten our feet down from the roommate upset, the graduation, and my going to work. The house was a mess, the kids were a mess, the dogs (oy). So when I walked into the house that fateful night to find it raining and ceilings falling...it was kind of the pinnacle of a very bad patch.
Then we were out of the house for I think 68 days...it might have been 63...but a long time. And during that period we "moved" to friends, to a hotel, and then to the "million dollar" apartment. Our stuff was moved out, our house was gutted, everything we'd put "there" for the last 5 years was no longer "there".
When we moved back, we had help to get stuff kind of where it was supposed to go, beds and tables and whatnot, but the boxes pretty much stayed in place, slowly being gone through as we needed to find something. But then it was just us. And our "US" that had always been so rock solid was suddenly completely fractured...and there wasn't anybody to tell who could help...we just had to (still have to) slog through it.
Somewhere along the line, I got sick and I just could not figure out what was going on. Now if the truth were really known, I've been struggling with this sickness for years and it underlies a bunch of my issues with weight and fatigue and anxiety and depression and diminishing eyesight. In the summer of 2018 (about a month and a half after being back in the house), I found my blood sugar to be 539. I spent the next almost 2 months getting it back down to normal and I've spent almost the last year, with the help of medication, trying to keep it that way. I do pretty well unless I'm getting sick...and then all bets are off.
I've spent so many days feeling guilty about how disorganized my house is. Ashamed of this place that I love. Telling myself that if I was just a better mom, housekeeper, PERSON, we wouldn't have to live this way.
Getting the school room finished is like this huge shining trophy for me. It's not like it's going to stay that way...I still see wild pirates in my future...but the move-in that should have happened a year ago, finally happened because I was able to be home, because I felt okay, and because our "US" is starting to recover.
To anyone dealing with heart-ache, or sickness, or catastrophe, or any of those things that we all deal with...yes, you need to get up, sure, you need to get going...but all you really need to do is the very best you can do today. I've had days where the BEST I had was making my kids watch a movie in my room so I could sleep through it near them.
Grace will come, there will be a day when the overwhelming isn't so overwhelming and you'll be able to do that thing that you just couldn't do. You know the one I mean, that one that you assume ANYBODY would be able to do better than you could. When that Grace comes...run with it as hard as you can. Because, maybe tomorrow, you won't have it in you.
I hate that we don't talk about recovery until there is some measure that someone can judge acceptable, because often that measure is YEARS later. I heard Peter Dinklage say that he was at a job he hated for YEARS until he finally made progress and could move forward. I posit that we ALL are making progress every day...and in a few years, we will all be able to say...LOOK HOW FAR I'VE COME. When you feel like you are standing still and that nothing is ever going to change...think of me.It took me a YEAR, but I've been making progress every single day. And today, I'm so thankful I had the time to notice.
See ya around...
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