What the what???

Even if I tried to make up the last couple of months & the events that have surrounded me I don't think I could come up with some of this crazy stuff on my own. Stranger than fiction...that's my life right now. The ups, the downs, the sickness, the sudden job changes, the CHANGES period!  Whew! I'm exhausted!

Yep, if I've learned anything in the last couple of months it's that change isn't just part of life...it IS my life right now. I've given up on making any concrete plans for the time being. If you ask me to make plans with you for anytime "in the future" don't be surprised if I stare at you blankly & and momentarily lose consciousness. Lately, anytime my brain has tried to process anything but pure survival for myself and my family I feel like I start to overheat & shut down. Maybe it's all the sickness talking, but man do I feel out of sorts!

I'm sure I'll find a new normal sometime soon, but right now I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel on a road to nowhere. I'm working really, really hard to GET SOMEWHERE, but I'm pretty sure I'm not actually moving forward quite yet. But let me tell you, when I DO get to going somewhere it's gonna be good. Because lord knows I'm working my booty off to see something good happen!

Here is a rundown of just the last month. I'll put it in a shortened "bullet" format, because if I went into all the details it would be a novel.

• Dec 31st - Jon gets sick. We try to celebrate the New Year, but he is just plain sick & we call it a night as soon as midnight strikes.
• Jan - Jon's job is getting miserable. I worry about my husbands well being because of his work situation. Pure misery.
• Jan 14th McKenna is sick..just a fever, but she is sick enough to miss school for a day.
• Jan 15 - I accept a full time job offer.
• Jan 21 - Maya gets sick...really sick. Misses an entire week of school.
• Jan 24th - Jon's boss fires him. No reason. Oh, and he calls it putting him "on notice" instead of "firing" him (Which we learn is a big, messed up, legal way of trying to screw him on the way out the door). 
• Jan 28th - I start my full time hours. I get sick. I muscle through, but I'm miserable.
• Jan 29th - 13th anniversary. I'm sick. Jon gets sick again. We've been here before. Blah! 
• Jan 31st -Chandler has a full on meltdown at school. It's been a long time since we had one of these & I get a frantic call from the vice principal saying I need to come get him right away! Another reminder that autism never goes away, not even when you are trying your best to manage things the best way you know how. I cry in the shower because that's the only place I can find any solitude. My heart aches for my sweet boy. I wake up the next morning with more determination than ever to change our situation. We need to get him to a new school...which is why I'm working full time! I can do this!
• Feb 5th - the preschool calls me...Judah is running a fever, we need to come get him. The fever lasts for 24 hours & goes away. We figure it was just a small virus.
• Feb 8th - Maya pukes at school. I get the call at work that we need to come get her.
• Feb 11th - Jon officially resigns (yes, he worked for a few weeks while "on notice"). I said it was a long story......  I have a mini breakdown at work. The events of the last 2 weeks feel so heavy!
• Feb 12th- Maya is still sick, and now I get a call from the preschool saying Judah just puked! I fight the urge to cry at work for two days in a row. Thankfully, I keep it together.
• *Somewhere in there I was trying to figure out if I should even be trying to work full time. A dark feeling of complete hopelessness overcomes me. It would seem that the forces of nature were trying to make the possibility of working full time a complete and total disaster. I even try to entertain thoughts of finding another part time job because the stress of figuring out how to arrange care for my sick kids is proving to be a very bad thing for my mental well being. 
• Feb 13th, Jon has a new job offer! We are making it through the dark, dark tunnel. Now we need everyone to get well, and stay well. 
• Now....if I could just find someone to watch my kids for 15 min every school morning then I can keep my full time job! Oh, the joys of being a working mom!

So, there is the last month in a nutshell. The only reason I'm even bothering to write all this out isn't to make anyone feel sorry for me, or even to garner any extra sympathy. Basically I want you all to know that if you are feeling frustrated with me because I've been hard to get a hold of ^^^^all of that is why!  I'm confident that "this too shall pass". I know that the hard times don't last forever, but I very much feel like I'm operating in complete and total survival mode right now. I was just telling my boss the other day that I feel like no one at my work has seen the best version of me yet & I hate that! I want to get back to a place of peace again where things don't feel so out of control all the time. 

I'd love to say that I'm staying positive, but that would be a lie. And...I think it's pretty apparent that I'm not blowing rainbows & sunshine out my rear end right now either. However, when I have allowed myself to suspend my crazy thoughts for long enough to take stock of what really matters I can clearly see that I truly am still a blessed woman. 

I have a beautiful husband that just spent the last week staying home every day with our sick kids. He hasn't had more than one or two days off of work in the last 18 months, and for the first time in a LONG time he was going to enjoy a little break between jobs, but he ended up pulling sick kid duty all week so I could keep my job! My family is the only reason I have been able to even survive for the last month. The grandparents have taken turns watching my sick kids & taking Judah to preschool two days a week. Without them I would have had no other choice but to wave the white flag & surrender my job because I wouldn't have been able to work at all for the last three weeks solid.  My poor mom even got sick after she took care of my puking kid last week (sorry grandma!!).  Now, that's love!

While this may not be me at my best, this is me surviving some pretty rough stuff and being carried along the way by some pretty amazing people. If I have to put a silver lining around the crap I just bullet listed above that's what it would be. If this was some sort of test to see if I could survive the rigors of the working mom world, I hope I passed the test and can move on now! What doesn't kill you makes you stronger....right?