Category Archives: Remarried Momdom

What Stress Does to Me

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I’ve mentioned how stressful the fall has been.  Know what happens when I get stressed?

First is my back-shoulders-neck-head. Mostly shoulders-neck-head. Tension-soreness-headaches-migraines happen to my shoulders-neck-head.  It can get bad, where I need to consciously lie on back at night (normally, I’m a side sleeper, curled into a fetal position), take too much tension headache medicine, be in a darkened quiet room, etc.

Second is my stomach.  Polite way of saying I need to run to the bathroom every two seconds.  Again, not fun, but uncontrollable, and a sure sign that something (or someone) has me stressed out.

Third, I begin to shake.  Somewhere between a shiver and a quake. Deep breaths help, but again, it’s uncontrollable.

All the while, I worry it, shake it like a rag doll in my brain.  In other words, I get a bit obsessive about whatever or whoever it is in my brain, and I can’t let go.  Probably one of the reasons, “Don’t worry about it,” sounds just as awful as nails on a chalkboard to me. It’s just not even practical, not even a realistic goal. Shut up.

Why do I know this much about how stress affects me physically? Because I was a teacher for over 17 years.  No, that was not a sarcastic answer. It’s the truth. And I’ve paid attention to my own body.

What helps alleviate some of these? Regular yoga (oops, need to get back on that wagon, too). Me-time. Deep breathing (goes along with the yoga). A massage now and then. Reading (to some extent). Being able to vent to someone about my source of stress (but not too much, because that can get me ramped up again). And a realization that This Too Shall Pass. I forget that a lot. Maybe I should get it tattooed somewhere I’ll see it all the time.

What does stress do to you? What do you do to alleviate it?

On-Again, Off-Again Dad

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The ex has called a couple of times over the past month or so, after a couple of months of not calling. He said, “I get him for Christmas this year, right?” Ummm, ok. So after making use of your liberal visitation schedule for two weeks out of the last 104, you want to stake your claim? Sure. Yes, you actually are supposed to have him starting on Christmas Eve, as it is an odd year. “I’ll try to get some time off, then,” he said. Sure, I thought.  Like last Christmas.

He called once more, spoke to The Boy only for a little while, and that was the last we heard anything about Christmas.  The Boy’s birthday was Wednesday, and his mom had sent gifts, one from her, and one from his dad. Her card said they were looking forward to seeing him at Christmas.  But the ex didn’t even call his son on his birthday.

What?

My mom told me that recently, she and The Boy were at Walmart and he said he really hoped he’d get to see his dad at Christmas, because he hadn’t seen him since April.  Yes, it hurts him more than he’ll admit to me, and yes, he does keep track.

As The Man says, kids are only young once. He’s going to miss it completely.

Angry for The Boy and pity for the ex. And partly angry for me too, really, because I have my own life and family that will be affected by his inadequacy. But mostly angry for The Boy.

Our Latest Project

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A couple of months ago, The Man and I were presented with an opportunity, and after careful thought, we jumped at it.

You see, The Man has done a couple of house flips in the past – he is that good at what he does. Not the huge house flips you see on HGTV, but some smaller ones where he turned a small profit that you couldn’t shake a stick at.

And so when we were offered a beach trailer for a steal, we decided that this was something we could do together.  Where we live, lots of people live or vacation in beach trailers.  They pay the lot rent year round and come down on the weekends, or a for a week at a time in the summer, stay in their little single-wide trailer a couple of blocks from the beach, and it’s their own little paradise for a fraction of the cost of a condo or beach house.

The Man and I are pretty good at being able to see potential in a living space. This place was a wreck when we bought it – holes in the floor and roof, standing water in places, and mouse poop pretty much everywhere else.  It was pretty disgusting work getting it cleaned out, and I was continually amazed that someone had lived there, in all of that nastiness. But since then, we have been working to make it sturdy, simplified and updated.  It may not look like much yet, but it already has come so far.

We have our tense moments, and things get thrown around, including cuss words from time to time, but we work well together, and we so look forward to seeing the finished product.

Here are some photos of our progress so far:

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Planners Who Need Planners

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I succumbed.

