Today was just not a good one. As I told Chris, that is good – helps me to know why the good ones go well. For one, we needed more activity this morning. I see how a lot of exertion in the morning really sets up our day. Also, I was tired and distracted as well.

We survived and as always, there were still some highlights. We made our cheesy snails which have pizza sauce in them. They are so good! We had a great lunch. And trust me, we do plenty of PB&J around here, so I was excited to come up with this. Today Tyler also made a golf club with a baster and spoon and began inventing games he could play.

I still made myself go to the gym even though I couldn’t even run a mile. I did some other core work though, so I got some kind of workout. Chris kindly put the kids to bed. I am just making myself take care of a few things before I collapse into bed.

I can’t get tired. I am just getting caught up with things and don’t want to get underwater again. I am still having to find my rhythm around here as well – otherwise I am always cleaning or trying to get something done. Trying to find more space for me to just be as well….

OK, that is about all my brain can come up with….

..and I wanted to make a stronger statement that that. This post is being written to my kids so they can understand why I am partially insane.

The getting them ready for bed is not the problem. The reading books, chatting, loving, or telling a story isn’t the problem.

It is that when I walk out of their rooms, I am figuratively punching my clock. I am done. I have given everything I can give and have nothing left to give. But they still need me. And I am done with being needed. I can feel my shoulder blades tighten when I hear “Mama” from my daughter or my son pops out for another hug.

And so there are times where I lost my temper. I just want time for ME. I want everyone to leave me alone.

Even on Daddy’s nights, he reads them books, then the kids run out of the room looking for me hug them, say goodnight, tuck them in. And then they proceed to need me for an unpredictable amount of time.

Oh and how I dislike uncertainty – I never know if it will be 1 Mama or 5 Mama’s…and tears if I don’t come.

And lately with hubby working every waking minute of the day it seems, he is here, but not really and so it just seems to be that much harder as I am that much more tired.

*sigh* It all just sucks. I don’t want bedtime to be like this, but it just is right now. Obviously, it is worse when I am tired, so I am trying to get better about earlier bedtimes.

I love both of you kids so much and I am sorry for the crankiness, but Mama just needs some time to recharge so I can have plenty of energy, time and love the next day. We have to disconnect for a little while.

And with that, I should go to bed.

I LOVE this shot – I can’t think of anything that more exemplifies living in the moment. And that is where I am right now -feeling so very alive! I feel like I am awakening after a long time. I have been trudging through these last two years searching for escape from my burdens.

But that is not the way to do it. That is running away from my life and whatever realities it may hold. My kids have been showing me all along – “it is raining, let’s gallop through it!”

Life will always be heavy and because of how I am wired, I will always feel the weight whether it be my own or someone else’s. So every opportunity I get, I have to go run in the rain and enjoy the sensations of water falling on my skin!

It has been hard because I am here, but with my husband, I feel like we are in different places. I wish I could just give him this feeling. I literally feel high, drunk, weightless, open, optimistic, sensual, alive and giddy. My focus over the next few months will be to integrate this into my family life. I shouldn’t need to be away from my family to be in this place. I want us all to feel alive, to feel the possibilities of each day. I need to tempt him to my place…and I am pretty sure with some effort, I can do that.

I won’t give up even though I sometimes feel like it. I want him with me. He has been my partner in adventure for so long, I want him with me. He mistakes my anger as pulling away, rather it stems from how badly I want to be connected to him. I have known him for so long, I know him intimately, I feel him, there is so much electricity still there after all these years and yet it seems like there is an abyss between us. Life weighs him down and to escape and decompress he spends many hours in one room of our house engaged in activities for one.

I have seen him elated and blissed out – I know him in that space. He thinks I don’t feel it, but I totally do. The singing, the laughter, the childlike silliness…it comes much less often then it used to. He is retreating to a place where he can’t afford to let go like that, he must at all times have one foot solidly on the ground being the adult.

I want to create opportunities in our home for him to be able to let go and feel light. And if anyone can do that for him, it is me. I left him behind to find my own bliss rather than engaging him more and drawing him out. I wanted him to want that fun, to seek it with me. That is not how he works. And so I will do the seeking for all of us (with the help of the kids I am sure) and I will keep it light.

So I do things like buying puppets. You will have to meet Chicken and Skiddish. Puppets – if you don’t have one and you have kids, you need one..or two. That is for another post though!

