Countdown to Forty

Yesterday was my 39th birthday.  It was a pretty awful day.  My husband and children did nothing for me.  I mean, I didn't even get wished a happy birthday until maybe 10 in the morning, hours after everyone was up. And then around three in the afternoon my husband suggests going grocery shopping to make me a birthday dinner. Ummm, no thanks.  You don't plan a birthday dinner for someone at dinner time the day of the birthday. I made dinner myself, and cleaned up the mess. The kids didn't even know it was my birthday until my parents came down and told them and then told them to say happy birthday. By then, it'd have been better if we had just pretended it wasn't my birthday at all.

Not exactly the kick off to my final year of the thirties I'd been hoping for. I think all moms at some point want to just run away and leave it all behind. We don't because there are little moments of happiness that keep us around. Yesterday, I just wanted a different life altogether. I think I was perceived as being spoiled because I was upset I didn't get presents or taken to a fancy dinner.  That makes me even sadder because what I really wanted was just a little effort. A day to not have to think about what's for dinner. A day where instead of me talking about and planning for others, someone planned something, anything, for me.

But I'm still here. I did the dishes, threw in a couple loads of laundry, carted the boys to school, went grocery shopping, and called the vet. I stay committed to this because the alternative of leaving would destroy my children and eventually me, knowing what I had done to them. Plus, most of it is the life I chose and it's the life I want. I like caring for my kids and my home and my husband. I find great joy in it, truly. And my husband really isn't that bad of a guy. He slipped up, as I certainly have done in the past.

So we move onto another day, another week, another year. As October draws to a close, I look towards November with some plan of action in mind. This morning I totaled our food expenses, which for us includes grocery bills, eating out, and miscellaneous purchases of diapers, toiletries, etc.  It was over $1400.  How? Why? What? Completely excessive and inexcusable. I'm not even going to mention the food we've tossed in the trash.  I don't find myself to be a wasteful person. I'm frugal and money conscious, and this part, of all parts of my life, is ridiculous that I spend this much money sometimes literally throwing it away.

So my next step is to get a handle on this spending on FOOD!  I'm not much of a couponer, preferring to buy store brand and sales. Most of the coupons I find I don't really care for the products. But, I did go onto Target.com and printed out some coupons. I'm also going on a cash only basis. Once the cash is gone, it's gone. In addition, I'm bringing a calculator with me to the grocery store. My thriftiness in buying generic and sale items isn't enough. I need to really assess what we need and what can stay on the shelf. I realize as I type this that there are women out there who spend $150 a month on groceries for like a family of ten. Well, I'm not her and I know that none of these ideas of mine are novel or earth-shattering. I'm just trying to rein in the spending a little and stay in a $600/month grocery budget. Maybe the $150/month budget will come in time, but not this November.

 

The First Steps

Today I took the first steps to refocusing myself.  Step one:  No. More. Facebook.  There are things I love about Facebook.  There's a support group for SM parents, and since there are so few of us, it's been very comforting and crazy informative.  I love keeping in touch with my cousins and other family members who live far away.  And I like keeping up with old high school friends, which is weird because most people want to forget high school.  But lately, Facebook makes me sadder than it does happy.  For one, friends I thought were good friends, are not.  Things I used to think they were too busy for in general turned out to be things they were too busy for just me.  It also fosters a false sense of community.  I'm "friends" with far too many local people who really don't care to be a real friend and I no longer have time for people like that in my life. And finally it makes me miss people, people who would be good, loyal friends again if I lived closer to them. But I don't.  So it's time to just take an indefinite break.

Second step:  Focusing on what I can control and letting go of what I can't.  I'm done with superintendent meetings and principal meetings.  It sounds like giving up, but it's not.  It's being realistic.  Without community support, there isn't much I can do and it's a huge expense of energy and emotions that could otherwise be spent on my family and myself.  I need to focus on cutting grocery expenses, for real, because that is in my control as much as I let it get out of control.  The other big thing I need to realize that is not in my control, and this is HUGE, is the state of my house.  My house is my refuge and I used to believe that it's one of the few things in my life that I can control.  I can keep it clean and nicely decorated, but I'm not the only person who lives here.  There are four other people and an old cat and an old dog.  They all have a piece of this house and render its overall state out of my control. I can focus on just a tiny piece of it at a time and I'm going to have to let the other stuff go.  Maybe then I won't have a major meltdown when my husband throws his nicely folded underwear haphazardly into a drawer--true story, it wasn't pretty.  And with that mindset, today I cleaned all three bedrooms in record time.

And finally step three:  Giving thanks.  I used to religiously write in a gratitude journal every night and for some inexplicable reason I stopped.  I write down five elements of my day that brought me joy or happiness. Sometimes it's big things, like my kids and husband.  Sometimes it's wrestling the dryer sheet out of the cat's mouth before he swallows it and then eventually barfs it up.  I record funny things the kids said or did, milestones they've reached, or the book I'm enjoying at the moment.  It ends the day on a positive and helps to drive out the negative thoughts.

A.N.T.'s

I can only liken it to the high of having a new baby and then that coming off the high and sinking lower than ever before.  Last spring, when I finished that teaching job from hell and all but abandoned traditional teaching forever, I felt like the world was so bright with possibilities.  And to give me that little added boost, I wrote an article in thirty minutes, sent it off to "Scary Mommy" and, yes, they will publish it.  This blog got hundreds of views, people actually commented on posts I'd written.  And then we left for vacation, in the mountains, secluded, and this new life I had seemingly given birth to is perfect.