A co-worker introduced me to the Erin Condren Life Planner in July.  Suddenly I remembered my undergrad days when a planner was my lifeblood.  I couldn’t function without it, and if someone had ever taken it or I had misplaced it, my world would come to a screeching halt.  As I read reviews and watched the plethora of YouTube posts (it seemed everyone who had ever purchased one had also either done a blog post or a video with a 20-minute “walkthrough”), I suffered from sticker shock, but also a growing need to have one.  How had I gone so long without a planner? I asked myself over and over again.  I had never quite gotten the hang of the digital organization I so wanted to make work: Evernote, SpringPad, even Notes and Reminders on the iPhone just hadn’t quite cut it.  And I thought about the nights where I can’t sleep because my mind is racing with to-dos and ideas, notes and projects, blog posts and emails I need to write.  When those nights pop up, the only, ONLY way to calm my fevered brain is to get up with a pen and a pad of paper and just write everything down.  Good old pen to paper.

I could get my money managed more effectively, and keep track of expenses, I thought.

I could organize my blogging calendar, I thought.

I could have all of The Boy’s school and Autism Society events in one place, I thought.

I could even put events for work in there so I always know what’s going on and when, I thought.

I could include a daily to-do list, I thought.

I could keep our evenings on track between homework and other household chores, I thought.

In the end, I convinced myself to bite the bullet, and give it a shot.  In the whole scheme of things, if it didn’t work, the cost was not that prohibitive.  I ordered my planner and waited about 4 weeks for it to arrive.

When it came, I wasn’t sure what to do with it, and again, watched videos and read blog posts on the most effective way to use the planner.  Come to find out, most people’s posts were about how pretty they could make the thing with washi tape and stickers, without any real substance on how to use it.  So I turned to the notes section and made a list of all the things I wanted to keep track of, and began to form my own ideas of just how I would keep track of all of the stuff I mentioned above.

It’s been about two weeks, and it is being used, multiple times a day.  Not only do I plan, but I record expenses (usually first on a sticky note, and if I have time later, with the “proper” label that I have devised), and other things that have happened.

ECLP

But the biggest A-Ha of all is that by having everything recorded, I don’t remind myself six times a day about that one thing I want to remember.  I have a go-to spot for important papers.  I know where stuff is.  And all of these things allow me to 1) relax more, and 2) be more creative.  I have time to think about (and jot down) ideas for blog posts, and even outline my dreams and plans for my own nonprofit which I hope to start someday.

So I guess this is my own obligatory Erin Condren Life Planner blog post.  And I’m not trying to sell you on anything – it’s not for everyone.  But I am glad that I have gone back to paper, because it’s actually allowing my mind to unburden itself of all the small stuff so I have more time to think about the big stuff.

Sometimes You Just Need a Walk

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So much has been new and different since our move to the South.  Right now I am dealing with a job that I used to love turning into a job that I absolutely dread going to each morning.  Suffice it to say that I am experiencing things at work that I have never encountered at a place of business, and it is mind-boggling the amount of drama, backbiting, and just plain nonsense that occurs daily.

So I have begun the job search again, and because I am who I am, I am often preoccupied with thoughts about either my job, or the desperation to get away from it way too much.  It’s soul-crushing sometimes – I turned to The Man at one point today and said, “There were a lot of things I didn’t like anymore about teaching when I left, but at least I was respected.”

This is when I am so, so thankful to have The Man in my life.  I tend to obsess about my worries, and I let them overtake me physically.  I tend to be sedentary anyway, much more so since I took my current job, and when I am stressed, my first instinct is to curl up into a ball and shut the world out, thinking, thinking, and over-thinking the problem.  The Man, however, will not let me do this.  And it makes me cranky sometimes.  “No, I do NOT want to go for a walk right now,” I think as I sulkily get my shoes on and follow him out the door.

But it helps.

It helps to be outside, with my boys, looking at the houses in the neighborhood, dreaming about what our next one will look like, making jokes, feeling the warm air, and enjoying the sunshine.  Enjoying real life, as opposed to stewing in the what-ifs.

I can rely on him to dose me with the perspective that I need to get over the toxic thought cycle.  And I’m so thankful.

sunset

When Work Sucks

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I love my job.  I love being busy, I love having some responsibility (and a title).  I love being a leader in the office.