I am surrounded by many end of life situations right now and it has me incredibly jaded about it. What I see is depressing and sad and makes me wonder why the hell we even save for retirement…to pay the medical bills as I waste away until I finally die? I want out when I want out. No way in hell I want to hang around to be in any of the situations I am watching. No living will – I want out at the near top of my game. And if something happens to my brain that screws with that, I will have someone be around to back me up.

I meet so many people my Mom’s age, their 60s, their golden years and they are dealing with aging parents in some form or fashion. None of it is pretty. It creates endless stress for families and there is just no happy ending. It is so much – living situations, medical bills, Medicare, who is going to do the caregiving, the cleaning, the meals, family arguments, settling estates, etc. The end of life care in this country sucks. They way people die is insane.

Today I spent many hours in the heat helping my Mom clean my grandparents house. No A/C. They had to go to assisted living because the doctor’s refused to allow my grandmother to return to the lake. To see that house and what they were living in was so very sad. It was so dirty. I spent so many years at this Lake house – so many good, good memories.

And now it sits deteriorated. I don’t even think that they know how dirty it is. I think my Grandfather’s brain is feeble and he is living very much in the Depression era where he is from. He had turned off the fridge, but somehow the doors didn’t stay open and there was so much mold. My Mom is vacuuming the carpets and you can hear all the bugs she is picking up. She is afraid to pick up papers and books to dust around because of spiders, silverfish and the like. Bedsheets are dark with as they hadn’t been washed in ages. Dust and spider webs everywhere, awful olders. It was bad.

And it is just sad. This morning I was full of emotion – so jaded. So completely jaded. And so we clean and do our best to pitch things trying to get rid of what we can. Today we left with 7 bags of trash. We have to tell my Grandfather “therapeutic lies”,as my Mom calls them, that we are going to sell those things and later we will give him a check for it. He thinks he can sell some of those things when they are so dirty, or old, or broken that they have no value.

We worked so hard today and I needed that. The emotion needed to get out and it did in the sweat and the labor. The day ran way late and so we decide to head to Gruene, TX for dinner with the kids. And there I had sangria and my head swims and I am at peace. It all is what it is. It still completely sucks, but it is what it is. I began the day in such a funk, just feeling it all, and by the end it was gone. I had nothing left to feel and I was glad for that.

For me, it comes in waves -some day I feel every emotion I encounter whether it belongs to me or someone else. And so to feel nothing but the sangria in me was quite nice.

What I did take away from this day is that I am going to start living more, in the present and to the fullest. This notion of saving until this golden period is bullshit – because you know what – it doesn’t work like that. Hell, these could be my golden years right now – everything could go to shit after this. I am starting a Happiness Project and my resolutions are going to be focused on enjoying each day as much as I can. Because I just don’t know what awaits me and no matter how well I eat or how much I exercise or how good my genes are – there are no promises. None.

My issues today center not so much on losing these people – it is inevitable and I have known that is coming for a while for all of them. It is the HOW that I can’t really stand. This final part of the journey sucks and it ain’t pretty.

And for all my bemoaning on how my kids can be difficult, I have one thing going for me – they are healthy and they are blooming and growing. I am watching two small plants grow, flower and become more grand. Unlike my Mom, who is watching my father wilt, shrink and lose his color. The same with my grandparents and my father in law for that matter. And for all them, it is all just a matter of time. There are no cures. They are all dying, the only question is when.

Life can be so batshit insane sometimes. I spoke with my Grandfather and he said, “I hope your kids enjoy their day at the lake.” I know he was thinking about the days when I was a kid and the fun I had. This was nothing like that for them. They were such troopers. They have not had to experience much death just yet, but they are both getting a front row seat at what a deteriorating life looks like. I wonder what they will remember in 20 years.

With that, I should go to bed, it has been a long, hard day.

Fear is such a necessary and nasty thing. Change is coming. Fear serves to heighten my awareness and alert me that I am standing at a precipice and need to make a decision. Do I freeze or do I leap?

Then there is the nasty side. Where fear leads to me conjuring possible alternate realities that are less than desirable. Next thing I know I am in a funk and feeling very much the victim.

The change approaching me isn’t that scary in and of itself, it is more that is exposes a weak point for me. I have decided to homeschool my kids next year. That in and of itself doesn’t worry me at all. I already know how we are spending the year, I am going to have them in a gymnastics class for homeschoolers one day a week, we have a weekly hike with another awesome homeschool family, and through the ever-expanding homeschool network in Austin we will find other opportunities and adventures. I am getting excited about it!