But we returned from vacation, and "Scary Mommy" had declined more pieces, and they hadn't paid me for the one that did get published, and I could think of nothing but complaining to write on my blog, not to mention the pressure to "be a blogger" and all the design that accompanies it.  I thought that maybe it would be a source of income, but as I read more about it, I felt this tremendous pressure to be something I was not.  First, I didn't want to whore out my project.  My blog was never meant to be this depiction of a perfect life and how your life could be perfect, too.  It was meant to be a log of how I take life one day at a time and force myself into finding happiness when the big things get way too big.  Suddenly the blog was one of the way too big things.

A.N.T.'s started infiltrating my life.  Automatic Negative Thoughts.  I don't really like to write.  It's not for me.  Blogging is more for professional writers/graphic designers.  That's not really my thing.  I experienced a little bit of a lag and immediately talked myself out of writing and blogging altogether.  And what made it easier was my children returning to school.  We began therapy again for my oldest son with selective mutism. Since school started, the boys' school has had one evacuation and two lockdowns as a result of threats.  The school has not been handling the situation as well as they could.  It was the perfect excuse to say my focus can't be with writing/blogging at this time.  

Only, I have been finding myself getting unhappier by the day to the point where I'd say I'm clinically depressed.  My body aches.  I've gained weight.  I sleep during the day, have insomnia at night.  I'm obsessing about money and all the things we can't afford (like private school or moving) and who is there for me and who isn't.  And my cat is sick.  My fifteen year old cat suddenly starting drinking obsessively.  He's had two UTI's and is losing weight.  The vet has offered no preventable or manageable solutions other than antibiotics when the infections occur nor have they said he's dying, but they are very content to bill me hundreds of dollars at each visit and send me home to clean cat urine out of rugs or comforters.  It's exhausting and just sad.  

But suddenly two weeks ago I got mad at myself over something.  "Scary Mommy" hadn't paid me and I just let them not pay me.  I never followed through with it.  I actually used it as a "sign" that I wasn't meant to be a writer.  How stupid was that?!?!  I wrote a piece that people loved and I deserved to be paid.  I emailed them and the issue was immediately resolved.  Just a glitch in processing a new writer.  The cat remained sick, the school remained broken, my son continues to have SM, but there was a little glimmer a couple of weeks ago.

That glimmer spurred me to write another article.  I don't know if it's been accepted yet, but I wrote it and sent it.  It was a step.  And it means enough to me to keep putting it out there until it is published.  It was written to bring awareness to selective mutism, so that's not something I'm willing to give up on.  While writing it, I started missing my blog, my blog from last year where I was writing about scrapbooking and books and finding fun projects to do around the house, anything to distract me from life.

Even though I was missing my blog, I had yet to sit down at the computer and write.  Last Wednesday was the most recent lockdown at my boys' school.  The oldest was too scared to eat his lunch.  The middle was denied bathroom access, wet his pants, and was left to sit in it for the remainder of the day.  The school had yet to address what was really happening.  On top of this, the school continued to trudge through ridiculous amounts of meaningless homework...I won't go into details, but I feel like I'm homeschooling my kid with all the work and modifications I'm making to the work that the teacher doesn't have time for, apparently.  I went to the board of education meeting last week incensed only to be met with denial that the school has any sort of problem.  We met with the superintendent on Monday to, in his words "hit the reset button".  He's very good at saying what you want to hear, but no change ever comes of it, and we walked away feeling empty.

On Tuesday there was a parent meeting to address the lockdowns, a week after the third incident.  There was an element of hysteria at the meeting, parents calling for metal detectors, others crying because they don't want metal detectors.  Others are on a witch hunt to punish the perpetrator(s).  What did I want to know?  How does this happen three times and you have no idea who it is?  They are just now implementing and following through on bathroom logs.  As of Tuesday, they have yet to limit the number of students out at the bathroom.  Are more frequent checks of the bathroom being put into place?  The answers were, of course, yes those plans are going to be put into action.  Why aren't they already put in place?  Some schools this is just policy from day one, and you're saying it wasn't put into place after the first incident.  Our kids had metal detector wands used on them and bomb sniffing dogs going through their belongings twice because you have no idea who was in the bathroom in a block of time and can only narrow it down to fifty kids?  The meeting ended with some parents praising the school for all it's doing (denial that their kid is in a potentially unsafe position) and others just shaking their heads.  

That was us, just shaking our heads and feeling powerless to do anything.  I have never been so down as I was yesterday.  I had surpassed sadness and anger.  I felt like it all was just hopeless, the school, the cat, all of it.  

This Sunday I turn thirty-nine.  As I lied in bed last night, I realized that it is hopeless, those things.  My cat is going to die and the school isn't going to change over night.  But I had one thing going for me, this blog.  And I remembered what happened last year when I focus on the blog and the projects I had attached to it, my life changed.  I got out of the house and landed a teaching job.  And though it didn't turn out the way I wanted, at least I knew.  I grew as a person, moved forward.  I'm back to sitting still and I hate it.  I don't want to be a blob at forty who is so achy she feels like she's seventy.  

I'm now focusing on what I can control and change in my life, and that is me.  I can control the fate of this blog.  I can learn about how to develop it slowly and within my terms of what I want it to be.  I can keep writing and let it be what it is.  And I can change my body and what I eat.  I can control that, and it's really time I start.  

On Sunday it'll be 365 days not just to happiness, but to FORTY!