But there are aspects of my job that are really just too much, sometimes.  I have quite a background in educational leadership and administration which actually isn’t a far cry from business management.  Simply put, a good leader is a good leader, and good management practices are good management practices.  And it is still easy for me to identify examples of bad leadership and management practices, too.

I work in a culture of blame, and I hate that.  Good leaders use mistakes to help guide people to better work, and to help create better procedures.  Poor leaders point fingers and end up making good workers wonder why they work so hard, or even quit.  Two people walked off the job this Sunday.  Two, of an office staff of six.

Today, I busted my behind, trained two new employees, handled a million phone calls, and even booked some private charters.  I went home feeling pretty good about the productive day I had.  And about an hour after I got off work, I got a phone call from my boss, asking me about something at work which he clearly felt was a mistake I had made.  I had not made a mistake, but in his mind, he had to blame someone, so it was me.  And instead of feeling good about being productive and working hard today, I end up with a sick feeling in my stomach this evening about his perception of my fault, even though none existed.

More and more, every single day is stressful, and that means I have less to give when I get home at night, which is absolutely no good.

Jobs are hard to find.  In five months of searching last year, I got very few calls for interviews, and only one real offer.  Do I consider leaving?  Yes I do.  Definitely on evenings like tonight.

How do I deal with it?  My boys.  I spend time with my family and they make me laugh.  It may sound clichè, but they remind me why I am really on this planet.  It’s not for other people’s kids, and it’s most certainly not to take reservations for boat trips.  It is to love and spend time with my guys.  Yes I need a job to pay the bills, but my job is the small stuff as compared to The Boy and The Man.  Remembering that is how I deal with the rest.

Behavior Really Is Communication

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Behavior is Communication.  This was one of the tenets of autism I learned early on.  I remember sitting in a workshop with my then-husband, who really just didn’t get it, and this was the key piece I walked away with – I already knew it, but the workshop had reinforced it, and I had hoped my then-husband would have an a-ha! moment, but it never came.

The ex has now cancelled on The Boy for his week of visitation next month, and I broke it to The Boy late last week.  He had equated this planned trip to his dad’s to the escape plan of the tank fish in Finding Nemo, and would talk about how he was looking forward to seeing whether or not the escape plan would work.

Well it didn’t.

And at first, The Boy seemed OK.  “I guess the escape plan didn’t work.  I guess we’re stuck in the tank,” he would say.  I knew he didn’t really feel like he was stuck here with us, but that the plan fell through.

As the weekend wore on, and we began to witness more teenager-y behavior (refusal to do things we asked, etc.), it took my mom pointing out to me that this behavior was probably coming from the cancellation of plans.  And I had a Doh! moment.  I should know better, because of that basic rule, BEHAVIOR = COMMUNICATION.

Of course, that explains why he was being such a jerkface this weekend!

It’s still a sore subject, but figuring it out has helped The Man and me gain a little perspective, and retain a little more compassion for him right now.  Sometimes it’s hard to be compassionate to someone who is being a jerkface, but The Boy is still just a kid, and a kid who has been cancelled on again by his dad.

“I knew this escape plan wasn’t going to work.  Do you remember me telling you that before?”

😦

 

 

A Year Has Passed

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The Boy and I have now lived in our new home for a year.  All in all, our transition down here was a lot smoother than I anticipated.  The beginning of the school year had its fair share of stressors, but over the course of the year, we have been very lucky with the opportunities that have come our way (including those that I helped force our way), and we have settled into a very happy existence.

Don’t get me wrong.  We were happy before, and I miss that just a little, the single mom household thing, the metropolitan suburbia thing, the way-more-time-for-hobbies thing.  I miss that a bit.  I miss our friends (although we are looking forward to some visits this summer!), some of our favorite restaurants, having a Target around the corner as opposed to 45 minutes away…

But they have been replaced with The Man around full-time thing, the warmer climate thing, and that little thing called “family” – there is nothing that beats that.  The ocean, new friends that crack me up Every Single Day, our new-to-us home, having The Man around Every Single Day, lunching with my mom, having dinner with my parents, getting off of work at 3pm and not having to do anything else with my job until the next morning (usually), sweet tea in abundance, and date night Every Single Weekend…

So as I sit and reflect about all that has changed in our lives since a year ago, I am very pleased that we jumped at this chance, very thankful for how it has turned out, and very, very happy.

The end of our rainbow