The scary part for me is that after 4 years of being supported by a very tight-knit group of Mamas, I am the only one making this choice. They will all be sending their kids to various schools around town. And I don’t know what the other side looks like. I fear that I will be forgotten or left out. I feel a bit lonely. I don’t know how all our lives will or won’t change. I will miss these last years of adventures, playdates and outings…most of all the support and friendship. Our friendships won’t be ending and I know that, it is more that there might be less room for them.

This is where the fear prays on my weak spots. I immediately flash black to moments in my past, where I was that person who was left out. I find it amusing that at 35 I can still feel like a kid in high school afraid that I won’t make any friends on the first day of class. It is surprising how old wounds can so easily surface to reinforce thoughts brought forward by fear.

But this morning, I stopped and took a deep breath. I will not play victim and I can’t spend my time worrying about pretend scenarios in my head. What I need to do is trust in the universe, trust that the people who are meant to be in my life will be. I also need to kick my own butt and have confidence in myself and not let the insecurities drive. I was always the girl afraid to take risks and do things against the grain, so this is very good for me.

It is just a down few days for me…they seem to come now and then. And in some ways it is good because it gives me a chance to bolster myself, to reaffirm my decisions, to dig and find that “just do it” attitude that I know is there. Everything will truly be fine and I am so lucky to even have a choice in this matter. Sometimes it is just hard to leave the nest…..

Yesterday my kids wanted to go to an art museum to see what other artists’ work looked like. Yes, next year will be very fun indeed.

It is amazing. For the past 4 weeks I have been doing a pretty good job of getting the rest I need and working out and it is amazing how good I feel. I didn’t need coffee, had a clear head, more energy and a positive outlook.

Fast forward to a few days of craziness, a kid up for a while last night and some late nights and what a difference it makes. I haven’t gotten to the gym this week, am drinking caffeine trying to get my brain alert, and feel so unmotivated and hopeless.

I read something that said lack of sleep can lead to depression. Um, yeah. I mean if you feel like this all the time how could one not be depressed? I know that this is all lack of sleep though, so today is gently putting one foot in front of the other and conserving energy where possible. Tonight I will have my butt in bed early and will try to get back to that good schedule I had been on.

Yesterday upon telling my kids I loved them, Tyler replied with something like, “I don’t always think you do.” Basically alluding that I am angry all the time. I can’t tell you how shitty I felt hearing that. Of course, he is 5 and a half and so I have to be weary of how much weight I put on that. But still, it made me sad.

I don’t really know what to do about that except to continue to take care of myself so I can be my best self and the best parent I can be. *sigh* One foot in front of the other, right?

I feel a bit embarrassed. My blog is an excellent tool to clear my head. I am quite visual and reading my words 20 times helps me figure things out. Of course it is published to FB, so when I note that things are bad, people are going to check in (and I appreciate that).

I am doing much better today. Spent 1.5 hours at the gym. Very, very good for me.

I am coming to the end of a long road which is a very good thing, but it also means the end of a way of operating. I have had ups and downs during this time, but now, finally, I can be tired and admit just how frickin’ strung out I am. The breaking point was about 3 weeks ago when I had nothing I had to do in the evening and didn’t know what to do with myself because I didn’t do anything for fun. Everything was a project, a purpose, a need – I could not stop, the time had to be filled with something.

Everything is slowly balancing out – hubby is better, Mom is walking, driving and now moved. My Dad has been elevated to the next level of care at his dementia home which is a good thing. Save for the scare that my grandmother died yesterday (someone in my family did, but an older relative mixed up who it was), things are calming down. I am shedding commitments which is such a relief to me.

At the same time, I am accepting that not everything will get easier and I still have a lot of weight to hold. I emailed a friend yesterday talking about how I sometimes just need to throw a tantrum about being “the strong one”.

It only reinforces that I am older and can’t do things like I used to. I imagine the universe feels I have not done a satisfactory job of learning to take care of myself, so it continues to provide opportunities for me to practice that.

The better job I do taking care of myself, the less dramatic these highs and lows will seem and the more I can hang in when life does get heavy. I will get the rest I need. I have gotten loads of good advice on that topic. I am going to start with exercise and music for the next few days which I have’t done consistently in ages. And I will probably return to sleeping upstairs for a few days. If those don’t help, I will delve into the wealth of advice I have received.

Thank you for listening. Sometimes it just feels good to put all my crap out there rather than sit with it.